To Engrave Beauty (Kutia Nakshi): Inscriptions on a Carved Door in Lamu, Kenya

Janet Marion Purdy

Kutia nakshi translates from the Kiswahili language to English as ‘to engrave beauty’. An undeniably elegant phrase, it conjures potent mental imagery, depth of meaning, and layers of esoteric qualities. Inscriptions that adorn a late-nineteenth-century wooden door in coastal Kenya represent an important example of this expression in practice as part of one of the most iconic artistic traditions of the region. This littoral zone where the edge of eastern Africa meets western Indian Ocean shores has been a fulcrum for cultural, artistic, and intangible social confluence for millennia – fully on display in this architectural adornment.

The carved doors of the Swahili coast – the narrow strip of land that runs along the East African coastline from Mogadishu to northern Mozambique, including all the islands and archipelagos in between – have long been revered as visual manifestations of the region’s complex roots and histories. In the nineteenth century when the diversely populated port cities of Lamu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar flourished as centers of global trade and cultural confluence, so did the popularity of owning a carved door. Massive and elaborately decorated extant examples are primarily understood for their role as expressions of power, prestige, and wealth – their surfaces filled with diverse motifs and designs that reflect the original owner’s access to the vast streams of trade, production, and elite society that converged at his doorstep.

In the majority of cases, the carver or workshop behind a door’s creation is not known. Significant for this particular door is that we know it was carved by the most revered and multi-faceted artistic figure of Swahili culture, Ahmed Abubakar Omar (c. 1855‒1945), more commonly known as Mohammed Kijuma or Kijumwa. Kijumwa was creatively diverse, influential, and prolifically productive. His lifetime spanned almost entirely across the colonial period in East Africa. His multivalent collaborations and innovations were, in effect, a bridge that connected nineteenth-century Zanzibar sultanate court culture, colonial regimes, European Christian missions, and northern Swahili Islamic traditions. Best known as a poet, musician, and calligraphic scribe, Kijumwa characterized nakshi in his own range of artistry as ‘all kinds of ornaments, no matter whether incised in wood, modeled in plaster or drawn on paper’.

Fig. 1: Wooden door carved by Kijumwa: lintel detail.

The carved Arabic inscription inside the lozenge at the top center position of the lintel (Fig. 1) provides the date of creation for this door. Translated to English the text reads, ‘Carved on 7th Dhu al-Hijja 1314’, which converts from the hijri calendar to the Gregorian calendar as approximately May 1897. The door was commissioned for a historic duka (‘shop’) and dwelling on the west side of usita wa mui (‘the main street’) of Lamu Town, just south of the central marketplace. It still graces the entrance of the shop today. As we will see, the door contains some of the most artistically significant and controversial carvings produced by Kijumwa.

The door frame is more than two meters tall and over a meter wide, fashioned from planks of a durable and termite resistant hardwood, possibly jackfruit (Fig. 2). The rounded, narrow center post is attached to one of the door panels, both of which are plain and undecorated as is typical for historical compositions. Doors of this size are usually constructed from eight to twelve interlocking pieces that join together to form the decorative frame and lintel.

Fig. 2: Duka door carved by Kijumwa, c. 1897, Lamu, Kenya.

As this notable duka doorway exemplifies, Kijumwa created and established new and recognizable carving techniques and compositions for the decorative doors of Lamu that clearly display his exceptional artistic talents and mastery of the form. They also reflect his travels, during which he observed a variety of trends, global tastes, and diverse fashions that later fueled his own creative explorations and innovations. His carving style is marked by a curvaceous, flowery, organic, detailed admixture with clear influences incorporated from the strands of vines, leaves, elaborate foliage, fruit, and vases preferred by Indian carvers working along the coast and throughout the western Indian Ocean region during this period.

Kijumwa’s carving style – as may be seen in the details of this door – is expansive in motifs, curvature, and technical virtuosity. Many carvers are not able to master the high and low relief depth of technique and number of tools – sometimes up to ten or more varieties – required to produce beveled inscriptions and the elaborated naturalistic imagery in what became known as the Kijumwa style. Based on his own writing and interviews with contemporary carvers who learned their craft in the lineage of training extending from Kijumwa to the present, we know that he used the following tools to carve this and other doors: a knife with a wooden handle, an adze, a chisel, a drill, a plane, a saw, kiminingu and mangapo (both local Swahili terms for special carving tools).

Fig. 3: Detail of lintel lozenge with Arabic inscription.

