Gedi

Gedi was a Swahili stone town in the forest near Malindi on the Kenyan coast. Founded around the eleventh century, it left no recorded dynasty and is known chiefly from archaeology.

An inscribed pillar tomb dates to 1399, and Chinese porcelain and Islamic glazed ware found at Gedi show its Indian Ocean trade. The town reached its peak in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Portuguese efforts to monopolize trade, falling groundwater, the Wazimba raid of 1589 and Oromo raids contributed to its abandonment by the mid-seventeenth century.