Empires of the Monsoon

FOUR

Islam Rules in the Land of Zanj

The Zanj have no ships in which they can voyage, but boats land in their country from Oman, as do others that are going to Zabaj [Indonesia] … The inhabitants of Zabaj call at Zanj in both large and small ships and trade their merchandise with them, as they understand each other’s language.

—Al-Idrisi (1110–65), A Book of Entertainment for One Desirous to go Round the World

UNLIKE THE INDONESIANS, who forgot their original homeland after migrating to Madagascar, the Arab and Persian settlers on the East African coast always looked back to the great cities of the Middle East. They looked back quite literally, bowing towards Mecca in their mosques, where they heard the sermons of imams who read the Qur’ān and sustained their faith. The dhows sailing south to Africa on the winter monsoon brought goods which sustained their cultural links with Islam.

The earliest settlements, dating to A.D. 750 or earlier, had been rudimentary, laid out in an African style, with protective wooden palisades. Such places were too remote to make use of artisans who built in stone in the Arabic manner. Sites of the first mosques are revealed by traces of wooden post-holes in the earth, and these show a curious error: the alignment is not directly towards Mecca, as the Prophet had ruled. This suggests that the newcomers were simple traders who could not ‘read’ the night sky correctly, since their only way of finding a precise bearing was from the stars.

The logical first step for Arab newcomers was simply to install themselves in an established African fishing village, near a bay where boats could be safely run up on the beach at high title for unloading and loading. In such places, nameless and ungoverned, life was ruthless. As well as the threats from within an encampment, there was always the danger – with nobody to call upon for help – of surprise attacks by seaborne raiders. One settlement in the Comoro islands, far to the south, was built on top of a cliff, through fear of the Waqwaqs from nearby Madagascar.

It was not only to protect themselves from one another that the rival settlers tended to live on islands. They had good reason to maintain a safe distance from the Africans of the mainland. Several early communities chose islands more than a day’s sailing out in the ocean, such as Zanzibar, Pembra and Mafia, all big enough to be self-supporting in times of war. African dugout canoes, used for fishing inside the coral reefs, could not reach such islands to retrieve captives, and there was no risk that newly-acquired domestic slaves might try swimming back to shore.

Safe on their islands, the Arabs never wished to venture into Africa. They merely waited for the products of the interior to come to them. At their backs the mainland was a brooding and hostile giant, whom none cared to challenge. Local women taken as wives or concubines, and the slaves working in the gardens, were converted to Islam.1 But there was no attempt to spread the faith within Africa – its people remained kafirs.

After a few generations the settlements grew more prosperous and secure. Bigger mosques were built, and although still of wood they were now on a true alignment to Mecca. When trading ships came over the horizon from the Gulf and the Red Sea, the settlers could afford to barter for many luxuries. By the ninth century they were eating off Chinese floral-pattern plates, as well as oriental stoneware and opaque white porcelain. These outposts could tap into trade routes reaching all the way, through cities such as Siraf, to the great ports of Tang China.

The settlers also possessed pottery and glass goblets from Persia, phials containing attar of roses, many household ornaments, and brass oil-lamps. Their combs were made of tortoiseshell, cosmetics were kept in carved copper bowls. They stored their water in tall pottery jars, originally used to transport oil and wine from the Persian Gulf.

In exchange for these reminders of a distant splendour, the settlers had more than gold, ivory and slaves to offer. There were leopard-skins used on saddles, rhinoceros horns for making medicines, and the buoyant pale blue ambergris – as valuable, weight for weight, as gold – which the winds and currents swept up on to the sandy beaches. The ambergris was used to ‘fix’ perfumes, and for scenting the oil in lamps: a tenth-century poet writes of the way ‘gilded lamps, fed with ambergris, shine like pearls’.

The Chinese in particular valued this mysterious substance which, apart from its other qualities, was vaunted as an aphrodisiac; yet they did not know exactly where the ambergris came from, and named it ‘dragon’s spittle’. (The Zanj people simply called it ‘treasure of the sea’.) In fact, it was an excretion of solidified fluids, sometimes as big as an ostrich egg, from the stomachs of the sperm whales which in those times abounded in the Indian Ocean.

As the Muslim pioneers grew even richer they began building with coral stone and bricks carried from Persia as ballast. Orange and lemon orchards and vegetable gardens were planted round their homes. The animal enclosures contained sheep, goats and even camels.