The remainder of the Arabic text in the lozenge on the lintel translates to English as ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’ (Fig. 3). Known as the bismillah, this is one of the most important phrases in Islam. It is used by Muslims as the beginning of most daily actions or prayers, as well as when performing good deeds or religious acts. As with this door, texts that include the bismillah and other verses about blessings and benevolence from the Qur’an are commonly inscribed onto lintels, and are clearly understood to be devices of prayerful protection. It is not entirely clear when lintel inscriptions became such an important compositional element for carved doors of this region. In earlier decades, colonial visitors who could not read Arabic characterized the inscriptions incorrectly as addresses or as identifying the house owners. By contrast, in 1872 Richard Burton compared the lintel inscriptions to a local practice in which individuals wrote Qur’anic texts onto slips of paper and fastened them to doorways and entrances for protection. Their purpose was to expel and deflect spiritual and earthly dangers such as witches, evil spirits, and thieves. In this context inscriptions firmly situate the carved doors within the wide-ranging material world of amulets, totems, and other apotropaic devices, especially highlighting historic and cultural traditions that mark doorways and thresholds as points of potential danger.

Fig. 4: Detail of inscriptions on lintel, signature and hand design on center post.

The controversial aspect of Kijumwa’s door relates to the unique imagery and text he inscribed on the center post just below the lozenge. This placement for an inscription is so rare and unusual that it is the only known extant example on the Swahili coast and surrounding regions. These marks do not appear on any of his other carved doors. Kijumwa carved a twisting snake with an arm hooked into one of the coils (Fig. 4). The arm ends in a hand with fingers pointing up to a hook-like ring or shape in which is written his honorary title and name, ‘Fundi (‘master’) Kijuma’. (Fig. 5) The oddly shaped outline for his carved name could possibly represent a fish, a turtle – similar in form to those historically carved in plaster wall decorations in Lamu buildings – or has also varyingly been referred to as an eagle, a ring, calipers, or a pair of compasses.

Fig. 5: Kijumwa’s signature detail carved on the center post.

Carvers in Mombasa and Lamu, Kenya, and Zanzibar and Bagamoyo, Tanzania, relate that it was highly unusual to so obviously and defiantly ‘sign’ one’s work. To do so does not fall under the custom of deferring recognition and gratitude to a spiritual source, nor does it align with the belief that all talent comes from God. Kijumwa went against Swahili and local Muslim traditions of artistic anonymity to include a hand in the lintel as his obvious signature. He pushed this statement even further when he arranged the hand with the finger pointing toward the most important and central section of the carved lintel with the bismillah inscription at the center of the panel above the door. With this act of self-importance Kijumwa places himself and his hubris firmly within the spiritual sphere as the most important aspect of the door. It was an audacious act, one that might even be compared to architectural monument plans in which Islamic leaders strategically positioned their own tombs in the sight line between worshippers and the mihrab so that they were automatically included in an eternal and directed gaze.

Countless streams and layers of creative input over centuries shaped the diverse evolution and designs of the carved doors of the Swahili coast. Each one operates in some way as a projection of society at the time it was created and includes not only multi-vocal messages but also unique details that reflect individual histories, beliefs, and stories about the actors responsible for their creation. The doors also tell us something about the various audiences who would have lived with them and engaged with them day in and day out. This special nineteenth-century door with inscriptions carved by Kijumwa continues to stand in Lamu as such a marker – one in which God is worshipped, beauty is engraved, and a unique artist’s legacy and creative bravado is preserved.

References

Allen, John de Vere (1974), Lamu Town: A Guide, Lamu, Kenya: Allen.

Athman, Athman Hussein (1996), ‘Styles of Swahili Carving’, AAP (Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere: Schriftenreihe des Kölner Instituts für Afrikanistik) 47: 11–29.

Coney-Ali, Katherine E. (2016), ‘Kijumwa: Trajectories of Art and Resocialization in Swahili Culture’, in Jane McAllister (ed.), Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean From Oman to East Africa, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art and Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, 133–146.

Egl, Mohammad Ibrahim Mohammad Abou (1983), The Life and Works of Muhamadi Kijuma, Phd diss., University of London.

Miehe, Gudrun, Clarissa Vierke, Sauda A. Barwani, Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany (2010), Muhamadi Kijuma: Texts from the Dammann Papers and Other Collections (AAM – Archiv afrikanistischer Manuskripte, 9). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

Purdy, Janet Marion (2020), Carved Swahili Doors: Gateways of Status, Trade, and Transaction in East Africa, PhD diss., The Pennsylvania State University.

Description

Location: Lamu, Kenya

Date: c. May 1897

Material: wood (jackfruit?)

Size: c. 200 × 100 cm

Copyright Notice

Reference Note

Janet Marion Purdy, To Engrave Beauty (Kutia Nakshi): Inscriptions on a Carved Door in Lamu, Kenya. In Leah Mascia, Thies Staack (eds): Artefact of the Month No. 30, CSMC, Hamburg.