Kilwa Sultanate

The Kilwa Sultanate was a medieval Muslim thalassocracy centred on the island of Kilwa Kisiwani off the coast of present-day Tanzania, which grew into the foremost commercial power of the Swahili Coast.

According to the Kilwa Chronicle it was founded around 957 CE by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi, a prince associated with Shiraz in Persia, inaugurating the Shirazi dynasty; from about 1277 the Yemeni Arab Mahdali (Mahdari) dynasty ruled in its place. Kilwa's wealth rested on its command of long-distance Indian Ocean commerce, above all the gold and ivory that flowed north from the interior of southern Africa, including the empire of Great Zimbabwe, through the southerly port of Sofala, which Sultan Suleiman Hassan seized in the late twelfth century. As an entrepot it linked African gold, ivory, and slaves with Arabian, Persian, Indian, and Chinese goods, and it minted its own copper and silver coinage, specimens of which have been found as far afield as the Wessel Islands of northern Australia. At its fifteenth-century zenith Kilwa claimed overlordship of a chain of coastal cities and islands including Malindi, Mombasa, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia, the Comoros, Sofala, and Mozambique Island. Its prosperity is embodied in monumental coral-stone architecture such as the Great Mosque of Kilwa and the palace of Husuni Kubwa, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The sultanate's independence ended in 1505 when the Portuguese under Francisco de Almeida sacked the city and built a fort, redirecting the Indian Ocean trade and precipitating Kilwa's decline.