Lamu old Town
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Maqrizi (1441) writes: Muhammad bin Ishaq bin Muhammad, judge of Lamu city. Namely one of the cities of the Zanj on the coast of the Sea of Berbera. It is located west (sic) of the city of Mogadishu for about twenty stages. Those who penetrated the south did not see a plant for several years, but the sand rose on some of their lands many fathoms. (The only other medieval writer to mention Lamu is Ibn Majid (1470).)
Today it is covered by a sand dune called Hedabu hill situated between Shela and present day Lamu. Strigand in his book: The Land of Zinj made a picture of the sand hills.
Pwani Mosque: taken from: Lamu Case Study of the Swahili Town. Thesis of Usam Isa Ghaidan Nairobi 1974.
Immediately north of the fort is the Pwani mosque which claimed the old foundation date of the equivalent of A.D. 1370. The name Pwani (Swahili = coast) is evidence that the town's edge used to run fifty meters west of its present position. When the fort was built it faced the sea and its bastions covered the harbor. (Centuries of dumping rubble in the channel made the town 50m wider). The mihrab of the jamia or Friday Mosque, in the northern part of the town, incorporates an inscription reading the equivalent of A.D. 1511 which may belong to the mihrab of the older Friday Mosque on the site of which the present one stands.
Pwani old Mosque.
According to the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) Curator in charge of Lamu Museums and World Heritage site, Mohamed Mwenje, there are at least three historical tombs that exist within Lamu Old Town.
First: of Mwenye Mui Zahid Mngumi (19th century) in Langoni area in Lamu Old Town. Zahid Ngumi is famously known for building the Lamu Fort between 1813 and 1821.
Tomb of Zahid Ngumi
Domed Tomb of Mwana Hadie Famau
Two: Of Mwana Hadie Famau between 300 to 400 years old, according to NMK. (Late 15th century according to: Swahili Funerary Architecture of the North Kenya Coast by Thomas H. Wilson.) It is located in Mkomani area, Lamu Old Town. Mwana Hadie Famau is referred to as the ‘Saint of Lamu’ due to the strong religious beliefs that she portrayed during her lifetime in Lamu. The sketch shows the north side of this Lamu domed tomb ( by Thomas H. Wilson)
Three: a national monument in Lamu Old Town is the 14th Century Fluted Pillar Tomb in Gadeni area within Lamu Old Town. Of which I did not find a picture only the following sketch showing the south facade of the Lamu fluted pillar tomb white pasted Persian bowls set in the pillar suggest a 14-15th century date, ( by Thomas H. Wilson).
In the Book: The Rough Guide to Kenya by Richard Trillo (2002) mentions on p566: After Lamu fort, the only other national monument in Lamu (though you may not believe it when you see it) is the fluted pillar tomb behind Riyadha Mosque. This may date back as far as the fourteenth century, and the occasional visit by a tourist might persuade the families in the neighborhood that it is worth preserving; it can only be a matter of time before it leans too far and collapses …..
The pillar tomb is now buried to the height of the top of the walls, but excavations there revealed two doubly recessed horizontal panels on the south wall (Wilson 1979b). Recessed on top of the wall are much-ruined step-ends, while on the east side rises the fluted pillar (Ghaidan 1976).
The 14th Century Fluted Pillar Tomb in Gadeni are.
Taken from: Swahili Monumental Architecture and Archaeology North of the Tana River. By Thomas H. Wilson.
The archaeology of Lamu: Chittick (1967) conducted minor archaeological excavations. Sherds from the northern excavation ranged from the thirteenth century or before to the eighteenth century. Another excavation south of the present town near Hidabu Hill, the supposed area of old Lamu, produced sherds that ranged from the thirteenth century or earlier to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Sherds could be found eroding out of the ground in both these areas in 1978, and the Lamu Museum has a surface collection of these. The northern area from the cemetery to the old butchery and jetty was particularly productive. There, we found, in addition to four pieces of sgrafiato pottery, which date from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, two pieces of Sasanian-Islamic ware, usually assumed characteristic of the ninth-tenth centuries. Of the later pieces, we recovered one sherd of black on yellow, numerous examples of celadon, Chinese blue and white porcelains and Islamic Monochromes.
In the Hidabu Hill area we collected several pieces of Sasanian-Islamic ware. These were found with a single black on yellow sherd of the fourteenth century. By 1980, the Lamu Museum had collected 14 pieces of Sasanian-Islamic pottery from the Lamu Ginners site. These sherds from three different locations provide a clue that incipient Lamu, while in no way as prosperous as ninth to twelfth century Manda, Shanga or Pate, might be about as old as the earliest known settlements on the coast. In the surface collections we also found two examples of white-glazed and color splashed (“tin-glazed”) Islamic ceramics, which date from the earliest phase at Shanga (Horton 1996:271-78), and simple and late green sgrafiato, from the end of the sgrafiato sequence, perhaps thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.