Kilwa Kisiwani

One of the first things that Becca and I did when we got to Dar was to visit the National Museum. There, we saw a rather large exhibit about Kilwa, a trading hub of the Swahili coast that rose to global prominence a few different times between 1300 and 1800. Most famously, during the 1330's Kilwa controlled the gold coming out of Great Zimbabwe and the port of Sofala. As middlemen for the precious metal coming out of the interior of Southern Africa, Kilwa quickly became fabously wealthy. The Moroccan Muslim traveler Ibn Battutah even stopped in Kilwa on his journey from Spain to China and back again in the middle of the 14th century. At various times throughout history, Kilwa rose to prominence as a trading hub for spices, ivory, gold, and slaves. Finally, after a short revival just before the end of the slave trade, the Omani Arabs, in an attempt to consolidate control from Zanzibar exiled the final sultan of Kilwa towards the end of the 18th century.

After getting home from the museum, we checked out a map, and saw that Kilwa was "only" about 330km to the south of Dar, and we decided to use the weekend to travel there. We flew down after class on Friday afternoon, and then we took the bus back on Sunday morning.

What is especially neat about Kilwa is that many of the buildings documented the past riches of Kilwa still exist as ruins. Admittedly, it takes some imagination to recreate the splendor of the palaces, but the fact that these buildings still exist--most notably a mosque that still retains its domed tops--makes it possible to just walk around inside the structures. For me, it was also so interesting to realize that vast majority of the knowledge that we have about Kilwa is due to archeological findings. Historians trying to study, for example, England, in the 1500's have a sizeable collection of written documents and records to go from. For those (few) that have tried to study Kilwa few such records have been found. Usually, I tend to think of acheology as a people looking for Troy or King Tut's tomb, not records of Portugese trade goods from the middle of the 18th century. There is, however, a part of me that thinks that these records must exist somewhere. But even that doesn't help much! They could be in Mombassa or Oman, Istanbul or Gujerat, Lisbon or Seville, and in any more languages than any one scholar could probably ever hope to know.

More than anything, though, that shows how important Kilwa (and the rest of the "Swahili Coast") has been throughout history. Just as I saw in Zanzibar, the early modern world, especially once Vasco de Gama rounded South Africa, truly went through the "Spice Islands" off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania. And that is just really cool.

However, the past greatness of Kilwa has certainly not translated into modern wealth. The roads away from it are impassible when it rains, and (as we found out) bumpy and unpaved even when you can get through. The airstrip nearby is unpaved, and the site sees only a trickle of visitors (despite being a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Furthermore, the village of Kilwa was one of the poorest that I have seen. Living around the ruins of fabulous wealth are people who still use the same wells that the Kilwa Sultans once did. I cannot even imagine living in an omnipresent shadow of past riches and knowing that at one point the stones piled up around you were the center of the world.