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 gi ed 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 di erent 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
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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 di cult 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
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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.
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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 in uence 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
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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 di erent 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. However, here the entire sandal has been covered with thin sheets of repoussé silver, as well as delicate silver bells attached along the rim of each san- dal’s sole. e sole is further embellished by vegetal and geometric interlace in low relief. Clearly, there was incredible variety in how mitawanda were made and consumed. e example of the mitawanda at the Bata Shoe Museum is particularly intriguing, because the record of these sandals largely obscures a connection to east Africa in favor of an Indian attri- bution. On the website, they are labeled not as mitawanda but as paduka, the Sanskrit word for this type of sandal, and it is noted that they were made in Gujarat, in northwest India, but acquired in Zanzibar. is attribution is based on formal, stylistic analysis. e vegetal patterns on the soles are interpreted as having “Gujarati in uence.”3 Even if this attribution could be determined with cer- tainty, it erases the social history of these objects once they arrived in east Africa in favor of an “original” meaning as paduka. is is not to say that connections between mitawanda and men’s tunics were fashioned in India and central Asia before being paduka did not exist. e forms of both types share obvious sim- shipped to the port cities of Lamu and Zanzibar for local consump- ilarities: a platform sole to which is attached a post and knob that tion; and silver bracelets and anklets were made in various locales would be gripped between the rst and second toes. Additionally, and transported across the Indian Ocean with such frequency that jewelry and modes of dress were circulating widely across the it is next to impossible to trace styles or techniques to a particular Indian Ocean in the early modern and modern periods. Protective region. For instance, two sets of silver anklets are attributed to di er- amulets circulated between east Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and ent locales, one to the Swahili coast (Fig. 6) and the other to Oman western India in the forms of sumt necklaces and port-Qurʾans; (Fig. 7). But despite the distance between purported production
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peruski.indd 62 5/8/2020 12:58:42 PM employ large lozenge and diamond shapes inscribed with dots 6 Pair of wedding anklets Swahili coast, 19th–20th century and lines. Clearly, styles and techniques (and even artisans) were Silver; (l) 7.6 cm x 12.7 cm x 11.4 cm; (r) 7.6 moving freely across the Indian Ocean, historic exchanges that are cm x 12.4 cm x 11.1 cm Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, from particularly well established and evidenced by the nineteenth cen- the Robert and Nancy Nooter Collection, tury. e mitawanda form was a similarly mobile one, which was Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, especially popular in east Africa and South Asia. Object# 2003.19.1–2 Photo: Travis Fullerton, © Virginia Museum of Fine In India, the use and meaning of paduka di ers from their func- Arts tion on the Swahili coast. e long history of this type of sandal begins around 200 , when it was and remains associated with the divine (see Balakrishnan 2016: 175–208; Jain-Neubauer 2000; e Hindu 2006), and with the god Vishnu and his avatars Krishna and Rama in particular. ey can be worn by devotees or become devotional objects in their own right (Jain-Neubauer 2000: 90). A particularly sumptuous example held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. 