ABSTRACT
Africa borders the Indian Ocean along its eastern coast, a region of beaches and cliffs fringed by coral reef and backed by a varied landscape, sometimes dry and inhospitable, often fertile and full of life. This coast and its offshore islands (Map 1, p. xxii) is home to the Swahili people, language and culture. Those elements overlap to a great extent, but each is the product of its own historical trajectory; this coast has been home for many centuries to the developments that created contemporary Swahili society. During the course of those centuries, the people of this coast developed a society of sophistication and complexity; their towns were known throughout the world from Europe to China, regions with which eastern African traders were in regular contact. Today Swahili history is relatively poorly known to a global audience, yet it is rightly recognised by scholars of the African past as the story of one of the continent’s great civilisations.
