A town on the Mtambwe peninsula near modern Wete, settled in the ninth century and grown to about 16 hectares, with a timber hall rebuilt in stone in the tenth century, two stone mosques (a tenth-century mosque of Ibadi plan replaced in the mid-eleventh by a Sunni one), a family cemetery, indigo-dyeing pits and twelfth-century mangrove stakes against the sea.
A hoard found under a hut floor held some two thousand coins: eight gold (seven Fatimid, one Abbasid) dating its burial to about 1066, and hundreds of small local silver coins, each with a ruler's name on one side and a pious maxim on the other; the names match rulers of the Kilwa Chronicle's kind, and similar coins are found at Kilwa. It shows Pemba striking its own silver under its own rulers in the eleventh century, at the same time as the Kilwa sultans struck theirs; names on the local coins run into the thirteenth century. On 1 January 1200 it is a living town under its own coin-striking rulers.
Who holds it
- Title
- Ruler of the town
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
Lord in 1200
Its own rulers, not known.
How things stand that morning
Independent of Kilwa on present evidence.
Charter
None known: Swahili towns had no written charters.
Council
Not recorded.
Communities
Swahili-speaking Muslims.
Fairs and markets
No fairs; trade follows the monsoon season (ships arrive with the north-east kaskazi from about November and leave with the south-west kusi from about April).
Militia
Not recorded.
Walls and castle
Stone structures including a mosque; no walls recorded.
Trade and crafts
Trade with Egypt, Syria and the Gulf (the origin of the gold coins); local silver coinage in the eleventh century.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Excavation and the hoard (Horton and others, 1980s).
Primary sources for Swahili towns
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.
- Records of Foreign Peoples: the entries on the African coast and Egypt, Zhao Rugua (1225, at Quanzhou). A Song customs inspector's handbook, written from merchants' reports, that reaches the African coast within a generation of 1200: Bipaluo (Berbera) with its ostriches and giraffes, Zhongli (the Somali coast), Cengba (Zanzibar and the Zanj coast) with its ivory and ambergris and its trade with the Arabs, Kunlun Cengqi (perhaps Madagascar or Pemba), and Wusili (Egypt) with Alexandria's lighthouse. Read online
- 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
- Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
- Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
- The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. 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
2 more in the sources library for The Swahili Coast and the Gold Country.
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia, Mtambwe Mkuu
- African History Extra, Forgotten cities of the Swahili coast: a history of Pemba
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.