Oman captures Fort Jesus and seizes the Swahili coast
- Date
- 13 December 1698
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Swahili coast, East Africa (modern Kenya/Tanzania)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
After a siege lasting from March 1696 to December 1698, the army of the Yarubid sultan of Oman, Saif ibn Sultan, stormed Fort Jesus at Mombasa on 13 December 1698, ending nearly two centuries of Portuguese dominance over the East African coast.
Omani forces expelled the Portuguese from Zanzibar, Pemba, Pate and Kilwa, pushing them south to Mozambique and bringing the Swahili city-states of present-day Kenya and Tanzania under Arab Omani overlordship. The conquest reoriented the Indian Ocean trade of the Swahili coast toward Muscat and the Arabian and Persian Gulf worlds, reviving commerce in ivory, gold and, increasingly, enslaved Africans drawn from the interior. Over the following century Omani influence deepened, culminating in the rise of Zanzibar as a commercial hub whose clove plantations and slave markets would make it the centre of the nineteenth-century East African slave trade. The 1698 victory thus marked a decisive shift in the balance of power on the Indian Ocean rim, replacing a declining European maritime empire with an expanding Arab one and setting the stage for the entanglement of the Swahili coast in a vast oceanic slaving system distinct from, but parallel to, the Atlantic trade.
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Empires active in 13 December 1698
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Fall of Beijing and the Ming–Qing transition1644
- Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War23 May 1618
- Second Siege of Vienna and the turn of the Ottoman tide12 September 1683
- Dahomey conquers Allada and Whydah on the Slave Coast1724–1727
- Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and shatters Mughal powerMarch 1739
- Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang1755–1759
Also relevant
Further reading
The wider story
The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages
Sets Kanem-Bornu within the wider medieval African world.
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