Historic graffiti made by soldiers sheds light on Africa maritime heritage, study shows

According to scientists from the University of Exeter, soldiers on patrol guarding the sea are responsible for the historic graffiti of ships cut into an African fort.

The mid- to late nineteenth-century engravings, which were discovered in Tanzania's Zanzibar archipelago, provide a window into the ships that plied the western Indian Ocean at the time.

They were created during a time when the region served as the southernmost point of an oceanic trading network that relied on monsoon winds. Along the length of the waterfront, just outside Stone Town's Old Fort, or Gereza, ships anchored, beached, and unloaded their cargoes.

The photos, though occasionally hazy, imply a variety of ship designs, including a European-style frigate or frigate-built vessel as well as a number of settee-rigged ocean going ships frequently referred to as "dhows." Some of them appear to have transom sterns, suggesting certain ship types like the baghla, ghanja, sanbq, or kotia. The prows of the elusive East African mtepe, which was stitched together rather than nailed together, may also be shown in two.

All of the graffiti shows ships that might have been seen from the fort's ramparts or by moving a short distance beyond its door.

The Gereza was one of the primary fortifications in the area that the rulers of Oman started to build in the eighteenth century. From there, they managed and governed the trade in raw materials and the enslavement of individuals traveling through Zanzibar from the interior of Africa. They built up spice plantations on the archipelago and then moved their political headquarters from Arabia to Zanzibar. The nineteenth century saw the fort's abandonment.

The graffiti that depicts a three-masted frigate or a ship made of a frigate, such as a corvette, is the most intricate and intriguing. During this period, Western powers sent square-rigged ships, including frigate-built ships, to Zanzibar, although the Omani navy also had a few of its own.

The settee- or lateen-rigged ships shown in the graffiti could possibly be Omani ocean-going merchant ships engaged in monsoon-based trade or non-Omani trading ships coming from Yemen, the Arabian-Persian Gulf, or India.

The drawings are distinct from those found elsewhere in East Africa in that they are not displayed inside or on the exterior of a mosque. This implies that they served no spiritual or religious purpose. Instead, they were primarily positioned on the fort's ramparts, indicating that they were constructed by troops who were on duty as guards.

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa released the study by University of Exeter professors John P. Cooper and Alessandro Ghidoni.

Similar graffiti has been observed in other parts of Oman, indicating a very common practice of writing ship graffiti inside Omani military structures, according to Professor Cooper. "Set inside the fort, the Gereza graffiti were not for public consumption in the way that they might have been if they had been on the fort's outer faces, where people thronging to the busy Soko Uku market under its walls might have seen them, as well as the families of Arab and Indian merchants and notables who built their homes around the fort."

"The graffiti must have been created by and for members of the fort's own community. Those in the southwest tower and the western ramparts of the Gereza must have been created by individuals who had access to these more segregated upper reaches of the fort, most likely Baluchi or slave soldiers who were stationed in the fort by Omani or Zanzibari sultans for a large portion of the nineteenth century. They were most likely created by idle individuals, soldiers on duty or soldiers relaxing in the cooler upper floors of the structure. By such ocean-going vessels, the Baluchi warriors themselves would have arrived and subsequently left.

University of Exeter