8) is made of wood with elaborate brass inlay detailing a styl- ized sh form likely intended as an incarnation of the god Vishnu sites, both sets share remarkable similarities. Both employ broad, (Balakrishnan 2016: 181). attened hinges secured by pins. ese hinges are embellished with In east Africa, however, the sandals were seen as the exclusive horizontal registers of oral and geometric motifs in the Swahili right of wealthy, upper-class individuals and thus became markers example, and geometric motifs in the Omani pair. e hinges are of status. ey feature prominently in photographed portraits of connected to the rest of the anklet by perpendicular bands dec- wealthy Swahili women and men, such as Princess Sayyida Salme; orated with pearl motifs, chain motifs, and diagonal stripes. e the few pairs that have personal histories attached to them are as- remainder of each anklet has more organic decoration: the Swahili sociated with famous merchants such as Tippu Tip or members of example includes abstracted plant motifs, while the Omani anklets the ruling class such as Sultan Fumo Omari4; the brief discussions
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peruski.indd 63 5/8/2020 12:58:43 PM of them in primary and secondary sources suggest that they were 7 Pair of anklets Oman, 19th century worn exclusively by wealthy, freeborn individuals (although there Silver; Exterior diameter: 11.3 cm, interior are con icting accounts of this as I will discuss later on). diameter: 6.2 cm, height of bezel: 6 cm e history of mitawanda is further complicated by linguistic Photo: courtesy of Michael Backman Ltd, London references. Tippu Tip’s inscription refers to these sandals by the Arabic term qabqāb (pl. qabāqīb), as opposed to the Swahili des- ignation mitawanda. e term qabqāb is also used to refer to a type of sandal popular in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, greater Syria, and Turkey at least as early as the Mamlūk period (1250–1517 ). Doris Behrens-Abouseif notes that one of the eleven daughters of Sultan al-Nāsiṛ Muhammaḍ of Egypt (r. 1293– 1294, 1299–1309, 1310–1341) purchased what must have been an extremely lavish pair of qabqāb for the exorbitant sum of 40,000 dirhams or 2,000 dinars (Behrens-Abouseif 2007: 48). While these fourteenth-century sandals no longer survive, similar if less lavish clog sandals were being used in the Middle East between the eigh- teenth and twentieth centuries. Few sources exist on the Middle Eastern qabqāb. Behrens- Abouseif brie y denes them as “bath footwear” (2007: 48), which is a use still associated with this type of sandal today. However, similar to the Swahili coast, more functional qabqāb were more simplistic and had minimal decoration (Fig. 9). ese more prac- tical shoes exist in dramatic contrast to what must have been an inlaid mother-of-pearl arranged in various patterns. While the incredibly ornate pair commissioned by al-Nāsiṛ Muhammad’ṣ form remains distinct, these qabqāb share a number of similarities daughter, or other elaborate commissions from the early modern with the mitawanda at the Bata Shoe Museum: the use of wood as and modern periods. A nineteenth-century pair of qabqāb re- the primary construction material, the elevated sole, and the use cently up for auction (Fig. 10) consists of a wooden sole which has of silver sheet metal. been elevated high o the ground by two wooden boards reced- In this example, the form far supersedes any functional neces- ing in width from their bases to the point where they are attached sity in a bathhouse. In fact, the added metal plating would have at the heel and pad of the soles. e sandal would be attached to been particularly ill suited to that humid environment. Two online the foot by an arched strap embellished with pierced and ham- sources state that embellished qabqāb were worn by women on mered silver sheet metal and attached to either side of the pad of their wedding days (Meem Magazine 2017, Souriat 2015). Souriat the sole. ese wooden sandals have been further decorated with indicates that women would wear qabqāb to increase their height
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peruski.indd 64 5/8/2020 12:58:48 PM 8 Sandals (paduka) South Bengal, India, 20th century Wood inlaid with brass; 7.8 cm x 26 cm x 10.3 cm Bata Shoe Museum, Object# P84.154 Photo: © 2020 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada
