The popularity of the East Asian martial arts in Africa have been taken to gesture to popular imaginations beyond “the West” (Prashad 2002), but at the same time, they can’t be reduced to Chinese “cultural diplomacy.” In Tanzania, the practice of the East Asian martial arts derives from a multitude of sources illustrating the longstanding presence of Afro-Asian connections, and the significant role played by African martial artists. In this paper, based on collaborative fieldwork with a Tanzanian karate dojo, Bagamoyo Film and Martial Arts (BAFIMA), and its founder, Sempai Ally, I describe two genealogical projects to trace the origins of the style Tanzanian martial artists call “Karate Combat.” The first, based on my oral history research project, traces the style to the Tanzanian military and its international collaborations during the Cold War. The second, based on Sempai Ally’s project to produce a book transmitting the knowledge he has received from spiritual teachers (majini), locates the ultimate origins of the martial arts in an Afro-Islamic world and cosmology. I discuss the relationship between these two projects and its implications for developing a history of the martial arts in a context where both origins and routes of transmission are contested. During the course of this research, North Korean commandos, expatriate Chinese residents, and individual Zanzibari teachers have alternatively emerged as key figures in the development of a “combat” style characterized by being non-institutionalized, underground, and even subversive. In the process, Tanzanian martial artists link their practice to social and moral concerns in their communities. The confusions and debates complicate grand narratives of Afro-Asian cultural exchange, blurring the boundaries in ways exemplary of both martial arts and Swahili cultural histories. In the process, I consider the implications for the politics of claims regarding authorship of Afro-Asian cultural heritage.