Ngazidja

Who holds it

Title

Village chiefs (bedja)

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

How things stand that morning

Several independent chiefdoms.

Assemblies

Village chiefs and the heads of the leading lineages.

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.

1. Through 1200No dated event is known.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Tradition and sparse archaeology.

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.