Evolution of Building techniques during the Middle Ages in East Africa.

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Taken from: SWAHILI PAST IN PERIL; NEW ARCHAEOLOGY IN EAST AFRICA by STÉPHANE PRADINES. 2017

 

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According to oral traditions on the Swahili coast, the first stone mosques were associated with the Shirazis. The so-called Shirazi mosques dates back to the eleventh- to twelfth-century, these mosques seem to have had consistent proportions; in Gedi, the first mosque was c. 10 by 7 m. In Tanzania, the great mosque of Kilwa was erected between 1131 and 1170, its initial rectangular plan does not differ from the model previously described, measuring 11.8 by 7.8 m. Also in the Bay of Kilwa, the Island of Sanje ya Kati houses a large mosque founded in the second half of the eleventh century, the mosque measures 10.21 by 9.46 m. In Shanga, the mosque, constructed in Shanga between 1015 and 1035, forms a rectangle measuring 11.22 by 7.21 m. The Islamization of the African coasts was connected with Shi’a communities from the Persian Gulf (Pradines, 2009). These mosques do not have a minaret.

From the fourteen and fifteenth century onward, Swahili cities were surrounded by fortified stone walls, as notably at the Kenyan sites of Pate, Ungwana, Gedi and Songo Mnara (Pradines 2004: 328-334). These urban fortifications support the centralization of the political power with local sultanates and reinforced the distinction between town and country, the coast and the hinterland.

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Only rich merchants and individuals from powerful lineages could live in stone houses. This social change is confirmed by anthropology and our observations in Gedi where architecture was profoundly altered at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Stone buildings became emblematic of the power of the wa-ungwana patricians/nobility and represented the very notion of the Swahili city.

Multiple examples of architecture in coral limestone exist in the Dahlak Islands, Er Rih, Aydhab and Suakin. However, this technology was not only found on Egyptian and Sudanese shores, with examples existing on the coast of the Hadramaut and in the Persian Gulf, in Bahrain and in Qatar where coral blocks are called hagar al-bahr, or “stones of the sea”. And very similar architecture in Yemen, the occupation of which by Indian merchants is confirmed by historical sources.

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-Our archaeological excavations in Sanje ya Kati demonstrate that the first stone houses were built with the same technology as the earliest mosques on the East African coast.

Taken from: ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE SWAHILI COAST Mark Horton (2018)

 

The first archaeological evidence for the adoption of Islam by coastal communities dates to the eighth century CE. It is from this period that we have found the earliest Islamic buildings made of timber, as well as burials laid out in the correct Muslim fashion. At Shanga (Horton 1996, 2004), a succession of early timber mosques were excavated below two successive stone mosques of the tenth and eleventh centuries CE. Muslim burials (oriented east–west, and laid out on their right sides facing Mecca) reflected and followed the correction of the qibla direction observed in the mosques; these shifted some 40 degrees between the eighth and eleventh centuries. At Ras Mkumbuu another timber mosque was found below two tenth-century stone mosques, suggesting a replacement in stone as the community grew in size (LaViolette, this volume).

 

In the tenth century, these prototype timber mosques were converted to stone. Almost universally, Porites coral was used. Early mosques at Shanga and Ras Mkumbuu were both made from Porites coral, with blocks carefully shaped for the walls, bonded in lime mortar and with raised floors. Also Unguja Ukuu and Kilwa. East African mosques are rectangular prayer halls that range in proportion from 2:1 to 3:2.

 

The ‘Shirazi’ mosque: Features of this ‘Shirazi’ culture include the use of coinage (silver and copper coins), but also a standard form of mosque.

Along both the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, this form of mosque appeared during the eleventh and early twelfth century. They feature a rectangular prayer hall, built of Porites coral, with four or six columns that may still have supported a thatched roof. Examples include Kizimkazi, Kaole, Mtambwe Mkuu, three mosques at Kisimani Mafia (Chittick 1966), Mbui, Sanje ya Kati (Pradines 2009), Domoni and Old Sima (Wright 1992). The most impressive was Kilwa Kisiwani (Chittick 1974).

