Mrima or Mrima Coast is the traditional name for the part of the East African coast facing Zanzibar. The inhabitants were often called "Wamrima" or Mrima people even though they could belong to different tribes and language groups.
The sources give different definitions about the borders of the coastal stretch. Generally the Mrima consisted only of a coastal strip of a width of two days travel, i.e. about 20 miles or 30 km.
Ludwig Krapf, who collected his information at Mombasa between 1844 and 1852, wrote that the Wamrima began on the northern side with the Vumba people, the speakers of the Kivumba dialect of Swahili, who lived in the area of Shimoni, opposite Wasini Island, continued southwards until the Usambara Hills and "the land of Mrima".[1]
A.C. Madan who collectd his material at Zanzibar around 1890, described Mrima being the area between Wasini and Kipumbwi at the mouth of the Msangasi River, about 25 km south of the Tanzanian town of Pangani. Madan thought the name Mrima could derive from a variation of the Swahili word"mlima" for hill, mountain, thus denoting the hilly country rising behind the immediate coast.[2]
Later authors described a wider use of the name on the southern side. Stigand for example described the Kimrima dialect reaching from Vanga (southern Kenya) until the neighborhood of Kilwa.[3]
In southern Kenya there is a village and a small mountain called Mrima about 20 km north of Vanga, Kwale County.[4]
Fungu Mrima (also Fungu Marima) is a coral reef in the Mafia Channel between the mainland and Mafia Island.[5]
References edit
- ^ Krapf quotes the British missionary Last “ The coast-line opposite Zanzibar and inland for two days' march, about twenty miles,is called Mrima."(Krapf, Ludwig: A dictionary of the Suahili language, London 1882, "Mrima"
- ^ "Mrima, n. and Merima, name of the strip of coastland opposite and south of Zanzibar, with its own dialect of Swahili called Kimrima. The people also are described as Wamrima. (Perh. cf. mlima, i. e. the hill-country, rising from the coast inland.)" Swahili-English dictionary, 1903 Oxford, Clarendon press, "Mrima"
- ^ C. H. Stigand: Dialect in Swahili: A Grammar of Dialectic Changes in the Kiswahili Language, Cambridge 1915; "Kimrima, or the dialect of the Mrima coast, is in use, with local variations, from Vanga nearly to Kilwa." p. 16
- ^ Cf. geonames org "Mrima"
- ^ Cf. Fungu Marima = Fungu Mrima