A History of the East African Coast

by Charles Cornelius

  An even older source, the Hsin Tang Shu, points to another distant connection between the coast and China, the use of Negro slaves. The account described how envoys from Java brought two “Seng-chi” women to the Chinese imperial court in 614 as a tribute to the emperor. Negro slaves also appear to have been taken to China around the time Duan Chengshi was writing: a terracotta figure of an African slave was found in a ninth century Chinese tomb and we know from another Chinese source that many wealthy Cantonese households had African slaves.

  In addition to Chinese sources, the East African coast is also described by several Arab writers. The Arab geographer, Al Jahiz, writing at about the same time as Duan Chengshi, names Kanbalu (probably Pemba Island) as being a centre of the slave trade. The export of slaves from Africa to the Middle East was certainly on a significant scale at this time, the numbers being large enough to make an African slave revolt in the marshes of the Shatt al Arab big news in the ninth century.

  Al Masudi - or, to give him his full name, Abdul Hasan Ali Bin Hasan Bin Ali Al-Masudi – was a remarkable Arab scholar born in Baghdad in the final decade of the ninth century. A prolific writer and traveller, he wrote 34 books during his lifetime including a colossal 30 volume history of the world, the Muruj-al-Zaman, together with works on topics as diverse as earthquakes, Arabic music and a recent Persian invention, the windmill. As well as this, Al Masudi put forward, a thousand years before Charles Darwin, a theory of evolution. Because of the critical, scientific approach he applied to his studies of history and geography, he is known as the Herodotus of the Arabs and, like the ancient Greek historian, travelled to many of the places he described. In a breathtaking three year period from 915 to 918, Al Masudi travelled through Persia, into India, across to Sri Lanka and on through south-east Asia and China, before crossing the Indian Ocean to reach Madagascar, and sailing up the East African coast until he reached Oman. Finally settling down in Cairo, Al Masudi penned his greatest work, Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones, in which he described the people and culture of the places he had visited on his epic trip. The many accounts and legends Al Masudi recounted included the tale of a Muslim ship that set out in 889 from Spain, sailing west until it reached a previously unknown land named Ard Majhoola, from where he returned with fabulous treasures, a tale that has led some Arab scholars to suggest that Muslims reached America six centuries before Christopher Columbus.

  In Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones, Al Masudi gave a detailed description of life at the East African coast, a region he called the Land of Zanj. Kanbalu and Sofala seem to have been the most important destinations for traders from Arabia and Persia. Described as an island one or two day's sail from the coast, Kanbalu was probably Pemba Island, but, despite having visited the island at least twice in his lifetime, Al Masudi failed to describe the island in any detail. However he did say that it had a mixed population of Muslims and non-Muslims, and that it had a Muslim royal family, providing us with the first contemporary written evidence of Muslim leadership anywhere along the coast, as well as clear evidence of Muslim settlement.

  Sofala, however, was clearly the most important settlement on the coast. Al Masudi called it the Zanj capital, and from here its king, the Mfalme (meaning Son of the Great Lord), ruled the coast to the north, supported (if Al Masudi is to be believed) by an army of some 300,000 troops. Linguists have identified Mfalme as a Bantu word, suggesting that here, Africans were in charge.

  While there clearly were Muslims on the coast, particularly at Kanbalu, it is likely that early in the tenth century they only formed a small and isolated minority of the population. Indeed, another tenth century Arab traveller, Ibn Hawqal, wrote that south of the Horn of Africa, the land “departs from the regions of Islam”. He described how the Zanj followed a pagan religion in which “every man worships what he pleases, be it a plant, an animal or a mineral”, presumably a kind of idol worship.

  Some of the main exports of the coast at this time would have included gold, ambergris, timber, leopardskin and tortoiseshell, but Al Masudi only pays passing interest to these products. Of far greater interest to him is ivory, possibly the most lucrative export of Zanj.

