East African sailor led Da Gama to India: without the help of an anonymous East African sailor, it is doubtful that Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer, would have ever succeeded in 'discovering' India. Stephen Williams writes on the early history of the East African region.

The history of Africa's 1,500km Indian Ocean coast from Somalia to Mozambique has been documented for more than 2,000 years, although small coastal settlements undoubtedly existed for many millennia before that.

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Some historians have suggested links between the east coast of Africa and Ancient Egypt. They base their theories on a number of Ancient Egyptian murals that show black Africans bearing tributes of gold, leopard skins, ostrich eggs, ivory and precious stones to the courts of Egyptian Pharaohs. It is possible that these emissaries travelled not from the coast but from a kingdom the Ancient Egyptians knew as Punt--thought to have been located in the triangle between the Red Sea coast, present day Sudan's southern province of Kordofan and Ethiopia's northwest highlands.

What is certain is that by 50 BC, merchants and traders of Roman-ruled Egypt, Axum (Ethiopia), Persia, Phoenicia and southern Arabia had developed long-distance trading routes--east to India, the Far East and China as well as travelling down the African coast as far south as Tanzania and Mozambique.

The ancient Greeks knew of East Africa's coast as Azania but it later became known as the Zhanj coast. "Zhanj" means black in Persian and those early Indian Ocean mariners trading with East Africa could rely upon the regular monsoon winds that blew from the northeast along the African coast between November and March (the Kaskazi wind) and southwest between April and September (the Kusi wind).

They could also depend on the ubiquitous coconut, found in all lands of the Indian Ocean. Both ocean-going and coastal sailing-boat builders of the region had, since time immemorial, used coconut fibres to bind together wooden hulls. This 'sown' technique was developed before there was a ready supply of iron to make nails to hold timbers together, although iron smelting and trading in the commodity is known to have existed in East Africa more than 2,000 years ago.

It is thought that Africa was of lesser interest to the early Red Sea, Arabian and Persian Gulf traders than India and China. The return voyage to the East African coast usually required two years of preparation and voyage time waiting for the right winds, while ships could sail to India and back in less than 12 months. India and China also provided more valuable cargoes for the traders.

Nevertheless, a major trading centre was established at a port called Rhapta (perhaps located near the mouth of the Pangani River close to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, although no trace has been found of it) and traders, particularly from Yemen and Persia, began to settle along the coast of Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania acting as agents for those merchant mariners trading for slaves, ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell, frankincense, myrrh and other trade goods.

The influence of these coastal-settlers became increasingly dominant as they began to trade and intermarry with indigenous Africans. Their presence was to be strengthened as the wealth and power of Persia and Arabia developed shortly after the death of the Prophet Mohamed when Middle East economies boomed. During the 9th and 10th centuries AD, proselytisers arrived with the traders to convert people to Islam.

Islam had a unifying effect on those living on the coast, although some of the customs of the faithful took a different path to the rest of the Islamic world. For example, a unique practice was to build pillars over tombs. Early examples of pillar tombs still stand such as the 14th century Mbaraki Pillar and the 17th century pillar tomb of the Sheik of Changamwe on Mombasa Island.

Shortly after Islam came to East Africa a common trading language, KiSwahili (the language of the Swahili) spread along the coast. Today the language is spoken throughout east and central Africa. Swahili is from an Arabic term that means 'coast' but it has evolved to mean much more. Tanzania's first president Julius Nyerere famously commented "I am a Swahili" even though his family came from inland Tanzania, from a small island on Lake Victoria.

In the centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans, more than 30 Islamic coastal city-states were built and ruled over by sultans claiming descent from the Shiraz region of Persia. During this period, known as the Shirazi era, Indian Ocean trade routes were extended further south along the Zhanj coast as far as Sofala in Mozambique, and an important trading centre on the island of Kilwa, offshore present-day southern Tanzania, was established.

By the 13th century, a number of important ports--Mogadishu, Brava, Malindi, Mombasa, Pemba, Zanzibar, Kisimani Mafia, Kilwa and various smaller settlements--stretched along the Zhanj coast. These coastal entrepots became very wealthy by controlling the trade with Africa's interior.

They traded ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell as well as slaves for Chinese porcelain, Indian textiles and other goods--but gold became an increasingly important metal for the Arab merchants who travelled to Mogadishu's famous market for this precious metal. Much of the gold sold in Mogadishu was mined in Zimbabwe, carried to the coast at Sofala and then shipped by local traders to Mogadishu.

As important as this era was, very little architecture of the Shirazi period still exists--the best-preserved being the early 14th century Friday Mosque and 15th century Makutani Palace found on Kilwa island. But further north, on the Kenyan coast, are the ruins of a number of other settlements. While virtually nothing remains of the Shirazi period in Mombasa, a port that vied in importance with Kilwa during that time, between Mombasa and Malindi are the sites of at least four settlements.

About 13km north of Mombasa are the ruins of Jumba la Mtwana near Mtwapa Creek, a slave-trading settlement. Only parts of the coral-rag walls of the most prestigious buildings of this 14th century site survive, such as the four mosques and a number of important houses. Coral-rag buildings are made of building blocks carved of coral from the reefs that run down the East African coast. The mud and thatch homes of poorer residents have long disappeared.

By Kilifi Creek, 35km north of Jumba la Mtwana, are the Mnarani ruins of a similar period. Here are the remnants of town walls, two mosques and groups of tombs with ornately carved inscriptions while nearby is the smaller Kitoka site with the ruins of a small mosque and a few houses.

The Gedi ruins at Watamu--a small town outside Malindi, now an important tourist-centre but once a thriving trading port--are the largest of all the Shirazi ruins. As with its three sister sites, a considerable amount of speculation and mystery surrounds the fate of the original occupants. After thriving for centuries, the settlements appear to have been abandoned almost overnight.

Malindi itself can trace its own history to the 12th century when Arab traders founded it. But like Mombasa, practically nothing remains of the ancient town. Nevertheless, Malindi is historically significant for two major events. By the first quarter of the 15th century, before European explorers reached East Africa, Chinese mariners had established official relations between the Chinese emperor and the coastal kingdoms of East Africa.

Relations between China's early Ming dynasty and the ruler of Malindi were particularly friendly. The Malindi king sent envoys with the Chinese mariner, Zheng He, bearing gifts of a giraffe, zebra and oryz. The emissaries, and what to the Chinese must have seemed a truly exotic menagerie, reached the Beijing palace of the Chinese emperor in 1415.

Malindi also played a pivotal role when, at the close of that century, the Portuguese appeared. Led by the explorer Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese had been given an inhospitable reception further south at Kilwa and Mombasa where on two occasions the fleet was fired upon by cannon, but the king of Malindi welcomed them and the headland where Da Gama came ashore in 1498 is marked by a white coral-rag cross.

The success of Da Gama's expedition to finally reach India owed almost everything to Malindi. Not only was he permitted to take on fresh water and provisions for the voyage but he also found a local navigator to join his fleet and guide it across the Indian Ocean. Without this anonymous East African, it is doubtful that Da Gama would ever have succeeded in "discovering" India.