Back to Table of Contents 6
To next page
(Ibn Battuta visits Kilwa)
As illustration of Ibn Battuta's visit to Kilwa some old pictures of Kilwa.
Under the arches of the great mosque of Kilwa Ibn Battuta and the Sultan prayed.
The famous copper coin of Kilwa that was found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. It is inscribed al-Hasan Sulaiman who
was Sultan of Kilwa around 1320-1333. This picture can be found on many websites and in many books.
And the even more famous reconstruction of the great palace in Kilwa. It was under construction when Ibn Battuta went there or just finished.
We stayed one night in the island (Mombassa), and then pursued our journey to Kulwa, which is a large town on the coast. The majority of its inhabitants are Zanj, jet black in color, and with tattoo marks on their faces like the Limiin (1) at Janada (2). I was told by a merchant that the town of Sufala lies two weeks journey from Kulwa and that gold dust is brought to Sufala from Yufi (3) in the country of the Limis (1), which is a month's journey distant from it. The city of Kilwa is amongst the most beautiful of cities and elegantly built. All of it is of wood, and the ceiling of the houses is of al-dis (reeds)(4). The rains there are great. Its inhabitants are constantly engaged in holy war, for their country is contiguous to the heathen Zanj. Their chief qualities are devotion and piety: they follow the Shafi rite.
CONCERNING THE SULTAN OF KULWA
When I arrived, the Sultan was Abu al-Muzaffar Hasan surnamed Abu al-Mawahib (father of gifts)(5) on account of his generosity. He organized many raids of the mainland and set aside one fifth of
his booty to spend on the ways recommended by the Koran, and sets aside another part for the sharifs (7), the descendants of the Prophet who come and visit him (6). They come to him from Iraq,
the Hijaz (8), and other countries. I found several Sharifs (7) from the Hijaz (8) at his court, among them Muhammad ibn Jammaz, Mansur ibn Labida ibn Abi Nami (9) and Muhamma ibn Shumaila ibn
Adi Nami (9). At Mogadishu I saw Tabl Ibn Kubaish ibn Jammaz (9), who also wished to visit him. This Sultan is very humble: he sits and eats with beggars, and venerates holy men and descendants
of the Prophet.
In the palace the inscription given under was found: Verily God is the helper of the Commander of the faithful, al-Malik al-Mansur (the conquering king) al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman, may Almighty God grant him success.
Africa as Ibn Battuta saw it
The explanation on why Ibn Battuta says the Yufi bring the gold to Sofala. Somewhere in his book he says that the Nile starting in Mali goes to the land of the Limis and from there to the Yufi.
He deducts from this that it must be the Yufi that bring the gold. He also describes the Nile as it is seen in the drawing.
THE STORY OF ONE OF HIS GENEROUS ACTS
I found myself near him one Friday as he was coming away from prayer and returning to his home. A fakir (10) from Yemen stopped him and said: O Abu al-Mawahib. He replied: Here I am, O beggar,
What do you want? Give me the clothes you are wearing. And he said: Certainly you can have them. At once? he asked. Yes immediately.
He returned to the mosque and entered the preachers house, took of his clothes and put on others. Then he said to the fakir (10): Come in, and take these. The beggar entered and took them,
wrapped them in a cloth and placed them on his head. Then he went away. Those who stood by thanked the sultan most warmly for the humility and generosity he had displayed.
His son and successor-designate took back the clothes from the fakir (10) and gave him ten slaves in exchange. When the sultan learned how much his subjects praised
his son's action, he ordered that the beggar should be given ten more slaves and two loads of ivory. In this country the majority of presents are of ivory, gold is very seldom given.
When this virtuous and liberal sultan died, may God's mercy be upon him - he was succeeded by his brother Dawud (11), who was at the opposite pole from him in this respect. If a poor man came to
him, he said: He who gave is dead, and left nothing behind him to be given. Visitors would stay at his court for months on end, and finally he would make them some small gift, so much so
that eventually no one came to visit him.
