Fetishizing the Foot - Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2020-01-01
Journal	African Arts
Authors	Jenny Peruski
Institutions	Harvard University
Citations	1

Abstract

Hamad bin Muḥammad al-Murjabī (c. 1832-1905), more commonly known as Tippu Tip, was a (in)famous slave trader from the Swahili coast who worked along a broad stretch of land reaching into what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Between 1884 and 1889 he developed a friendship with Herbert Ward, an English artist and adventurer working in the service of King Leopold II of Belgium. In 1889, Tippu Tip and Ward encountered each other for the last time before Ward’s return to England. Upon Ward’s request, Tippu Tip removed his wooden clogs, a special type known as mitawanda (sg. mtawanda) and gave them to Ward as a parting “souvenir” (Ward 1927: 108). To mark the occasion, Tippu Tip wrote a short inscription in Arabic on each stating “I have made a gift of this sandal to my friend Mister Ward of the English government” (Figs. 1-2).1In this moment of exchange, these sandals meant two different things, in addition to the various other meanings they had carried throughout their lifetime. To Tippu Tip, these sandals reflected his status as a wealthy, freeborn individual capable of gifting a luxury item to a friend. Tippu Tip is frequently noted for his generosity and “gentleman-like” manners throughout Herbert Ward’s Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (1969, especially pp. 164-85) and his edited journals A Valiant Gentleman: Being the Biography of Herbert Ward, Artist and Man of Action (1927, especially pp. 106-109), where it would seem that he took great pride in his ability to host and to share wealth.2 To Ward, the clogs represented a cultural memento from his time spent in the Stanley Falls district in the Belgian Congo, where Tippu Tip acted as governor between 1887 and roughly 1890. For Tippu Tip, clog sandals were emblematic of his high status and generosity, and for Ward they were ethnographic artifacts which he maintained in his collection until the 1920s, when he gifted them to the Smithsonian Institution at the suggestion of his American wife, Sarita Ward (Page and Bennet 1972: 188).It is both the object of this exchange as well as the process by which meanings become attached to mobile objects that will be the focus of this investigation. These meanings are entangled in complex networks of visual, linguistic, economic, and geographic associations. The meanings of mitawanda are shaped not only through exchanges like that between Herbert Ward and Tippu Tip, but also by Indian Ocean trade networks, gendered practices of dress and display, racial violence, and religious authority, to name but a few. These complex associations point to questions about the history and significance of this type of sandal, their use and display on the Swahili coast, and how the circulation of objects becomes an important component of structuring social, cultural, and economic relationships. How these sandals circulate and create meaning are thus implicated in larger dialogues that question disciplinary boundaries and long-standing art historical frameworks such as formal analysis.As this study works against any singular reading of these sandals, so too it transcends any fixed temporal or geographic space. While I am primarily occupied with coastal east Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I read into and against practices of bodily adornment in the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, and further inland in east Africa. Moreover, in order to better understand the complex history of mitawanda, I explore similar forms dating as early as 200 bce and as recently as the present day. Of course, this should not imply that these examples represent a continuous narrative. Instead, I will demonstrate how any telling of the history and use of this type of sandal on the coast necessitates a discussion of the nature of mobility and the fluid meanings attached to mobile objects such as mitawanda. In doing so, I raise the questions: How is the meaning or status of objects constructed among the peoples on the Swahili coast? In what ways does object mobility collapse or solidify temporalities and geographies? Through an investigation of the history, social functions, and circulation of these sandals, this study aims to unseat the notion of fixed meanings within homogeneous cultural units. The mobility of mitawanda implies a fluidity of meaning that speaks to their status as transcultural, entangled objects.The history of mitawanda is incredibly difficult to trace, but it seems likely that they were popularized in east Africa between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were periods of increasing trade and patronage under the Omani Mazrui sultans administering from Mombasa (ca. 1698-1837) and later the Omani Būsa’īdī sultans administering from Zanzibar (ca. 1832-1964). Some of the earliest examples can be found in photographic portraits of the ruling elite such as the Būsa’īdī princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3). The Būsa’īdī sultans were particularly adept at appropriating and adapting the artistic and architectural forms of former rulers of the Swahili coast.For instance, Prita Meier has demonstrated how Sultan Barghash (r. 1870-1888) reused spaces