Kilwa

For all its splendour, Husuni Kubwa was lived in only briefly and abandoned before it was finished, yet Kilwa's reach kept growing. In the 15th century its sultans claimed lordship over a coast stretching from Malindi and Mombasa down to Sofala and Mozambique Island, though what they headed was a loose confederation of trading towns, each with its own merchant elite. That looseness showed once the Portuguese arrived. Mombasa broke away in 1502, and on 24 July 1505 Dom Francisco de Almeida's fleet sacked and burned Kilwa and built Fort Santiago on the island to hold it. Arab mercenaries drove the garrison out in 1512, but the city that had once been the richest on the coast was now a prize for others to fight over, and in 1597 the Portuguese took it again.