From Kulwa we sailed (12) to Dhafari (Dhofar) at the extremity of the Yemen (near the border with Oman).....
Note on this last sentence taken from: From Africa to Australia: a find of coins from Kilwa, Tanzania, and from the Nether- lands, in the Wessel Islands. By G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville.
…….a copper piece of Da’ud ibn Sulaiman (sultan Kilwa 1333-56)…. Excavated at al Bilad two miles east of Salalah, the capital of the province of Dhufar or Zafar….. associated with it (the coin) are 13 pieces of a Sultan al-Nasir Nasir al-Din Ahmad, of whose issues many specimens have been found at Kilwa, together with several pieces that appear to have come from Mogadishu…………..Salalah was Ibn Battuta’s next port of call after he sailed from Kilwa. He calls it Zafari’l-Humud but the identification is certain.
(1) Limiin: Limi is a variant form of Lamlam applied by the Arab Geographers to the (supposedly cannibal) tribes of the interior.
(2) Janada: also Janawa and Janara was the name given to the country of the pagan tribes south of the Muslim lands in West Africa. (Guinea)
(3) Yufi: is the kingdom of Nupe in West Africa.( Established in the middle of the 15th century in a basin between the Niger and Kaduna rivers in what is now central Nigeria.)
(4) al-dis (reeds): according to Guillain p295 ampelodesmos tenax.
(5) Sultan Abu al-Muzaffar Hasan surnamed Abu al-Mawahib (father of gifts): from 1310 until 1333. His full name was Abu al-Muzaffar Hasan Abu al-Muwahib ibn Sulaiman al-Mat'un ibn Hasan ibn Talut al-Mahdal. Al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman was a member of the Mahdali dynasty, and oversaw a period of great prosperity in his capital city of Kilwa. The Mahdal claim descent from the Prophet of Islam. He built the extensive Palace of Husuni Kubwa outside of the city and added a significant extension to the Great Mosque of Kilwa. This building activity seems to have been inspired by the Sultan's pilgrimage to Mecca, whose great buildings he wished to emulate.
Taken from: Ibn Battuta and east Africa; Journal des Africanistes 1968 by Neville Chittick. (And also, from the Kilwa Chronicle).
The Sultan of Kilwa:
Ibn Battuta tells us that the ruler at the time of his visit was Abu’l-Muzzaffar Hasan, surnamed also Abu’l-Mawahib. This is almost certainly the same man as Abu’l-Mawahib al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman al-Mat’un ibn Ialut al-Mahdali who, the Kilwa Chronicle tells us, was ruling about this time. The nisba al-Mahdali refers to the al-Ahdal, a family of Sayyids of the western Yemen, connected at the period concerned particularly with Murawa’a, a small town a little east of Hodeida, where numbers of them were famous Sufis. The mention of this nisba is valuable confirmation that there had been a change of dynasty from the original Shirazi line. The Kilwa Chronicle tells us that al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman travelled, when a youth, to Aden where he spends two years, proceeding then to Mecca. It may well have been at that time that he came into touch with the Sharifs which Ibn Battuta mentions were present at Kilwa at the time of his visit. One Husainid sharif from al-Madina, one Hasanid from Mecca.
The Kilwa Chronicle tells us also that his younger brother Daud ibn Suleiman ruled for two years, while his older brother, al-Hassan completed the pilgrimage to Makkah. Abu al-Mawahib al-Hassan ibn Suleiman returned from Makkah in 1309 and assumed his place. He had no heirs. Daud ibn Suleiman came back to the throne after the death of his brother. He is also mentioned by Ibn Battuta.
(6) His jihad against the heathen tribes is obviously slave-raiding, and his piety in ‘setting aside the fifth’ is contrasted with the disregard by other rulers of the injunction in Qur'an, viii, 42: ‘Whatsoever you take in booty, the fifth of it belongs to God, the Apostle, the relative, the orphans, the poor and the traveller’. By traditional interpretation the term ‘relative’ was taken to mean those persons related to the Prophet by descent, i.e. the sharifs.