and forms associated with Mwana Mwema Fatuma, a Zanzibari queen who ruled in the seventeenth century, in order to assert his own authority within Zanzibar Stone Town (Meier 2016: 128-30), while at the same time wrestling with the encroaching influence of the British and their assaults on his sovereignty.The importance of footwear, and particularly wooden sandals, on the Swahili coast certainly precedes the Būsa’īdī Sultanate. British administrator Alfred Claude Hollis recorded an oral history of Vumba territories on the border between Kenya and Tanzania in which wooden sandals featured importantly in investiture rights in the eighteenth century. He claimed that when a new ruler was agreed upon by the patrician elite, that ruler then “had the right to wear wooden sandals instead of leather ones and [wa]s styled Diwan” (Hollis 1900: 279). It seems possible, though speculative, that Būsa’īdī commissions of mitawanda exist as part of a continued artistic tradition preceding the establishment of Būsa’īdī rule in east Africa.This type of sandal is characterized by a platform sole to which is attached a post and knob, which would be gripped between the first and second toes. This shape can vary from a simple rectangle, to hourglass, to stylized fish, or various other forms. Typically, the primary medium is wood, to which decoration might be added with carving, painting, ivory inlay, or applied metals like silver. The mitawanda featured in a nineteenth-century portrait of the Būsa’īdī princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3) are made of a thin, hourglass-shaped sole, a lathe-cut post and knob, and two scalloped platforms connected beneath the heel and pad of each shoe.The laborious and expensive process of hand-making and decorating these objects suggests the high value attached to such adornments, which exceeded their practical function. Mitawanda such as those made for Sultan Fumo Omari (r. 1890-1894) are carefully chip-carved with repeat saw tooth, triangle, and square designs that complement the rectilinear form of the sandal (Fig. 4). The designs and techniques used in Fumo Omari’s sandals are markedly different from those found in a silver-plated pair of mitawanda now held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. 5). Similar to Sayyida Salme’s sandals, this pair features thin, hourglass-shaped soles, what appear to be lathe-cut posts and knobs, and scalloped platforms at the heel and pad of each shoe. However, here the entire sandal has been covered with thin sheets of repoussé silver, as well as delicate silver bells attached along the rim of each sandal’s sole. The sole is further embellished by vegetal and geometric interlace in low relief. Clearly, there was incredible variety in how mitawanda were made and consumed.The example of the mitawanda at the Bata Shoe Museum is particularly intriguing, because the record of these sandals largely obscures a connection to east Africa in favor of an Indian attribution. On the website, they are labeled not as mitawanda but as paduka, the Sanskrit word for this type of sandal, and it is noted that they were made in Gujarat, in northwest India, but acquired in Zanzibar. This attribution is based on formal, stylistic analysis. The vegetal patterns on the soles are interpreted as having “Gujarati influence.”3 Even if this attribution could be determined with certainty, it erases the social history of these objects once they arrived in east Africa in favor of an “original” meaning as paduka.This is not to say that connections between mitawanda and paduka did not exist. The forms of both types share obvious similarities: a platform sole to which is attached a post and knob that would be gripped between the first and second toes. Additionally, jewelry and modes of dress were circulating widely across the Indian Ocean in the early modern and modern periods. Protective amulets circulated between east Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and western India in the forms of sumt necklaces and port-Qur’ans; men’s tunics were fashioned in India and central Asia before being shipped to the port cities of Lamu and Zanzibar for local consumption; and silver bracelets and anklets were made in various locales and transported across the Indian Ocean with such frequency that it is next to impossible to trace styles or techniques to a particular region. For instance, two sets of silver anklets are attributed to different locales, one to the Swahili coast (Fig. 6) and the other to Oman (Fig. 7). But despite the distance between purported production sites, both sets share remarkable similarities. Both employ broad, flattened hinges secured by pins. These hinges are embellished with horizontal registers of floral and geometric motifs in the Swahili example, and geometric motifs in the Omani pair. The hinges are connected to the rest of the anklet by perpendicular bands decorated with pearl motifs, chain motifs, and diagonal stripes. The remainder of each anklet has more organic decoration: the Swahili example includes abstracted plant motifs, while the Omani anklets employ large lozenge and diamond shapes inscribed with dots and lines. Clearly, styles and techniques (and even artisans) were moving freely across the Indian Ocean, historic exchanges that are particularly well established and evidenced by the nineteenth century. The mitawanda form was a similarly mobile one, which was especially popular in east Africa and South Asia.In India, the use and meaning of paduka differs from their function on the Swahili coast. The long history of this type of sandal begins around 200 bce, when it was and remains associated with the divine (see Balakrishnan 2016: 175-208; Jain-Neubauer 2000; The Hindu 2006), and with the god Vishnu and his avatars Krishna and Rama in particular. They can be worn by devotees or become devotional objects in their own right (Jain-Neubauer 2000: 90). A particularly sumptuous example held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. 