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Fetishizing the Foot Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

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Fetishizing the Foot Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals Fetishizing the Foot Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals Jenny Peruski amad bin Muhammaḍ al-Murjabī (c. 1832– were emblematic of his high status and generosity, and for Ward 1905), more commonly known as Tippu Tip, they were ethnographic artifacts which he maintained in his col- was a (in)famous slave trader from the Swahili lection until the 1920s, when he gied them to the Smithsonian coast who worked along a broad stretch of Institution at the suggestion of his American wife, Sarita Ward land reaching into what is now the Democratic (Page and Bennet 1972: 188). Republic of the Congo. Between 1884 and It is both the object of this exchange as well as the process by 1889H he developeḍ a friendship with Herbert Ward, an English which meanings become attached to mobile objects that will be artist and adventurer working in the service of King Leopold II the focus of this investigation. ese meanings are entangled in of Belgium. In 1889, Tippu Tip and Ward encountered each other complex networks of visual, linguistic, economic, and geographic for the last time before Ward’s return to England. Upon Ward’s re- associations. e meanings of mitawanda are shaped not only quest, Tippu Tip removed his wooden clogs, a special type known through exchanges like that between Herbert Ward and Tippu Tip, as mitawanda (sg. mtawanda) and gave them to Ward as a part- but also by Indian Ocean trade networks, gendered practices of ing “souvenir” (Ward 1927: 108). To mark the occasion, Tippu Tip dress and display, racial violence, and religious authority, to name wrote a short inscription in Arabic on each stating “I have made but a few. ese complex associations point to questions about the a gi of this sandal to my friend Mister Ward of the English gov- history and signicance of this type of sandal, their use and dis- ernment” (Figs. 1–2).1 play on the Swahili coast, and how the circulation of objects be- In this moment of exchange, these sandals meant two dierent comes an important component of structuring social, cultural, and things, in addition to the various other meanings they had car- economic relationships. How these sandals circulate and create ried throughout their lifetime. To Tippu Tip, these sandals re- meaning are thus implicated in larger dialogues that question dis- ected his status as a wealthy, freeborn individual capable of gi- ciplinary boundaries and long-standing art historical frameworks ing a luxury item to a friend. Tippu Tip is frequently noted for such as formal analysis. his generosity and “gentleman-like” manners throughout Herbert As this study works against any singular reading of these san- Ward’s Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (1969, especially pp. dals, so too it transcends any xed temporal or geographic space. 164–85) and his edited journals A Valiant Gentleman: Being the While I am primarily occupied with coastal east Africa in the eigh- Biography of Herbert Ward, Artist and Man of Action (1927, espe- teenth and nineteenth centuries, I read into and against practices cially pp. 106–109), where it would seem that he took great pride of bodily adornment in the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, and in his ability to host and to share wealth.2 To Ward, the clogs rep- further inland in east Africa. Moreover, in order to better under- resented a cultural memento from his time spent in the Stanley stand the complex history of mitawanda, I explore similar forms Falls district in the Belgian Congo, where Tippu Tip acted as gov- dating as early as 200 and as recently as the present day. Of ernor between 1887 and roughly 1890. For Tippu Tip, clog sandals course, this should not imply that these examples represent a con- tinuous narrative. Instead, I will demonstrate how any telling of the history and use of this type of sandal on the coast necessitates a dis- J P is a doctoral student at Harvard University. She studies cussion of the nature of mobility and the uid meanings attached Islamic artistic practices in global east Africa. She is especially interested to mobile objects such as mitawanda. In doing so, I raise the ques- in material exchanges between central and eastern Africa, the Arabian tions: How is the meaning or status of objects constructed among Peninsula, and South Asia. [email protected] the peoples on the Swahili coast? In what ways does object mo- bility collapse or solidify temporalities and geographies? rough african arts AUTUMN 2020 VOL. 53, NO.3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00538 by guest on 28 September 2021 peruski.indd 58 5/8/2020 12:58:39 PM 1 Sandals (mitawanda) believed to have belonged to Tippu Tip (probably) Zanzibar, second half of the 19th century Wood; 11 cm x 28 cm x 10 cm