||  THE SWAHILI COAST EPISODE  ||

		Sheik Badawi on Swahili Identity (length: 1 min 10 sec) Along the Swahili Coast, Gates meets with Sheik Said Hassan Badawi, a respected Lamu elder and Muslim scholar who claims pure Arab lineage. The sheik believes that the Swahili people are descendants of Arab men who took African concubines. Ali Salim, the sheik's grandson, translates. Read Transcript This site includes RealVideo. Download RealPlayer now.

Video Transcript

C.U. GATES.

GATES: You have a noble ancestry. Do you have African ancestors as well?

SHEIKH BADAWI: (SUBTITLES) We don't have African ancestry, but we try not to think badly of those who do

ALI: All his ancestors are coming from, from Arab people. And in the past there was a system of making concubines …

GATES: Concubines?

ALI: Yeah, among those women.

GATES: Yes.

ALI: So it resulted people to, to be considered as inferior.

GATES: Ah. And the concubines were African women?

ALI: Yeah, conflicts, yeah.

GATES: I see. Why did Arab men take African women as concubines?

ALI: Maybe people could not afford to marry mainly Arabs, Arab people, so the Africans who are the local people who are cheap. And other reasons best known to them.

||  THE SWAHILI COAST EPISODE  ||

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