Mombasa 1860

I embarked at Maqdashaw (Mogadishu) for the Sawahil (Swahili) country, with the object of visiting the town of Kulwa (1)(Kilwa, Quiloa) in the land of the Zanj.

We came to Mambasa (Mombasa), a large island two days journey by sea from the Sawihil country (2). It possesses no territory on the mainland. They have fruit trees on the island, bananas, lemons, and oranges. The people also gather a fruit they call the jammun (eugenia jambu) which is similar to the olive and its stone is like an olive stone except that it is extremely sweet. The people are not farmers but import grain from the Swahili. The greater part of the diet is bananas and fish. They follow the Shafi' rite (3), and are pious, honorable, and upright.
And they have well built wooden mosques. Beside the door of each mosque are one or two wells, one or two cubits (one cubit is 18 inch) deep. They draw water from them with a wooden vessel which is fixed on to the end of a thin stick, a cubit long. The earth around the mosque and the well is stamped flat. Anyone who wishes to enter the mosque first washes his feet, beside the door is a piece of heavy material for drying them. Anyone wishing to perform the ablutions, takes the vessel between his thighs, pours water on his hands, and so makes his ablutions. Everyone here goes barefoot.

(1) Kulwa: The journey from Mogadishu towards the end of the north-east monsoon in February or early March might take from six to ten days.

(2) Sawihil country: sawahil= coast; Ibn Battuta is one of the first to speak of the Swahili country.

(3) Shafi' rite: Imam al-Shafi: Mohammed bin Idris Shafi'i: (767–820 CE) was an Arab Muslim theologian, writer, and scholar, who was the first contributor of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. His legacy on juridical matters and teaching eventually led to the formation of Shafi'i school of fiqh.

Taken from: The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika: With Special Reference to Recent Archaeological Discoveries, Numbers 55-57 by Greville Stewart Parker Freeman-Grenville 1962.

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Their mosques were wooden, and at the door of each was a well from which water was drawn with a wooden vessel at the end of a cane a cubit long. The mosque precincts were of beaten earth. All the people went barefoot, and washed their feet before entering the mosque, beside whose door was a piece of heavy material on which they dried their feet as they entered. The wooden vessel used for drawing water was also used for the ceremonial ablutions, the cane being held between the thighs during them. The wells were only one or two cubits deep. Slight as it is, Ibn Battuta's picture of Mombasa is very different from the prosperous city depicted by Portuguese accounts little less than two centuries later. By then it was a solidly built city of stone buildings.

While the import of grain shows that it was already a commercial centre with interests in the entrepot trade, one cannot imagine it to have been much developed. The mosques are of wood. Yet it is clear from the Tanganyika coast that many centres had mosques of permanent materials when the inhabitants were still content to dwell in huts of wattle and thatch. If the mosques were of wood, it is reasonable to conclude that the houses were also. Mombasa was still at an early stage in its development and perhaps not yet a rival to the trade of Kilwa. The statement that the wells were only one or two cubits deep is surprising. For the depth of a well depends on the water level. Mombasa Island is for the most part from ten to fifty feet above sea level: shallow wells would be surprising. It may be suggested that the reference is really to the cisterns in the ablutions of mosques which were, and still are, fed from a well. The measurements suggest precisely the arrangements preserved at the Gedi Friday Mosque.