Some of the world ’s greatest city during the Middle Ages were on the eastern coast of Africa . Their flowery stone dome and soaring walls , made with ocean corals and paint a brilliant white , were wonders to the dealer that impose them from Asia , the Middle East , and Europe . They were the great power of the Swahili Coast , and they ’ve long been misunderstood by archaeologist . It ’s only of late that investigator outside Africa are beginning to apprise their importance .
Photos by Samir Patel
Throughout the Middle Ages , nifty civilizations ringed the Indian Ocean . From Egypt , the great unwashed could journey the Red Sea to reach the ocean , then sweep to the south to Africa , or stay due east to the Arab world and India . Then , of course , one could move around over country on the famous Silk Road from India through central Asia and into China . In realness , few mass ever made that journeying . But many trade wind goods did , passed from bridge player to hand in cosmopolitan cities whose ethnical diversity would have made places like New York and Sao Paolo looking like monoculture . Among those with child medieval cities were spot like Songo Mnara , a gorgeous and bustling Swahili city built on an island off the coast of Tanzania in the fourteenth century .
At a time when European cities were getting wipe out by plague and famines , Songo Mnara was thriving .
This month , Samir Patel has a fascinating articlein Archaeologyabout the city . He writes :
From the one-tenth to fifteenth centuries , the rich of Africa ’s inside , such as off-white , gold , resin , food , timber , and even slaves , were in high demand around the world . Because of the monsoon barter malarkey , which could dependably bring traders from around the Indian Ocean to and from the East African seacoast , many of these good elapse through Swahili town and into a hemisphere - span patronage electronic connection — through the Red and Mediterranean Seas to Europe , across the ocean to India and Persia , and to China via sea and demesne . Some of the Swahili stone towns — a corporate description of some settlement with stone ruin across miles of coast — grew stunningly wealthy on this swap . They were independently ruled sultanate that shared intracoastal trade , culture , nomenclature ( Kiswahili ) , faith ( Islam ) , and receptiveness to the influence of the external world . Like the independent urban center - United States Department of State of the same menstruum in Italian story , some were major powers , and their fortune rose and fell with shifting swap relationships and political maneuvering .
Today , Songo Mnara is a downfall that had been almost forgotten by hoi polloi living outside the local area . It was built by the people of Kilwa Kisiwanti , an ancient urban center on a nearby island , and they did it the manner today ’s good metropolis planner might . Though no one is sure why , they wanted to erect this city quickly . So they drew up a city design and organized the rest home , palace , and town ’s mosques around elegant open sphere , with generously - sized courtyards that the locals used to greet traveling merchants .
Swahili towns did n’t have mart like comparable cities in Europe , the Middle East and China . Instead , archeologist are learning , trade wind was conducted in the courtyards , which were halfway between public and private space . Similar kinds of public / private domain werecommon in ancient Rome as well . Perhaps merchandiser would stay with a family and other city habitant would visit to sell with them . Or perhaps they would go from courtyard to courtyard , extend their product .
https://gizmodo.com/the-lost-city-of-pompeii-pictures-of-an-alien-world-f-5825459
The people who live in Songo Mnara were part of a Sultanate , or metropolis - state , connected to their parent urban center of Kilwa . They utter Kiswahili ( related to today ’s Swahili ) , and were part of an tremendous ethnical internet that spanned the coast from Somalia to Tanzania . Like the Arab peoples they traded with , the mass of the Swahili Coast were Muslims and some of their most breathless architecture can be seen in the towers that coronate their mosque .
Below , you could see the octagonal pocket billiards thatonce was a gorgeous H2O lineament in the Sultan ’s palace on Kilwa .
accord to one of the archaeologists who is now excavating Songo Mnara , University of York archaeologist Stephanie Wynne - Jones , it ’s very possible that Islamic practice in medieval Songo Mnara were unlike from the I pop in the same region today .
drop a line Patel :
According to ethnographical research , Swahili society is traditionally matrilocal ( meaning that a man , after wedlock , moves in with his wife ’s family ) , which does n’t seem to jibe with the more socially cautious variant of Islam practiced on the Swahili Coast today . It is thought that the tardy Omani occupation of the region imposed a stricter version of Islam with regard to women , overwrite what could have been a brand of Swahili Islam with great gender equality .
One of the cardinal pieces of evidence for this other chassis of Islam can be found on Songo Mnara , where University of Bristol archaeologist Mark Horton believes he ’s expose a mosque that was purpose - built for adult female . Horton is an expert on mosque architecture and believes that such a mosque would be unique in the Islamic world and would have reflected the grandness of woman in Swahili society of the center age . It ’s potential that women prayed alongside the men in the many other mosque of the Ithiel Town , and eventually were segregated into their own mosque as their persona change over time . We do n’t have it away for sure , and Horton says that it ’s always potential that the building was for some other purpose — perhaps a Koranic school — they still have n’t figured out yet .
Below , the ruin of the potential fair sex ’s mosque . Below that , we can see an dig area where house once were .
For Horton and Wynne - Jones , hollow Songo Mnara is a uncommon privilege — it ’s a mostly - undisturbed land site , largely ignored by scientists and locals alike . Partly , it ’s been preserved so well because archeologist from an earlier era did n’t trust it was a legitimate African ruin — they conceive the computer architecture was too sophisticated , and therefore had to have been crafted by Arab trader who require an outpost . That idea has long been disproven , and now the archeological community accepts that the vibrant Swahili cultivation was purely African in origin , and that the ethnic influence from the Middle East tailor both way . The Swahili Coast and its sybaritic arts and goodness were an tremendous influence on their neighbour ringing the Indian Ocean .
But the power of the Swahili Coast fall as European powers arise . Patel explains :
At the end of the 15th century , the Portuguese arrived and Indian Ocean craft changed . Many stone towns were abandoned around this metre , often in haste . Through the result 500 yr of compound line — Portuguese , Omani , British — the Swahili refinement that commingle in the knightly period has persisted . Today , more than a million people in East Africa still identify as Swahili ( from Sawahil , an Arabic word intend “ people of the coast ” ) .
Below is a drawing of Kilwa from a European map drawn in the 16th century , roughly a century after the city ’s flower as a trade power . appreciation for the metropolis ’s beauty had spread far and all-inclusive .
And , as the selection of Swahili polish in Africa attest , the retentiveness of the great trade imperium last on in the peoples of the region . Now , as archaeologists learn more about this history , it ’s becoming more obvious than ever how crucial African civilizations were to the development of the medieval world .
Read morein Archaeology
AfricaanthropologyArchaeologyHistoryScience
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