ABSTRACT
Much of pre-twentieth century written Swahili literature, especially in its poetic form, could be described as Islamic, not only because of the subjects it treats but also because of the infl uence of the wider Muslim culture on canons of composition in East Africa. What Thomas Hodgkin said of Ghana’s Islamic literary tradition is also true of the earlier stages of much of classical Swahili literature: ‘It is a literature which can properly be called Islamic in the sense that its authors were Muslim, trained in the Islamic sciences, conscious of their relationship with the Islamic past, and regarding literature as a vehicle for the expression of Islamic values’.1
