INTRODUCTION

The Swahili. To the outsider, the very name conjures up an exotic aura, shrouded in mystery, a
civilization unlike any other in Africa. On the fringe of both the African continent and the Indian
Ocean, the Swahili are a result of the coming together of two distinct cultures, a blend of the
African and Middle Eastern whose origins lie lost in the mists of time.

For centuries, while most Africans lay scattered across the interior following a nomadic lifestyle,
the East African coast had developed an urban civilization within which its people lived in stone
houses, engaged in maritime trade on an intercontinental scale, used one of Africa's first written
languages, enjoyed a sophisticated, deeply religious culture and whose leaders lived in palaces
inlaid with gold, silver and ivory. Here was one of Africa's oldest and greatest civilisations.

The development of the Swahili civilization is inextricably linked with trade. The Swahili, and the
people who lived here before them, have been engaged in overseas trade for at least the past
three millennia, providing a range of luxury goods unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The
northern parts of the coast, in modem Somalia, had a limitless supply of spices, such as
cinnamon, and aromatic gums like frankincense and myrrh. Farther south could be bought goods
harvested from wild animals such as ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell and leopardskin.
Ambergris, a liquid found in the intestines of whales, was valued highly by perfume makers.
Slaves too have been exported for centuries to the countries of the Middle East. So was gold,
brought up from the mines of Zimbabwe for export from the towns on the southern parts of the
coast such as Sofala, Mozambique and Kilwa. And eventually, often via the markets of Egypt, the
Levant, Arabia, Persia and India, these goods found their way to wealthy courts as far apart as
England and China. The East African coast was an integral part of a trading zone of near-global
proportions.

Stretching along 3000 miles of coastline from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south
and encompassing offshore islands as distant as the Comoros Islands, the East African coast has
been blessed with a combination of geographical gifts that have made the region ideal for
settlement, navigation and commercial exploitation. The coast is protected by an almost unbroken
line of coral reef, keeping much of the force of ocean waves and currents at bay, making
navigation behind the reefs much easier and providing sheltered beaches for offloading cargo.
The coral itself made an excellent building tool. In places, rivers flowing from the distant African
highlands break out into the ocean, forming deep inlets which provide excellent natural harbours
and a base for larger towns, while offshore islands, some close to the mainland, others farther
offshore, provided good harbours and a degree of protection from history's marauding inland
tribes.

The East African coast begins at the tip of the Horn of Africa, the peninsula jutting out at the end
of the Red Sea, a point known as Cape Guardafui. The coastline around and to the south of the
Horn is a dry area with few natural harbours where sand dunes extend far inland, but in the
hinterland beyond is a land that was, from ancient times, so rich in spices and aromatic gums that
it was also known as the Cape of Spices or the Cape of Cinnamon. Waves of immigrants from
nearby Arabia and settlement by inland tribes has altered the population to such an extent that it
cannot today be called part of the Swahili world, but it is where our story begins.

The spartan northern Somali coast eventually breaks into the more lush Benadir coast, along
which towns like Warsheikh, Mogadishu, Merca, Brava and Kismayu are located. Farther south, a
string of thin islands sit close offshore and, just beyond the frontier with modern Kenya, lies the
Lamu Archipelago, three small, sandy islands whose creeks act as beds for huge crops of
mangrove poles, a valuable material used in constmction for thousands of years. Here, the
mainland is still sandy, but it soon gives way to a more lush and fertile coastal plain where
agriculture thrives and through which the Tana and Sabaki Rivers flow out into a great bay,
watched over by the town ofMalindi whose harbour is red with the soil carried from far inland.
After another fertile stretch of deeply forested land lies Kilifi, looking out over a grandiose bay of
brilliant blue and farther south, the island of Mombasa, nestling between the two arms of the
mainland coastline. South of Mombasa lies a long stretch of sandy beach, popular among tourists
today and home to a number of scattered settlements all the way up to the border with Tanzania.
The northern Tanzanian coast is home to some of the bustling ports of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, including Tanzania's former capital city, Dar es Salaam, still an important
commercial centre. The great islands of the Swahili coast lie off the coast of Tanzania including
Pemba, and the queen of them all, Zanzibar. The curiously named Mafia Island stands close to
the delta formed by the outpouring of the Rufiji River and further south lies Kilwa. A string of small
settlements line the fertile coast that stretches into Mozambique, where a number of important
ports are located, including Quelimane, Maputo and, lying just south of the point at which the
Great Rift Valley breaks out into the ocean, Sofala, while 300 kilo metres offshore lie the Comoros
Islands. Beyond lie the giant island of Madagascar and the coast of South Africa, beginning with
the province of Natal.

