826 CE: date written on a bowl on the Arab / Persian ship which probably sailed not long after, and sank at Batu Hitam, off Belitung island. The cargo was entirely from China, apparently destined for the Middle East, on a voyage via the Sunda Strait. The ship was of Middle Eastern construction, made of East African and Indian wood, sewn together with rope (possibly hibiscus, implying resewing in Southeast Asia); it was 20-22m long and 5m wide. The bulk of the cargo comprised mass-market Changsha ceramics, including 40,000 bowls, 1635 ewers, 763 inkpots, and 915 spice jars: motifs include Buddhist symbols, Persian-carpet and geometric designs, date palms, and Arabic Muslim scripts. In one area of the stern, there were items of imperial quality, which include fine Ding and Yue ceramics, three blue-and-white saucers (the earliest intact blue-and-white so far found), an octagonal gold cup with decorations including a Persian dancer and Central Asian figures, and exquisite silver boxes - a royal commission or gift? Perhaps to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad? Other finds include a cast & wrought iron & wood anchor, lead ballast, silver ingots, many coins from 618-626CE, and star anise.

SIRAF

Siraf was the harbour of Shiraz province of Persia; and the place of big trade with East Africa.

Neville Chittick in The People of the East African Coast p37: The trade of Siraf with the Zanj country is better attested than that of any other region. Al Masudi (916) travelled with two Sirafis, and Ibn Hawqal (970) stated that timber for building is Siraf came from the Zanj country. Because Siraf was the port of Shiraz, our attention is drawn to the traditions of early Shirazi settlement in the region of Mogadishu and to the thirteenth century inscriptions of Persians, one a Shirazi (the only epigraphic mention of that name) in that town.

For the text of that inscription see my webpage: Ibn al Mujawir  (1232). Also among the informants about tales connected to East Africa of Buzurg (955) were two Sirafis and one from Najiram (a smaller subsidiary town of Siraf).

The influence of Siraf on East Africa was enormous; the most successful dynasty in the Swahili towns called themselves Shirazi; and a coastal survey by the British on the East African coast of the local population just before the colonial area showed that nearly all of them called themselves Shirazi. And the political power that won the elections on Zanzibar after independence were the Shirazi.

Further reading on this:

-The Shirazi in Swahili Traditions, Culture, and History by Thomas Spear in History in Africa Vol. 11 (1984), pp. 291-305 (15 pages)

-THE "SHIRAZI" PROBLEM IN EAST AFRICAN COASTAL HISTORY by J. DE V. ALLEN in Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde  Bd. 28, FROM ZINJ TO ZANZIBAR: Studies in History, Trade and Society on the Eastern Coast of Africa (1982), pp. 9-27

-Oral Historiography and the Shirazi of the East African Coast by Randall L. Pouwels in History in Africa Vol. 11 (1984), pp. 237-267

-The 'Shirazi' Colonization of East Africa by Neville Chittick The Journal of African History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1965), pp. 275-294

SMALL SWAHILI TOWNS

Taken from: The Swahili City-State Culture by Paul J.J. SincIair and Thomass Hakansson.

The answer on why the Swahili international trade was so small in comparison with the rest of the Indian Ocean Shores:

Even at their peak in the 15th century, few Swahili towns were larger than 20 ha and most were much smaller, their populations must have been small, the larger not more than the 10 000 reported for Mombasa in the 16th century. For example, the important town of Shanga in the Lamu archipelago had, in the 14th century, 220 masonry houses within 7 ha and an estimated population of ca 3,000 (Horton 1996), while Takwa had 137 in an area of ca 3 ha (Wilson 1980). Even allowing for multi-storied buildings and a larger number of less permanent dwellings, the overall population could not have been more than a few thousand.

THE MONSOON

Taken from: The Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean Trade Patterns in the 7th–10th Centuries CE by Edward Pollard & Okeny Charles Kinyera 2017.

Sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean voyaged to eastern Africa with the north-east monsoon between November and February, but the return journey, with the south-west monsoon, was interrupted between mid May and mid August, when winds are too strong. The NE monsoon’s strength decreases southwards, and reliability beyond about 90 kilometres south of Kilwa is low. Although currents could be used in the Mozambique Channel to supplement the winds, it is likely that vessels would have had to wait until the following April to return if they ventured much further south of Kilwa. Dhows could leave the Arabian Peninsula in November and take 30–40 days to reach Mombasa or Unguja (Zanzibar Island). Indian vessels started on their journey a month or so later and averaged 20–30 days for the same voyage.

Taken from: Mark Horton · Nicole Boivin · Alison Crowther · Ben Gaskell · Chantal Radimilahy · Henry Wright: East Africa as a Source for Fatimid Rock Crystal. Workshops from Kenya to Madagascar. 2015

Trade between East Africa and the Red Sea and Egypt was not as simple as the monsoon-directed bilateral trade with the Gulf, in which ships could undertake the voyage directly. It is difficult to sail from the Red Sea to East Africa in a single season, and this can be shown on the monsoon dates, recorded by the 15th and 16th century navigators; according to Ibn Majid, ships left the Red Sea ports between August 29 and September 11 with a wind that carried them all the way to India. However, when reaching the southern Arabian ports they would be confronted by the contrary southwest monsoon for the African voyage and would have to await the change in monsoon in November – the optimal dates for sailing from Malindi to Madagascar are January 25-February 15, possibly reaching Madagascar by April. The return journey would begin in September, reaching the coasts of southern Arabia by November, and the Red Sea ports in December or January – a voyage of up of 18 months duration. It is hardly surprising that the ports of the southern Arabian coast, from Dhofar to Aden, acted as an entrepôt, where East African goods could be stored and transferred.

9TH-10TH-11TH CENTURY

Taken from: East Africa, the Comoros Islands and Madagascar before the sixteenth century : on a neglected part of the world system by Philippe Beaujard

In the 9th and 10th centuries, the demise of the Tang and Muslim empires led to social disorder and political fragmentation. Tulunid and then Fatimid Egypt and the Red Sea both benefitted from the downturn of other cores of the world-system. This new importance of the Red Sea, which accompanies the reconfiguration of the exchange networks, sheds light on the rise of trade in East Africa at the end of this period and on the Arab-Swahili thrust towards the Comoros and Madagascar, where the first métissages occurred between the Austronesians and the new immigrants (Dewar & Wright 1993). In northern Madagascar, the first known settlements, such as Mahilaka, reveal contacts with Indian Ocean networks, which brought West Asian and Chinese pottery, and exports of chloritoschist to the Comoros. In the Comoros islands, the Dembeni phase, with its mixed Asian and African culture, developed from the end of the 8th century (Allibert 1992; Wright 1984).

Taken from: GLASS BEADS AND INDIAN OCEAN TRADE by Marilee Wood (2018) (In the Swahili World).

In the second millennium there was a shift in bead sources. Plant-ash beads declined to very small numbers and were made in the eastern Mediterranean or Egypt, but most beads were made of mineral-soda high-alumina glass from the Indian subcontinent. Early in this period there was a mix of beads – wound from northwest India and drawn from southern India. But over time wound beads decreased in numbers, suggesting a gradual shift in trade patterns favouring the Deccan and southern India.

The most significant of these changes – those occurring in the second half of the tenth century – related to political upheavals at the time. These included the Chola invasion of Sri Lanka, followed by the abandonment of Mantai and a shift in power in that region to South India. After this, production of m-Na-Al 1 beads apparently ceased, and m-Na-Al 2 beads (wound and drawn) made at various sites in India became the main bead types traded to Africa’s eastern seaboard. This is also the period in which the Persian Gulf lost its preeminent position in Indian Ocean commerce, and political power in the Middle East shifted from the Gulf to Fustat (old Cairo), Egypt. Concomitantly v-Na-Ca beads made from drawn tubes, such as Zhizo beads in southern Africa and flat-reheated ones from eastern Africa, vanished from trade (although ‘fancy’ beads made of a variation of this glass type, mostly produced in the eastern Mediterranean or Egypt, continued to be traded to eastern Africa in small numbers).