(7) Sharifs: meaning "noble", "highborn", or "honourable", traditionally used as a title for the descendants of the family of the prophet Muhammad.
(8) Hijaz: the province of Mecca.
(9) Muhammad ibn Jammaz, Mansur ibn Labida ibn Abi Nami and Muhamma ibn Shumaila ibn Adi Nami.
At Mogadishu I saw Tabl Ibn Kubaish ibn Jammaz, who also wished to visit him.: all visitors to East Africa. Two of the Husainid sharifs of al-Madina, from the house of Jammaz b. Shiha, and of the Hasanid sharifs of Mecca, from the house of Abi Numayy.
(10) Fakir; Faqih: A Faqih is an expert in fiqh (Jurist).
His son and successor-designate took back the clothes from the fakir and gave him ten slaves in exchange. When the sultan learned how much his subjects praised his son's action, he ordered that the beggar should be given ten more slaves and two loads of ivory.
(11) Succeeded by his brother Dawud: Da’ud; who had previously reigned for two years during Hasan’s absence on pilgrimage, reigned again for twenty-four years after his death and is described as ‘ascetic and pious’. Note that bn Battuta here relates at second-hand events which took place after his visit.
(12) From Kulwa we sailed: As the south-west monsoon sets in on the African coast during March and reaches the Arabian Sea in April, Ibn Battuta’s departure from Kilwa is probably to be dated about the end of March, and the direct journey to Dhofar can be reckoned at from three to four weeks.
Taken from: The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika: With Special Reference to Recent Archaeological Discoveries, Numbers 55-57 by Greville Stewart Parker Freeman-Grenville 1962.
P99
After the pilgrimage of 1330 Ibn Battuṭa left Mecca and travelled through the Yemen to Aden. When he reached there he would have found the North - East Monsoon blowing to enable him to reach Kilwa. This would have been in November or early December, and, judging by the short periods spent at Zeila, Mogadishu and Mombasa, he would have reached Kilwa in December or January. He would not have been able to leave until the following March or April, according to when the South-East Monsoon began that year. This gives him a stay of some three months at Kilwa.
P101
Sprinkling with Damascus rosewater is a custom yet surviving in Arab countries. The ceremonial
presentation with betel, however, is connected rather with South Arabia and, further afield, with India, rather than with Egypt and Syria. Fragments of Damascus rosewater bottles have been found
along the whole coast, and it is likely that this custom prevailed as far as Mafia and Kilwa.
Ibn Battuta is escorted by the Qadi to the lodging specially built for the Qadi’s pupils. It was near the palace, and presumably attached to the madrassa in which the Qadi, apart from his judicial duties, gave instruction. Ibn Battuta found it elegantly furnished with carpets - no doubt imported from the Persian Gulf as they still are along the whole coast and every other necessity. The house, it must be noted, had been specially built for the Qadi's pupils, and it may be inferred that they were not merely local boys. Apart from al - Hasan ibn Sulaiman III's visit to Aden and his course of study there which has already been mentioned, this is the only reference to education in the Middle Ages. A pious upbringing demands a sufficient literacy to read the Koran, and a school such as this is rather to be regarded as a place for studies higher than what could be imparted by the Imam in an ordinary mosque. Kilwa too had its Qadi and its Faqih, and the latter were to be found at Mafia too if this is the correct inference from the burial of Talut ibn al-Husain in the tomb of two of them in 1364. It is quite possible, though Ibn Battuta does not mention it, that Kilwa also had such a school.
Of the import trade: in exchange for its wool, Mogadishu bought Egyptian linen and fringed turbans, but of interest is the cloak of material from Jerusalem. Syrian imports have already been noticed in the form of Damascus rosewater.
P108
The statement that the sultan was called Abu'l – Mawahib (Father of Gifts) because of his innumerable acts of generosity need not be taken seriously: it had already been applied to al-Hasan ibn Talut (1277–1294), and was perhaps rather a throne name which had been carried down. …. Ibn Battuta's comment that gold is rarely given as a present may be concealed bitterness. In other places he received munificent gifts of gold.