Minwafa bay (the Mtwapa estuary)
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Ibn Majid (1470) is the only author to mention Minwafa bay. (Mtwapa estuary)
However in the Kitab Ghara'ib al-funun wa-mulah al-'uyun (1050) a place is mentioned : ‘M-k-f-a (Mtwapa) qa⟨ryah⟩, village’ this according to Horton, M. (2018) in ‘The Swahili Corridor Revisited’ is probably Mtwapa. Also mentioned is ‘The bay of Mīkhānah (?Mtwapa)’. Both times it is in an itinerary of a ship sailing down the East African coast.
There are two ancient towns in ruins inside modern day Mtwapa. The first one (Jumba la Mtwapa) seems to have existed till early 15th century and so might have been out of existence in 1470 when he wrote. The second one (Mtwapa) still existed till late 16th century.
1) Jumba la Mtwana (Minwafa bay)
Taken from: THE MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN KENYA COAST by Thomas H. Wilson, Ph.D.
The site of Jumba la Mtwana consists of four mosques and a number of houses (about eight) located in a picturesque setting on and above the beach not far north of the mouth of Mtwapa creek. The site was excavated by Kirkman in 1972 and concluded that it had existed from late 11th to early 15th century.
One of the mosques is the Great Mosque or the Mosque by the Sea. A second mosque, as it is located near the centre of the site, will be called here the central mosque. There is a small mosque at the far western end of the site, and the fourth mosque, the domed mosque illustrated by Garlake, is found some metres north of the cleared areas of the National Monument. It is a well-planned mosque with the building nicely executed. ……….
………… The northwest or domed mosque at Jumba la Mtwana is located at the northwest periphery of the National Monument, about 100 metres north of the ticket office and about 175 metres north of the small western mosque (Note: it is outside the map). ………
………. The houses of Jumba la Mtwana are complex, but archaeologically important ……..
Taken from: The Rough to Kenya by Richard Trillo 2002
Jumba La Mtwan.
This national monument, one of three between Mombasa and Malindi is the ruined centre of a wealthy fourteenth - fifteenth-century Swahili community. Jumba la Mavana means “mansion of the slave", but it has been deserted for some 500 years and probably had a different name in the past. It's a small site right on an open shore with no harbour. Jumba is fortunate in having good water, but why it was deserted, and by whom, remains a mystery.
It must once have been a sizeable settlement; there were three mosques within the site and a fourth just outside. Most of the population would have lived in mud-and-thatch houses, which have long since disintegrated.
The best of Jumba’s mosques is the Mosque by the Sea, which shows evidence of having had a separate room for women, something which is only nowadays becoming acceptable again in modern mosques. The cistern where worshippers washed is still intact, with coral foot-scrapers set nearby and tombs behind the north wall facing Mecca. One of these has a Koranic inscription carved in coral on a panel facing the sea and must have been the grave of an important person:
Every soul shall taste death. You will simply be paid your wages in full on the Day of Resurrection. He who is removed from the fire and made to enter heaven, it is he who has won the victory. The earthly life is only delusion.
The people of Jumba seem to have been very religious and hygienic virtues that are closely associated in Islam. Cisterns and water jars, or at least the remains of them, are found everywhere among the ruined houses, and in most cases there are coral blocks nearby which would have been used to squat on while washing. Latrines are all stone-lined with long-drops. Of course, it is possible that the poorer people of Jumba lived in squalor in their mud huts, yet even the House of Many Doors, which seems to have been a fifteenth-century “boarding and lodging”, provided guests with private washing and toilet facilities.
Look out for the two smaller mosques, each with its well-preserved, carved coral mihrab (the arched niche that indicates the direction of Mecca), and for the strange chinks in several walls (in the House of the Cylinders and the Small Mosque), the purpose of which is unknown.
2) Mtwapa ruins
Taken from: ICOMOS World Report 2006-2007 on Monuments and Sites in Danger.
http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/world_report/2006-2007/pdf/H@R_2006-2007_27_National_Report_Kenya.pdf
Mtwapa Heritage Site (MHS) is an archaeological site that was a town during the 14 th century AD as were other East African sites on the coast. The site is situated on a piece of land that is owned both privately and publicly (National Museums of Kenya). Mtwapa is located on the north-east of the Kenyan coast 15 km north of Mombasa, one of Kenya’s major cities. The history of Mtwapa as a settlement dates back to the 12th century AD. Archaeological evidence from the site indicates that the site developed prior to contact with the Middle and Far East.
Remains at the site consist of the ruins of a town wall which once surrounded the site. The wall may be seen today as a mound of earth extending across roads and through the bush (cross-country). The architectural remains consist of 64 houses, one mosque and a tomb. There are five categories of houses: the single unit, double unit, triple unit and compound house complexes. According to oral tradition the site had three mosques being the Sheik Muhdar, Sheik Zamani, and Sheik Salim (still existing), the presence of which is corroborated by archaeological evidence. It is estimated that two thirds of the site lies outside the town wall. Other structures still surviving include several wells, pit
latrines, a tomb, mosque cistern and lower portions of the mosque mihrab.
Taken from: Destruction of Swahili Heritage by Chap Kusimba,
https://www.academia.edu/21484756/Kusimba_Destruction_of_Swahili_Heritage_page_1
The houses in this forest area were last occupied in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and a remarkable wealth of architectural and archaeological information has been recovered from them (Kusimba n.d a). Since 1986 the archaeology team from Fort Jesus Museum has been carrying out archaeological excavations at the ruins. Much of the preliminary work was completed by Dr. Richard Wilding and the author and is now in various stages of preparation for publication. Excavations have recovered a very rich archaeological sequence. Mtwapa had a total of five mosques, three of which were outside the town wall. All the mosques outside have been destroyed by recent cultivation and settlement since the 1980s. Within the stone walls were 13 wells, 64 stone houses, 22 mounds presumably of collapsed houses, 7 houses with distinct graffiti, and 42 pit latrines, 15 of which were in open spaces indicating the structures in which they belonged had collapsed (Kusimba n.d a; Kusimba and Barut n.d).