8) is made of wood with elaborate brass inlay detailing a stylized fish form likely intended as an incarnation of the god Vishnu (Balakrishnan 2016: 181).In east Africa, however, the sandals were seen as the exclusive right of wealthy, upper-class individuals and thus became markers of status. They feature prominently in photographed portraits of wealthy Swahili women and men, such as Princess Sayyida Salme; the few pairs that have personal histories attached to them are associated with famous merchants such as Tippu Tip or members of the ruling class such as Sultan Fumo Omari4; the brief discussions of them in primary and secondary sources suggest that they were worn exclusively by wealthy, freeborn individuals (although there are conflicting accounts of this as I will discuss later on).The history of mitawanda is further complicated by linguistic references. Tippu Tip’s inscription refers to these sandals by the Arabic term qabqāb (pl. qabāqīb), as opposed to the Swahili designation mitawanda. The term qabqāb is also used to refer to a type of sandal popular in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, greater Syria, and Turkey at least as early as the Mamlūk period (1250-1517 ce). Doris Behrens-Abouseif notes that one of the eleven daughters of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad of Egypt (r. 1293-1294, 1299-1309, 1310-1341) purchased what must have been an extremely lavish pair of qabqāb for the exorbitant sum of 40,000 dirhams or 2,000 dinars (Behrens-Abouseif 2007: 48). While these fourteenth-century sandals no longer survive, similar if less lavish clog sandals were being used in the Middle East between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.Few sources exist on the Middle Eastern qabqāb. Behrens-Abouseif briefly defines them as “bath footwear” (2007: 48), which is a use still associated with this type of sandal today. However, similar to the Swahili coast, more functional qabqāb were more simplistic and had minimal decoration (Fig. 9). These more practical shoes exist in dramatic contrast to what must have been an incredibly ornate pair commissioned by al-Nāṣir Muḥammad’s daughter, or other elaborate commissions from the early modern and modern periods. A nineteenth-century pair of qabqāb recently up for auction (Fig. 10) consists of a wooden sole which has been elevated high off the ground by two wooden boards receding in width from their bases to the point where they are attached at the heel and pad of the soles. The sandal would be attached to the foot by an arched embellished with and silver and attached to of the pad of the sole. These wooden sandals have been further decorated with in various While the form remains these qabqāb share a of with the mitawanda at the Bata Shoe the use of wood as the primary the elevated sole, and the use of silver this example, the form any functional in a In the added would have been particularly to that sources that embellished qabqāb were worn by women on their that women would wear qabqāb to their and for the that clog sandals were embellished with silver and that the sandals commissioned by al-Nāṣir Muḥammad’s were purchased with from it seems likely that the qabqāb by Behrens-Abouseif were in used for as “bath history of mitawanda is thus with types of sandals and used across the Indian Ocean (and even into the each of which has own complex These connections with the Middle East and South Asia their and meanings on the Swahili coast. east were of how paduka or qabqāb were used in South Asia and the Middle East or these visual, linguistic, and connections to locales an important in how east merchants and rulers and In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the on the Swahili coast were with the of class boundaries through markers of a that such as these sandals were to has been to the history and of the peoples on the Swahili coast, which I not to repeat but it is important to that trade has and in ways remains a feature of the and is an important component of the A of works this would this notes that the trade networks between the Arabian and east Africa were important for the of such a on the coast, while the between and Swahili merchants the Indian This is not to the practices of and that these as a of racial and authority attached to individuals or Indian but to that trade a in how of the Swahili coast and class to the periods of trade would in the and from the Arabian Peninsula, India, Asia, and These high trade were by wealthy coastal such as the ruling Būsa’īdī sultans in Zanzibar. Sultan Sayyida Salme ethnographic on time as princess in Zanzibar in which notes that for the of was it to the of a new of and the and of for a upon the of the in for was to