Assessing the way in which the Kilwa Chronicle, a text presenting the genealogy of the Kings of Kilwa of Persian origin, over more than five centuries, could have been printed in Portuguese in João de Barros’ Decades in Lisbon, in 1552, is not a simple matter. The "why" of the chronicle is obvious and stems from several political reasons arising from Kilwa’s occupation by the Portuguese in 1502. On the contrary, the "how" of the chronicle is much less so. Through a systematic study of the two written versions of the text at our disposal, the Chronicle and the Kitab, we will show that the existence of an original manuscript which, as is generally presumed, would have been found by the Portuguese on their arrival and would have travelled up to the mouth of the Tagus, raises strong doubts. These doubts could be answered more convincingly through an alternate hypothesis, according to which the Chronicle was “co-written” in the 16th century, as a result of the colonial encounter.
Based on this East Africa case study, this paper would like to raise the question of the circulation of genres - and in this case of historiographic genres - from different historigraphic tradition. It will argue that it is impossible to express a view on genres with the sole exam of the content of texts and independently of their material circulations.