  In demand in Al Masudi's day as far afield as China and India, ivory tusks, carried to the coast from far inland, were shipped to the Middle East and re-exported at a huge profit. Al Masudi wrote that one of the main uses for ivory in China was in the construction of covered litters for carrying the wealthy of Chinese cities, and for burning as incense. The main use for ivory in India was carving, particularly in the manufacture of chess and backgammon pieces as well as handles for knives and scabbards for swords. (The ivory of Indian elephants was too tough and brittle for carving and, besides, the Indians preferred to use their elephants as domesticated working animals.) Al Masudi described a novel strategy the Zanj used to get their hands on the ivory: according to him, they would leave out the leaves, bark and branches of a tree that seems to have had powerful narcotic effects and, after eating the vegetation, the elephant would quickly become drunk and collapsed, whereupon the Zanj would descend upon the inebriated animal with their spears and knives. It must have taken a degree of patience, but earnings from ivory were definitely worth the effort.

  It's clear that by the tenth century, the East African coast was engaged in a lucrative international trade that reached markets thousands of miles away. Chinese annals even reported a tribute-bearing mission from “Zongstan” to the Chinese imperial court in 1071 and 1083. And as trade changed the East African coast, so too did religion.

   

  The Rise of Islam

  It is likely that by Al Masudi's time, Islam was starting to gain a foothold along the coast in a number of places, brought there by an ever-increasing number of Muslim merchants from Arabia and Persia. Since Muslims are required to pray five times a day, and since the merchants would have remained at the coast for many weeks and months while they traded and waited for the monsoon winds to shift direction and take them home, Muslim worship would have been a feature of life in the Swahili towns since the time of Mohammed. By the tenth century, however, Islam was starting to take on a more permanent feel. Shanga is thought to have had a stone mosque by the middle of the tenth century and evidence of its repeated expansion in size suggests that by 1000AD most of the population of Shanga were Muslim. The traditional date for the Muslim takeover of Kilwa is 975AD, when Ali bin Hasan bought the island in return for a huge consignment of cloth. Mogadishu, further up the coast, was regarded as an Islamic centre of regional importance, and may have been a sponsor of continued Islamic expansion further south. Indeed, a later writer described Mogadishu at this time as the sovereign city of all Muslims along the coast. So while Islam was probably still a minority religion at the end of the tenth century, it was beginning to win converts among the African population rather than merely being the religion of overseas visitors.

  The oldest archaeological evidence for Muslim leadership on the coast, indeed, the oldest piece of writing found in East Africa - is to be found at Kizimkazi, a town on the southern tip of Zanzibar Island, where there is an eighteenth century mosque rebuilt around the remains of one dating from the twelfth century. The only surviving part of the original mosque is the mihrab, a niche built into a thick wall at the front of the mosque facing Mecca from which the imam leads the prayer. The mihrab at Kizimkazi contains an Arabic inscription dated to 1107 and tells how the construction of the original mosque was ordered by the local ruler, Sheikh al Sayid Abi Amran.

   

  Al Idrisi

  The rising status of the East African coast eventually caught the attention of a court geographer and cartographer in Sicily, a Muslim called Muhammad Al Idrisi. Al Idrisi is something of a renegade figure in Arabic history because he worked for a Christian ruler on Sicily, an island at the time being fought over by Christians and Muslims. Born in Spain in 1099 and educated there at the great centre of Islamic learning at Cordoba, Al Idrisi settled in Sici
ly to work at the court of King Roger II. His greatest written work was the aptly titled, ‘Roger's Book’, which had the slightly less snappy but certainly very honest subtitle, ‘The Book of the Travels of One Who Cannot Travel Himself’. As this subtitle suggests, Al Idrisi never actually set foot outside Sicily to write his book, relying entirely upon other writers and informers paid at royal expense. Parts of his account are not terribly reliable: he seemed convinced, for example, that tigers roamed the shores of the East African coast and had a rather exaggerated idea of the size of some of its offshore islands. However, his is a crucial account, particularly as it gives us our first glimpse of life at two of the coast's most famous towns, Malindi and Mombasa.

  By the time Al Idrisi put pen to paper in the middle of the twelfth century, Malindi and Mombasa both seemed to be well established towns, gaining much of their income from iron mining, an export which, rather surprisingly, is the only one Al Idrisi felt worthy of mention. Malindi is described as a large town, Mombasa as a small but highly prestigious one due to the fact that the ‘king of Zanj’ lived in the town.

