64

The Mazrui (Mazrū‘ī) Liwalis or Governors of Mombasa

c. 1109–1253/c. 1698–1837

Mombasa and Pemba island in the East African coastland

The Mazrū‘ī family (Swahili Wamazrui) originally stemmed from eastern Arabia, having migrated from Oman at the end of the seventeenth century. Over nearly a century and a half, they provided an almost unbroken line of governors (Swa. liwali < Ar. al-wālī) in Mombasa, with branches on Pemba island and elsewhere. At times they were strong enough to attack the Bū Sa‘īdīs in Zanzibar (see below, no. 65), and they intervened in the affairs of Pate (see above, no. 63). The Bū Sa‘īdī ruler of Zanzibar Sa‘īd b. Sulṭān nevertheless suppressed the Mombasa line in 1253/1837, but members of the Mazrū‘ī family continued to hold positions of power and of religious and intellectual eminence on the coastland, and the family has remained influential to this day. As with the rulers of Kilwa and Pate, a local chronicle exists for the Mazrū‘īs, but this was compiled as recently as c. 1946.

EL²‘Mazrū‘ī’, ‘Mombasa’ (G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville).

G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville and B. G. Martin, ‘A preliminary handlist of the Arabic inscriptions of the eastern African coast ’, JRAS (1973), 98–122.

Shaykh al-Amīn b. Alī al-Mazrū‘ī History of the Mazrui, ed. and tr. J. McL. Ritchie, The British Academy, Fontes Historiae Africanae, London 1995.