The East African coast looked out, until the twentieth century, to the Indian Ocean world for its
raison d'etre. The construction of railways and roads at the end of the nineteenth century from the
coast to the new towns of the interior such as Nairobi, overcame - to an extent - the difficulties of
travelling overland, a journey previously made almost impossible by an uncompromising expanse
of arid desert that cut the coastal plains off from the fertile highlands.

Travelling by water was, the world over, the preferred method of travel until the most recent times
and in this, the East African coast was no exception. To help in this, the people of the Indian
Ocean invented a sewn boat with triangular sails, the dhow. Able to navigate both deep oceans
and shallow coastal waters, it was ideally suited to conditions in the Indian Ocean.

The journey across the ocean was made possible by a hugely helpful weather condition,
monsoon winds that blew away from East Africa for one part of the year, before turning 180
degrees and blowing back the other way. These winds have been blowing with metronome
regularity for aeons, carrying dhows laden with cargo. From October to April, the wind blows from
the northeast. Known to the Swahili as the kazkazi, it carried dhows from India, Persia and Arabia
to the East African coast, carrying goods to sell in exchange for East Africa's luxuries. Then the
wind turns, and for the rest of the year the northwest monsoon blows. Known as the kuzi, it
carried dhows away from East Africa, laden with gold, ivory, and all the other produce of the land.
Before the age of steam, this force was the power that drove trade around the Indian Ocean world
and without it, the story that follows would not have been possible.

So here it is then. A story brimming with pioneers, pirates, adventurers and entrepreneurs,
horrors, tragedies and comedies, scandal and political intrigue, international commerce, lost
cities, invasion, rebellion and reconstruction, an African success story that provides us, not only
with a history of the past, but an understanding of the present and a hope for the future.
 EARLY
HISTORY
 The Land of Punt
The oldest evidence of trade with the East
African coast lies inside the breathtaking
Temple of Queen Hatsheput at Thebes,
which was built shortly after 1500BC on the
banks of the River Nile. Inside the temple is
a relief depicting an Egyptian expedition to
the Land of Punt, an ancient land lying just
to the west of the Horn of Africa. The
expedition set out to collect incense trees and myrrh in response to the prophecy of an oracle. It
was the first Egyptian voyage there for five hundred years, meaning Egyptians were going there
4000 years ago. While the voyage there was rarely made by Egyptians, traders from south-
western Arabia probably made regular trips across the Red Sea to barter for luxury goods that
included spices and the aromatic gum resins, frankincense and myrrh, and they would have
exported them to the wealthy courts of Arabia, Egypt and beyond.

