Swahili: Did you mean...?

The Swahili Coast on the shores of East Africa was a region where Africans and Arabs mixed to create a unique identity from the 8th century called Swahili Culture. Swahili is the name of their language and means 'people of the coast.' The...

Kilwa, an island located off the coast of East Africa in modern-day southern Tanzania, was the most southern of the major Swahili Coast trading cities that dominated goods coming into and out of Africa from and to Arabia, Persia, and India...

The Portuguese first took an interest in East Africa from the beginning of the 16th century as their empire spread eastwards across the Indian Ocean. Trade in the region was already well-established and carried out by Africans, Indians, and...

A carved wooden doorway typical of Swahili Coast architecture (12th - 15th century CE). Mombasa old town, Kenya.

Artist's impression of the house of a rich Swahili merchant whose trade along the Swahili Coast brought wealth to the family. Created by Amplitude Studios for the video game Humankind.

A map of the east coast of Africa showing, amongst others, the key trade ports of the Swahili Coast during the medieval period, 12th to 15th century CE.

Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated...

The Kikuyu people (aka Gikuyu or Agikuyu) are a Bantu-speaking people who occupied territory in what is today central Kenya in East Africa from the 17th century onwards. They established themselves primarily as agriculturalists around Mount...

Mutapa (aka Matapa, Mwenemutapa, and Monomotapa) was a southern African kingdom located in the north of modern Zimbabwe along the Zambezi River which flourished between the mid-15th and mid-17th century CE. Although sometimes described as...

Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city near Masvingo, central Zimbabwe which was inhabited between c. 1100 to c. 1550 (flourishing c. 1300 - c. 1450) in the region’s Late Iron Age. Capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe of the Bantu-speaking Shona people...