Note 281 — Chapter IV · MARKET DAYS
Reading edition
W. W. A. Fitzgerald, Travels in the Coastlands of British East Africa, London, 1898, p. 111, quoting W. E. Taylor, Vocabulary of the Giryama Language, London, 1897. The name applied to the first day of the week—jumwa—is directly taken from the Arabic al jum‘a (Friday, the Mohammedan day of worship), from which circumstance it may be concluded that the Wagiriama observe jumwa both as a market day and a rest day. Similarly, the name of the weekly market held at Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, is zoma, or Friday (Antananarivo Annual, 1889-1892, iv, 372).