Kilwa's Husuni Kubwa palace marks the Swahili coast's golden age
- Date
- early–mid 14th century CE
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- East Africa (Swahili coast, Kilwa)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
In the first half of the fourteenth century the Swahili city-state of Kilwa Kisiwani, on an island off the coast of present-day Tanzania, reached the height of its power.
Under Sultan al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman the city built the sprawling cliff-top palace of Husuni Kubwa, a stone-and-coral complex of over a hundred rooms combining residence, trading warehouse and ceremonial space, and greatly enlarged its Great Mosque, the largest of its kind on the coast. Kilwa's prosperity rested on its control of the southern outpost of Sofala, the outlet for gold from Great Zimbabwe and the interior, which the city funnelled into the Indian Ocean trade in exchange for Chinese porcelain, Persian faience, Indian textiles and glass beads. Kilwa minted its own copper coinage and, when the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited around 1331, he judged it one of the most beautiful and well-built towns in the world. The Swahili city-states fused African, Arab and Persian influences into a distinctive Islamic urban civilisation, demonstrating Africa's central place in the medieval Indian Ocean world.
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Empires active in early–mid 14th century CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Mongol Empire1206 CE – 1368 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Yuan Dynasty1271 CE – 1368 CE
Related economy & trade events
- First large group of enslaved Africans sold at Lagos, Portugal8 August 1444
- Mansa Musa's hajj displays the wealth of Mali to the world1324 CE
- Great Zimbabwe rises as a stone city on the gold trade13th–14th centuries CE
- Yapese Rai Stone Money and the Sawei Tribute Networkc. 1400 CE
- Rise of the Hanseatic Leaguec. 1159
- Song China issues jiaozi, the world's first government paper money1023 CE
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Further reading
The wider story
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