al-Athar al-ʻUmānī fī al-Sard al-Sawāḥilī: Qirāʼah fī Sīrat Tībū Tīb bayna al-Tārīkh wa-al-Tarjamah - Ḥawqānī, Khalīl ibn Muḥammad; Rāshidī, Nāṣir ibn Aḥmad; Muʼtamar al-Istiqāmah al-Duwalī al-Thānī: al-ʻUmānīyūn wa-al-Sawāḥilīyah bayna al-Taʼthīr wa-al-Taʼaththur (2026) (Mumbāsā) (Mumbāsā : Jamʻīyat al-Istiqāmah al-Khayrīyah al-Islāmīyah al-ʻĀlamīyah, 2026)
This paper treats the representations of the Swahili setting in Omani Arabic narrative through a narrative and cultural reading of the book An Omani Adventurer in the Jungles of Africa: Tippu Tip, in the translation of Muḥammad al-Maḥrūqī, taken as a narrative text reflecting the image of the Omani presence in East Africa and offering a significant model of the interaction of Omani narrative with the Swahili space within a shared historical and civilizational context. The study proceeds from a problem that may be framed thus: how was the Swahili setting manifested in Omani Arabic narrative, and what narrative and cultural characteristics played a part in representing it? The paper reads the text as both a historical document and a translated work, attending to what each of those aspects contributes to and withholds from the reader.
Permanent citation identifier: MHF-MOMBASA2026-024.
Text in Arabic; title also romanized (ALA-LC); abstract and keywords in English.
Keywords: Tippu Tip; Omani narrative; Swahili setting; Translation studies; Travel narrative; East Africa