And Home Was Kariakoo (13 page)

No other town or city on the East African coast, no other place in southern Africa has a written premodern history all its own. Kilwa does. The story of Kilwa has been told in the Kilwa Chronicle, or
The Book of the Consolation of the History of Kilwa
, a history set to paper around 1550 in Arabic, at the instigation of the ruling sultan, who feared that the story of Kilwa would soon be forgotten. Says the writer of the Chronicle, whose name is not known (because the page bearing it is missing),

This is the founding myth. Besides the oral tradition there is ample evidence in the form of coin finds, pottery, and inscriptions (for example, at the mosque in Kizimkazi, Zanzibar, dated 1107) of ancient Persian connection to the Swahili coast. Iran is known to have had a strong maritime presence in the Indian Ocean from pre-Islamic times, and there were Persian settlements in many ports. In East Africa, many coastal people consider themselves Shirazi, after the city in Iran. (The ruling party in Zanzibar, soon after its independence, was called the Afro-Shirazi Party [ASP].) The first sultan of Kilwa, and a Persian according to the Chronicle, was Ali bin al Hasan; copper and silver coins found at the site and nearby bearing his name attest to his existence, and place his rule at around 1070. He was known as Nguo Nyingi (“Much Cloth”), says the Chronicle, for having bought Kilwa Island for a lot of coloured cloth.

According to archaeologists interpreting Kilwa’s desolate, grey stone ruins, by the late eleventh century Kilwa already boasted a stone mosque. It had a flat roof of coral laid over mangrove rafters supported by nine wooden pillars. What remains of that structure today are portions of the boundary wall with arched entranceways, the roof having collapsed. During the economic boom of the fourteenth century in Kilwa this mosque received a large extension, with fifteen domes, most of which still exist, and octagonal pillars of composite stone, also now very much in evidence. This larger combined mosque is called the Great Mosque. It marks a period of extensive and grand construction on the Island, the most impressive of which would have been the Great House, or Husuni Kubwa, only the foundations of which remain.

Kilwa Island was the southern extremity of the Islamic world and its rise as a commercial empire corresponded with the rise of the Abbasid Empire centred at Baghdad and the growing market for
gold, copper, ivory, timber, and many other items. Gold and copper were mined in Zimbabwe down south, brought to the port of Sofala—on the Mozambique coast—and dispersed through Kilwa to the commercial centres abroad.

Sometime probably in March, in 1329, that remarkable Moroccan globetrotter Ibn Battuta arrived in Kilwa, having sailed from Aden, gone round the horn of Africa, and touched port at Mogadishu and Mombasa. This was before his more famous voyages to India and China. Ibn Battuta says, of his visit to East Africa,

The Kilwa Chronicle nicely corroborates this, and a copper coin minted in Kilwa has been found in Zimbabwe, bearing al-Mawahib’s name.

Such was the reach of Kilwa on the Isle. It had wrested the southern African gold monopoly from Mogadishu, and its merchants were among the wealthiest in the region. They lived in multistoreyed houses of stone and marble with sunken courtyards and indoor plumbing, they wore silk and cotton, gold and silver, they ate off porcelain dishes. The Island’s reputation had reached legendary status
abroad, though few had seen it. Milton would equate it (or Sofala) with the biblical Ophir, from where King Solomon received gold and silver. Other accounts described it along the lines of a walled, European city surrounded by luxurious vegetation, forgetting that it was an island off the coast of Africa.

While in the mind of Europe Kilwa belonged to the realm of fantasy and myth, the city had a more mundane and an older relationship with India and China. Leopard skins, ivory, and rhino horns had a market in the Far East. Correspondingly, Chinese porcelain has been found in many coastal towns where it was used to decorate mosques and the better homes. Cotton from India was a valued commodity, as was silk from China. In the fifteenth century giraffes were shipped to China, one particular giraffe making a stopover in Bengal, whose ruler then presented it to the Emperor of China.

Europe’s contact with Kilwa (and the East African coast) began with the search for the sea route to India.

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Photo Caption 8.1
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In 1497–98 Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa with three Portuguese ships, looking for India. This was just six years after Columbus had set off in the western direction from Europe, with the same objective. The voyage was hazardous, and the attitude of the Portuguese towards all whom they met was belligerent and mercenary. They came with superior weapons—crossbows, canons, and muskets—and body armour, and among the crew were select hardened criminals who had already been condemned to death in Lisbon. With that voyage a new era began on the Indian Ocean, that of European commercial and naval dominance.

In March 1498—according to the account by Gaspar Correa (d. 1583)—the ships arrived in Mozambique (the island, in the northern part of the present country of that name), having captured a “Moor” on the way. This Moor did not speak Arabic, and did not drink wine, and was from the great Indian port city of Cambay (Khambat today, shorn of all its former glory); therefore we can only presume that he was a Gujarati, perhaps a Muslim. That he was described as a dalal, or broker, only makes one smile. He agreed to assist them, likely under duress—he was captured only because, unlike the others who were with him, he could not swim. His name was Davane. The Portuguese in their accounts use the term “Moor” somewhat loosely, because they did not know the people they were dealing with—a Moor could be an Arab, a Swahili, an Indian from Gujarat or from Malabar, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu; and “fair,” “dark,” or “swarthy.” How Davane of Cambay was able to carry on lengthy conversations with them is unclear. According to Correa’s account, this stretch of coastal East Africa had a governor representing the sultan of Kilwa. Besides gold, silver, ivory, and wax, he says, pepper and “drugs”—it’s unclear what this term refers to—were also shipped out to Cambay.

