Antambahoaka

The Antambahoaka are a Malagasy people of the south-eastern coast around Mananjary, whose village of Masindrano grew into that town. They share their origins with the Antaimoro, who trace themselves to an Arab migrant, Raminia, said to have come from Mecca between the 900s and the 1100s.

In the 1400s the Antaimoro leader Ravalarivo broke away to found Masindrano, and the community took its name from his later title Ratiambahoaka. Their later history is largely unrecorded: they lived in villages under mpanjaka kings, and the noble clans kept the sorabe art of writing Malagasy in Arabic script.

Their festival was the Sambatra, held every seven years: boys born since the previous one were circumcised together and received into their paternal clans as sons of Raminia, with processions to the Mananjary river mouth. They kept fady taboos and Islamic traces such as refusing pork to their chiefs.