  The only other part of the Swahili coast to be described by Al Idrisi were the Comoros Islands, which he called the Djawaga, a group of islands 100 miles offshore which received scant attention from other writers of the period. The Comoros do seem to have been an active player in the Swahili world, trading with the coast in exports that included pearls, aromatic plants, perfumes and rice. Significantly, they are described as having a predominantly Muslim population, suggesting that by this time, Islam was starting to have a serious impact.

   

  New Towns and Economic Boom

  In 1984 and 1985, a large horde of gold and silver coins was found at Mtwambe Mkuu on Pemba Island, a find dated to the middle of the eleventh century. Given that a community making use of coinage must have been economically sophisticated, and that they lived in what appeared to be a large, rapidly built, new town, the suggestion is that the settlement may have been founded by a group of refugees from further north. Indeed, the Chinese annals that reported the visitors from ‘Zongstan’ in 1071 and 1083 also described how the Swahili rulers minted coins for its people to use.

   Similar evidence of large, new towns comes from sites at Mkumbua on Pemba Island and Tumbatu, an island next to Zanzibar, which a thirteenth century Arab writer described as being populated by refugees. Settlements on nearby Mafia Island have also been dated to the early eleventh century. Mark Horton has speculated that this wave of settlement in the Zanzibar Archipelago was the result of refugees coming from the Lamu Archipelago in the middle of the eleventh century. It does seem as if something catastrophic must have happened in Shanga around that time, because stone buildings there appeared to have been destroyed and replaced with huts of mud and timber. Archaeology suggests a similar thing happened at Manda and so suddenly, albeit only briefly, the islands of the Zanzibar Archipelago had gained pre-eminence over those of Lamu.

  Back in the Middle East, a new star was rising: a legendary Kurdish prince in his late twenties called Saladin. In 1169 Saladin conquered Egypt and, with his brother's help, seized control of south-western Arabia, giving him control over the Red Sea trading route. He soon united the fractured Muslim region and by the early 1190s had pushed the crusaders back from their strongholds in Jerusalem and the surrounding desert until they had been reduced to controlling a 100 mile long, thin strip of coastal land. Saladin had created a Pax Islamicus, a peace over the Islamic world which would facilitate trade across the region for years to come. With the same leader controlling the Red Sea and the major Islamic cities of the Middle East, trade between East Africa and the major Islamic cities of the Middle East was made far easier. Peace also meant prosperity - and a greater demand for the luxury goods of the coast.

  Europe was also becoming a more peaceful and orderly place. The Dark Ages were a thing of the past and an era of economic and intellectual expansion was underway. Imports flowed into Europe through Mediterranean ports such as Venice, Genoa and Marseilles and it is during this period that the first sizeable imports of ivory can be dated. Much of this ivory would have come from East Africa. Rising demand for luxury goods, including gold, both in Europe and in the vibrant Islamic courts of Persia from this time would have resulted in economic expansion along the coast and it is no surprise that from the eleventh century, evidence of settlement along the coast becomes more readily available.

  Archaeological work shows an increase in the remains of imported goods, particularly expensive Chinese porcelain, and also points to growing use of cowrie shells, used as a form of currency throughout the Indian Ocean world. Many stone buildings date from the twelfth century, as do a number of settlements; it is likely that the town of Malindi was founded some time in the twelfth century and by the time of Al Idrisi was already important. However, some of the older towns appear to have fared less well, and Manda, one of the earliest towns whose remains we can still see today, was in decline.

  One of the greatest beneficiaries of this new world order was Kilwa. For centuries, Mogadishu had controlled the gold trade coming out of the Zimbabwe gold mining region. The Swahili cities may have gained something from charging Mogadishu's ships fees for harbouring in their own ports, but it seems that not until the twelfth century did any of them try to control the actual trade for themselves.

