The history of the Swahili coast is laced with political intrigue, scandal, international commerce, war, invasion and terrorism. Stretching from Somalia in the north, through Kenya and Tanzania, to Mozambique in the south and to the great offshore islands of the coast, it is home to the Swahili people, a unique blend of Arab, African and Persian, whose story stretches back more than two thousand years and which forms the backdrop to one of Africa's oldest and greatest civilizations. Drawing on archaeology, the civic chronicles of the Swahili towns and accounts of the coast written by explorers, traders and colonialists from as far afield as Italy, China and Britain, this illustrated book tells the story of the Swahili coast. Moving from the slave markets and clove plantations of Zanzibar, to the stone towns of the Lamu Archipelago, to the fight for control of Mombasa and its great bastion, Fort Jesus, it tells the stories of Zanzibar sultans, Swahili traders, Portuguese conquerors and Christian missionaries.

This book is a compilation of documents throughout history which discuss the East African Coast. Authors of these documents include figures such as Claudius Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and Vasco da Gama.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.

First published in 1971, The Swahili Coast deals with a sixty-year period in which Arabs from Oman in Arabia extended their influence over the East African coast from Mogadishu in the north to Cape Delgado in the South. This region had a culture and a way of life quite distinct from that of the interior and had always been an area of great maritime activity. For hundreds of years, Arabs had come down on the monsoon winds to trade there, and for two centuries, the Portuguese had controlled the region. In the course of the period covered by this book the ruler of the Omani Arabs transferred his seat of government from Arabia to Zanzibar. This involved him in delicate relationships with the Western powers who developed strategic and commercial interests in the area, and in conflicts with the local inhabitants of the East African littoral. Based on many original and hitherto unpublished materials, this book illuminates the reasons for this extension of Arab influence in the western part of the Indian Ocean, and shows the growing involvement of Western powers with the politics of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Attention is also focused on the development of trade on the Swahili coast, as well as the reaction of the local populace to Arab and Western pressures. This study will be particularly useful for advanced students of African history, African Studies and anyone interested in political, social, and economic development of East Africa.