ABSTRACT
In 1966 Peter Garlake published his monumental Early Islamic Architecture of the East African Coast, a survey of surviving architecture in Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia, and collaboration with the excavations at Kilwa, which were being conducted by the British Institute in East Africa under Neville Chittick (1974). For the first time, plans of the Islamic monuments (although not tombs) were accurately drawn up, as well as elevations of the buildings and mihrabs within the mosques. The work at Kilwa also involved architectural study of the late thirteenth-century Husuni Kubwa complex. Garlake was working in an archaeological vacuum, with few available dates, limited excavation data (Kirkman 1954, 1963), and an historical interpretation of the Swahili as the products of Arab ‘colonisation’ from the Middle East (Garlake 1966, 1; Horton and Chami this volume). His study remains invaluable as a record of many buildings that have subsequently disappeared, while new discoveries can suggest a longer and more detailed chronology.