and appearance for the ceremony. Similarly, Meem Magazine states MITAWANDA AS MERCANTILE COMMODITIES that women’s clog sandals were embellished with silver and gold Much work has been devoted to the history and origins of the during wedding ceremonies. Given that the sandals commissioned peoples on the Swahili coast, which I do not want to repeat here, by al-Nāsiṛ Muhammad’ṣ daughter were purchased with money but it is important to note that trade has been, and in many ways from her trousseau, it seems likely that the qabqāb discussed by remains a de ning feature of the region and is an important com- Behrens-Abouseif were in fact used for her wedding rather than ponent of the economy. A survey of most major works addressing as “bath footwear.” this region would readily con rm this assertion: James de Vere e history of mitawanda is thus interconnected with types of Allen (1993) notes that the steady trade networks between the sandals produced and used across the Indian Ocean (and even into Arabian Peninsula and east Africa were important for the forma- the Mediterranean), each of which has its own complex histories. tion of such a heterogeneous environment on the coast, while John ese connections with the Middle East and South Asia informed Middleton (2004) emphasizes the interconnection between Arab, their uses and meanings on the Swahili coast. Whether east Indian, and Swahili merchants crossing the Indian Ocean. is is African consumers were explicitly aware of how paduka or qabqāb not to understate the practices of violence and exclusion that o en were used in South Asia and the Middle East or not, these visual, accompanied these interactions as a result of racial tensions and linguistic, and mercantile connections to distant locales played an imperial authority attached to individuals claiming Arab, Iranian, important role in how east African merchants and rulers situated or Indian descent, but rather to emphasize that trade played a cru- themselves locally and translocally. In the eighteenth and nine- cial role in how residents of the Swahili coast de ned themselves teenth centuries, the majority Muslim populations on the Swahili and enforced class boundaries. coast were increasingly preoccupied with the enforcement of class Tied to the annual monsoon winds, periods of trade would boundaries through visual markers of status, a role that mercantile bring in the latest fashions and commodities from the Arabian commodities such as these sandals were uniquely quali ed to ll. Peninsula, Iran, India, Southeast Asia, and China. ese high trade
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peruski.indd 65 5/8/2020 12:58:58 PM 9 Sandals (qabqāb) Cairo, Egypt, January 7, 2020 Wood and recycled plastic Photo: author
seasons were eagerly anticipated by wealthy coastal families such various earrings, and most notably mitawanda. She is posed with as the ruling Būsaʿīdī sultans in Zanzibar. Indeed, Sultan Saʿīd’s her right foot resting on one of the sandals and her le leg crossed youngest daughter Sayyida Salme published detailed ethnographic atop her right. e le sandal sitting idly beneath her foot ap- memoirs on her time as princess in Zanzibar in which she notes pears at rst glance to be situated appropriately, until one consid- that “ e day for the yearly distribution of [foreign goods]… was ers the fact that it would be incredibly dicult to put this sandal impatiently looked forward to; it signi ed to us the beginning of a back on from where it is located in the portrait. Indeed, Sayyida new season of fashion, and the style and quality of our nery for a Salme would have to keep her legs crossed, balancing on her right whole year depended upon the contents of the ships lying in our foot while attempting to stand to put her le foot into the sandal. ports” (Ruete 1998: 59). Clearly, these sandals were carefully situated props that feature is preference for imported goods was generally limited to prominently in the portrait as markers of Sayyida Salme’s status. merchant families and the ruling elite, as the expense of such Apart from their role in this carefully managed portrait, these goods would immediately price out the enslaved and lower classes. shoes must also have been worn in important meetings and in is was further enforced by “sumptuary laws meant to patrol the public. As Tippu Tip’s exchange with Herbert Ward indicates, lines between enslaved and free-born peoples” (Meier 2009: 18). he was wearing the sandals at the time they met, removing “the Mitawanda are oen implicated in enforcing this dividing line, and sandals from his own feet” (Page and Bennet 1972: 188) to gi to it is frequently argued that “footgear was [altogether] forbidden to Ward. In their discussion of these sandals, Melvin Page and Patrick Swahili slaves” (Curnow 2014: 74), who are oen pictured barefoot Bennett note that there is little wear in the soles and treads, but in late nineteenth and early twentieth century photography (Fig. there are clear indications of wear around the toe grip and along 11). In contrast, photographs of wealthy merchants and the ruling the edges, which suggest that they were worn