One of the most famous ancient customers for East Africa's produce would have been King
Solomon, one of ancient Israel's first kings, a man reputed for his wisdom and wealth, who ruled
around the year 1000BC. During his reign he was visited by the Queen of Sheba, whose empire
included south-western Arabia and the African coast on the other side of the Red Sea. Quite how
far south her coastal empire stretched is open to debate - some just it reached into Mozambique -
but a story, told in the Biblical Book of Kings, tells that in return for receiving his wisdom, the
Queen of Sheba provided Solomon with huge quantities of spices, gold and precious stones,
luxury goods found along the East African coast as far south as modem Mozambique, leading
some to suggest that this was how far south her empire reached. The Solomon and Sheba
relationship didn't end there: every three years after their first visit, Solomon sent ships to gather
gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, a market town
probably within Sheba but thought by some to be Sofala in Mozambique. The Bible says that
Solomon imported a colossal 23 tons of gold a year, much of which paid for the construction of his
Temple in Jerusalem, with the rest lavished upon his magnificent court: King Solomon is said to
have had made shields hammered from gold and to have sat upon an ivory throne, while his
courtiers drank from golden goblets. This was one seriously rich king, and, almost certainly, these
products came from East Africa.
 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
These stories are sketchy and laced with legend, but there can be little doubt that by the second
century AD, a well-organised trading system, served by coastal settlements, had been
established in East Africa. We know this because of a guide book, by far the most important
written source surviving from ancient times, dating from around the year lOOAD, called The
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A Periplus is a kind of ancient guide book and the Erythraean
Sea was the name given by ancient Greeks and Romans to the Indian Ocean. This Guide Book
to the Indian Ocean, written by a Greek merchant, described a journey from the Red Sea
southwards along the East African coast. Half a century later, a Greek from Alexandria in Egypt
called Claudius Ptolemy, wrote one of the greatest ancient works on geography, which included
infonnation about the East African coast, giving us a text with which to compare and supplement
the Periplus. Together, these two texts give us a fascinating, all-too-brief glimpse into life at the
coast in the ftrst half of the second century.

Both the Periplus and Ptolemy referred to the East African coast using the ancient Greek name
for the region, Azania. They named several settlements but these cannot be easily identified with
any towns today. We cannot even be sure if they were pennanent settlements. Many of them may
well have been temporary trading bases, growing as traders arrived with the kazkazi, dying once
the kuzi began to take traders home.

The most important town in Azania was Rhapta, "the last mainland emporium of Azania", a town
named after the small sewn boats used there, where a large amount of ivory and tortoiseshell
could be found. Rhapta is also mentioned by Ptolemy, who gave Rhapta the grandiose title of
metropolis, and says it was "set back a little from the sea" near a river that flowed out into a bay
which took three days and nights to cross.

Since the first English publication of the Periplus in 1912, historians and archaeologists have
speculated and searched in vain as to the precise location of Rhapta. The most likely location
would have been in the delta formed by the outpouring of the Rufiji River opposite Mafia Island.
Others have suggested it was as far north as the coast opposite the Lamu Archipelago or
somewhere in the delta of the Tana River: Ungama Bay, with its headland at Kipini, just west of
which flows the Tana River, bears a striking resemblance to Ptolemy's description: "This bay
begins with the market town called Toniki; and beside the promontory is the river Rhapton and the
metropolis of the same name set back a little from the sea."

Essina, Sarapion, and Toniki are towns mentioned by Ptolemy that lie along the coast, but, again
their location is unclear. The Periplus also mentioned Sarapion, a town called Nikon, an island
called Diomx and the Pyralaae Islands, which are generally thought to be the islands of the Lamu
Archipelago. But all of these are just given passing mention.

Ptolemy knew little of the world beyond Rhapta, except for a brief mention that further south lay
the island of Menouthias. In the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Menouthias is described as a flat,
wooded island with many rivers, whose inhabitants caught mainly fish and tortoise using small
sewn boats and dug-out canoes. Crocodiles lived there. This description of the island doesn't
exactly give the impression of a vibrant trading community, and the place remains something of a
mystery, not least because it is even harder than Rhapta to pinpoint on the map. Ptolemy places it
to the south of Rhapta while the Periplus places it two day's sail to the north. Menouthias could be
Pemba or Zanzibar. It might be Mafia. It could even be Madagascar. We simply don't know!

Neither the Periplus nor Ptolemy are particularly helpful when describing the inhabitants of the
coast. The Periplus described them as "men of the greatest stature, who are pirates" while
Ptolemy called them "Man-Eating Ethiopians", which doesn't give us a great deal to go on, but the
Periplus does suggest a quite significant fact, that Arab merchants were intermarrying with the
Africans and leaming their language, suggesting that Arab settlement on the coast began at least
2000 years ago.

