Attractions in Lamu County
21. House of Habib Swaleh
All that building known as “House of Habib Swaleh Bin Alwi Jamal Al-Layl” or simply as “Nyumba ya Habib Swaleh” situated in Riyadha was gazetted as a National Monument on March 31st, 2021. Its former occupier, Habib Swaleh, in all probability, was one of the most special reformer Lamu has yet been blessed with. He is a well known Sufi in the Lamu archipelago, perhaps more than any other Sufi. This is in so far as Maulidi Festival is concerned. He introduced the form of Maulidi al-Habshy to Lamu during the late 19th century and his social reformation was a singular effort of opening up Islam and Islamic education to the descendants of slaves and the underprivileged Wagema (coconut-tappers) transforming local Islam from an exclusive religion for the privileged (Arabs and Waungwana) to an inclusive one, which integrated people from all ethnic and social backgrounds. It therefore meant that the Maulidi Festival, which he introduced on the island, was a medium for social reform and symbol of social change. His lineage half completed his success. Swaleh was from the infamous Seyyid family, Jamal al-Layl, who are distinguished descendants of the family of the Prophet Muhammad. The word Habib is a title used in the Hadhramaut as an alternative to Seyyid or Sharif to denote a descendant of the Prophet, more so after his death. This branch had produced a number of famous scholars who had migrated to many parts of the world including the Comoro Islands and the South East Asia like Indonesia. They are also found in Hadhramaut and the Hijaz. Harun bin Abdul Rahman settled in East Africa, making his home in Pate. His great grandson, Ahmed, moved from Pate Island to Comoro Islands, where both Habib Swaleh and his father Alawi were born. “A remote ancestor of Habib Swaleh is said to have emigrated from the Hadhramaut and settled in Siu on the Island of Pate. From Siu another ancestor had moved to Anjouan (Johanna) in the Comoro Islands.” Hence, four of Habib Swaleh’s sheikhs were Hadramis who had settled in Lamu. They were his uncle, Ali b. Abdullah Jamal al Layl, Muhammad bin Fadl, Alawi bin Abu Bakr al Shatiri and Seyyid Mansab.
His arrival at Lamu is debatable, but at the time of his death, Habib Swaleh is said to have been probably over eighty years. His age when he first arrived in Lamu from Comoros is said to have been about thirty. This sets the date of his arrival at circa 1860-1880, though local assessment is that he arrived almost twenty years earlier. This roughly coincides with the common anecdote of his arrival in 1870, then 17 years, for medical treatment and stayed with his uncle Ali bin Abdullah Jamal al-Layl who had migrated to Lamu and settled there in 1847. Habib Swaleh studied under his uncle’s tutorage as well as several other leading teachers. He acquainted himself with the views of the local people and was readily accepted. According to the chronology of events, the young Swaleh returned to his father in Comoro Islands. On return, he immediately expressed a desire to continue his studies in Lamu. A fellow member of the clan convinced his father, Mwenye Ba-Hassan Jamal al-Layl, to allow his son to settle in Lamu based on Ba-Hassan’s opinion that his son has a promising future and would become an important figure in the society. His major influences, while in Lamu, were his uncle, Ali Jamal al-Layl, who taught him traditional medicine; Alawi bin Abu Bakr al-Shatiri, who taught him the interpretation of the Holy Quran; Abu BakrMuawy, who taught him Arabic and the science of metrics; and Habib Abu BakrMansab who taught him the science of hadith. Habib Swaleh was accepted as a qualified scholar and began conducting lectures in Sheikh al-Bilad Mosque in Langoni. When he had gathered some students, he read Maulidi ya Barazanji in his own house to celebrate the birth of the Prophet. Habib Swaleh later on licensed his students to initiate the festival in other mosques within Lamu, the first being at Anisa Mosque followed by the Bawazir Mosque. This later on spread to other towns outside Lamu. The first to receive this license outside Lamu was Sharif Said Al Reidh of Mambrui. Habib Swaleh is buried next to his uncle’s grave near to that of Sufi Sharif Mansab, a member of the Al-Husain family, who was one of his teachers and among his biggest supporters.
22. Mosque College of Lamu
Located alongside Masjid Riyadha, this offers a beneficial book room to further the exercise of learning about the history, application and influence of Islam in Lamu. The Mosque College of Lamu stands in the middle of a large open space south of Lamu Fort, a space usually packed and filled with dancers during the Maulidi Festival. Founded in the late 19th century by Habib Swaleh, it is one of the oldest continuously functioning Islamic teaching institutions in East Africa. The date of his death is recorded on his tomb in an Arabic inscription, whose translation reads: “The grave of the distinguished in learning, the knowing of God, Habib Swaleh ibn Habib, Alawi ibn Habib, Abdullah Jamal al-Lail, who died on Saturday, the second Muharram, in the Year 1354. May God have mercy upon him, upon his parents and upon the Muslims.” A visit to the Riyadha Masjid and to the tomb of Habib Swaleh is the main purpose of every pilgrim to Lamu Maulidi Festival. At night, thousands of families sleep inside the mosque and outside it in brightly coloured atmosphere in the surrounding alleyways.
From its inception to present day, Mosque College of Lamu has drawn students from all over the region and held on to teaching tradition closely linked with similar institutions in Yemen and with its offshoots elsewhere in East Africa. It runs courses lasting two to five years. Masjid Riyadha is the seat of the academy and holds song sessions three times a week during which Arabic verse in praise of the Prophet is sung to the music of tambourines. Swaleh was instrumental in the origination of this new but controversial use of music and song in mosques. The college has a vast collection of manuscripts, many unique, which represent Islamic education in East Africa for the past few hundred years, with a lot of the manuscripts dating from 1837 to 1920. The collection is in a state of rapid deterioration, being stored in a broken cupboard exposing the material to the harmful climatic conditions prevalent in Lamu, of humidity causing fungus and mildew. Insects have caused much damage to all the manuscripts. In 2019 a digitization drive was initiated in a bid to conserve them in perpetuity. Copies will be deposited with the British Library and the library of the Lamu Museum.
23. Lamu Market
Just as it holds true that you can never go wrong by investing your travel time in learning other cultures and investing your time in the human beings within them, so does it also hold true that a visit to Lamu Market is one of the best ways to appreciate the stripped-down way of life of Lamu, preferably during the busier morning hours. A trip to the Lamu Market is a welcome change from the monotony and comfort of the secluded oceanside resorts and where one gets to marvel at the “market-calisthenics”, all governed by the sharply spoken Swahili traders. For the discerning intrepid, the strong Swahili accent heard at Lamu Island shows great variation from that heard across other regions of the coast, where Swahili is the predominant language. Lamu Market, within Lamu Town, has a profusion of tropical fruit stalls, fish and meat markets and spice vendors.
24. Tamarind Tree Cafe
As with many things on Lamu Island the food is exotic, and it combines traits of many world cuisines picked up over centuries from the disparate visitors who came into Lamu where spices were a valuable merchandise. Good for one’s taste buds, Lamu’s cuisine is open for inspection by callers to the island in one of few seaside eateries, and deservedly so at the vintage Tamarind Tree Cafe which has been operational for almost 100 years. The quirky Tamarind Tree Hotel, build around a big Tamarind Tree, serves a melange of Swahili delicacies (notably of the fresh sea dishes) and is a typical site to be part of the living-history of Lamu.
Abiri Kenya 