AFRO-ARAB CONTACT ALONG THE EAST COAST OF AFRICA

Sources Of Historical Information For The Early Period Along The East Coast of
Africa

(Main Reference: Ivan Hrbek)

Until the 15th century, Classical and Arabic sources were dominant

Classical : Sources connected with or influenced by the culture of ancient Greece and
Rome.

1. Strabo (-29 to +19): He witnessed the period of Roman expansion under Augustus,
and gives accounts of the Red Sea region and the Indian Ocean trade. Strabo wrote his
famous geography at the beginning of the Christian era and compiled his map from
travelers' reports and the "writings" of ancients.

2. Pliny (+23 to +79):Better known as Pliny the Elder. He describes the Roman empire
at its height and gives a valuable description of trade and navigation in the Indian
Ocean

3. Periplus of the Erythrean Sea: Literally meaning ‘the circumnavigation of the Indian
Ocean’,

It was a commercial handbook and probably the most valuable and informative source
regarding the early period along the East African coast.

It was written around A.D 120 by an unidentified Greek merchant resident in

Alexandria, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian
ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa
and India.

4. Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’ written about the 5th century A.D.

He was born in Alexandria, Egypt and became one of the most influential Greek
mathematical astronomers

He drew a map of the world and our present coordinate system for mapping the earth
was devised by him around 150 AD. To locate places, Ptolemy traced out a grid system
of latitude and longitude over the globe.

5. Cosmas Indicopleustes’ ‘Christian Topography’ written during the first half of the
6th century A.D.

While it is known from classical literature that there had been trade between the
Roman Empire and India, Cosmas was one of the individuals who had actually made
the journey.

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He travelled over much of the Red Sea coast, and as far as modern Sri Lanka and
described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography.

Arabic sources begun to appear from the 7th century A.D with the expansion of
Islam e.g.

Al Masudi (871-957 AD): made an important contribution to earth sciences and is

nicknamed the 'Herodotus of the Arabs' because he was the first Arab to combine
history and geography.

He traveled extensively in India, the Middle East, and Africa and wrote a 30-volume
history of the world and described the experiences of his travels from Europe to India.

Ibn Battuta (1304–1368 or 1369): A Moroccan Berber Muslim scholar and traveller who
is known for the account of his travels and excursions

By the time of Ibn Battuta’s appearance on the Somali coast in 1331, the city was at
the peak of its prosperity. He continued south along the Swahili Coast, a region then
known in Arabic as the Bilad al-Zanj ("Land of the Zanj").

He stopped at the island town of Mombasa and continued along the coast to the island
town of Kilwa in present day Tanzania which had become an important transit centre
in the gold trade.

Early Contacts Between The East Coast Of Africa And The Outside World

(Main Reference: H. H. Abdul-Sherrif)

Factors Facilitating Early Contacts Along The Coast

One of the outstanding characteristics of the East African coast has been its relative
accessibility from the interior and from the sea. For over 2000 years the East African
coast has been penetrated by two cultural streams, the vehicle for that process being
trade.

Trade facilitated the assimilation of the East African coast into the international
economic system with its attendant consequences.

1. The Continental factor

The East African coastal region forms a fairly distinct geographical entity,
bounded on the west by a belt of poor, low rainfall scrub known as the Nyika.
Population movements therefore probably followed corridors of more favourable
environment around or across the Nyika such as that along the Tana in Kenya
and the Pangani and associated mountain chains in North East Tanzania.

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 Accessibility from the interior has been vital for population movements into the
coastal belt, and helps to explain its ethnic and cultural complexity.

2. The Oceanic factor:

The sea has been a means of contact with the outside world. Accessibility from
the sea has given the coast a long history of commercial contact, cultural
influence and population movements from the lands across the Indian Ocean.
Interaction existed between East Africa and the Middle East, and between the
Middle East and India. An intermediary role was also played by the Middle East
between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Such interaction was
possible due to the development of a suitable marine technology and the
harnessing of the winds and currents of the Indian ocean
The north-east monsoon ‘trade’ winds beginning in November/December would
bring vessels to the East Coast of Africa.
By January/February they would be in East Africa from Arabia and the Persian
Gulf: after trading up and down the coast, they would return to their own
countries around the end of March and early June courtesy of the south-west
monsoon winds

Early Visitors To The East Coast

Some historians have suggested that Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians and others may
have come to the East African Coast centuries before the birth of Christ.

Phoenicians: They lived on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, their chief ports
being Tyre and Sidon.

Circumstances of their coming: King Hiram of Phoenicia is reported to have entered into
an alliance with King Solomon around 1000 B.C and sent ships down the East Coast
of Africa to modern Sofala.

Herodotus also gives a brief account of the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenicians

Persians: One of the earliest civilizations in the world grew up in the neighborhood of
the Persian Gulf, in present-day Iraq, where the Sumerians lived.

At a very early date, Sumerians made voyages on the open sea and invented a sailing
ship.

Sumerians flourished for a thousand years and thereafter were conquered by the
Assyrians who preserved and developed Sumerian culture.

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The Assyrians also made sea voyages which probably made them reach the East Coast
of Africa.