The sea itself was a ready supplier of food, although some species were gradually hunted into oblivion along the East African coast. An early victim was the dugong, a large harmless mammal living on sea plants. It was often to be seen basking on coral rocks, and from a distance could look almost human, so that it became the source of many Arabic tales about mermaids. By A.D. 1000 the dugong had vanished for ever from the western side of the Indian Ocean.

Other sea creatures to suffer at the hands of the newcomers were giant tortoises and turtles, valuable for their shells. According to Muslim law, the eating of tortoises was forbidden, and this should have been obeyed not only by the faithful, but also the kafirs working for them as slaves. However, there is evidence from ancient rubbish dumps that tortoises were consumed with gusto in some early settlements. Far in the south, in the Comoro islands, there was an equal readiness to eat lemurs, which would certainly have been prohibited fare for devout Muslims, since these animals live in trees and have monkey-like bodies.

This may suggest that some early settlers on the East African coast were fugitives or outcasts from the Arab world. In their isolation on the remote African shore they would be beyond the reach of enemies, and may have ignored some more inconvenient religious rules. It is hard to be sure, however, because legends about the identity of the Arabs who migrated to the Land of Zanj often contradict one another.

One popular account tells how Abd-al-Malik, an early caliph, gave orders that all of Oman’s independent chiefs should be deposed. This was harsh treatment, for Oman had accepted Islam as early as A.D. 630, during Muhammad’s lifetime. So two brothers, Sulaiman and Sa’id, organized the defence of Oman and drove back a land and sea attack by 40,000 men. Finally, 5,000 cavalry were sent in and the brothers could resist no longer. They decided to flee to Africa, taking with them their families and followers. The date, it is said, was around A.D. 700.

Other events in the expansion of Islam may also have sparked off migrations to East Africa. Most crucial was the overthrow of the original dynasty, the Umayyads, in 750, by the caliph Abu-al-Abbas, the ‘Shedder of Blood’. He had defeated and executed his predecessor, then organized a banquet of conciliation for the dignitaries of the former regime. The guests arrived, sat down to eat, then were murdered to a man before they could start. A carpet of leather was thrown over the bodies, then the host and his followers sat down on it to enjoy a hearty meal. Supporters of the Umayyad dynasty – which re-established itself in Spain – would have been understandably keen to put some distance between themselves and Abu-al-Abbas; an expanse of Indian Ocean might have seemed appropriate.

Some newcomers ventured into little-known waters, far to the south. The Chibuene settlement was several days’ sailing beyond Sofala towards the Cape of Good Hope, and its merchants traded inland along the Limpopo and Sabe river valleys. An eighth-century Islamic burial site has been found at Chibuene, and the town may even have been founded in pre-Islamic times.

When later communities arrived in Zanj, their leaders were quick to assert independence. Each proudly called himself a sultan and some claimed as their ancestor, real or symbolic, a famous trader named Ahmed bin Isa, who had left Basra for Arabia in the year 930. More importantly, these new rulers were all sharifs, meaning that they claimed descent from the Prophet. Their arrival in East Africa, towards the end of the eleventh century, marked the start of a visibly different era.2 New towns, with mosques and palaces built of coral blocks, were established on offshore islands or mainland strongpoints. Soon there was rivalry between the towns over the size of their mosques and palaces and the elegance of their architecture.

The self-confidence of these new rulers was symbolized by the large-scale minting of coins. Although in earlier centuries some simple copper currency had been produced in the Land of Zanj, coins were now also cast in silver, and a few even in gold. They all bore a Qur’ānic inscription on one side and the name of a sultan on the other. The tiny copper coins, made from metal smelted in the African interior, were for buying goods in the local markets; they were intended to replace cowrie shells, the traditional form of currency brought from the Maldive islands.3 The gold was likewise African, but the silver had to be imported – usually in the form of coins, which were then melted down. Foreign money, mainly Arab and Egyptian dinars, was also used. Traders brought home Indian and Chinese coins, but these were merely souvenirs. A pit at the site of one coastal town has yielded up an eleventh-century Hindu statuette; it possibly served as a trader’s weight.4

Among the ruling families, at least on the male side, there was a high degree of literacy. This is reflected in the stylized script known as kufic, carved on coral slabs in the mosques and on tombstones; brought to perfection in Siraf, the floriate kufic was admired as far away as Spain. The flat-roofed stone houses of the wealthiest families displayed a regard for orderly comfort not witnessed before in Zanj: they had bathrooms and plumbing, glazed windows and plastered walls. Some buildings were three storeys high, with carved and brass-studded front doors, behind which entrance halls led into receiving rooms. The designs on the Persian carpets spread over the floors and hanging on the walls symbolized Arab society: the centrepiece represented the sultan, with his courtiers surrounding him, and the outer parts of the patterns stood for the villagers, artisans and slaves.