on more than one oc- elite never featured men or women without shoes. A mid-nine- casion. Similarly, another pair of mitawanda (Fig. 12) shows obvi- teenth-century portrait of Princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3) por- ous signs of regular use. e heels of both sandals are signi cantly trays her seated on an imported velvet-upholstered chair dressed worn down, and the lightly etched pattern on the sole is faded at in extravagant nery, including what appears to be an imported the heel and pad of the foot, indicating a certain amount of use silk tunic, various necklaces including a lavish sumt necklace most over time. In comparison, more elaborately decorated mitawanda likely brought in from Oman, a headdress to which is attached such as those of Sultan Fumo Omari (Fig. 4) or the silver-plated
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peruski.indd 66 5/8/2020 12:58:59 PM photography, and the more functional sandals were marked by the 10 Sandals (qabqāb) Turkey, 19th century performance of wealth in public. Wood, mother-of-pearl, silver; 34.5 cm x 23 It is notable that this distinction between more functional and cm x 22 cm each more decorative mitawanda was o en a gendered one. Similar Photo: courtesy of Michael Backman Ltd, London to European and American fashion trends,5 men’s footwear was frequently lower-heeled and less ornate than that of women. Of course, this division between men’s and women’s fashion was not absolute and exceptions such as Sultan Fumo Omari’s elaborate sandals do exist. However, of the numerous photographic por- traits featuring mitawanda surveyed during my research, few of pair held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. 5) show little if any indi- them were of men. Portraits of wealthy men from the Swahili coast cation that they were worn outside of the limited context of por- typically included thong sandals or close-toed shoes. In contrast, trait photography. is suggests that there were at least two types women’s sandals were o en taller and more elaborately decorated of mitawanda, those speci cally intended for display and those with silver appliqué or painting. e height and added decorative that have less decoration but were more functional. Both of these materials resulted in the shoes being more delicate and harder to types re ected similar ideas of status already discussed, where the wear. e diculties of walking in shoes by gripping a toe peg more decorative sandals were valued for their reproducibility in would have been exacerbated by the additional height of women’s
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peruski.indd 67 5/8/2020 12:58:59 PM 11 Young woman Zanzibar, ca. 1900 Gelatin silver print Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection Photo: courtesy of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University
mitawanda. It is perhaps ironic, then, that such highly traded and that upon entering the friend’s home, “ e shoes are slipped o mobile commodities in turn limited women’s mobility. before entering the room, and this custom is followed from the While footwear is generally considered to have been the exclu- sovereign down to the slave” (Ruete 1998: 121). Similarly, John sive right of the upper class, it was common for attendants to be Middleton notes that “One duty of male slaves was to accompany dressed in nery provided by their owners. Enslaved attendants their male owners in the streets, dressed in formal clothing with functioned as an extension of oneself when appearing in public, turban and sword and so to act as an aspect of the owner’s public and the ability to adorn one’s servants re ected the wealth and gen- personality; on ordinary occasions, however, male slaves wore only erosity of the patron. And it is here that the line between enslaved black loincloths, without sandals” (Middleton 2004: 75–76). Both and freeborn becomes more precarious. Although sources argue, of these assertions indicate that attendants must have worn some as noted, that enslaved individuals were prohibited from wearing form of footwear when accompanying their owners in public.6 any form of footwear, this distinction seems not to have been en- us, in these instances, status must have been marked more in forced when wealthy men and women went outside their homes the nature of how individuals interacted and the degree of adorn- accompanied by an entourage of attendants. In noting the practice ment rather than by clear-cut symbols such as the absence or of how “Arab” women call on their friends, Sayyida Salme states presence of footwear.
