A city of gold on the Tanzanian coast
Picture Africa's east coast in the year 1300. Off the shore of what is now Tanzania, on the small island of Kilwa Kisiwani, stood one of the richest cities in the medieval world. Kilwa's sailing ships crossed the Indian Ocean carrying gold, ivory and timber to Arabia, Persia, India and China. On the return voyage they brought back Chinese porcelain, silk and cotton. The sultans of Kilwa grew so powerful that the city minted its own gold coins, and they taxed every cargo that passed through the harbor.
The city's wealth rested on its grip over the gold trade. Around 1185, Kilwa seized the port of Sofala, the gateway to the gold fields of the Zimbabwe plateau. Gold mined near Great Zimbabwe traveled by caravan and boat to Kilwa, then sailed onward to markets thousands of miles away. The sultans spent the profits on palaces, mosques and houses of coral stone.
"One of the most beautiful towns in the world"
In 1331, the great traveler Ibn Battuta arrived in Kilwa by dhow from Oman. By then he had already seen Delhi, Cairo, Timbuktu and Jerusalem. Kilwa still impressed him. He called it "one of the most beautiful and well-constructed towns in the world," adding that "the whole of it is elegantly built." What struck him most, he wrote, was the people, whom he described as religious, pious and virtuous. From a man who had crossed most of the known world, that was high praise.
The buildings he saw still stand. Kilwa's Great Mosque was begun in the 11th century, making it the oldest surviving mosque in East Africa. The 14th century palace of Husuni Kubwa combined the roles of a fort, a castle and a warehouse. When a European scribe arrived with the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, he wrote of fine coral stone houses, rich merchants, and "much gold and silver and amber and musk and pearls." Portuguese visitors even compared Kilwa's mosque to Spain's famous Cordoba Mosque.
The China connection
Kilwa's reach stretched all the way to China. Archaeologists have found Chinese porcelain in the city's ruins and as far inland as Great Zimbabwe. Records say an African giraffe was once sent as a gift to the Chinese emperor. And Chinese accounts say the great admiral Zheng He visited the Swahili coast, including Kilwa, during his voyages between 1405 and 1433. Long before European ships crossed the Indian Ocean, an African city-state was doing business at the far end of it.
Cannons ended it; history nearly erased it
Kilwa's golden age lasted into the 1400s. Then came the Portuguese. In 1505, a Portuguese force sacked the city and broke the gold trade circuit Kilwa had controlled for centuries. The city never recovered. Today the ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but most people have never heard the name.
Why it matters
Kilwa destroys the old story that Africa had no cities, no money and no world trade before Europeans arrived. It had all three. The coins Kilwa minted have turned up as far away as the Maldives. Its merchants bought from China and sold to Arabia. And Ibn Battuta, the most widely traveled man of his age, ranked the city among the most beautiful on Earth. Remember that the next time someone tells you Africa's history begins with colonization.
