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Trying to found out more of this part of the swahili world before Omani Domination from 1698 onward but there's not much. Island was settled before 1st century AD and that Stone town was built on the site of an earlier fishing village.
Hmm...was it a great city-state like kilwa, mombasa, lamu, malindi, gedi, sofala,etc? Before Omani rule I mean.
Posts: 74 | From: Kanata | Registered: Oct 2013
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The Swahili coast was an important part of the Indian ocean trade during the classical, middle age and Renaissance era before the coming of the Portuguese pirates. There should be a lot of Indian, Persian, Roman, Egyptian, Khmer and Chinese artifacts in the Swahili coast. African schools should do archeological work in the Swahili coast.
Map of Indian ocean trade.
Coin of an Indian ruler wearing Roman helmet according to Wikipedia. Could also be the coin of a black Roman wearing Roman helmet
Emperor Augustus decided that the circumnavigation of Africa should also be attempted (in 1 BC). Romans had two naval ouposts in the Atlantic coast of Africa: Sala near actual Rabat and Mogador in actual southern Maroc (north of Agadir). The island of Mogador prospered for the local exploitation of purple (highly esteemed in imperial Rome) from Augustus until Septimius Severus times. Augustus, based even in the discovery of a sunken merchant ship from southern Spain in the Djibuti area (done by his adoptive son Gaius Caesar when he sailed toward Aden), wanted to organize an expedition from Egypt to Mogador and Sala around Africa.
The eastern coast of Africa south of Egypt was at the center of a huge sea commerce, probably related to initial exploratory expeditions like the one promoted by Augustus around Africa and the Arabian peninsula, between Rome and India through the Somalian coast.
Roman books such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and Ptolomey's "Geography" list a string of market places (emporia) along this coast. Finds of Roman-era coins along the coast confirm the existence of this huge trade even in coastal Tanzania, and Ptolomey's Geography refers to a town of Rhapta as "metropolis" of a political entity called Azania near actual Zanzibar. But archaeologists have not yet succeeded in identifying the location of Rhapta, though many believe it lies deeply buried in the silt of the delta of the Rufiji River.
The scholar Felix Chami has found archaeological evidence for extensive Roman trade on Mafija island near the Kenyan coast and, not far away, on the African mainland, near the mouth of the Rufiji River and the northern Mozambique coast, which he dated to the first few centuries CE. Furthermore, J. Innes Miller points out that Roman coins have been found on Pemba island, just north of Rhapta.
Roman coins have been found in Zimbabwe and Madagascar, supporting the possibility that Roman vessels sailed south of Azania toward the area of the gold mines of the Zambesi river and the legendary Greater Zimbabwe kingdo
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