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peruski.indd 68 5/8/2020 12:59:01 PM 12 Sandals (mitawanda) Mombasa, Kenya. ca. 19th–20th century Wood; 3.2 cm x 27 cm x 8 cm Penn Museum, object# AF346A/B Photo: courtesy of the Penn Museum
Nevertheless, when photographed individually or in contrast e line between architectural and bodily adornment in coastal with their owners, enslaved and recently manumitted individ- east Africa was a ne one. Under Sultan Barghash, “the di erence uals were always portrayed barefoot. And these same individu- between people and things became less clear” (Meier 2016: 120). als were not permitted to wear footgear outside of the context of Wapambe, or heavily adorned enslaved women, functioned as tab- their owner’s entourage. leaux vivant in public (Meier 2016: 120). e amassing of wealth on bodies in the forms of bracelets, necklaces, imported fabrics, and footwear materially and physically expanded the presence of MOBILITY AND MEANING slave owners in public. Later generations capitalized on the legibil- Having established that mitawanda functioned as status symbols ity of bodily adornment to contest the rigid social and economic for the merchant and ruling classes, the question remains, how did boundaries of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth cen- they come to re ect this status? A number of recent studies have tury, formerly enslaved women, in particular, adopted practices looked at the relationship between port cities and the Indian Ocean, such as veiling from the patrician elite in order to express their new and several more speci cally dealing with the politics of display status as free individuals and as respectable Muslims (Fair 2001: on the Swahili coast, discussions which shed light upon these san- 18, 67–74, 85–96). However, twentieth-century “reformulations” dals. Important among these studies are Prita Meier’s “Objects on of patrician status markers did not entirely obscure the potency the Edge” (2009) and “Chinese Porcelain and Muslim Port Cities” of bodily adornment as a segregating tool. e interconnection of (2015). In “Objects on the Edge,” Meier elucidates “how objects are veiling and respectability suggests that women who did not veil deployed by East Africans to create an Afro-Indian Ocean mercan- were still considered less respectable, less Muslim. ese twenti- tile aesthetic” (2009: 9). She argues that objects brought in from the eth-century appropriations of dress functioned less as reforms of a Indian Ocean give material presence to mercantile power and to rigid economic system and more as a literal and gurative buying unity with the broader Islamic umma with whom the Swahili were into the mercantile, capitalist economy of Zanzibar. connected by the Indian Ocean. “An ‘exotic’ rarity [thus] signi ed In Zanzibar and other port cities on the Swahili coast, objects cultural sophistication” through allusions to Islam, wealth, mobil- brought in through trade were imbued with power and privilege ity, and trade (Meier 2009: 13). that locally produced items rarely obtained, although exceptions In “Chinese Porcelain and Muslim Port Cities,” Meier expands do exist. e few local products that achieved such prestige made on these topics with a study of the acquisition and display of glazed clear reference to trade or port cities elsewhere on the Indian ceramics in Swahili port cities. In this instance, the multiplication Ocean. Examples of this include the elaborate doorframes axed of ceramics compiled in dramatic wall displays perpetually rein- to the whitewashed stone homes of merchant families on the coast. forced the status and authority of the owner. e origins of these ough of local origin, the doors oen bore Arabic calligraphy, objects mattered little in comparison to how they arrived on the which is conceived of as both local and foreign on the coast be- coast via the Indian Ocean, a fact that is further reinforced by the cause of its associations with the Arabian Peninsula and with lack of distinction made between glazed ceramics from Iran, those Islam. Exceptional examples of these doorframes might include from Europe, and porcelain from China (Meier 2015: 702–17).
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peruski.indd 69 5/8/2020 12:59:02 PM a modern home replete with electric lighting and electric ceiling slave trade is still evident in how they are regarded on the Swahili fans,7 making clear reference to emerging global technologies of coast. Families maintain old pairs of mitawanda or purchase new the late nineteenth century. ese objects were not just commod- ones in order to assert their free-born lineage (see Meier 2016: ities, but aspects of imagined, idealized, distant ports. rough 170–75). e segregating powers enacted through the display of these objects, Swahili merchants could aesthetically situate them- mitawanda continue to assert class and ethnic boundaries today. selves and claim a deeper connection to “foreign” territories. In the context of these sandals, I would also like to elaborate on Mitawanda similarly embodied a mercantile aesthetic, con- Bose’s understanding of temporality and geography to consider nected as they were to distant cities in Egypt, Syria, the Arabian how space and time expanded and contracted with the movement Peninsula, and South Asia. Visual, linguistic, and material referents of objects and ideas. e ability to plot the trajectory of Tippu Tip combined to imbue these sandals and their wearers with an aura of and Herbert Ward’s sandals from Zanzibar to the Democratic “foreignness” exclusive to free-born merchants and rulers on the Republic of the Congo to England to the United States in the nine- Swahili coast. ese connections reinforced the global economic teenth and twentieth centuries tells little of the