coastweek.com

THE MOMBASA OLD TOWN -
OLDER THAN MILLENNIUM !

MAP PHOTO courtesy - British Library from Sloane MS197. Taken from
Livro do Estado da India Oriental 1646. Used as the front cover to 'THE
OLD TOWN MOMBASA - A Historical Guide' published by the 'Friends of
Fort Jesus' and printed by the Rodwell Press, Mombasa.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT MOMBASA RANKS
AMONG THE 'OLDEST CITIES' OF THE WORLD

Coastweek - - How old is Mombasa town ?

No one knows for sure writes Coast historian JUDY ALDRICK.

But what is certain, there has been a port at Mombasa for more than a thousand years.

In Roman times, in the 2nd century AD, Ptolomy wrote about the trading ports of the East African coast and Mombasa with its excellent natural harbours and location in the path of the trade winds must surely have been one of them.

However it is difficult to identify which of the places mention-ed in Ptolomy's Geography corresponds to present day Mombasa as the names have all changed.

The Romans called Africa, Azania, the East African coast they called Parvum Litus and in those days the main ports were Serapion, Tonike and Rhaptum, but where they were exactly is anyone's guess.

Before that, though no written records survive, it is known that early seafarers from the Gulf of Oman and from Persia and India came to these shores and earlier still, over 2,000 years ago, the Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians and Greeks traded along the East African coast.

The traders brought silk, cotton cloth, ironware, glassware and pottery items which they bartered for goods such as ivory and gold, tortoiseshell, gum copal, ambergris, mangrove poles, timber and slaves.

They revitualled their vessels, stopped awhile and took local wives, before returning whence they came.

They came with the North East trade wind, Kaskazi ya vule and returned by the South West trade wind, Kuzi ya mwaka.

Winds that began before history was made.

A trade route that stretches back into time immemorial.

Oral tradition speaks of Mwana Mkisa a Queen of Mombasa, who was ruling before Islam became established on the coast.

Her town was variously known as Gongwa, the place of the palace, or Kongowea - the place where people are welcomed.

Shehe Mvita was the founder of the first Muslim settlement in Mombasa.

He was a Shirazi, from Persia, whose unmarked grave lies in the grounds of the Allidina Visram school.

He started the Shirazi dynasty and is considered the ancestor of the present Mombasa Swahili people.

The first documented mention of Mom-basa by name comes in 1154, when Al Idrisi an Arab geographer at the court of Roger II of Sicily made a silver model of the world (considered flat not round in those days) and wrote brief descriptions and drew maps of all the places he marked.

Mombasa he said was a small town of the Zanj, situated on the sea and on the edge of a big creek, a journey of two days along the coast from Malindi.

He described how its inhabitants were engaged in the extraction of iron from their mines and in hunting leopards and how there were fierce red dogs and wild beasts living close by.

They do not have any proper buildings' he said, 'and in this town is the residence of the king of the Zanj and his soldiers go on foot because they have no riding animals'.

Zanj or Zinj is the Arab name for Africa.

Ibn Battatu, another Arab geographer, writing two hundred years later in 1331 provides the first eye witness account of Mombasa town.

He stayed there one night and wrote from first hand knowledge.

The picture had changed considerably.

He describes Mombasa as a large island with Muslim inhabitants, who are pious, honourable and upright with Mosques made of wood, admirably constructed.

By the time the Portuguese came in 1498, Mombasa was a well established and wealthy town with high stone buildings and narrow streets, looking one imagines not unlike Lamu does today.

Archaeological evidence for an early site of the town of Mombasa was found on the cliff top between the old and new Nyali bridges, where the Coast General Hospital now stands.

Remains of substantial masonry walls were unearthed and sherds of pottery were among the excavated items, also glass beads and fragments of brass and bronze.

Whether this was the original town of Mwana Mkisa, which was later occupied by Shehe Mvita or an even earlier settlement still remains conjecture.

The Swahili town of Mombasa shown in the maps of the Portuguese was situated slightly to the South of this, while the present Old Town, built by the Portuguese dates from the 16th century.

On the opposite side of the island at Kilindini and at the small inlet at Mbaraki there were other natural harbours and suitable places for ships to anchor and there is evidence for further ancient settlements.

There was one township along Mama Ngina Drive, among the old baobab trees.

This was known as Tuaca by the Swahili and was already in ruins when the Portuguese came.

Some think this might have been the port called Tonike by the Romans, but no proof for this has yet come to light.

There is no doubt that Mombasa ranks among the oldest cities of the world and is one of the select few in Africa which can trace its history beyond the millennium.