Of Patience and Pity: Rewriting and Reciting the Widely Travelled Islamic Poem “The Hawk and the Dove” in East Africa


 The Swahili poem of “The Hawk and the Dove” (Kozi na Ndiwa) has long been popular along the Swahili coast. In brief, the poem tells the story of the prophet Musa, who is put to the test by the angels Mikaili and Jibrili, disguised as a dove and a hawk. The dove, fleeing the famished hawk, finds refuge in the folds of Musa’s clothes. The bird of prey, approaching Musa, claims its right to the dove, since it is hungry. Musa faces a dilemma: he understands the hawk’s argument but is also full of pity for the dove. When he finally offers to cut off a part of his own right thigh to feed the hawk, the birds reveal themselves as the two angels and praise the prophet.
 “The Hawk and the Dove” has been a travelling Islamic poem par excellence: like many other popular Swahili Islamic poems dating back to the eighteenth, but mostly the nineteenth century – the heyday of Swahili Islamic poetry, having flourished amid the Sufi movements and their emphasis on poetry in vernacular languages as a means to ignite religious zeal in wider audiences – the poem is also based on sources that have widely travelled the Indian Ocean. Swahili poets creatively adapted them into Swahili verse, just as other Muslim poets in North Africa, West Africa, and, earlier, the Iberian Peninsula did for the discourses relevant to their own contexts. This contribution takes the double optic of providing a first text edition of the most ancient surviving Swahili manuscript of the poem. Secondly, I view the poem amid a longer history of circulation beyond the Swahili coast, as well as compare it with other popular, vernacular versions in the Arabic dialect of Algeria, Hausa in Nigeria, and the earlier adaptations by moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula in Aljamiado. This kaleidoscope of various rewritings of the story allows me to see the Swahili-specific readings more clearly in contrast.