In the 1920s the villages behind Tiwi changed quickly. Mosques went up one after another, and for the first time most of them were led by Digo imams who had been taught close to home. The historian David Sperling gave this change a heading of its own in his thesis: "The First Digo Imams". The first name under that heading is Kassim Mwachinyama of Chigato.
What we know about him comes from a few paragraphs in Sperling's work. Sperling built them from interviews he recorded at Chigato, Chigongoni and Vuga in 1985 and 1986. This article keeps close to that account.
Islam in the Tiwi Hinterland
Islam had been growing in the Tiwi area for a generation before Kassim. Around 1894 a teacher named Juma Matungale, whose mother was a Digo from Chitsanga, settled at Tiwi. The Mkoyo Mosque was built there around 1898, with Matungale as its first Imam. By 1916, according to oral testimony, more than half of the elders of Tiwi's ngambi, the village council of elders, were Muslims.
Further inland, around Chigato and Vuga, there were still few teachers. That changed with the arrival of Salimini bin Simba, a Yao from southern Tanzania who had come to Kenya as a soldier before the First World War. He married a woman from a Vuga family and settled there. In 1915 a District Commissioner found "a Swahili (ex KAR)" living at Vuga without permission and told him to go. Sperling thinks this was Salimini. That year Salimini moved to Chigongoni, became Imam of the Mabatani Mosque and opened a Qur'an school. Sperling calls him "the first teacher in the Chigato area". Around 1922 he helped build the Makunguni Mosque at Chigongoni and became its first Imam.
A Student of Salimini
Kassim Mwachinyama was one of Salimini's early students. His older brother, Hamisi Mwachinyama, was the head of Chigato village.
Salimini did more than teach his students to read the Qur'an. Sperling writes that he knew "the important role his students would play in their home villages", and trained some of them to lead prayers. Kassim is said to have practised giving the Friday sermon at the Makunguni Mosque under Salimini's guidance. A Qur'an teacher of this kind is called a mwalimu (teacher), and the step from pupil to teacher to imam is the path Kassim followed.
The Chigato Mosque, 1924
In 1924, when Kassim was about to finish his studies, Hamisi decided to build a mosque at Chigato so that his brother could be its first Imam.
This was a pattern in the area. Sperling describes "a friendly rivalry between villages that boasted an 'educated son' whom they sought to honour by building a mosque". The Mwamabanda Mosque (1926), the Mkunguni Mosque (1928) and the Chai Mosque (1929) were all built for young men who had just finished their studies. By 1930 there were eight mosques in the Tiwi area, and seven of them had Digo imams.
Teacher to Vuga
Kassim's influence reached beyond Chigato. Vuga, about three miles away, had a mosque from around 1922 but no Qur'an school and no local imam. Imams came from Tiwi to lead Friday prayers. Sometimes it was Salimini or Kassim, more often Sulayman Mwakuaza of Mkunguni. Children from Vuga walked to Chigato to study with Kassim.
Tsufu, the Muslim headman of Vuga who had led the building of its mosque, sent his sons to Kassim. He later persuaded Kassim to move to Vuga and teach them at home. When Tsufu's eldest son, Sulayman Zingizi, finished his studies, Kassim went back to Chigato. Zingizi became Imam of the Vuga Mosque and opened the village's own Qur'an school. In this way the teaching passed from Salimini to Kassim, and from Kassim to the next village.
Why the Record Is Thin
Everything above rests on Sperling's thesis, which draws on a handful of oral informants. No colonial file that has been checked names Kassim. We do not know when he was born or died, how long he served as Imam, or whether he had children who carried on his work.
The chronology is also uneven. Sperling dates the Chigato Mosque to 1924, when Kassim was "about to finish" his studies. Yet he also says Tsufu moved Kassim to Vuga "shortly after the first World War", and that Vuga children were already studying with him before the Vuga Mosque was built around 1922. Both cannot be exact. Kassim may have been teaching younger pupils while still finishing his own studies, but the sources do not say.
"First" also needs care. Sperling's heading refers to the Tiwi and Chigato area. Elsewhere, Digo imams came earlier: Mwalimu Ali bin Muhammad Mwaganyuma was the first Imam of the Pungu Mosque in the 1890s.
Legacy
Kassim Mwachinyama left no writings that we know of. What he left was a role. He was one of the first young men of the Tiwi hinterland to be trained at home and then to lead his own village in prayer. Through his pupils at Chigato and Vuga, Qur'an teaching spread to places that had none. The Chigato Mosque, built for him by his brother in 1924, marks the moment when the Digo of this area began to take over the leadership of their own mosques.