  Since its foundation, Kilwa had remained relatively unimportant. The town’s rise was not helped by unpopular rulers whom the townspeople quickly overthrew: a twelfth century sultan, Hasan Suleiman, was thrown alive into a well after a despotic reign of six years and his nephew fared even worse; within two years of becoming sultan, he had been beheaded. Fortunately for Kilwa, his son, Daud, and grandson Suleiman al-Hasan, proved to be outstanding sultans and during the second half of the twelfth century they transformed Kilwa from a town of mud and wood, based on small-scale, local trade and fishing into a magnificent sultanate with an empire stretching along the coast. The cause of this sudden change was Kilwa's successful attempt to seize control of the trade in gold coming through Sofala.

  Sofala had first come to Kilwa's attention when - according to the Chronicle of Kilwa - a lone fisherman snared a rather large and stubborn fish which then proceeded to drag the equally stubborn fisherman and his boat southward through the open seas. The fish and the sea currents helped to take the fisherman further away from Kilwa until eventually, hopelessly lost and more dead than alive, he happened upon the port of Sofala where he saw traders from Mogadishu exchanging cloth for gold mined in the African interior. It was a lucrative trade and Kilwa was well positioned to access it and so, from the second half of the twelfth century, Kilwa gradually sidelined Mogadishu until she controlled the trade with Sofala and with it the huge profits that were to be made. Daud's son, Suleiman al-Hasan, then used this new found wealth to establish Kilwa's political authority over Pemba, Mafia, Zanzibar and a large part of the mainland.

  Further north, the town of Pate was undergoing a more modest revival. Still dwarfed by its neighbour on the other side of the island, Shanga, Pate slowly started to rise in importance during the thirteenth century. According to its chronicle, the main reason for this revival was the coming to the town of a new dynasty of rulers from Oman, the Nabahani, who arrived there from Muscat in 1204 having been ousted from positions of leadership by a rival Arab dynasty. The Nabahani leader, Suleiman, quickly won over the Patean population by dishing out gifts to all the influential men of the town including its chief, who responded by agreeing to his daughter's marriage to Suleiman. The chief’s wedding present to Suleiman was certainly on the generous side, it being the kingdom of Pate itself.

  By the end of the thirteenth century, the coast was predominantly Muslim. Peace in the Middle East and a growth in trading opportunities had no doubt encouraged an increase in immigration from the Middle East - the Nabahani may be one example of that - bringing with it their religion, and the wealth enjoyed by the Swahili residents was pumped into increase
d stone construction, some of which came in the form of mosques.

  Kilwa was by then the pre-eminent town on the coast. Its sultans had used revenue from the gold trade to build a walled city of stone. In 1270, a huge mosque was built in the town and fifty years later a palace was constructed there, by which time Kilwa's sultans were minting their own coins.

  The Pax Islamicus which may have assisted this expansion was not entirely without its hiccups, especially when Muslims in the Middle East awoke to find hordes of mounted and highly violent men from Mongolia at their gates. Baghdad fell to Genghis Khan in 1258 and much of the Middle East followed in its wake. However, the speed of the Mongol invasion was such that, within a few years, a new peace reigned, only this time over a much wider area. The Mongols ruled the greatest empire the world has ever seen, stretching from China in the East to Russia in the North, India in the South and the Balkans in the West. It now meant safe trade and travel was possible over a much wider area and, indeed, coins of the Mongol sultans of the Middle East, dated to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, have been found on both Mafia and Zanzibar islands. One man to take advantage of this new world order was the Italian traveller, Marco Polo.

  Despite globetrotting on such a vast scale, Marco Polo never actually made it to the Swahili coast but, having heard of the region on his travels felt it important enough to mention when he sat down to write his memoirs in Venice in 1295. Unfortunately, whoever told him about the coast doesn’t seem to have been there either because Marco Polo's information is seriously at odds with all the other writers of his age. He described its population as “all idolaters” and made no mention of any Islamic influence nor of any towns on the coast, but he did mention ivory and ambergris as key exports. He also described Swahili men as horrible to look at, with the appearance of devils, and the women fared no better. According to Marco Polo, they had breasts quadruple normal size with enormous facial features. Fortunately, other writers were better informed.