The Periplus describes in some detail the goods traded: in the north, around Cape Guardafui,
cinnamon, slaves and tortoiseshell were common; farther south, ivory, rhinoceros horn and
tortoiseshell were important commodities. No mention was made of gold, which, a thousand years
earlier and a thousand years later were noted exports. In return for these goods were sold such
items as iron tools and weapons, together with small glass vessels. Wine and wheat were also
provided by Arab merchants "to gain the goodwill of the barbarians."

The Periplus is very clear on the political situation at the coast, saying that "the country has no
sovereign but each emporium is ruled by its own chief." Independent of each other, they were all,
however, subject to whoever was the most powerful mler in Arabia, a long-standing situation
tradition, which, at the time of writing, handed suzerainty over the coast to the chief of Ma'afir.
Ptolemy extended his geography to the African interior too, describing that to the west of Azania
"lies the Mountain of the Moon, from which the Lake of the Nile receives snow water", providing
disbelieving

Europeans the image of a snowcapped mountain in the tropics, an image that would take another
1700 years to be confirmed.

Azania and Rome

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was written in Egypt. a country which, following the death of
Antony and Cleopatra in 30AD, had been formally annexed to the Roman Empire, ruled directly
by the emperor himself. Using Egypt as a hub, Rome was able to extend her influence, if not
direct control, into the Middle East and the Red Sea. Rome often made alliances with kings on the
fringes of her empire, so it's not impossible that Azania's Arabian overlord had such a relationship
with Rome. In any case, Roman influence, via Egypt, would have afforded safe passage to
Greek, Roman and Egyptian vessels down the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean, drawing
Azania into the Roman sphere of influence. The Periplus is evidence that trade with Roman Egypt
did exist. And the extent to which this trade took place, the sophistication of this trade. and its
longevity, are attested to by remarkable discoveries, in several places along the East Africa coast,
of coins from Rome, Greece and beyond.

In the 1940s, a coin of the Roman emperor, Victorinus, who ruled

in the middle of the third century, was found near Nairobi. Quite
what a Roman coin was doing in the middle of Kenya is anyone's
guess. There is evidence of inland trade routes connecting the
Kingdom of Axum, a Roman ally in the Ethiopian highlands, with
the gold mining areas of central Africa, or perhaps the coin is
simply what an archaeologist would call astray. However, at Port
Dumford on the southern Somali coast. a substantial collection of
Roman coins was also unearthed, including no less than forty-six Roman coins dated to the first
half of the fourth century AD, minted in places as far apart as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,
Constantinople and Thessalonica. Another six earlier Roman coins, covering the reigns of
emperors from Nero (54-68) to Antonius Pius (138-161) were also found, in addition to sixteen
coins from Egypt, six of them from the reign of Ptolemy III (247-221BC). On Zanzibar in the
1950s, another startling find was made by a man who turned up at the local museum with a
handful of coins. The collection included Roman coins from the reigns ofDiocletian (284-305),
Licinius (308-324), Justin (518-527) and Justinian (527-565), together with five Parthian and
Sassanian coins minted at Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia, the latest of them being dated to the reign
of Ardashir I (227-241). In addition to these were two Hellenistic coins dated to the second
century BC.

These finds, together with evidence from the Periplus and Ptolemy, prove that a very well-
developed trading system existed between Azania on the one hand, and the Mediterranean world
and Arabia on the other from at least as far back as the third century BC. It must have been pretty
sophisticated, given that coins were being used and that these coins had come from such a wide
geographical area.

It also suggests how devastating for Azania the collapse of the Roman Empire might have been,
particularly the safe passage it afforded to Greek and Egyptian ships. It is possible that this
ancient trading system, dating as far back as 2000BC, began to break up around the fourth
century. The collapse of the Roman Empire would have led to a downturn in trade between
Azania and the Red Sea, and it is also thought that at the same time, trade with Arabia declined,
because of a dam burst there which led to an economic decline.

The fact is that we really don't know what was happening on the coast. And it would take
centuries for the mist to rise.