and the ruling elite, as the of such would the and This was further by meant to the between and (Meier Mitawanda are implicated in this and it is frequently that was to Swahili who are in nineteenth and early twentieth (Fig. In of wealthy merchants and the ruling elite featured or women A portrait of Princess Sayyida Salme (Fig. 3) on an in what to be an various necklaces a lavish sumt likely in from a to which is attached various and mitawanda. is with right foot on one of the sandals and The sandal beneath foot at first to be until one the that it would be incredibly difficult to this sandal on from where it is in the Sayyida Salme would have to on right foot while to to foot into the Clearly, these sandals were carefully that feature prominently in the portrait as markers of Sayyida Salme’s from their in this carefully these shoes must also have been worn in important and in Tippu Tip’s exchange with Herbert Ward he was the sandals at the time they sandals from his own (Page and Bennet 1972: to gift to In their discussion of these sandals, and that there is wear in the soles and but there are of wear around the and along the which suggest that they were worn on more one pair of mitawanda (Fig. obvious of The of both sandals are worn and the on the sole is at the heel and pad of the a of use In more decorated mitawanda such as those of Sultan Fumo Omari (Fig. or the silver-plated pair held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. if any that they were worn of the of portrait This suggests that there were at least two types of mitawanda, those intended for display and those that have less decoration but were more Both of these types reflected similar of status where the more sandals were for their in and the more functional sandals were by the of in is that this between more functional and more mitawanda was a gendered Similar to and American men’s was frequently and less ornate that of Of course, this between men’s and was not and such as Sultan Fumo Omari’s elaborate sandals exist. However, of the photographic portraits mitawanda my few of them were of of wealthy from the Swahili coast sandals or In sandals were and more decorated with silver or The and added in the shoes being more delicate and to The of in shoes by a would have been by the of mitawanda. It is that such and mobile in is to have been the exclusive right of the it was for to be in by their as an of when in and the ability to reflected the and generosity of the it is here that the between and freeborn becomes more sources as that individuals were from any form of footwear, this seems not to have been when wealthy and women their by an of In the of how women on their Sayyida Salme that upon the shoes are off before the and this is from the to the notes that of was to their in the in formal with and and so to as an of the on however, only Both of these that must have worn form of when their in in these status must have been more in the nature of how individuals and the of adornment by such as the or of when photographed or in contrast with their and recently individuals were these same individuals were not to wear of the of their established that mitawanda as status for the and ruling the question how did they to this A of have at the between port cities and the Indian Ocean, and more with the of display on the Swahili coast, discussions which upon these among these are Prita on the and and In on the Meier objects are by East to create an Ocean 9). that objects in from the Indian Ocean to and to with the with the Swahili were connected by the Indian cultural through to and trade (Meier and Meier on these with a study of the and display of in Swahili port In this instance, the of in dramatic the status and authority of the The of these objects in to how they arrived on the coast the Indian Ocean, a that is further by the of made between from those from and from (Meier between architectural and bodily adornment in coastal east Africa was a Sultan between and became less (Meier 2016: or as in (Meier 2016: The of on in the forms of and and the of slave in on the of bodily adornment to the social and economic boundaries of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, in practices such as from the patrician elite in order to their new status as individuals and as However, of patrician status markers did not the of bodily adornment as a The of and suggests that women who did not were still less less These of dress less as of a economic and more as a and into the of Zanzibar and other port cities on the Swahili coast, objects in through trade were with and that exist. The few local that such made to trade or port cities on the Indian of this the elaborate to the of on the coast. of local the Arabic which is of as both local and on the coast because of associations with the Arabian and with examples of these might a modern with and to of the nineteenth century. These objects were not but of Through these Swahili merchants could and a connection to similarly a connected as they were to cities in Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and South linguistic, and to these sandals and their with an of exclusive to merchants and rulers on the Swahili coast. These connections the economic influence and religious authority of those who commissioned and clog This by such as Tippu Tip of and by which has the study