Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz (1932-2023)
Kwaheri, Baba yetu wa Kiswahili. A goodbye to the father of Swahili and African linguistics, Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz (1932-2023)
by Annachiara Raia
Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, born in Mombasa on 11 November 1932, passed away on Monday 10 July in his home in Nairobi at the age of 91. Prof. Abdulaziz was a Kiswahili linguist, an Arabist and expert of distinction of archaic Swahili. He is also remembered as a so-called ‘teacher of the teacher’ (mwalimu wa walimu) for his vast knowledge in language matters.
In October 2016 a conference to honour his contribution to Kiswahili scholarship was held in Kilifi, a northern Kenyan coastal village, 56 kilometers northeast of Mombasa. Prof. Iribe Mwangi, chair of the Kiswahili Department at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, provides a palpable description of him as a humble and erudite human being and scholar. Prof. Mwangi aptly captures his being through this evocative description:
‘Unapomwona akiwa kwenye pitapita zake katika vijia na ngazi za Chuo Kikuu cha Nairobi, kamwe huwezi kuambatanisha kiwiliwili chake na sifa alizonazo. Pia, huwezi kuambatanisha kiwiliwili hicho na umri wake. Utafyeka miongo miwili kutoka kwa umri wake pasipo kuhisi kukosea. Mwenyewe hupita kwa kuinamisha uso kama mtu anayeona haya. Daima hapendi kujikweza na humsalimu yeyote anayemsimamisha kwa heshima kubwa. Anapenda mno kujidunisha. Ni mtiifu, mfuata maelekezo na ambaye hutimiza wajibu wake kwa wakati ufaao pasipo kukumbushwa. Anapozungumza, matao yake huwa ya chini na huepuka na kukaa mbali na migogoro ya aina yoyote ile. Kwenye vikao vya kiusomi, huketi kama ambaye haelewi yanayoendelea, lakini afunuapo kinywa kutoa mchango wake, mawazo anayoyatoa humwacha kila mmoja bila shaka yoyote kuhusu umuhimu wa tajriba pevu na fikra yenye kina. Hufika afisini mwake kila siku asubuhi kabla ya saa moja; jambo ambalo huenda amelifanya katika miongo iendayo kufikia mitano kwa sasa. Ngazi na vyumba vya jengo la Education Building anavielewa kuliko kila mmoja wetu idarani kwa sasa. Huyu ndiye Profesa Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz aliyezaliwa kisiwani Mombasa tarehe 11 Novemba, 1932.’
(English translation:)
‘When you see him walking in the hallways and stairs of Nairobi University, you cannot connect his slim body with the reputation he has. Also, you can’t associate the body with its age. You will cut off two decades of his age without feeling that you are wrong. He himself passes by bowing his head like a man who is shy. He doesn’t like to brag about himself and greets everyone who stops him with great respect. He is a very humble person. A diligent and quiet one, who follows instructions and who fulfills his obligations in time without the need to remind him of it. When he speaks, his eyebrows are low and he avoids and stays away from conflicts of any kind. At academic meetings, he sits as if he does not understand what is going on, but when he opens his mouth to give his contribution, the thoughts he gives leave everyone without any doubt about his mature experience and deep thought. He arrives at his office every day in the morning before 7 am; which he may have done for the last five decades. He knows the stairs and rooms of the Education building better than any of us in the department at the moment. This is Professor Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, who was born on the island of Mombasa on 11 November, 1932.’
Father of the Kiswahili department
His contribution to the field of language and linguistics has been unrivalled. Prof. Kineene, Prof. Mohamed Bakari, Prof. Kitsao, Prof. Habwe, Prof. Timammy and Prof. Wamitila have all been Prof. Abdulaziz’s pupils. Many others regard themselves as his grand-children (wajukuu). Because of his contributions to Kiswahili linguistics, he is rightly regarded as the father of the Kiswahili department (baba wa Idara ya Kiswahili) in Nairobi (I. Mwangi, 2018. 'Profesa Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz (Mkilifi)', p.5.). This same merit and praise goes to Prof. Farouk Topan. Both scholars have been the founders of Swahili Language and Literature (Lugha na fasihi kwa Kiswahili) at the University of Dar es Salam and Nairobi University.
