Swahili

Swahili, or Kiswahili, is a Bantu language of the Sabaki branch, native to the Swahili people of the East African coast and its islands. Indian Ocean trade with Arab and Persian merchants gave it a large Arabic word-stock; the name itself comes from an Arabic word meaning of the coast.

It grew into a regional lingua franca in trading city-states such as Kilwa, founded in the 800s, whose sultanate dominated the coast from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century and which the traveller Ibn Battuta praised in 1331. Portuguese fleets sacked Kilwa in 1505 and added their own loanwords, yet Swahili continued to spread along caravan routes.

It was written in Arabic script. The epic Utendi wa Tambuka, composed by Bwana Mwengo wa Athman in 1728, is among its earliest surviving literary works.