Swahili Coast

The Swahili Coast group also includes the neighboring Makhuwa and Yao. Medieval writers called the coast Zanj, and its trading towns, reaching south to Sofala, lived by exchanging cloth and spices from Arabia and India for the gold and ivory of the interior.

Kilwa took Sofala from Mogadishu in the twelfth century, and under the Mahdali dynasty built the Husuni Kubwa palace. In the fifteenth century its sultans claimed overlordship from Malindi to Sofala. In 1502 Vasco da Gama's fleet forced Kilwa to pay tribute to Portugal.