of Africa as a of the Middle East or South and mobility have become frameworks of in where practices of as of cultural meanings as their simple or 3). The of and on the into question the of as homogeneous and by The of objects and forms across or becomes a of where objects and cultural that or not with their former a the border thus becomes a of cultural production where the of and both and cultural have similarly boundaries of by The Indian Ocean in particular has from this new of in the last two where India and east Africa have been in with such as A or the Indian In his notes that of boundaries and in historical the Indian Ocean as an of economic, and cultural and other of the Indian Ocean importantly the boundaries of the Indian Ocean that were not to but instead as a of However, it is important to also the ways in which objects function in because such are complex and This is especially important when the through as the of mitawanda study an elite of mobility and cultural that at the of of the of my has been an to between peoples and those who in such as Tippu Tip and Herbert The of class boundaries through modes of dress between and and the of the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. history with the slave trade is still in how they are on the Swahili coast. pairs of mitawanda or new ones in order to assert their (see Meier 2016: The through the display of mitawanda to assert class and boundaries the of these sandals, I would also like to elaborate on of and to how and time and with the of objects and The ability to the of Tippu Tip and Herbert Ward’s sandals from Zanzibar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to to the in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the complex meanings attached to them when they arrived in these The and of a pair of mitawanda could be in the moment of exchange when it meant various to different at the same In one mitawanda made present the of cities across the Indian Ocean, and in they the between the Swahili coast and because such sandals took on meanings in each these sandals a within Swahili coast between and were temporalities attached to these patrician modes of dress were associated with while modes of dress used by peoples or those inland in Africa were as by coastal can the Indian Ocean as a boundaries and fixed temporalities and as a that and the of time and based on who is it and nature of object mobility into question not only and but also the of formal, stylistic analysis. In and and have more the of in an They that object or architectural is through markers of exchange by or and that this on obscures histories and modes of Mitawanda should be in of this where the ability to mitawanda, or paduka of the more associated with trade and the Indian Ocean I have This is not to say that formal an important when object as I have in my discussion of the portrait of Princess Sayyida However, a formal of object types discussions of mitawanda under the of paduka as it has for a of objects held in example of the mitawanda held at the Bata Shoe Museum (Fig. the of formal when mobile these sandals were acquired in they are labeled as silver likely to by a or history as mitawanda has been by an of and form with the of This the of The that this pair of mitawanda were made in the nature of exchange on the Indian Ocean in which east and merchants were to the gifting of Tippu Tip’s sandals to Herbert Ward, the important by cultural and individual associations in the meaning of These and associations could exist where Tippu Tip and Herbert Ward at once these sandals Tippu Tip was gifting a luxury to a and Ward was a cultural Mitawanda are particularly examples of how meaning is shaped through complex of and sandals within histories of and Omani in and central Africa. can be through the Belgian in what was the Congo to a in the Indian Ocean slave known for the of his in western and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tippu Tip’s of and status at the of for these sandals into question the significance of discussions on The of the Indian Ocean became a through which Swahili merchants and the ruling elite their both local and such as mitawanda that to or arrived by Indian Ocean trade for the of class boundaries as well as the of connections to of trade and religious Through these sandals, and form can be seen as that the notion of fixed meanings and cultural units. the ways that mitawanda circulated and meaning into question the nature of and the of art history on meanings attached to forms and

Tech Support

Original Source

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00538

References

1993 - Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon
2016 - Cultural Practice and Social Identity: South Asian Folk Jewelry
2007 - Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of Architecture and Its Culture [Crossref]
2006 - A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire
1997 - Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century
2014 - At Home in Africa: Design, Beauty and Pleasing Irregularity in Domestic Settings
2003 - Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America [Crossref]
2001 - Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945
2010 - Rituals of Consumption and the Politics of Feasting on the Eastern African Coast, ad 700-1500 [Crossref]
2006 - Mediating Role