In this same transition period, around the mid- to late tenth century, a number of important trading ports on the eastern African coast were essentially abandoned, including Unguja Ukuu, Tumbe and Chibuene. After this transition, glass beads from South Asia appeared for the first time in southern Africa (all earlier beads were v-Na-Ca drawn beads from the Gulf region). From then up to the arrival of European beads in the seventeenth century, India was the main source of glass beads found in east Africa while in southern Africa the source alternated between India and the unknown region that produced Mapungubwe Oblate and Zimbabwe series beads.

The Swahili Corridor by Mark Horton 1987.

In about 960 a radical change took place. Within a single decade Europe was flooded with magnificent examples of carved elephant ivory. This appeared in the Christian world, and in the Islamic world, many of the pieces are more than 110 mm across, a diameter achieved only by the tusks of the African elephant. Rock crystal shows a similar pattern. Late in the 10th century the crystal-carving industry was transformed. From the workshops of Fatimid Egypt came the finest rock-crystal working. The earliest examples from 975, and over the next 60 years production was so great that more than 100 surviving objects can be attributed to these workshops. Contemporary accounts suggest that the newly available crystal came from East Africa. Gold was the most important product for the Mediterranean economy. The traditional view has been that most of the gold for the Fatimid mints came from West Africa. The array of evidence from art history, documents of the time and other sources makes it clear that East Africa was the new source of rock crystal, ivory and gold for the 10th century Mediterranean world. In that brief period archaeological discoveries have confirmed the route's existence and demonstrated the central role of the Swahili in establishing it.

By the beginning of the 10th century the trading system centered on the Persian Gulf was in decline.

The Zanj Revolt, in Mesopotamia at the end of the ninth century, reduced the scale of the African trade. Commerce between Siraf and China, which had provided the largest market for East African ivory, diminished greatly during the political instability following the ending of the Tang dynasty in 906. Commercial decline is reflected in the archaeological record on the East African coast: many early sites failed to survive the collapse and were abandoned. Into the vacuum created in this way came merchants from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Those traders, who had connections with the Mediterranean rather than with China, needed to establish permanent trading relationships with the Swahili rulers of the coast.

The way of life, which closely mimicked the Muslim courts of the Middle East, was adopted by the Swahili rulers who had contact with the Red Sea merchants. At Mtambwe Mkuu, an 11th-century site on the island of Pemba, Mark Horton found a hoard of silver coins and 10 gold and seven of 

these are Fatimid dinars from Mediterranean mints. The other three are copies of Fatimid coins inscribed with bogus Arabic writing; these imitations may have been struck in East Africa. The only other coins resembling them come from Fatimid Sicily in the 11th century.

The supply of rock crystal lasted for only about a century. By 1050 rock crystal had vanished from coastal sites in the Lamu archipelago. At about the same time the workshops in the Mediterranean ceased production in crystal and turned to substitutes such as clear glass.

Taken from: Mark Horton · Nicole Boivin · Alison Crowther · Ben Gaskell · Chantal Radimilahy · Henry Wright: East Africa as a Source for Fatimid Rock Crystal. Workshops from Kenya to Madagascar. 2015

Red Sea trade with East Africa in the 10th and 11th centuries. In many ways, this was problematic, as the many excavated sites contain very limited material from the Red Sea or Egypt during this period. In contrast to the many thousands of sherds from the Persian Gulf that have been found on the East African sites, not a single sherd of Fatimid or related ceramic has been excavated (except one possible one from Mahilaka which has similarities to some early Islamic Egyptian wares) and only a few pieces of possible painted glass. This is in contrast to evidence from the mid-13th to mid-14th century, when East African trade with Aden is represented by significant quantities of yellow-glazed mustard wares, from kilns near Aden.

