Kilwa

Who holds it

Name

The sultan, name not pinned (al-Husain bin Sulaiman on the Freeman-Grenville and Bosworth reckoning)

Title

Seat of the sultan of Kilwa

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

The sultan of Kilwa in person (see Sultan of Kilwa).

How things stand that morning

Held by the sultan; prosperous and growing.

Charter

None known: Swahili towns had no written charters.

Council

No council is recorded. The chronicle shows the townsmen ('the people of Kilwa') choosing, deposing and restoring sultans, and the ruling kin acting as a body. A qadi and preacher of the Friday mosque must exist but are not named; ministers (wazir, amir) appear in the chronicle only for later centuries.

Communities

Swahili-speaking Muslim townsmen, the leading families claiming 'Shirazi' (Persian) descent; mainland Africans in the wattle-and-daub quarters; visiting Arab, Persian and Indian merchants in season; slaves.

Fairs and markets

No fairs. The market is busiest in the months of the north-east monsoon (kaskazi), roughly November to March, when ships from the Gulf, Oman, Aden and the Benadir arrive; they leave with the south-west monsoon (kusi) from about April.

Militia

The townsmen bear arms; in the chronicle they rose to expel a sultan set up by the king of the 'Shanga'.

Walls and castle

No walls or citadel are attested for 1200. The later fortifications (thirteenth century onward), Husuni Kubwa (mostly fourteenth century) and the Portuguese fort (1505) are later.

Trade and crafts

Re-export of ivory, gold (its Sofala source not yet Kilwa's on the archaeologists' dating), ambergris, tortoiseshell, captives, Malagasy rock crystal and soapstone; imports of Islamic glazed wares (sgraffiato), Chinese stoneware and porcelain, glass beads and cloth. Cotton spinning (twelfth-century spindle whorls), shell-bead making, ironworking, fishing, boatbuilding (sewn boats, mtepe), coral-lime burning, copper coin striking.

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. January to April 1200The trading season with the north-east monsoon; ships sail for Arabia with the south-west monsoon from about April.Depends on: The normal monsoon year. Stopped by: War at sea.

Where the sources disagree

• The first Great Mosque is dated 1131-1170 by Wikipedia from the chronicle's chronology (the reign of Dawud bin Sulaiman), and to the eleventh century by some archaeological summaries; either way it should stand on 1 January 1200.

Evidence: Excavated site (Chittick; later Horton, Wynne-Jones, Fleisher) with a late chronicle; no description by a visitor before Ibn Battuta (1331).

Primary sources for Kilwa

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 Kilwa Chronicle (Arabic version about 1520 to 1530; Portuguese summary printed by João de Barros in 1552). The only narrative for the Swahili coast before the Portuguese, in two versions that agree on the dynasty and disagree on much else: the arrival of Ali ibn al-Hasan from Shiraz, his purchase of the island, and the line of his descendants, with reign lengths that put Sulayman ibn al-Hasan, Dawud ibn Sulayman, Talut and Husayn ibn Sulayman in the decades around 1200 (Bosworth's conversion gives Husayn about 1191 to 1215), the winning of Sofala's gold trade, and later the Mahdali dynasty of Abu'l-Mawahib. Read online
• 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.
• The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
• The History of the Observant Traveller: the pages on Zeila, Berbera, Mogadishu and Dahlak, Ibn al-Mujawir (Yusuf ibn Yaqub ibn al-Mujawir) (about 1221 to 1230). The closest description of the Horn's ports to 1200, written about twenty-five years later by a trader and official who worked the Aden trade: Zeila and its traffic in slaves, ivory and the goods of the Ethiopian interior; the Barbar (Somali) coast with Berbera and Mogadishu, and the sea route from Aden to Mogadishu and on to Kilwa with its sailing seasons; the Dahlak islands with their own sultan and his dues; Socotra; and the customs and prices of Aden under the Ayyubids of Yemen. 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.