Prof. Abdulaziz studied Quran and Islamic studies in the madrasa in the Kuze area of Mombasa, where other talented Islamic scholars, book publishers and poets studied as well, notably Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir and Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo. Swahili language historian Shihabuddin Chiraghdin and Prof. Mohamed Hyder also took madrasa classes with him.
Academic career
After receiving his school education in Kenya (Arab Boys’ school and then Coast Teachers Training College in Shanzu), he moved to the UK for his BA on Classical and Modern Arabic at SOAS (1958-1962). Afterwards, he continued his MA and wrote a thesis on popular Kiswahili poetry that he submitted in 1966 and later turned into the widely known book, titled Muyaka: 19th Century Swahili Popular Poetry, published by The Kenyan Literary Bureau in 1979. Abdulaziz finished his PhD in Linguistics with a thesis on Kiswahili syntax from University College London. His work on Transitivity in Kiswahili (Köppe, 1996) is still consulted in the field of Kiswahili language and linguistics. In East Africa, Prof. Abdulaziz held several positions. Besides acting as Officer of Education until 1967, he was in that same year appointed Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of the Department of Language and Linguistics in the then University College of Dar-es-Salam.
Later in 1970, he moved to the University of Nairobi at the Department of English Literature, where he taught for one year. In 1971 he was involved in the establishment of the Department of Linguistics and African languages at the University of Nairobi, of which he became the Founding Chairman. He also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and became full Professor in the same department in 1978.
Attracting teachers
Besides all the pioneering work he did for the establishment of Kiswahili, linguistic and Arabic studies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Nairobi, he was successful to attract Arabic teachers through the Egyptian Embassy and the Arab League, who sent their staff members to help teaching Arabic in the Kiswahili Department up to 2012. He obtained support from the American Fulbright foundation to help teach linguistics in the Kiswahili Department and from the German DAAD foundation for setting up German languages classes too.
Besides all the pioneering work he did for the establishment of Kiswahili, linguistic and Arabic studies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Nairobi, he was successful to attract Arabic teachers through the Egyptian Embassy and the Arab League, who sent their staff members to help teaching Arabic in the Kiswahili Department up to 2012. He obtained support from the American Fulbright foundation to help teach linguistics in the Kiswahili Department and from the German DAAD foundation for setting up German languages classes too.
In conversation with German linguists
Prof. Abdulaziz managed to travel to Germany several times, for instance in June/July 2003 and March/April 2004, when he was part of the Liyongo Working Group, researching and editing the songs attributed to the master poet Liyongo Fumo. The workshop was held at the University of Bayreuth, organised by Prof. Gudrun Miehe. Its valuable outcome is titled Liyongo Songs. Poems attributed to Fumo Liyongo (Köppe, 2004). In Cologne, he was in ongoing conversation with German linguists such as Bernd Heine and Wilhelm J.G. Möhlig, with whom he edited for instance a Kiswahili Grammar handbook in German, the so-called Swahili-Grundkurs (Köppe, 1999). The triglossia system that he coined is used in a plethora of sociolinguistic books up to now.
Hosted at his homeI had the honour to be kindly hosted by Prof. Abdulaziz and his family at their home in Nairobi in 2014. Muyaka 19th Century Swahili Popular Poetry is an early gem in Swahili literary criticism and comparative studies. As an African-language literature lover specialised in Swahili literature and manuscript studies, I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude for the existence of such a work. With a blue cover and the image of a traditional Swahili wooden carved door from within, one can see a coconut palm tree and Fort Jesus of Mombasa in the sketched background. This 340-pages book offers an edition of the entire hitherto unedited collection of the most distinguished poet from 19th century Mombasa, Muyaka Bin Hajji al-Ghassaniy. This topical poetry was written down in the dialect of Mombasa, kimvita, and in Swahili in Arabic script. W. Hichens had published in 1940 a collection of the poems of Muyaka, titled Diwani ya Muyaka, published by the University of the Witwatersrand Press, Johannesburg in 1940. The poems included in his Diwani were however neither translated nor annotated. Abdulaziz’ work has inevitably become the reference book that every student of Swahili literature in Europe and East Africa must have been asked to read and study carefully. It is a treasure for Swahili Studies and almost available in all university libraries in Europe, and most certainly in East Africa. A copy of this work is also held in the private library of Ustadh Mahmoud Mau on Lamu island. Upon consent of the family, it’s our wish to digitise it in the framework of the UMADA project and increase its visibility for future generations of Swahili scholars all over the world.
