East Africa: the expansion of commerce

Abstract

MUSLIM SETTLEMENTS ON THE COAST Until the end of the eighteenth century the inhabitants of the islands and ports of East Africa had very little to do with those of the interior. The East African coastal belt belonged to the rest of the continent only in a geographical sense. Events at the coast passed almost unnoticed in the interior, while people living along the coast were rarely touched by what happened up country. The East African littoral was more a part of the Indian Ocean world than of the African continent. From the second century at least, Arabs from the south of Arabia and the Persian Gulf had been trading to East Africa, following the monsoon winds. They transacted their business in the ports and went back with the trade winds to India or beyond. During Muslim times, some of these Arabs and Persians, especially the Shirazi, began to build fortified urban settlements on the coast and the offshore islands. The earliest of these known so far was at Manda in the Lamu archipelago, and dates to the ninth century. Zanzibar and Pemba were probably occupied soon after this. The Islamic settlements at Mafia and Kilwa were built mainly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and a score of other stone-built towns were added during the next two hundred years. Thus by the fifteenth century a considerable population of immigrants had settled in the islands and ports of East Africa.

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