The Swahili towns

Who rules

Title

No single ruler: each town under its own king, shaykh or council of patrician lineages (see the town records)

Since

Not pinned

Family

The patrician lineages of each town; some later claim Shirazi (Persian) or Arab descent

Confidence

low

Almost no ruler of 1200 is known by name anywhere on this coast. Al-Idrisi (1154) places 'the king of the Zanj' at Mombasa; Kilwa's Shirazi sultans are the one dynasty with a chronicle (zan's records).

Overlord

None. Kilwa (its own realm) and Mogadishu (its own realm) are the strongest towns; whether Kilwa already claims Pemba, Mafia or Zanzibar is zan's question.

What the realm holds

• Merca, Barawa (Benadir)
• The Bajuni islands and the Juba mouth (thinly settled; little dated before the fourteenth century)
• Shanga, Manda, Pate and the Lamu area (Lamu archipelago)
• Ungwana at the Tana mouth (date not pinned)
• Malindi, Gedi, Kilifi (Mnarani), Mtwapa, Mombasa
• In zan's area: Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia, the Mrima towns, Mahilaka in Madagascar and others

How it was acquired

The towns grew from farming and fishing villages of the seventh to ninth centuries (Triangular Incised Ware sites) that took up long-distance trade and Islam: at Shanga a timber mosque stood by about 800 and was rebuilt in stone; the Kizimkazi mosque in Zanzibar carries an inscription of 500 AH (1107). Traditions of Shirazi, Arab and Omani founders are later and partly mythical.

Allies and rivals

Kilwa and Mogadishu are the two powers of the coast. The towns depend on the peoples of their hinterland (the farmers of the Tana and of the coast behind Malindi and Mombasa, the Somali herders behind the Benadir), who supply food, ivory and labour. Overseas: Aden (Ayyubid Yemen), Shihr and the Hadramawt, Oman and the Gulf (Kish), Gujarat and Malabar; Chinese goods arrive through these middlemen.

The realm that morning

A world of self-governing towns. On this sheet's northern half: Mogadishu (its own realm) leads the Benadir; Shanga is a sizeable Muslim town; Manda, rich in the ninth and tenth centuries, is in its second period, smaller but occupied; Pate is a lesser place at most; Gedi is a young town; Mombasa was the seat of al-Idrisi's king of the Zanj in 1154. Inland, nobody rules: the farmers and herders are drawn as provinces of the peoples.

Wealth

The monsoon trade described above; local cloth weaving, iron working (Malindi and Mombasa in al-Idrisi), fishing, coconut, rice and millet farming; lime burning and coral-stone building.

Military

No standing armies recorded. Al-Idrisi says the king of the Zanj's soldiers fight on foot, for horses do not live in their land. Town walls on this coast are mostly fourteenth-century and later (Gedi's walls fifteenth); Manda's great sea walls of coral blocks (ninth to thirteenth centuries) are harbour works rather than fortifications.

Threats

• Rivalry between towns for trade, sometimes ending in war (Shanga's Friday mosque was destroyed and rebuilt in the later eleventh century)
• Water failures on the islands
• Kilwa's expansion (later)

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.

In 1200

1. January to March and April to September 1200The monsoon cycle: ships from Aden, the Hadramawt, Oman, the Gulf and Gujarat lie in the Swahili ports in the first months of the year and sail home on the south-west monsoon.Depends on: The winds and peace at sea Stopped by: A failed season or war between towns

Later, on the likely course

1. 1203 or 1204 (tradition only)The Pate Chronicle's Nabhani founding of Pate. It is a late tradition rejected by the archaeology: not an event to play as fact.Depends on: Nothing: legendary Stopped by: Not applicable

Where the sources disagree

• Many popular accounts back-project the Pate sultanate (Nabhani, 1203-1204), the Malindi and Mombasa 'kingdoms' of the Portuguese age and the Kilwa empire of the fourteenth century into 1200: none is attested then.

Evidence: Written evidence is al-Idrisi (1154) before and Yaqut, Ibn al-Mujawir, Ibn Sa'id and the Chinese Zhao Rugua (1225) after; archaeology (Shanga, Manda, Gedi, Kilwa and others) carries most of the weight.

On the map: Drawn through its towns' records; the realm record itself carries no ground.

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.
• 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
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. 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.