complex meanings in uence and Islamic religious authority of those who commis- attached to them when they arrived in these locations. e past, sioned and wore clog sandals. is mercantile aesthetic triumphed present, and future of a pair of mitawanda could be obscured in by gures such as Tippu Tip challenges traditional notions of place the moment of exchange when it meant various things to di erent and culture put forth by area studies, which has emphasized the people at the same time. In one very real sense, mitawanda made study of sub-Saharan Africa as a bounded unit independent of the present the distant ports of cities across the Indian Ocean, and in Middle East or South Asia. another they furthered the divide between the Swahili coast and Geography and mobility have become signi cant frameworks of elsewhere because such sandals took on diverse meanings in each analysis in recent years, where practices of displacement “emerge context. Further still, these sandals enforced a stark divide within as constitutive of cultural meanings rather than as their simple Swahili coast communities between free-born and enslaved pop- transfer or extension” (Cli ord 1997: 3). James Cli ord’s Routes ulations. ere were explicit temporalities attached to these divi- (1997), Fred Myers’s e Empire of ings (2004), and Claudia sions. Urban, patrician modes of dress were associated with “mo- Swan’s “Exotica on the Move” (2015) call into question the framing dernity,” while modes of dress used by enslaved peoples or those of culture as homogeneous and bound by place. e movement of living farther inland in Africa were perceived as “backward” by objects and forms across physical or symbolic borders becomes a many coastal residents (Fair 2001: 84). us, we can see the Indian space of rhetorical contestation where objects re ect and produce Ocean as a space beyond nite boundaries and xed temporalities cultural values that may or may not connect with their former and rather as a transitional space that contracts and expands the functions. Rather than a no-man’s land, the border thus becomes a folds of time and space based on who is accessing it and when. site of cultural production where the movement of objects, people, e nature of object mobility calls into question not only geogra- and ideas both construct and deconstruct cultural identities. phy and temporality, but also the reliability of formal, stylistic anal- Oceanic studies have similarly broken down traditional bound- ysis. In “Hybridity and Its Discontents” (2003), Carolyn Dean and aries of analysis marked by area studies. e Indian Ocean in par- Dana Leibsohn have more broadly considered the role of visual ticular has bene tted from this new wave of interest in the last two culture in determining an object’s meaning. ey argue that object decades, where India and east Africa have been brought in closer or architectural hybridity is considered through visual markers of dialogue with studies such as Sugata Bose’s A Hundred Horizons exchange rather than by crasmanship or materials, and that this (2006) or Isabel Hofmeyr’s “Universalizing the Indian Ocean” emphasis on visual hybridity obscures deeper histories and modes (2010). In his work, Bose notes that “the issue of spatial bound- of contact. Mitawanda should be considered in light of this argu- aries helps us theorize and place in historical context the Indian ment, where the ability to visually compare mitawanda, qabqāb, Ocean as an interregional arena of political, economic, and cul- or paduka tells little of the more ingrained relations associated tural interaction” (2006: 6). Bose and other scholars of the Indian with trade and the Indian Ocean I have discussed. is is not to Ocean importantly highlight the exible boundaries of the Indian say that formal analysis cannot play an important role when dis- Ocean that were not subordinate to contemporary nation-states, cussing object histories, as I have highlighted in my discussion of but instead functioned as a space of continual intercultural con- the portrait of Princess Sayyida Salme. However, a purely formal tact. However, it is important to also highlight the speci c ways analysis of object types oen subsumes discussions of mitawanda in which objects function in transitional spaces, precisely because under the label of paduka as it has for a number of objects held in such functions are complex and multivalent. is is especially im- Western collections today. portant when considering the violence performed through many e example of the mitawanda held at the Bata Shoe Museum objects, as the uses of mitawanda demonstrate. Bose’s study pres- (Fig. 5) demonstrates the limits of formal analysis when discussing ents an elite view of mobility and cultural contact that emphasizes mobile objects. Although these sandals were acquired in Zanzibar, consumption at the expense of processes of exclusion. they are labeled as “Indian silver slippers” likely brought to “Africa At the crux of my argument has been an aesthetic impulse to by a Gujarati person or visitor.”8 eir history as mitawanda has distinguish between enslaved peoples and those who tracked in been obscured by an interlinking of style and form with the place humans, such as Tippu Tip and Herbert Ward. e enforcement of origin. is academic practice ignores the contextual construc- of class boundaries through modes of dress occurred alongside tion of meaning. e claim that this pair of mitawanda were made increasingly stark ethnic divisions between “Arab” and “African” in Gujarat obfuscates the complex, multidirectional nature of ex- populations and the rapid growth of the slave trade in the eigh- change on the Indian Ocean in which east African artists and mer- teenth and nineteenth centuries. eir parallel history with the chants were active participants.