Object# E323366-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Photo: Smithsonian Institution 2 Alternate view of sandals (mitawa- nda) in Figure 1 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Photo: Smithsonian Institution an investigation of the history, social functions, and circulation of ENTANGLED HISTORIES OF MITAWANDA these sandals, this study aims to unseat the notion of xed mean- e history of mitawanda is incredibly dicult to trace, but it ings within homogeneous cultural units. e mobility of mitawa- seems likely that they were popularized in east Africa between the nda implies a uidity of meaning that speaks to their status as seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. e eighteenth and nine- transcultural, entangled objects. teenth centuries were periods of increasing trade and patronage under the Omani Mazruʿi sultans administering from Mombasa VOL. 53, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2020 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00538 by guest on 28 September 2021 | peruski.indd 59 5/8/2020 12:58:40 PM (ca. 1698–1837) and later the Omani Būsaʿīdī sultans administer- 3 Portrait of Princess Sayyida Salme ing from Zanzibar (ca. 1832–1964). Some of the earliest examples Zanzibar, c. 1856–1880 Photo: Leiden University Libraries, Loan Collection can be found in photographic portraits of the ruling elite such as Oriental Institute the Būsaʿīdī princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3). e Būsaʿīdī sultans were particularly adept at appropriating and adapting the artis- tic and architectural forms of former rulers of the Swahili coast. african arts AUTUMN 2020 VOL. 53, NO.3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00538 by guest on 28 September 2021 peruski.indd 60 5/8/2020 12:58:41 PM 4 Sandals (mitawanda) probably made for on the Swahili coast certainly precedes the Būsaʿīdī Sultanate. Sultan Fumo Omari Witu, Kenya, ca. 1890–1894 British administrator Alfred Claude Hollis recorded an oral history Wood; 8.9 cm x 24.6 cm x 10.2 cm each of Vumba territories on the border between Kenya and Tanzania Object# X1054a-b, Brooklyn Museum in which wooden sandals featured importantly in investiture rights Photo: Brooklyn Museum in the eighteenth century. He claimed that when a new ruler was agreed upon by the patrician elite, that ruler then “had the right to wear wooden sandals instead of leather ones and [wa]s styled Diwan” (Hollis 1900: 279). It seems possible, though speculative, that Būsaʿīdī commissions of mitawanda exist as part of a con- tinued artistic tradition preceding the establishment of Būsaʿīdī rule in east Africa. is type of sandal is characterized by a platform sole to which is attached a post and knob, which would be gripped between the rst and second toes. is shape can vary from a simple rectangle, to hourglass, to stylized sh, or various other forms. Typically, the For instance, Prita Meier has demonstrated how Sultan Barghash primary medium is wood, to which decoration might be added (r. 1870–1888) reused spaces and forms associated with Mwana with carving, painting, ivory inlay, or applied metals like silver. Mwema Fatuma, a Zanzibari queen who ruled in the seventeenth e mitawanda featured in a nineteenth-century portrait of the century, in order to assert his own authority within Zanzibar Stone Būsaʿīdī princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3) are made of a thin, hour- Town (Meier 2016: 128–30), while at the same time wrestling glass-shaped sole, a lathe-cut post and knob, and two scalloped with the encroaching inuence of the British and their assaults platforms connected beneath the heel and pad of each shoe. on his sovereignty. e laborious and expensive process of hand-making and e importance of footwear, and particularly wooden sandals, decorating these objects suggests the high value attached to such VOL. 53, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2020 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00538 by guest on 28 September 2021 | peruski.indd 61 5/8/2020 12:58:42 PM adornments, which exceeded their practical function. Mitawanda 5 Wooden sandals (mitawanda) with silver repoussé and attached bells such as those made for Sultan Fumo Omari (r. 1890–1894) are Gujarat, India, acquired in Zanzibar, ca. 18th carefully chip-carved with repeat saw tooth, triangle, and square century designs that complement the rectilinear form of the sandal (Fig. Wood, silver, metal alloy, brass; 6.1 cm x 26 cm x 10.1 cm each 4). e designs and techniques used in Fumo Omari’s sandals are Bata Shoe Museum, Object# P79.568 markedly dierent from those found in a silver-plated pair of mi- Photo: © 2020 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada.. tawanda now held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. 5). Similar to Sayyida Salme’s sandals, this pair features thin, hourglass-shaped soles, what appear to be lathe-cut posts and knobs, and scalloped platforms at the heel and pad of each shoe.
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