Yohanna Barnaba Abdallah

Who was Yohanna Barnaba Abdallah?

Yohanna Barnaba Abdallah was a clergyman and historian of the Yao people of central Africa.

He was born in northern Mozambique, and ordained as an Anglican priest at Likoma Cathedral in 1898. After a brief stint at Zanzibar, he took up residence at the Unangu station on the east side of Lake Malawi, eventually spending most of his career there. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1905.

Abdallah was noted as a scholar of the Greek language and of the Bible, but his chief claim to fame is his Chikala cha Wayao, a seminal study of the Yao people and Yao language. It was translated by Meredith Sanderson and published in 1919, and republished in 1973.