What followed in Mozambique, this trading colony of Kilwa, when the Lusitanian ships arrived is a tale of intrigue and treachery that includes a skirmish with the natives. The Mozambican port is described thus, as Davane the Moor comes ashore on behalf of the Portuguese:

The Africans were naturally nervous about these white men in armed ships who spoke of the great wealth and power of their king. Informed by Davane of Cambay about a treachery planned by the “sheikh,” or governor, of Mozambique, da Gama pretended not to be aware of this and left, restraining himself from firing on the sheikh’s ships—he had a long way to go still and didn’t want news of his aggression to precede him. He left behind one convicted murderer, Joan Machado. Joan was joined by a fellow convict who swam ashore from a ship to join him and the two lived happily with the sheikh.

As in all such chronicles, the local facilitator remains a cypher. Who was Davane (whatever the actual name was) and why would he attach himself to a foreign ship whose success was not guaranteed?

Da Gama was informed by his pilots that Kilwa was a great city where ships came from all parts of the world, including India and Mecca—presumably Arabia—and that there were even some Armenian Christian traders dwelling there. But, according to the faithful Davane, treachery was afoot. This is how the Portuguese poet Camõens describes it in his epic,
The Lusiads
, which he wrote to extol da Gama’s exploits and Portugal’s glories:

Fortunately for da Gama and his crew, “the Lord sent them a contrary wind” and they missed Kilwa, going to Mombasa and Malindi instead, before heading off to the port city of Calicut in India.

In 1502 Vasco da Gama undertook a second voyage to India, this time taking ten large ships and five warships. He arrived in Kilwa on July 12. Says Correa,

Da Gama fired a series of salvos to frighten the people. Then he had the nervous sultan visit him in a boat with a few of his men, and demanded of the ruler that he become vassal to the king of Portugal and pay an annual tribute, with the threat that he had the capacity to “put the city to fire and sword.” In return, da Gama would give him a written guarantee of protection from the king of Portugal. The sultan acquiesced. The Portuguese standard was raised upon a spear and brought to the shore where it was received with trumpets and carried around the city. Thus began the demise of Kilwa, and indeed of the city-states of the coast. In time Mombasa and Mozambique became important, in the former of which the Portuguese constructed Fort Jesus. The Portuguese eventually left Kilwa, which was ruled by local sultans, before the Omani Arabs of Zanzibar took over.

Much of East Africa would eventually end up in British hands; the Portuguese clung to Mozambique until 1975, fighting a bitter guerrilla war to keep it. The liberation of Mozambique, Angola (also Portuguese), Zimbabwe, and South Africa was a cause we grew up with in the 1960s in newly independent Tanzania, which had become a champion of African freedom. In National Service, where we were sent after high school, we sang about all these causes, wishing death to the enemies of Africa during our morning jogs, and on long route marches over the countryside, dressed in khakis and boots, our G3 rifles in our hands. The headquarters of the Mozambique freedom movement,
FRELIMO
, was in Dar es Salaam, on Nkrumah Street, where the leader, Eduardo Mondlane, was killed by a letter bomb presumably sent by the Portuguese. The head of the Angolan freedom movement, Samora Machel, was later killed in a plane crash believed to be arranged by the South Africans. Dar’s Acacia Avenue, its name already changed once to Independence Avenue, is now Samora Avenue.

Yes, says our guide, there are ghosts on the Island; and there are also people who are descended from those early Arabs. He shows us a boy of about eight with an almost translucent brown skin and a round head. They are called Shombe, says the guide. We see another man, black, but with a greenish glint to his eye; he claims that descent too, on his mother’s side. Many of the Shombe have gone to Dar, the guide adds. I recall that “Shombe” in my childhood was a derogatory term for a half-caste.

We walk farther inland through a field and come to an immense baobab tree, its girth some ten feet across. Looking up into the gnarly, leafless branches coloured a grim shade of grey, one can well believe them to harbour a ghost; an important spirit of the air, a captain among djinns. This would be an eerie place at night. Past the baobab we walk along a path and come to a settlement, all mud and wattle, and no electricity. In fact the Island is not electrified at all; from our hotel it appears totally dark at night save for some pinpricks of light. We come to a table where a few men sit idly and, just to bring business, we join them and ask for tea, which is brought for us. There are no jobs, the men say. Yes, there are the ruins, but the government has brought no development; what do we eat, the stones? Our guide takes us to a large, square structure closer to the shore. It is a madrassa. We walk inside and meet the principal. They teach Islamic doctrine, he says, up to Standard 6, and also English and Math. But the teaching is in Arabic, no Swahili is used. The boys come from different parts of the country on scholarship. After Standard 6, some of them get further scholarships to go to Egypt, Libya, and other places. This appears to be a madrassa of the Shadhiliyya Sufi group.