Taken from: India in Africa: Trade goods and connections of the late first millennium by Jason D. Hawkes and Stephanie Wynne-Jones (2015).

Excavations at the Swahili stonetown of Shanga, on the northern Kenya coast, recovered the bronze figure of a lion, dated to c. AD 1100, is unique among finds from the coast of eastern Africa, yet is typical of a number of similar figurines found in India—specifically the Deccan Plateau—known to have been used in Hindu rituals. One explanation for the presence of this figurine in an archaeological context in East Africa is that it was brought by an Indian merchant or traveller, or imported by a member of the increasingly rich local elite; Shanga was deeply connected with Indian Ocean routes of commerce and interaction dominated by Islamic traders. Yet, the Indian technologies employed in the manufacture of the Shanga lion tell only half the story. Despite its South Asian style, the figurine appears to depict an African—not an Indian—lion, with a wild unkempt mane running down its back. Indian examples have the neatly trimmed collar of an Asian lion. This means that its maker was familiar with both this style of Indian sculpture and with African lions themselves, and it suggests the possibility that it was made by an Indian craftsman present in Africa. The metal content of the lion further supports this latter suggestion. This is somewhat different from comparable statuettes found in Indian contexts. The closest parallels to the lion’s specific alloy are with contemporary Chinese coins, leading to the suggestion that it may have been cast from melted coins, as part of a wider practice of metal recycling in the Indian Ocean world. The single find of the Shanga lion therefore opens up a world of possibilities, to the movement of people, materials, ideas, styles, and religions.

12TH-13TH CENTURY

 Taken from: Islamic Archaeology in the Comoros: The Swahili and the Rock Crystal Trade with the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates by
Stéphane Pradines

The “urban shift” observed at the end of the 12th century and beginning of the 13th century, where major Swahili sites were abandoned or rebuilt. This phenomenon affected many sites, such as Kilwa Kisiwani, Gedi, and Sanje ya Kati (Pradines 2002, 66–75; Pradines 2010, 187–211; Pradines 2009, 5657). The abandonment of old sites and the creation of new urban centres was linked to new trading relations. In the 13th century, stability was established with the Ayyubids and then the Mamluks in Egypt and the Rasulids in Yemen. In Kilwa, the Shirazi Dynasty was replaced at the end of the 13th century by the Mahdali Dynasty, a Hadhrami tribe from southwest Yemen. This new elite was linked to the Indians of the Gujarat and the Deccan plateau. The position of the western Arabian Peninsula strengthened beginning in the 13th century with the ports of Aden and Shihr, and it was at this time that the Red Sea took control of the Indian Ocean trade from the Persian Gulf, maintaining it until the end of the Mamluk period (Hardy-Guilbert 2004, 95–157; Pradines 2017, 241).

Taken from: GLASS BEADS AND INDIAN OCEAN TRADE by Marilee Wood (2018) (In the Swahili World).

It is generally accepted that Kilwa was the principal entrepot controlling trade between eastern and southern Africa between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the height of the gold trade from southern Africa. But it is notable that few of the bead types (the Mapungubwe Oblate and Zimbabwe series), found in the hundreds of thousands in southern Africa during this period, were found at Kilwa. Indeed, when Chittick was shown orange beads from Great Zimbabwe, he remarked that he had not seen similar ones on the coast (Chittick 1974: 483). The rarity at Kilwa (and on the entire coast) of bead types that were a key part of trade to southern Africa calls into question the extent of Kilwa’s control over the southern African trade, at least in terms of glass beads.

Taken from : L’ile de Sanje ya Kati (Kilwa, Tanzanie): un mythe Shirazi bien réel Stéphane Pradines

(During the excavation of Sanja ya Kati very close to Kilwa)

Statistically, the proportions of local ceramics are in the majority, which confirms the African nature of a large part of the occupants of the city.

