The oldest island, ringed by a lagoon.
Settled from the eighth century (charcoal at Koungou); the great entrepot of Dembeni (ninth to eleventh centuries) is declining in the twelfth; Muslim graves at Bagamoyo on Petite-Terre go back to the ninth and tenth centuries and multiply in the eleventh and twelfth, showing an elite that is mostly Muslim by 1200. The 'time of the fani', chiefs of villages, men or women, begins about the eleventh century. The Shirazi sultanate (Tsingoni mosque, 1538) is much later.
Who holds it
- Title
- Village chiefs (fani), men or women
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
How things stand that morning
Independent chiefdoms.
Customs
Islamized elites, some non-Islamic burials persisting; Bantu and Austronesian heritage.
Assemblies
Village chiefs.
What the year holds
What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.
- Through 1200No dated event is known.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Excavated sites (Allibert and others) and tradition.
On the map: Drawn from modern language areas, physical geography and a few dated sites; the 1200 extent is a rough guess.
Primary sources for Comoros
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- The coins of Kilwa and the early Swahili inscriptions (coins struck from about the eleventh century; dated inscriptions from 1107). The only contemporary writing from the coast around 1200.
- Mapungubwe, the Zimbabwe plateau, Toutswe and the Comoros: the archaeological record (no text; radiocarbon-dated sites). There is no written word from the interior south of the Zambezi or from the Comoros in 1200; all that is known is from excavation. Read online
- The East African Coast: Select Documents, Various (edited and translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville) (the collection published 1962; second edition 1975). The standard English collection for the coast, and the one place to read together everything written about the Swahili towns near 1200: al-Masudi and Buzurg ibn Shahriyar (tenth century), al-Idrisi (1154), Yaqut (1220s), Ibn al-Mujawir (1220s), Ibn Said, the Chinese notices of Duan Chengshi and Zhao Rugua (1225), Ibn Battuta's visit of 1331, the Kilwa Chronicle in both versions, and the Portuguese.
Sources and studies
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.