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peruski.indd 70 5/8/2020 12:59:02 PM CONCLUSIONS Republic of the Congo. Tippu Tip’s celebration of wealth and status Returning to the gi ing of Tippu Tip’s sandals to Herbert Ward, came at the expense of freedom for many individuals. we see the important role played by cultural context and individ- Finally, these sandals call into question the signi cance of dis- ual associations in shaping the meaning of objects. ese contexts cussions on “origins.” e intercultural space of the Indian Ocean and associations could exist simultaneously where Tippu Tip and became a mode through which Swahili merchants and the ruling Herbert Ward at once experienced these sandals very di erently. elite envisioned their status, both local and translocal. Objects such As noted, Tippu Tip was gi ing a luxury commodity to a for- as mitawanda that alluded to or arrived by Indian Ocean trade al- eign acquaintance, and Ward was receiving a cultural memento. lowed for the solidi cation of class boundaries as well as the ar- Mitawanda are particularly exacting examples of how meaning is mation of connections to distant centers of trade and Islamic reli- shaped through complex negotiations of form, geography, and time. gious knowledge. rough these sandals, geography, temporality, ese sandals existed within multiple colonial frameworks, car- and form can be seen as contested epistemologies that challenge rying histories of Belgian, British, and Omani colonialism in east- the notion of xed meanings and homogeneous, bounded cultural ern and central Africa. eir provenance can be traced through units. And thus, the ways that mitawanda circulated and produced the Belgian colonial mission in what was the Congo Free State to meaning broadly calls into question the nature of area studies and a major gure in the Indian Ocean slave trade, known for the vio- the emphasis of art history on singular, originary meanings at- lence of his raids in western Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic tached to forms and styles.
Notes Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. 2007. Cairo of the Mamluks: Art History 38 (4): 702–17. Of the many people to whom I owe in nite thanks, I A History of Architecture and Its Culture. London: I.B. Meier, Prita. 2016. Swahili Port Cities: e Architecture of am especially indebted to Prita Meier for her support, Taurus. generosity, and gentle recommendations, without which Elsewhere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. this article would not have been possible. She and Allyson Bose, Sugata. 2006. A Hundred Horizons: e Indian Meier, Prita and Allyson Purpura, ed. 2018. World Purpura kindly invited me to contribute to research for Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Cambridge, MA: on the Horizon: Swahili Arts across the Indian Ocean. the exhibition World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts across Harvard University Press. the Indian Ocean, which provided the initial impetus Champaign, IL: Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead for my interest in the topic of bodily adornment on the Cli ord, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in Pavilion. Swahili coast. And she was a consistent source of ideas the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Middleton, John. 2004. African Merchants of the Indian and inspiration throughout my research for and writing University Press. of this article. Ocean: Swahili of the East African Coast. Long Grove, IL: 1 Transliteration: “qad hidaytu hadhạ qabqāb li-sāḥ ibị̄ Curnow, Kathy. 2014. At Home in Africa: Design, Beauty, Waveland Press. mista wād dawlat al-inglīz.” For this and all other Arabic and Pleasing Irregularity in Domestic Settings. Cleveland, Myers, Fred. 2004. e Empire of ings: Regimes of transliterations in this article, I relied on the translit- OH: e Galleries at Cleveland State University. eration system set forth by the International Journal of Value and Material Culture. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press. Dean, Carolyn, and Dana Leibsohn. 2003. “Hybridity Middle East Studies. Page, Melvin, and Patrick Bennett. 1972. “ e Inscribed and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in 2 Such gestures of generosity arm status on the Sandals of Tippu Tip.” Journal de la Société des African- Swahili coast, as discussed in Fleisher 2010: 195–217. Colonial Spanish America.” Colonial Latin American istes 42 (2): 187–91. 3 Email with Collections Manager Suzanne Peterson, Review 12(1): 5–35. Bata Shoe Museum, November 16, 2018. Meem Magazine. 2017. “rana qabqāb ḥabībī.” August 22. Fair, Laura. 2001. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Com- -،باقبقلا-ةنر/Of course, the bias of preservation favors the elite https://meemmagazine.net/2017/08/22 4 over the everyday. munity, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, ./رحاس-يقرش-عاقيإ 5 See for instance Riello 2006: 38–41, in which he 1890–1945. Athens: Ohio University Press. highlights that men o en wore more functional shoes Riello, Giorgio. 2006. A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Fleisher, Je rey. 2010. “Rituals of Consumption and the such as boots, which were more suitable for outdoor Producers, and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century. Politics of Feasting on the Eastern African Coast, activities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 6 What type of footwear they wore is unclear, though 700–1500.” Journal of World Pre-History 23: 195–217. given the prestige associated with mitawanda it seems Ruete, Emily. 1998. Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from e Hindu. 2006. “Mediating Role.” September 20. unlikely that attendants would have been permitted to Zanzibar: An Autobiography. Zanzibar: e Gallery http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-miscella- wear such nery. Publications. 7 National Museums of Kenya, Object ID E556-04- neous/mediating-role/article3077989.ece. 99. For a brief reference to and an image of this door Souriat: e Voice of the Voiceless. 2015. “mahna sinạ̄ ʿa Hofmeyr, Isabel. 2010. “Universalizing the Indian lintel in publication, see Allen 1971: 7 and Meier and al-qabāqīb damashq ta aqid rana al-qabāqīb fī shu- Ocean.” PMLA 125 (3): 721–29. Purpura 2018: 176–77. wāriʿha.” August 14. http://souriat.com/2015/08/7410. 8 Email with Collections Manager Suzanne Peterson, Hollis, Alfred Claude. 1900. “Notes on the History of html. Bata Shoe Museum, November 16, 2018. Vumba, East Africa.” e Journal of the Anthropological Swan, Claudia. 2015. “Exotica on the Move: Birds of Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 30: 275–97. References cited Paradise in Early Modern Holland.” Art History 38 (4): Allen, James de Vere. 1993. Swahili Origins: Swahili Cul- Jain-Neubauer, Jutta. 2000. Feet and Footwear in Indian 621–35. ture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon. London: J. Curry. Culture. Toronto: Bata Shoe Museum. Ward, Herbert. 1969. Five Years with the Congo Canni- Balakrishnan, Usha R. 2016. “Cultural Practice and So- Meier, Prita. 2009. “Objects on the Edge: Swahili Coast bals (3rd ed.). New York: Negro Universities Press. cial Identity: South Asian Folk Jewelry.” In Madhuvanti Logics of Display.” African Arts 42 (4): 8–23. Ghose (ed.), Vanishing Beauty: Asian Jewelry and Ritual Ward, Sarita. 1927. A Valiant Gentleman: Being the Objects from the Barbara and David Kipper Collection, Meier, Prita. 2015. “Chinese Porcelain and Muslim Port Biography of Herbert Ward, Artist, and Man of Action. pp. 175–208. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cities: Mercantile Materiality in Coastal East Africa.” London: Chapman and Hall.
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