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Lamu Island
Lamu Island is a port, city, and island just off the shore of Kenya in the Indian Ocean approximately 150 miles from Mombasa. It is a part of the East African country of Kenya. Lamu was founded in the 12th century. Lamu is one of the longest-established and best-preserved remaining settlements of the Swahili tradition in east Africa that remains today. The island has continually been inhabited for over seven hundred years, and continues to be an important center in eastern Africa. Swahili culture The island of Lamu is a Swahili settlement filled with culture. Prior to the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, people of various countries and regions migrated to the island of Lamu. Traders and sailors from the Arabian Peninsula, China, India and South-East Asia traveled across the Indian Ocean to the East African Coast to reach the island of Lamu. The diverse mixture of sailors and traders with the native people of the Lamu island created distinguishable social classes and a diver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manda Island
Manda is an island of the Lamu Archipelago of Kenya, known for the prosperous 9th century ports of Takwa and Manda town. The island is now linked by ferry to Lamu and is home to Manda Airport, while Manda Toto island lies to its west. The island is separated from the mainland by the narrow ''Mkanda'' channel. Both Manda town and Takwa were probably abandoned due to a lack of water in the first half of the 19th century. In the 1960s the Kenya Department of Agriculture recommended building several concrete catchments called ''jabias'' to capture rain water on the island. Two ''jabias'' were built and many families moved onto the island, farming maize, cassava, simsim and cotton. Manda town History The Manda town ruins (on the Northwest coast of Manda Island), were first explored by the archaeologist Neville Chittick in 1965. The town owes its origins to trade with the Persian Gulf during the 9th and 10th centuries. The chief trading commodity was probably elephant ivory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swahili People
The Swahili people (, وَسوَحِيلِ) comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab, and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the East African coast across southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambique, and various archipelagos off the coast, such as Zanzibar, Lamu, and the Comoro Islands. The original Swahili distinguished themselves from other Bantu peoples by self-identifying as Waungwana (the civilised ones). In certain regions, such as Lamu Island, this differentiation is even more stratified in terms of societal grouping and dialect, hinting at the historical processes by which the Swahili have coalesced over time. More recently, through a process of Swahilization, this identity extends to any person of African descent who speaks Swahili as their first language, is Muslim, and lives in a town of the main urban centres of most of modern-day Tanzania and coastal Kenya, northern Mozambique, or the Comoros. The name ''Swahili' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sienna Miller
Sienna Rose Diana Miller (born 28 December 1981) is an American-British actress. Born in New York City and raised in London, she began her career as a photography model, appearing in the pages of Italian '' Vogue'' and for the 2003 Pirelli Calendar. Her acting breakthrough came in the 2004 films ''Layer Cake'' and '' Alfie''. She subsequently portrayed socialite Edie Sedgwick in '' Factory Girl'' (2006) and author Caitlin Macnamara in ''The Edge of Love'' (2008), and was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2008. Her role as The Baroness in '' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra'' (2009) was followed by a brief sabbatical from the screen amid increased tabloid scrutiny. Miller returned to prominence with her role as actress Tippi Hedren in the 2012 television film '' The Girl'', for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film. She has since starred in several notable fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Hanley
Chris Hanley is an American film producer best known for producing independent films such as ''Buffalo '66'', ''The Virgin Suicides'', ''American Psycho'', ''Bully'', ''Spun'', ''Spring Breakers'', and ''London Fields''. Early years Chris Hanley was raised in Montclair, New Jersey, demonstrating an interest in art and photography. Hanley studied literature and philosophy at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts. Additionally, he studied at Columbia University and Oxford. Hanley met his wife Roberta at the affiliated Hampshire College's electronic music lab. Career Music Hanley started his career in the music business as the founder of Intergalactic Music, Inc., a company that supplied vintage Fender and Gibson guitars to musicians such as John McLaughlin, Heart, and John Entwistle of The Who. In the early 1980s, Intergalactic opened a recording studio in New York City, and recorded artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, Soul Sonic Force, Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam, The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake
On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+07:00, UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicenter, epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Burma plate and the Indian plate, and reached a Modified Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of IX in some areas. A massive tsunami with waves up to high, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami after the Boxing Day holiday, or as the Asian Tsunami, devastated communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean, killing an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries, violently in Aceh (Indonesia), and severely in Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu (India), and Khao Lak (Thailand). The direct result was major disruption to living conditions and commerce in coastal provinces of surrounding countries. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances) above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are in turn generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water from a large event. Tsunami waves do not resemble normal undersea currents or sea waves because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide. For this reason, it is often referred to as a tidal wave, although this usage is not favoured by the scientific community because it might give the false impression of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zamani Project
The Zamani Project is part of the African Cultural heritage, Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Database. Zamani is a research group at the University of Cape Town, which acquires, models, presents and manages spatial and other data from cultural heritage sites. The present focus of the Zamani project is Africa, with the principal objective of developing "The African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Database". Zamani comes from the Swahili phrase "Hapo zamani za kale" which means "Once upon a time", and can be used to mean 'the past'. The word is derived from Arabic root for temporal vocabulary, 'Zaman,' and appears in several languages around the world. History The Zamani initiative was conceptualised in the Geomatics Division of the University of Cape Town by Professor Heinz Rüther in 2001 in collaboration with ITHAKA and Aluka as the "African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Database" in 2004 with a number of sequential grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Founda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friday Mosque
A congregational mosque or Friday mosque (, ''masjid jāmi‘'', or simply: , ''jāmi‘''; ), or sometimes great mosque or grand mosque (, ''jāmi‘ kabir''; ), is a mosque for hosting the Friday noon prayers known as ''jumu'ah''.See: * * * * * * * * * It can also host the Eid prayers in situations when there is no '' musalla'' or '' eidgah'' available nearby to host the prayers. In early Islamic history, the number of congregational mosques in one city was strictly limited. As cities and populations grew over time, it became more common for many mosques to host Friday prayers in the same area. Etymology The full Arabic term for this kind of mosque is ''masjid jāmi‘'' (), which is typically translated as "mosque of congregation" or "congregational mosque". "Congregational" is used to translate ''jāmi‘'' (), which comes from the Arabic root "ج - م - ع" which has a meaning ‘to bring together’ or ‘to unify’ (verbal form: and ). In Arabic, the term is typically s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Shela
The Battle of Shela (or Kuduhu) occurred around 1812 on the sand dunes near the village of Shela on Lamu Island, in what is now Kenya, just south of the larger village of Lamu. The people of Lamu won against superior forces from Mombasa and Pate. The battle led to the domination of the coast by the rulers of Oman. Background The Lamu Archipelago is a group of three islands off the coast of what is now Kenya. The largest and most fertile is Pate, the northernmost. Manda lies to the south of Pate, separated by a narrow channel from Lamu, the farthest south. Manda and Lamu are sandy and covered with dunes. Lamu supports mango and coconut trees. The islands provide the best anchorages on the coast north of Mombasa. The battle was one of several between the people of Lamu and Pate during the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time of the war the population of Lamu was estimated at between 15,000 and 21,000, and the town was expanding its trade while Pate was in decline. The sultans of Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oman
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline faces the Arabian Sea to the southeast and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The exclaves of Madha and Musandam Governorate, Musandam are surrounded by the United Arab Emirates on their land borders, while Musandam’s coastal boundaries are formed by the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. The capital and largest city is Muscat. With a population of approximately 5.46 million and an area of 309,500 km2 (119,500 sq mi), Oman is the Countries with highest population, 123rd most-populous country. From the 18th century, the Omani Sultanate was Omani Empire, an empire, competing with the Portuguese Empire, Portuguese and British Empire, British empires for influence in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. At its peak in the 19th ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mazrui
The Mazrui or Mazar'i (Arabic: المزاريع) were an Omani Arab clan that reigned over some areas of East Africa, especially Kenya, from the 18th to the 20th century. In the 18th century they governed Mombasa and other coastal places and opposed the Omani Al Bu Sa'id Dynasty that ruled over Zanzibar. On at least one occasion they attacked Stone Town allying with the Portuguese. When the British East Africa Protectorate was established in the late 19th century, the Mazrui were one of the groups that most actively resisted the British rule, along with the Kikuyu and Kamba people. Notable people * Ali Mazrui Ali Al'amin Mazrui (24 February 1933 – 12 October 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic, professor, and political writer on African and Islamic studies, and North-South relations. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya. His positions included Dir ..., academic and writer Footnotes Further reading * Akinola, G.A. (1968): ''The Mazrui of Mombasa''. Year: 1968. Period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
