The Comoros

Who rules

Name

Not known: no chief of the Comoros is named for this date

Title

No ruler over the islands. Each town and village is led by its chief: in later tradition the fani (plural mafani; also mafe, mfaume) on Nzwani, Mwali and Maore, and the bedja (mabedja) on Ngazidja

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Leading lineages of each village; the later sultans' Shirazi houses arrive only in the fifteenth century

Confidence

low

Tradition and French scholarship (Allibert, Wright, Chami; summarised on French Wikipedia, Histoire des Comores and Histoire de Mayotte): villages first led by the heads of the leading families (mafe, mfaume, mafani), then by chiefs (mabedja, bedja); the 'time of the fani' begins about the eleventh century; the Shirazi sultanates are fifteenth century.

What the realm holds

• Ngazidja (Grande Comore): village chiefdoms under bedja; Mbachile an early site (see Ngazidja)
• Mwali (Moheli): village chiefdoms (see Mwali)
• Nzwani (Anjouan): Sima with its mosque, Domoni, other villages under fani (see Nzwani)
• Maore (Mayotte): Dembeni in decline, Acoua, the necropolis of Bagamoyo on Petite-Terre, villages under fani (see Maore)

How it was acquired

Settlement from about the eighth century (charcoal of the eighth century at Koungou on Maore); the Dembeni phase of the ninth and tenth centuries (Wright 1984) with sites on all four islands; Islam among the elites by the twelfth century.

Allies and rivals

No wars are recorded. The islands trade with Madagascar (rock crystal, soapstone, iron), with the Swahili towns (Kilwa's chronicle has a Shirazi ship settling Nzwani in the eleventh century, a late tradition) and with Arab, Persian and Indian merchants. Austronesian traders ('Waqwaq') raided the Zanj coast for slaves in the tenth century (Buzurg ibn Shahriyar); nothing of the kind is recorded for 1200.

The realm that morning

On 1 January 1200 each island is a patchwork of village chiefdoms with small Muslim towns at their heads. No town rules a whole island. The Comoros owe nothing to Kilwa on present evidence.

Wealth

Re-export of Malagasy rock crystal, chlorite schist (soapstone) vessels and iron; coconuts, rice, fish; captives (French scholarship holds the slave trade a main income over many centuries, without a date). Imported Persian Gulf, Indian and Chinese wares.

Military

No figures. Village men; hilltop and coastal refuges (the 'fortifications' of Acoua and Majicavo on Maore are said to be early, without a date).

Threats

• Raids by sea from Madagascar or the mainland (none recorded for 1200)
• Loss of the rock-crystal trade as merchants settle in Madagascar itself

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. The monsoon brings ships from the Swahili coast and Arabia in the first months of the year.Depends on: The normal monsoon year. Stopped by: Nothing known.

Places of note

• Sima mosque: Earliest stone mosque of the archipelago, eleventh or twelfth century
• Dembeni: Ninth to twelfth century entrepot, declining

Where the sources disagree

• French Wikipedia dates the Sima mosque to the twelfth century; other accounts give the eleventh. Its Histoire de Mayotte page puts the start of the fani period 'from the eleventh century' in one place and 'thirteenth to fifteenth' in another.
• The Kilwa Chronicle's story of seven Shirazi ships, one of them settling Nzwani, belongs to the dynasty's founding legend and cannot be dated.

Evidence: Archaeology (Wright, Allibert, Chami) and much later tradition; al-Idrisi's remarks on the islands are confused with other islands of the eastern seas.

On the map: The islands are coloured as one realm only because the sheet has one id for them; on 1 January 1200 each island holds several independent chiefdoms.

Primary sources for this realm

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.