Africanist conversant with the Arabic language
Prof. Abdulaziz’s work - that benefitted from the help of the late copyist Muhammad Sikujua and Rev. W.E. Taylor, who previously collected the poems of Muyaka and worked together to produce the Roman transliteration with notes - is a great example of what we could call ‘philological encounters from the fields’. He endeavoured a huge challenge, Muyaka’s poetic and patriotic language being rich of archaic mafumbo (riddles), allusions and obscure usages that very often are hard to grasp, let alone translate into another language. The required expertise of being an Africanist conversant with the Arabic language and canon for embarking in such a critical work, is often underestimated and hard to find amid students, because of the way undergraduate and postgraduate curricula are currently structured.
Prof. Abdulaziz’s work - that benefitted from the help of the late copyist Muhammad Sikujua and Rev. W.E. Taylor, who previously collected the poems of Muyaka and worked together to produce the Roman transliteration with notes - is a great example of what we could call ‘philological encounters from the fields’. He endeavoured a huge challenge, Muyaka’s poetic and patriotic language being rich of archaic mafumbo (riddles), allusions and obscure usages that very often are hard to grasp, let alone translate into another language. The required expertise of being an Africanist conversant with the Arabic language and canon for embarking in such a critical work, is often underestimated and hard to find amid students, because of the way undergraduate and postgraduate curricula are currently structured.
We are therefore still and very much in debt to Prof. Abdulaziz for this outstanding early achievement in Swahili literary history, published in 1976 and still consulted today. As Prof. Farouk Topan put it nicely: ‘Kitabu chake cha Muyaka kimeleta sauti mpya uwanjani’ (His book on Muyaka has brought a new voice in the field).
May his soul rest in peace.
Annachiara Raia
References
Bukenya, Austin. 2023. Abdilatif and Abdulaziz, and Kiswahili’s battle against ‘ukiwa’ | Nation
Mwangi, Iribe. ‘Profesa Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz (Mkilifi)’ (unpublished paper).
Rajab, Ahmed. 2023. Profesa Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz: Mswahili aliyetambulika kimataifa kuwa gwiji wa isimu - Gazeti La Dunia
Selected publications
Transitivity in Swahili / Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz. - Köln : Köppe, cop. 1996
Vers une culture multilingue de l'éducation / Adama Ouane; Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz. - Hambourg : Institut de l'UNESCO pour l'Education, 1995
The ecology of Tanzanian national language policy / Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz.
In: Language in Tanzania / ed. by E.C. Polomé, C.P. Hill , p. 139-175, 1980
Methodology of sociolinguistics surveys : the East African Language Survey experience / Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz.
In:Journal of Eastern African research and development , vol. 9, no. 2, p. 1-27, 1979
Muyaka : 19th century Swahili popular poetry / Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz. - Nairobi : Kenya literature bureau, 1979
For a more comprehensive list of publications see Google Scholar.
Photos
Top photo: Mohammed Hassan Abdulaziz (left) at his farewell party on 6 August 2019 (© University of Nairobi; picture cropped).
Upper photo: (Starting from left:) Sheikh Ahmed Nabahany, Prof. Mohammad Hassan Abdulaziz, Bwana Abdilatif Abdalla, Ustadh Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo. Bayreuth University, Germany. June-July 2003. Photo from Bwana Abdilatif Abdalla’s personal archive.
Lower photo: Liyongo Working Group, Bayreuth University June-July 2003. Starting from left: Clarissa Vierke (Bayreuth), Abdilatif Abdalla (Leipzig), Farouk Topan (London), Ahmed Nabahany (Mombasa), Gudrun Miehe (Bayreuth), Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo (Mombasa), Angelica Baschiera (London), Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz (Nairobi), Said Khamis (Bayreuth) and Ridder H. Samsom (Berlin/Hamburg). Photo from Bwana Abdilatif Abdalla’s personal archive.
Cover of the book Muyaka from Annachiara Raia’s private library.
Posted on 10 July 2023, last modified on 7 August 2023