But the most common Islamic pottery in Sanje ya Kati is hatched sgraffiato. Which originates from the coastal provinces of Iran. The Persian hatched sgraffiatos of Sanje ya Kati can be subdivided into two groups, the monochrome brown or mustard yellow hatched sgraffiatos (Kennet 2004, 35-36), which are dated to the late 11th century; and cross-hatched sgraffiatos …... We discovered in the house a large cup of very original hatched sgraffiato. This object, which dates from the end of the 12th century, must have had a certain value because it had been repaired many times.

In the big house, we excavated a layer of waste which contained a lot of Chinese ceramics dated to the Song period, 960-1279. We have identified a few sherds of black and yellow Yemeni, in the level of waste of the house (Pradines 2004, 241), as well as several shards of celadon from the 13th century. Black and yellow are always found in a Mamluk context, precisely from 1250 to 1350. Yemeni black and yellow pottery was produced near Khanfur in the Aden region. This ceramic also called Mustard ware. A fine mustard yellow glaze covers the interior. The latest ceramic material therefore dates from the middle of the 13th century (1240-1250). It was at this time that the flow of ceramic imports changed, and trade with the Red Sea seemed to be preferred. It is also the end of the occupation of the site of Sanje ya Kati.

At the end of the 10th century, the decline of Baghdad and the rise of regionalism led to a reduction in port establishments in the Persian Gulf. According to many authors, the Red Sea would have supplanted the Persian Gulf at this time, but this pattern has been largely undermined by archaeological evidence which shows a continuity of port occupation in the Persian Gulf from the Sassanids until the period of the independent principalities of the Gulf. The Red Sea did not replace the Persian Gulf but competed with it for a brief period. From the 12th century, other ports were used, often on islands such as Kish, Hormuz, Bahrain and Muscat. Thus, Sohar was replaced by Hormuz which became the great maritime power of the 14th century.

The north-northwest orientation of the mosque of Shanga and the great mosques of Gedi and Manda, was due to the fact that the builders were certainly of a different ethnic origin and faith, since we go from Shiites from the shores of the Persian Gulf to Sunnis, mainly Hadramis. This change occurs in the 13th century.

The generalization of Sunnism on the eastern coast would therefore be attributed to contacts with traders from Hadhramaut. Kilwa would be the perfect illustration of this, because its inhabitants converted to Sunnism in the 13th century with the advent of the Mahdali dynasty, of the Shafi faith, and according to Ibn al-Mugawir, a school professed this doctrine in Kilwa (Wilkinson 1981). From the 14th century, all Shia groups seem to have been absorbed by the Sunnis, for in 1331 Ibn Battuta encountered Shafia Sunnis all over the coast.

CONCLUSION

The Making of the Swahili A View From the Southern End Paideuma, 1982 Gill Shepherd.

Persian Gulf Seafaring and East Africa: Ninth-Twelfth Centuries by Thomas M. Ricks in African Historical Studies 1970.

The Early Muslim Era in East Africa.

Trade: This can be divided into three periods. The first, during which contact was primarily with traders from the Gulf, began in the eight century. The importance of Uballah and Basra declined however during the latter half of the ninth century as they were not able anymore to navigate the Shatt al-Arab river which had silted. This led to the rise of Siraf as the main port. Sirafs importance diminished during the tenth century but it continued to participate in the Gulf trade till the twelfth century. Kish island reduced Siraf to the status of a dependency in around 1170. Kish by the twelfth century was the main financial center of the Gulf and the main trading partner of East Africa. The second, during which they were joined by traders coming mainly from Yaman and the Red Sea, began perhaps in the eleventh century to the thirteenth centuries the two groups overlapped and there was hot competition, leading to increased settlement along the coast. The third period, during which the Gulf traders lost ground, began in the thirteenth century; but Red Sea Arabs continued to come to East Africa up to and after the arrival of the Portuguese.