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Kilwa
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Kilwa

Island in Tanzania, on the coast of Mtwara region, approximately 250 km/155 mi south of Dar es Salaam. The main town on the island is Kilwa Kisiwani with the larger town of Kilwa Masoko on the mainland immediately adjacent to the north. The island was formerly known to the Portuguese as Quiloa and to the Arabs as Kiloab. Kilwa was an important Arab trading station, with a harbour and inland trading routes to Lake Malawi.

The town was founded by Prince Ali ibn-Hassan, a Persian, in 957, and many ruins show the former importance of the settlement. Ibn Battuta, writing in 1331, called Kilwa ‘the most nobly built city on earth’. Kilwa was captured by the Portuguese in 1505.
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Geldof visited Tanzania where Kilwa Island, one of the African eastern seaboard's 35 coastal city kingdoms, for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans, traded luxury goods with India, China and Persia; these ports were supplied from deep in the interior with gold and ivory from Great Zimbabwe whose palaces and stone buildings were replicated in 150 sites--some built almost a millennium ago by descendants of today's Shona people.
'The ancestors are an immediate & accessible reality': poetic ... by Hordern, Nick / New African
As in the earlier sacking of Kilwa Island (see NA, fan 2003), Almeida's son, Lourenco, led the assault on the sultan's palace, and though with the Portuguese superior weaponry, this time met sterner resistance from the Swahili defenders.
Archaeology golden Gedi, Kenya's lost glory. (Feature) by Hordern, Nick / New African
Our correspondent, Nick Hordern, in a pale imitation of Ibn Battuta's travels, went to Kilwa Island to catch up with 800 years of African history.
The magic of Kilwa Island. (Feature: Tanzania) by Hordern, Nick / New African
 
 
 
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