Kilwa under its Shirazi sultans, with Mafia

Who rules

Name

Not pinned. On the Freeman-Grenville and Bosworth reckoning of the Kilwa Chronicle (reign lengths counted forward from 957), the sultan on 1 January 1200 is al-Husain bin Sulaiman, who acceded about 1191 and reigned 25 years. On the reading now usual among archaeologists (Ali bin al-Hasan's coins in the late eleventh century), he is a sultan of the middle of Ali's line whose name cannot be fixed. On Chittick's 1965 reading, the founder Ali bin al-Hasan himself was only arriving about 1200.

Title

Sultan of Kilwa (al-sultan; 'king' in the Portuguese version of the chronicle), of the Shirazi line said to descend from Ali bin al-Hasan

Since

Not pinned (about 1191 on the Freeman-Grenville and Bosworth reckoning)

Born

Not known

Family

If al-Husain bin Sulaiman: son of Sulaiman al-Hasan bin Dawud (reigned 18 years, about 1170-1188 on this reckoning; the Wikipedia lead gives about 1178-1195), the great sultan of the chronicle; his brothers Dawud (reigned 2 years) and Talut (1 year) reigned before him; his brother Khalid ('Hale Bonij' in Barros) is his heir and reigns 10 years after him; a nephew ('Bone Soleiman' in Barros) follows for 40 years. The chronicle says al-Husain died without heirs. No wife is named. The house as a whole claims descent from Ali bin al-Hasan, in the chronicle a son of a ruler of Shiraz by an Abyssinian mother, who bought the island from the mainland king and married his daughter.

Confidence

low

The Kilwa Chronicle survives in an Arabic version (Kitab al-Sulwa fi akhbar Kilwa, written about 1520) and a Portuguese one in Joao de Barros, Da Asia (1552). The genealogy is broadly the same in both; the reign lengths and episodes differ, and Barros's figures run a decade or two earlier than Bosworth's at several points (Sulaiman: 1113 in Barros's reckoning against 1129 in Bosworth's). The dates in both are modern reconstructions from reign lengths, anchored on a founding in 957 that coins and stratigraphy no longer support.

Chittick (1965) put Ali bin al-Hasan, whose coins are the earliest of the Kilwa series, about 1200, and Kilwa's taking of Sofala in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century; later work (Horton, Sutton, Wynne-Jones and Fleisher) dates Ali's coins tentatively to the late eleventh century and still puts the Sofala trade under Kilwa only in the later thirteenth century.

Overlord

None. The sultans recognise the Abbasid caliph in the Friday sermon (khutba) as Sunni Muslims are expected to, but no tie of obedience is attested for this date.

What the realm holds

• Kilwa Kisiwani island, with the town, its Friday mosque and the landing places (see Kilwa)
• The mainland shore facing the island (modern Kilwa Masoko), with its gardens and wells
• Mafia, through a kinsman of the house in the chronicle's telling (see Ruler of Mafia): not pinned for 1200
• Sanje ya Kati, the older town on the next island to the south: its relation to Kilwa in 1200 is not pinned (see Sanje ya Kati)
• Claimed in the chronicle's reckoning only: the gold trade of Sofala, and lordship over Pemba and Zanzibar (taken by Sulaiman al-Hasan bin Dawud); not drawn

How it was acquired

By the chronicle, Ali bin al-Hasan bought the island from the mainland king with cloth, married his daughter and founded the line; his successors fought off the king of the 'Shanga' or 'Changa' (Matata Mandalima), who once drove out the sultan Dawud bin Ali and set up his own nephew Khalid bin Bakr before the townsmen threw him out. Swahili tradition names earlier peoples of the island (the Mtakata, then the Mranga of Jasi, then the king Mrimba of the Machinga).

Allies and rivals

Mafia is tied to the house by kinship in the chronicle and was a refuge for a deposed sultan. Sanje ya Kati, a few kilometres south, was a town of the tenth to thirteenth centuries that may be the chronicle's hostile 'Shanga' (Chittick's suggestion; others look to Shanga in the Lamu archipelago); by 1200 it was probably being eclipsed. The chronicle makes Mogadishu Kilwa's rival for the gold of Sofala, which Kilwa 'wrested' from the Mogadishans under Sulaiman al-Hasan.

The towns of Zanzibar (Tumbatu, Kizimkazi) and Pemba strike their own coins and answer to their own rulers on the archaeologists' dating. The mainland peoples behind Kilwa trade food, ivory and perhaps captives to the town; no war with them is recorded for this date.

The realm that morning

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the sultan, whoever he is, sits on Kilwa island with the townsmen and his kin; the north-east monsoon (kaskazi) is blowing and ships from Aden, Oman and the Gulf are arriving or expected. Kilwa holds its island, the facing shore and, probably, Mafia. Across the water to the north lie the independent Mrima villages and the island towns of Zanzibar and Pemba (realm swahili); to the south the coast to Cape Delgado and the Mozambique shore has no known towns; Sofala, far south, is on the neighbouring researcher's ground (zim) and is not shown as Kilwa's.

