Swahili people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| ca. 500,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Tanzania (particularly Zanzibar), Kenya (110,614),Mozambique, Oman | |
| Languages | |
| Swahili | |
| Religion | |
| Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Mijikenda, other Bantu peoples |
The Swahili people (or Waswahili) are an ethnic and cultural group inhabiting the African Great Lakes region. Members mainly reside on the Swahili Coast, in an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago, coastal Kenya, the Tanzania seaboard, and northern Mozambique. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil سواحل, meaning "coasts." The Swahili speak the Swahili language, which belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family.
The Swahili people originate from Bantu inhabitants of the coast of Southeast Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. They are mainly united under the mother tongue of Kiswahili, a Bantu language. This also extends to Arab, Persian, and other migrants who reached the coast some believe around the 7th and 8th centuries, providing considerable cultural infusion and numerous loan words from Arabic and Persian. But according to Archaeologist Felix Chami notes the presence of Bantu settlements straddling the Southeast African coast as early as the beginning of the 1st millennium. They evolved gradually from the 6th century onward to accommodate for an increase in trade (mainly with Arab merchants), population growth, and further centralized urbanization; developing into what would later become known as the Swahili City-States.
...
Wikipedia