9781422283509

Africa to the 1400s

A Swahili man blowing on a Siwa horn. Swahilis are the descendants of Bantu and Arab settlers

A page from Ptolemy’s book, Geography.

The Earliest Books Over two thousand years ago, a Greek merchant wrote a guide for seamen called the Periplus Maris Erythraei ( Voyage Around the Indian Ocean ). It describes the ports along the east African coast and the trade which took place between African and overseas merchants. The author of the book wrote about a rich, southerly port called Rhapta, where there was plenty of ivory and tortoiseshell. Archaeologists have failed to uncover this site, but they think it may be somewhere in modern Tanzania. In the fifth century bce , a book came out which described the east African trading ports. It was written by the Egyptian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, and was called Geography . After Ptolemy’s book not much was written about the east coast until Arab geographers started visiting it over four hundred years later.

Arab Settlers During the tenth century, Arab merchants began to settle along the east African coast. They learned the languages and became middlemen, buying goods from Africans who lived further inland and selling them to the sea merchants. A century later, wars in Persia and Arabia forced many Arabs to move away from their troubled homes. Some of them ended up settling along the east African coast and taking part in the trade as well. These Arabs married local African women, and as time went on a new language called Swahili developed. Swahili is basically a Bantu language with lots of Arabic words. It is still spoken today throughout eastern Africa, and is the national language of Tanzania and Kenya. Growing Settlements Many Arab immigrants settled in the port of Mogadishu, and it became an important center of the Indian Ocean trade. But as the demand for African ivory (elephant tusks) increased in China and India, more Arabs left Persia and Oman and settled along the east African coast. Finally, in the twelfth century, a number of Swahili merchants who lived in the north moved to the south and established new trading cities. The most important and wealthy city was Kilwa. Kilwa controlled the Indian Ocean trade in the south of Africa. Most of the houses in the city were built out of coral , and there was a huge palace that covered almost one hectare . The Muslims of Kilwa built many fine mosques out of stone, and made their own copper and silver coins, kilwa’s power lasted until the fifteenth century when quarrels between ruling families led to its decline.

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