Wealth

Trade at the southern edge of the one-season monsoon voyage: ships from Arabia and the Gulf could reach Kilwa and return in a season, which later made it the natural market for goods from Sofala. Exports: ivory, gold (whether from Sofala yet is not pinned), ambergris, tortoiseshell, mangrove poles, captives, rock crystal and soapstone from Madagascar; imports: Islamic glazed pottery, Chinese stoneware and porcelain, glass beads, cloth. Local cotton spinning (twelfth-century spindle whorls), fishing, millet and rice from the mainland.

Copper coins of its own.

Military

No figures. The town's armed men and the sultan's household; boats. The chronicle's later sultan Sulaiman al-Hasan is credited with a stone fortress and palaces, which on the archaeologists' dating are later than 1200. No walls are attested for 1200.

Threats

• A disputed succession: the chronicle's twelfth-century sultans are often deposed, and one was beheaded
• Rival towns (Sanje ya Kati; the 'Shanga' of the chronicle)
• The mainland king or chiefs, from whom the island was bought
• Competition from Mogadishu's merchants for the trade of the south

Religion

Sunni Muslim townsmen with a Friday mosque, its preacher and a qadi (not named); the mainland peoples who trade with the town follow their own religions. No Christian, Jewish or Ibadi community is recorded at Kilwa.

Household and officers

Not recorded for 1200. The chronicle shows the ruling kin and the townsmen acting in successions; wazirs and amirs appear only in later centuries.

Coinage and khutba

Small copper coins (fulus) struck in the sultan's name, without mint or date; the earliest of the series are Ali bin al-Hasan's. The khutba is Sunni, naming the Abbasid caliph by custom; the rite (Shafi'i in the fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta) is not attested for 1200.

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 March 1200Ships from Aden, Oman and the Gulf trade at Kilwa during the north-east monsoon (kaskazi) and sail home with the south-west monsoon (kusi) from about April.Depends on: The normal monsoon year. Stopped by: War or piracy at sea, or a storm season.
2. Through 1200On the Freeman-Grenville and Bosworth reckoning al-Husain bin Sulaiman reigns throughout the year and until about 1215, when his brother Khalid succeeds.Depends on: That reckoning being right, and no deposition. Stopped by: A coup by kin or townsmen, as the chronicle records for earlier sultans.
3. Later thirteenth century (not in 1200)On the archaeologists' dating Kilwa takes the Sofala gold trade, builds in stone on a large scale and is taken over by the Mahdali line (al-Hasan bin Talut, about 1277).Depends on: Kilwa's rise continuing. Stopped by: Play that diverts the Sofala trade elsewhere.

Places of note

• Friday mosque (later Great Mosque, northern prayer hall): Flat coral roof on nine wooden posts; twelfth century by the chronicle's dating, eleventh or twelfth by the archaeology
• Kilwa Masoko shore: The mainland facing the island
• Kisimani Mafia: Mafia's town, under a kinsman of the Kilwa house in the chronicle
• Sanje ya Kati: Older town to the south, perhaps the chronicle's 'Shanga'

Where the sources disagree

• The regional brief asks which sultan took Sofala and when. Both versions of the chronicle credit Sulaiman al-Hasan bin Dawud (Barros: he used the Sofala enterprises of his father Dawud bin Sulaiman, who had made his fortune there). Bosworth's list dates his accession to 1170 (18 years), the Wikipedia lead to about 1178-1195; Chittick (1965) and later archaeologists put Kilwa's control of Sofala in the late thirteenth century. On 1 January 1200 the first reading makes Kilwa lord of Sofala, the second does not. The map follows the second.
• Wikipedia's Kilwa Sultanate page gives the founding as 957 in its list and 'tenth century' in its lead; German Wikipedia gives 975; the Kilwa Kisiwani page cites a ninth-century founding of the settlement (Horton et al. 2022). These are different things: the settlement is old, the Shirazi dynasty younger.
• Bosworth's list has Ali bin Dawud I at 1023, while a note gives about 1042 for him; the list and its notes are not consistent.

Evidence: No contemporary text names any ruler of Kilwa for 1200. The chronicle is of about 1520 and its dates are reconstructions; the coins carry names but no dates; the archaeology (Chittick's excavations, later work by Horton, Wynne-Jones, Fleisher and Pollard) dates phases, not reigns.

On the map: Kilwa's reach in 1200 is drawn small, on the archaeologists' dating. On the chronicle's own reckoning Pemba, Zanzibar and Sofala would also be Kilwa's that morning.

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 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.