Although the new rulers, as well as their law-makers and courtiers, were certainly literate in Arabic, no contemporary accounts of how these dynasties established themselves have survived. A fragmentary chronicle, written at least four centuries later, tells the history of the island city-state of Kilwa, founded by a Persian named Ali bin al-Hasan. The name Kilwa means ‘fishing place’ and the chronicle says the island was bought from an African chief with enough cloth to stretch right round the island (a distance of about fifteen miles); in truth, the chief was probably given only a few bales.

Kilwa was to grow into the wealthiest city on the entire coast, able to control a nearby part of the mainland known as Muli, where rice and other crops were grown. It had the advantage of being several days’ journey south of Zanzibar, and thus was strategically placed to exact tolls from ships travelling to and from the gold port of Sofala. Although Kilwa was remote, an experienced captain who knew exactly when to set out could sail there from India or Arabia in one monsoon season. It was a terminus of the ocean trade with Africa.

A few of the visitors to the coast took a perceptive interest in the mainland Africans. One was Abu’l Hasan ‘Ali al-Mas’udi, an Arab writer who first sailed to Zanj from Siraf in A.D. 916, when he was in his early twenties. He was the type of traveller, always asking questions, whose enthusiasm never waned. Born in Baghdad, he made journeys to India, Persia, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, Syria and Egypt. While in East Africa he stayed mainly at Qanbalu, whose population he describes as a ‘mixture of Muslims and Zanj infidels’, speaking the ‘Zanjiyya language’. The language was elegant, and the Zanj preachers would often gather a crowd and exhort them to ‘please God in their lives and be obedient to him’. The crowd would then be told to remember their ancestors and ancient kings. Al-Mas’udi’s account goes on: ‘These people have no religious law … every man worships what he pleases, be it a plant, an animal, or a mineral.’ This is the earliest description of the local Swahili (coastal) people of East Africa, and shows that some, at least, still clung to their African religions.5 Plainly, the towns had a ruling élite and a black population with which the Arab settlers were more or less integrated.

The villages of the Zanj, according to al-Mas’udi, stretched for 700 parasangs (2,500 miles) along the coast; an accurate estimate of the distance from the entrance of the Red Sea to the mainland facing southern Madagascar. Although he twice visited East Africa, he does not say if he travelled as far south as Sofala, but is quite definite that a king of the Africans ruled in that distant region, and had many lesser chiefs subject to him. This matches what is known from archaeology, that embryonic African states were taking shape at that time in the hinterlands of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Since merchants travelled regularly up and down the coast, it would have been easy, even in Qanbalu, to learn about the cattle-keeping kingdoms of the distant south.

Horses and camels were unknown there, writes al-Mas’udi, but the people owned great numbers of cattle, which were used as beasts of burden. The king had ‘300,000 horsemen’; this is an odd statement, set alongside his assertion that horses were unknown, until it is recalled that the warriors of southern Africa were the guardians of great herds of cattle, and rode on oxen.

The king of the Zanj, he says in a summary of knowledge on Africa, is called the Waflimi. This is his version of Wafulme, the plural of an African name for a paramount chief. The king is descended from a ‘Great God’ named Mulkendjulu (Mukulunkulu). He asserts that some Africans were cannibals, who filed their teeth to points. The interior of the continent is ‘cut up into valleys, mountains and stony deserts’.

The most common creature of all on the mainland was the giraffe, but the animal most hunted was the elephant. One way of catching elephants, says al Mas’udi, is by laying a bait of leaves containing a poison that completely paralyses them. He drily remarks that most tusks were sold in India, which he had visited, and China. That was why ivory was so scarce in Arabia. The Zanj were also good hunters on the ocean, and he vividly relates how they chased whales and harpooned them.

But voyaging to Africa was perilous. ‘I have sailed on many seas, but I do not know of one more dangerous than that of Zanj.’ He lists the captains with whom he has travelled. All had been drowned, paying the ultimate price for venturing to Africa.6 Every successful journey in the flimsy craft of the Indian Ocean (called the Abyssinian Sea by al-Mas’udi) was a gift from God.

