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. Modern and under copyright. It shows how thin the record is: between al-Idrisi and Yaqut no writer names a Swahili town.
About this source
- Title
- The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century
- Author
- Various (edited and translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville)
- Author's dates
- Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Swahili and Portuguese writers, first to nineteenth centuries
- Written
- the collection published 1962; second edition 1975
- Language
- Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese and Swahili, translated into English
- Covers
- the Periplus to about 1810
- Kind
- Collection of sources
Not freely online. The Arabic and Chinese originals are listed under their own entries in this library (al-Idrisi, Yaqut, Ibn al-Mujawir, Ibn Said, Zhao Rugua, Ibn Battuta, the Kilwa Chronicle).
Where to read it
Editions
- G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville (ed. and tr.), The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1962; 2nd ed. London, 1975) (not freely online)