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are problematic although it has recently been shown
that the Swahili are an indigenous people who
converted to Islam rather than Arab colonists. Most
of the settlements have their basis in the Indian
Ocean trade to Arabia,
India and the Far East and
are consequently located next to the sea. There was,
however, a strong local economy with connections
to the interior which has not yet been investigated
in any great detail. For example the walled city of
Gedi is 6 km inland and presumably had some
contact with inland tribes. It is known, too, that
Kenya’s fertile coast was attractive to nomadic
herders and tribesmen from the north, who
periodically raided and migrated southwards into
Kenya causing large-scale desertion of mainland sites
on the northern coast. The most famous of these
nomadic groups were the Galla who raided as far
south as Mombasa in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
The Kenya coast
contains the remains of many
settlements dating from the eighth to the nineteenth
century. The remains can be divided into two
geographical groups—a northern group based
around the Lamu archipelago, and a southern group
between Gedi and Mombasa. Between these two
areas there are few remains of earlier settlement,
probably because there are no useful creeks or
anchorages.
The Lamu archipelago is a complex series of
islands and creeks which probably represents the
remains of the Tana river delta before it moved
further south. This heavily indented coastline
provided an ideal area for coastal settlement and
some of the earliest remains
of Islamic trading sites
have been found here. The main islands in this
group are Pate, Manda and Lamu. Pate is the largest
island of the group and contains the walled city of
Pate which under the Nabhani kings ruled a large
area of the coast during the seventeenth century.
Other important sites on Pate are Faza, Siu, Tundwa
and Shanga. The ruins at Shanga are mostly
fourteenth century, but excavations have revealed
a dense continuity of occupation which stretches
back to the eighth century and includes the earliest
remains of a mosque in sub-Saharan Africa. The
nearby island of Manda also contains an early site
(known as Manda) which is dated to the ninth
century and is one of the
only sites on the coast to
use baked brick for construction. As well as the
important early site of Manda, the island also
contains the ruins of Takwa and Kitao. The island
of Lamu contains the settlements of Lamu and
Shella which have in recent times domi-nated this
area of the coast. To the north there are a few sites
on the mainland like Ishikani, Omwe, Mwana,
Dondo and Kiunga noted for their monumental
tombs. On the mainland to the south, at the mouth
of the Tana river, are the sites of Mwana, Shaka and
Ungwana. The site
of Ungwana is famous for its
congregational mosque with two parallel prayer
halls which was built in several phases between the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The early mosque
was built in the fifteenth and later in the same
century a second prayer hall with three rows of
piers and a domed portico was added.
The southern group of settlements are located
south of the Sabaki river and are mostly mainland
sites based around creeks. Immediately to the south
of the Sabaki river is the town of Malindi which,
although largely modern, is built over the remains
of one of the main towns on the coast that flourished
in the sixteenth century under Portuguese
protection. Nearby is the
walled city of Gedi where
the Sheikh of Malindi had his residence during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To the south of
Gedi are the three ruined settlements of Kilifi,
Mnaarani and Kitoka which collectively formed the
city-state of Kilifi during the sixteenth century.
Several other ancient settlements can be found next
to creeks further south towards Mombasa. One of
the best-known sites is Jumba La Mtwana dating
mostly from the fourteenth century. Mombasa itself
was an important early settlement with its deep
water anchorage at Kilindi although little remains
of the early settlement with the exception of a small
mosque in the harbour. Mombasa island is
dominated by Fort Jesus built by the Portuguese as
their base on the
coast and later captured and
remodelled by the Omanis. One of the most
intriguing monuments in Mombasa is the Mbraaki
Pillar which has been dated to the eighteenth
century. The pillar is a hollow cylindrical structure
resembling a minaret, an idea which is reinforced
by its position next to a small mosque. However,
the pillar has no internal staircase and minarets are
unknown in the area before the nineteenth century
implying some other function. South of Mombasa
towards the Tanzania border there are few early
sites although there are ruined early mosques at
Tiwi and Diani.
In addition to the pre-colonial Islamic architecture
Kenya also contains Muslim buildings dating from
Kenya
