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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Maasai Farmers: The Evolution of Arusha Agriculture
Authors:Spear, Thomas T.ISNI
Nurse, DerekISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:25
Issue:3
Pages:481-503
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:Arusha
agricultural history
Maasai language
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Development and Technology
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/219022
Abstract:While people commonly associate the Maasai of East Africa exclusively with pastoralism, more than one-third of all East African Maa-speakers farm. The Arusha Maasai, living on the southwestern slopes of Mount Meru in Tanzania, are intensive irrigation farmers who value land and the abundant crops the fertile volcanic soils produce as well as cattle. They often appear more similar to Bantu-speaking Meru farmers who live on the southeastern slopes of the mountain than they do to Kisongo Maasai pastoralists who inhabit the surrounding plains. But as Maa-speakers, Arusha trace their origins from Maasai and continue to participate actively in Maasai age-sets and rituals. The historical evidence for close, enduring Arusha relations with pastoral Maasai, as contrasted with their more distant and ineffectual relations with Chaga and Meru, is borne out by linguistic evidence relating to interaction among the four peoples. Meru linguistic influence on Arusha, and vice versa, is remarkably slight, given the close proximity of the two peoples on Mount Meru over the past 150 years. There is, however, a notable exception to the general lack of influence by either language on the other concerning vocabulary associated with cultivation, where most Arusha items for agricultural crops, tools, and practices are borrowed, largely from Meru. Notes, ref.
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