Place · Swahili coast port · Tanzania
Kilwa Kisiwani
Also known as Kilwa, Quiloa, Swahili coast
The most powerful of the Swahili city-states, on an island off southern Tanzania, which controlled the gold shipped north from Sofala and paid for it in Indian cloth and beads. Its Great Mosque and the Husuni Kubwa palace are the finest medieval buildings on the East African coast.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- -8.957, 39.506
Worth knowing
Indian glass and carnelian beads, Gujarati cloth and Chinese porcelain all turn up in Kilwa's levels, and the Swahili coast's mangrove poles went to build houses in Gujarat and the Gulf. Ibn Battuta visited in 1331 and called it one of the most beautiful towns in the world.
Connections (2)
- Trade routeSurat
Kilwa's gold came north from Sofala and was paid for in Gujarati cloth and Indian beads; Gujarat took East African ivory, mangrove poles and, later, slaves. Indian merchant communities were settled on the Swahili coast for centuries, and Indian glass beads are among the commonest finds in Kilwa's levels. The trade is older than any European presence in either place.
- Trade routeBeypore
East African mangrove poles were shipped to Gujarat, Sindh and the Gulf because the treeless coasts there had no roofing timber, and the ships that carried them were often Malabar-built in Nilambur teak. The Indian Ocean's building materials moved in both directions: Kerala wood west, African wood north, and Indian ships doing the carrying.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kilwa Kisiwani”. Ibn Battuta, Riḥla, on the Swahili coast; Neville Chittick, Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East African Coast (1974).
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