Qanbalu was a thriving place which minted its own coinage, although the Arab gold dinar was the main currency used in the Indian Ocean ports. Al-Mas’udi tells of sailing there with a number of Omani shipowners from Sohar. Traders also sailed to Qanbalu from Siraf, home of the story-writer Captain Buzurg. Al Mas’udi knew of Buzurg’s work – they were contemporaries, and had both grown up in or near Basra.

However, al-Mas’udi was to spend his later years in Cairo, a tolerant city where he probably felt safer, since his religious opinions were unorthodox. Only one work survives out of the thirty volumes he is known to have written on geography, medicine and natural history. His world encyclopaedia, Murnj al dhahab, (The Meadows of Gold), exists in a draft form, and his knowledge was at times flimsy: when he describes the Atlantic Ocean he says that ‘Britanya’ is towards its northern end and consists of twelve islands. On the other hand, he is the first Muslim writer to identify Paris, which he called Barisa, as the capital of the ‘Franks’, and is able to assemble an accurate list of French kings. (At that time, in the mid-tenth century, nobody in western Europe could have been remotely as well informed about Arabia or India. When medieval Christian scholars did begin describing the world, they clung to the belief that the three continents were a trinity, with the Holy City in the centre; they knew nothing of China, but said the East was where four great rivers flowed from an Earthly Paradise.)

While al-Mas’udi is the solitary eye-witness of life in the tenth-century Zanj, several of his contemporaries collected what facts they could about it.7 The information available to a renowned geographer, Ibn Hawqal, was scanty. The Africans, he had learned, were ‘not much inclined to the cultivation of the arts and sciences’. But also living in ‘Zingbar’ were white people ‘who bring from other places articles of food and clothing’ (undoubtedly a reference to Arab merchants from the Gulf). The anonymous Persian geography, Hudud al-Alam (Regions of the World), written towards the end of the tenth century, could only say that the ‘country of Zangistan’ was opposite India, and full of gold-mines. For the rest, the author relied on hearsay and prejudice. The Zanj people were ‘full-faced, with large bones and curly hair’, and extremely black. The people of Abyssinia were lazy, but obedient to their king.

At the time these accounts were being written, the merchants of southern Arabia were also establishing settlements on the south-west coast of India, which they called Malabar, the Land of Mountains, since the hills rose steeply behind the coastal plains. They were also starting to control the cinnamon exports of Ceylon. Many similarities were to be found between the Muslim communities of East Africa and Malabar, including the creation of a unique locally-based language, written in Arabic. Both traded widely throughout the densely-populated regions of the Indian Ocean, their ships going regularly to China.

Most intriguing of all the Islamic geographers is al-Biruni (sometimes written Alberuni), a learned Persian born in 973 near the Aral Sea. Known as ‘The Master’, he was also a mathematician and astronomer. One of his achievements was to calculate the earth’s circumference with greater accuracy than had ever been achieved before; he was only 70 miles out. Taken to Afghanistan as a prisoner, he spent much of his life there and in the Punjab, compiled a Chronology of Ancient Nations, and travelled through India, of which he wrote a history, Tahqiq al-Hind (An Inquiry into India). Typically, al-Biruni has little favourable to say of the Africans: ‘The Zanj are so uncivilized that they have no notion of a natural death. If a man dies a natural death, they think he was poisoned. Every death is suspicious to them, if a man has not been killed by a weapon.’

Turning to geography he is bold enough to criticize Ptolemy (whose work he had before him in translation) and offers his own assessment of Africa’s shape and size. Looking at the continent from a northern perspective, he had decided that it protruded ‘far into the ocean’, passing beyond the equator and the ‘plains of the negroes in the west’. It went much further than the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the Nile – ‘in fact, into regions which we do not exactly know’, where winter prevailed during summer in the northern hemisphere. The sea beyond ‘Sofala of the Zanj’ was impossible to navigate, and no ship which ventured there had ever returned to give an account of what it had seen. Elsewhere he seems to contradict himself. ‘This southern ocean is navigable. It does not form the utmost southern limit of the inhabitable world. On the contrary, the latter stretches still more southward.’

One ultimate geographical puzzle – where Africa ended – intrigued al-Biruni. He was not content with the Ptolemaic convention that it swung to the east, joining up with a long sliver of land along the southern limits of the Indian Ocean which eventually reached all the way to China. Instead, he believed there was a sea route round Africa, linking the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean: ‘One has certain proofs of this communication, although one has not been able to confirm it by sight.’