Chat in Kisiwani

Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara are two small islands off the coast of Tanzania that represent the vestiges of two large commercial ports where, between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, the gold and iron of Great Zimbabwe, the slaves and the ivory of all of East Africa, for fabrics, porcelains, jewelry and spices from Asia. These islands were inscribed by Unesco in 1981 in the list of sites that constitute World Heritage with the denomination of Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara and, in 2004, in the List of World Heritage in danger. In June 2014, Unesco removed these ruins from the list of World Heritage Sites in danger due to improved management and safeguarding of the site.

Located at the entrance to a bay in southeastern Tanzania, the islands of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara seem to have been occupied in the ninth century, probably by Swahili populations, and at that time, a chief of the island of Kilwa Kisiwani was he sells it to an Arab merchant named Ali bin Al-Hasan, founder of the so-called Shiraz dynasty. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, their descendants will create here the most powerful commercial center of East Africa. In the thirteenth century, their leaders dominated all the commercial centers of the African coast, from Pemba Island, to the north, to Sofala, in the south. The western world began to know Kilwa through the writings of a Moroccan intellectual traveler, Abu Abdullah Ibn Batuta, who visited it in 1331. He was ecstatic about the "beauty of the big city, with buildings built of coral stone, usually with a single floor and small rooms separated by massive walls and with roofs formed of plates of the same stone, supported by the walls and mangrove stakes ".

But he also found "formidable structures of several floors and some beautifully ornamented with sculpted stone in the entrances, carpets and niches covering the walls and the floor with carpets. Of course these were the houses of the rich, because the poor lived in houses of straw, they simply wore cloth over their legs and ate corn porridge..".

About 170 years later, Pedro Álvares Cabral also visited Kilwa and referred to the beautiful coral houses and their terraces, belonging to "black Moors", which attracted the attention of the Portuguese At the beginning of the 16th century, the fortune of Kilwa changed radically: Vasco da Gama took the island in 1502 and, as the Sultan ceased paying his tribute, on July 24,1505, the Portuguese, commanded by Francisco de Almeida, destroyed it and built a fort that was later used as a prison and, therefore, called "Gereza." In 1512, the island was conquered by an Arab force and returned to be a Swahili city-state until 1784, when it became a protectorate of Oman and returned to lose its power. In 1843, the neighboring city of Kilwa Kivinje, about 20 km north on the coast, was used as a port and Kilwa Kisiwani was abandoned and its buildings became ruins. In the 1950s, the colonial authorities co They begin to explore the ruins and later recover some buildings. At this time Kilwa Kisiwani is an important tourist spot. Among the most important buildings are: The Great Mosque of Kilwa, which was the largest in Africa when it was built, with large vaults and monolithic pillars. The Husuni Kubwa Palace, with 100 rooms, is the largest pre-European stone building in the eastern and southern African region. The small mosque, also vaulted, which is the best preserved building on the island.

The Makutani Palace, with large triangular walls. The "Little" Husuni Ndogo. Y. La Gereza.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilwa_Kisiwani