Utendi wa Tambuka

Utend̠i wa Tambuka or Utenzi wa Tambuka ("The Story of Tambuka"), also known as Kyuo kya Hereḳali (the book of Heraclius), is an epic poem in the Swahili language, dated 1728. It is one of the earliest known documents in Swahili.

Known by various titles in English, including The Book of the Battle of Tambuka and The Story of Heraclius, the story recounts numerous events of the Byzantine-Arab Wars and Byzantine-Ottoman Wars between the Muslims and Romans (the contemporary name for the Byzantines). The Byzantines were represented by the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Heraclius. The story covers a period from 628 (the Battle of Mu'tah) to 1453 (the Fall of Constantinople). "Tambuka" is the Swahili rendering of Tabuk, a city located in north-western Saudi Arabia. The oldest manuscript of the epic is dated 1141 on the Islamic Calendar, corresponding to AD 1728. It was written at Yunga, a royal palace in the old city of Pate (the palace has since been destroyed). In strophe 1124–1125, the author notes that the "king of Yung"' (that is, the then Sultan of Pate) asked him to write an epic on the heroic deeds of the first followers of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The author identifies himself in one of the final stanzas (1146) as Mwengo, son of Athumani or Osman. Not much more is known about him other than that he wrote at the court of the Sultan of Pate, that he was no longer a young man by 1728, and that some other poems are ascribed to him. He also had a son, Abu Bakr bin Mwengo, who wrote an imitation of his father's epic somewhere in the middle of the 18th century.

Like other manuscripts of the period in Swahili, the Utendi wa Tambuka is written in Arabic script. The language used is a northern dialect of Swahili called Kiamu; some manuscripts, however, show influence from Kigunya (another northern dialect), while others show traces of Kiunguja, the dialect of Zanzibar.

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