Richard Hall - Empires of the Monsoon

Other sea creatures to suffer at the hands of the newcomers were giant tortoises and turtles, valuable for their shells. According to Muslim law, the eating of tortoises was forbidden, and this should have been obeyed not only by the faithful, but also the kafirs working for them as slaves. However, there is evidence from ancient rubbish dumps that tortoises were consumed with gusto in some early settlements. Far in the south, in the Comoro islands, there was an equal readiness to eat lemurs, which would certainly have been prohibited fare for devout Muslims, since these animals live in trees and have monkey-like bodies.

This may suggest that some early settlers on the East African coast were fugitives or outcasts from the Arab world. In their isolation on the remote African shore they would be beyond the reach of enemies, and may have ignored some more inconvenient religious rules. It is hard to be sure, however, because legends about the identity of the Arabs who migrated to the Land of Zanj often contradict one another.

One popular account tells how Abd-al-Malik, an early caliph, gave orders that all of Oman’s independent chiefs should be deposed. This was harsh treatment, for Oman had accepted Islam as early as A.D. 630, during Muhammad’s lifetime. So two brothers, Sulaiman and Sa’id, organized the defence of Oman and drove back a land and sea attack by 40,000 men. Finally, 5,000 cavalry were sent in and the brothers could resist no longer. They decided to flee to Africa, taking with them their families and followers. The date, it is said, was around A.D. 700.

Other events in the expansion of Islam may also have sparked off migrations to East Africa. Most crucial was the overthrow of the original dynasty, the Umayyads, in 750, by the caliph Abu-al-Abbas, the ‘Shedder of Blood’. He had defeated and executed his predecessor, then organized a banquet of conciliation for the dignitaries of the former regime. The guests arrived, sat down to eat, then were murdered to a man before they could start. A carpet of leather was thrown over the bodies, then the host and his followers sat down on it to enjoy a hearty meal. Supporters of the Umayyad dynasty – which re-established itself in Spain – would have been understandably keen to put some distance between themselves and Abu-al-Abbas; an expanse of Indian Ocean might have seemed appropriate.

Some newcomers ventured into little-known waters, far to the south. The Chibuene settlement was several days’ sailing beyond Sofala towards the Cape of Good Hope, and its merchants traded inland along the Limpopo and Sabe river valleys. An eighth-century Islamic burial site has been found at Chibuene, and the town may even have been founded in pre-Islamic times.

When later communities arrived in Zanj, their leaders were quick to assert independence. Each proudly called himself a sultan and some claimed as their ancestor, real or symbolic, a famous trader named Ahmed bin Isa, who had left Basra for Arabia in the year 930. More importantly, these new rulers were all sharifs , meaning that they claimed descent from the Prophet. Their arrival in East Africa, towards the end of the eleventh century, marked the start of a visibly different era. 2New towns, with mosques and palaces built of coral blocks, were established on offshore islands or mainland strongpoints. Soon there was rivalry between the towns over the size of their mosques and palaces and the elegance of their architecture.

The self-confidence of these new rulers was symbolized by the large-scale minting of coins. Although in earlier centuries some simple copper currency had been produced in the Land of Zanj, coins were now also cast in silver, and a few even in gold. They all bore a Qur’ānic inscription on one side and the name of a sultan on the other. The tiny copper coins, made from metal smelted in the African interior, were for buying goods in the local markets; they were intended to replace cowrie shells, the traditional form of currency brought from the Maldive islands. 3The gold was likewise African, but the silver had to be imported – usually in the form of coins, which were then melted down. Foreign money, mainly Arab and Egyptian dinars, was also used. Traders brought home Indian and Chinese coins, but these were merely souvenirs. A pit at the site of one coastal town has yielded up an eleventh-century Hindu statuette; it possibly served as a trader’s weight. 4

Among the ruling families, at least on the male side, there was a high degree of literacy. This is reflected in the stylized script known as kufic , carved on coral slabs in the mosques and on tombstones; brought to perfection in Siraf, the floriate kufic was admired as far away as Spain. The flat-roofed stone houses of the wealthiest families displayed a regard for orderly comfort not witnessed before in Zanj: they had bathrooms and plumbing, glazed windows and plastered walls. Some buildings were three storeys high, with carved and brass-studded front doors, behind which entrance halls led into receiving rooms. The designs on the Persian carpets spread over the floors and hanging on the walls symbolized Arab society: the centrepiece represented the sultan, with his courtiers surrounding him, and the outer parts of the patterns stood for the villagers, artisans and slaves.

Although the new rulers, as well as their law-makers and courtiers, were certainly literate in Arabic, no contemporary accounts of how these dynasties established themselves have survived. A fragmentary chronicle, written at least four centuries later, tells the history of the island city-state of Kilwa, founded by a Persian named Ali bin al-Hasan. The name Kilwa means ‘fishing place’ and the chronicle says the island was bought from an African chief with enough cloth to stretch right round the island (a distance of about fifteen miles); in truth, the chief was probably given only a few bales.

Kilwa was to grow into the wealthiest city on the entire coast, able to control a nearby part of the mainland known as Muli, where rice and other crops were grown. It had the advantage of being several days’ journey south of Zanzibar, and thus was strategically placed to exact tolls from ships travelling to and from the gold port of Sofala. Although Kilwa was remote, an experienced captain who knew exactly when to set out could sail there from India or Arabia in one monsoon season. It was a terminus of the ocean trade with Africa.

A few of the visitors to the coast took a perceptive interest in the mainland Africans. One was Abu’l Hasan ‘Ali al-Mas’udi, an Arab writer who first sailed to Zanj from Siraf in A.D. 916, when he was in his early twenties. He was the type of traveller, always asking questions, whose enthusiasm never waned. Born in Baghdad, he made journeys to India, Persia, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, Syria and Egypt. While in East Africa he stayed mainly at Qanbalu, whose population he describes as a ‘mixture of Muslims and Zanj infidels’, speaking the ‘Zanjiyya language’. The language was elegant, and the Zanj preachers would often gather a crowd and exhort them to ‘please God in their lives and be obedient to him’. The crowd would then be told to remember their ancestors and ancient kings. Al-Mas’udi’s account goes on: ‘These people have no religious law … every man worships what he pleases, be it a plant, an animal, or a mineral.’ This is the earliest description of the local Swahili (coastal) people of East Africa, and shows that some, at least, still clung to their African religions. 5Plainly, the towns had a ruling élite and a black population with which the Arab settlers were more or less integrated.

The villages of the Zanj, according to al-Mas’udi, stretched for 700 parasangs (2,500 miles) along the coast; an accurate estimate of the distance from the entrance of the Red Sea to the mainland facing southern Madagascar. Although he twice visited East Africa, he does not say if he travelled as far south as Sofala, but is quite definite that a king of the Africans ruled in that distant region, and had many lesser chiefs subject to him. This matches what is known from archaeology, that embryonic African states were taking shape at that time in the hinterlands of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Since merchants travelled regularly up and down the coast, it would have been easy, even in Qanbalu, to learn about the cattle-keeping kingdoms of the distant south.