Behind the Sultan of Kilwa’s “Rebellious Conduct”: Local Perspectives on an International East African Town

Abstract

In 1331, the renowned Arab traveller Ibn Battuta visited Kilwa Kisiwani, a large prosperous trading town on the southern coast of present-day Tanzania (see Figure 1). He declared that “the city…is one of the finest and most substantially built towns” he had seen on the East African coast, and praised the generosity and power of the Sultan (Gibb 1962:380). However, only decades later the town witnessed a dramatic economic downturn, with clear indications that the Sultan had lost considerable influence locally, to recover again only by the mid fifteenth century. By the time Portuguese explorers arrived along the coast at the end of that century, Kilwa had regained some prominence as a multi-faceted destination for Indian Ocean and coastal merchants: acting as a brokering and provisioning centre for the former who sought gold and ivory, and for the latter, as a producer and distribution point for cloth and other imported items acquired through overseas trade. The Sultan of Kilwa stood at the head of these activities and held a powerful, if not controversial, position along much of the coast (Freeman-Grenville 1962a: 59-63).¹