Evidence:

i. A good deal of the magic practiced among the East African coastal people
has similarities to that of Sumerians
ii. The Swahili SIWA – a symbol of power and authority - is similar to that
found in Assyrian writings and sculptures where the sign of a horn indicates
strength and chieftainship

Egyptians: The ancient Egyptian civilization grew about the same time as that of the
country around the Persian Gulf.

Egyptian literature records that trading expeditions were sent to a country called
PUNT where they acquired incense, gold, ivory and leopard skins used in luxurious
palaces of the Kings and nobles of Egypt.

Punt has been further recorded to probably have been west of Cape Guardafui. The
Periplus calls it Cape of Spices.

For some 4 centuries after the time of Ptolemy there is no reliable information about
the coast. It is probable that some trade continued with the Arab world, and that there
was some trickle of Arab immigration.

Arabs can be considered to be probably the most important visitors to the East Coast,
having a greater and more permanent influence than any other visitors.

i. There are unreliable traditions of colonisers being sent by Harun al-Rashid,

the fifth Caliph (religious and political leader of an Islamic state) of the
Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad
ii. There is a tradition from Oman of an emigration from that country to the
land of Zenj in the 7th Century: two brothers, Sulaiman and Sa’id, joint
rulers of Oman, supposedly left with their followers after being defeated by
an Ummayad army. Already by the 7th C. Chinese trade goods were also
available in the whole of the Indian Ocean.
iii. There are reports of the coming of followers of the Shi’a leader Zaid. In the
8th or 9th C. some Zaidis actually arrived on the Banadir Coast, from which
they were later displaced by Orthodox immigrants, becoming largely
absorbed in the interior by the local inhabitants. ‘Banadir’ is a coastal region
of Somalia that covers most of the Indian ocean coast of the country from
the Gulf of Aden to the Juba river, containing the capital of Mogadishu. The
name comes from Persian bandar meaning ‘port’.

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Names East Africa Was Known By

The East African coast was known as ‘Azania’ to the Graeco-Roman writers, and as the
‘Land of the Zenj/Zanj/Zinj ‘(Land of the Blacks) to the Arabs.

Its chief town was called ‘Rhapta’, probably located in the Rufiji Delta.

The geographers divided the coast of East Africa at large into several regions based on
each region's respective inhabitants:

i. In northern Somalia was ‘Barbara’ (around modern-day Berbera), which was

the land of the Eastern Baribah or Barbaroi (Berbers), as Somalis were
referred to by medieval Arab and ancient Greek geographers, respectively.
ii. In modern-day Ethiopia was ‘al-Habash’ or Abyssinia, which was inhabited
by the ‘Habash’ or Abyssinians.
iii. Beyond the Abyssinian highlands and the Berber coast lay to the south
‘Zanj’ (also transliterated as ‘Zenj’ or ‘Zinj’), a land inhabited by Bantu-
speaking peoples called the Zanj, which stretched from the area far south of
present-day Mogadishu, to Pemba Island in Tanzania.
iv. South of Zanj lay the Land of Sofala in Mozambique, the northern limit of
which may have been Pangani, opposite Pemba Island. Al-Mas’udi describes
Sofala as the furthest limit of the Zanj settlement and mentions its kings
title as Mfalme (a Bantu word)

The Growth Of The Indian Ocean Trade And Its Impact On East Africa

There was probably no commercial exchange between East Africa and India before the
7th century A.D. India was largely self-sufficient especially in the staple ‘forest’
products East Africa could have supplied e.g. ivory

Expansion Of Trade Under The Romans

The establishment of the Roman empire under Augustus resulted in a tremendous

increase in the demand for oriental commodities.

This was followed by an aggressive policy in the Red Sea region designed to break Arab
monopoly. In this manner, the Romans entered into the Indian ocean trade, being
together with Indians and Arabs.

Imports from Indian seaports: Cotton cloth, grain, ghee, sugar

Greek/Roman ships: Dyed cloaks and tunics, copper, tin, worked silver, wine and
drinking cups, plates, swords and iron weapons

East Africa: Ivory, turtle shells, slaves, rhino horn

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Consequences Of East Africa's Involvement In The Indian Ocean Trade

By the middle of the 2nd century a large part of the East African coast and at least
part of the Pangani corridor had been drawn into the trade

i. Due to the international nature of the trade, economic growth may have
been stimulated at its peak by supplying iron goods and helping to bring the
knowledge of iron.
ii. The demand for ivory, rhinoceros horns and tortoise-shell gave value to
resources which had probably little local value previously and thus widened
East Africa’s sources of wealth
iii. International trade in the Indian ocean complex appears to have also helped
bring about urbanization of the market centres i.e. coastal city states
iv. There was a growing class of racially mixed coastal peoples – increasingly
outward-looking and dependent on foreign trade.
v. Fortunes of local operators rose and fell depending on the performance of
the trade and partners abroad. When Rome fell in 410 A.D. distant Rhapta
also declined. This paved way for the command of the Indian Ocean by the
Persians in the 6th and 7th centuries. There are reports of Zanji slaves
reaching China as early as the 7th century. By the 10th century India and
China were the most important markets for East African ivory.

T.Bagajah, 2023