 

Taken from: SWAHILI HOUSES Thomas Gensheimer (2018)

 

Stone houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

From the exterior, Swahili stone houses were plain and windowless, with only an interior courtyard to allow light and air to enter the inner spaces. The courtyards were predominantly oriented to the north, possibly for climatic reasons. It would let sunlight the rooms rooms during the coolest months as well as providing maximum protection against the strong southwest monsoon winds.

The first room (at Gedi house of the cowries) was entered through double doorways, with a lavatory. One side of the lavatory contained a bathing platform with a gap to drain the water. A shelf with indentations to put pots to provide water for washing. The other side contained a pit latrine (very deep) where waste materials were collected and water would drain. Also the smoothly plastered floors of the sunken courts and interior rooms were embedded with carefully constructed drains that emptied into (very deep) sumps. Storerooms designed for the safekeeping of valuables were common, entered by ladders through small openings high up on the wall. These were found off the bedrooms of every house at Gede.

The Swahili Town through the Centuries: Shanga (and Siyu).

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Taken from:

-Swahili origins: Swahili culture and the Shungwaya phenomenon. By Allen, James de Vere 1993.

-Wikipedia: Swahili architecture.

-SWAHILI ARCHITECTURE, SPACE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE Mark Horton 2003

-Early Swahili History Reconsidered by Thomas Spear in: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2000), pp. 257-290

 

Shanga

Dating from around 760 AD, Shanga was an ancient Swahili settlement built of mud and thatch. The Swahili community in Shanga continued to thrive there for 600 years until their disappearance in the early 15th century. The original settlement, established around a depression in the sand-dunes set back 150m from the sea, was a central enclosure around a well. The well remained the same location over time. An early timber mosque was built upon the central enclosure, serving as a communal gathering space.

 

The earliest settlement plan of Shanga comprised a rectangular enclosure of some 120 by 90 yards evidently surrounded by a timber fence or palisade. The well was in the centre of this enclosure, and livestock was probably initially stabled there. The houses were outside it, all of them built either of mud and timber or of palm leaves set in a mud base, and probably with palm-thatched roofs, of which no traces remain. Those to the west and southwest of the enclosure were mostly if not all circular, while those in the east seem to have been rectangular in form. While traces of iron-working were found in all trenches, the iron furnaces seem to have been concentrated in the west.

 

Just before 900 AD: The first large-scale building—although still wholly reliant on mud, thatch and timber— appears: one of the timber ‘mosques’; An existing timber hall in the central enclosure is being replaced (and directly overlain) by a massive timber hall.

 

By 950, a second phase began with the arrival of people with long-distance trade connections, who also appeared in several other east coast ports at about this time. Cattle become especially common in the eastern, sheep and goats more so in the western part of town, and the consumption of fish increases rapidly in the west. Less fish is consumed in the east (=taboo for nomadic cattle herders), but turtle and dugong are consumed mostly if not entirely there.

 

Stone building was introduced in the early to mid-tenth century, using a technique that cuts porites coral from the sea bed. A stone (coral) mosque replaces the underlying timber structures, but basically follows exactly the same plan and alignment. The timber hall, is succeeded by a square stone building, directly above, retaining the same basic plan and dimensions of the earlier timber hall. Other stone buildings were also found north, south and east of the well.

 

The small, two-roomed coral mosque is only roughly oriented towards Mecca and had no mihrab; but there was a shallow external pilaster in the middle of the north wall which could have contained a wall-niche of the type which quite commonly indicated the direction of prayer in early mosques. If it was a mosque, it can only have served a very small section (30 people) of the population. Below the foundations of this coral building Horton found the postholes of at least seven earlier structures, very much smaller and with prayer-space for about ten at most. Maybe for visiting Muslim merchants.

 

Later c. 1075, some or all of the monumental buildings were dismantled, perhaps violently, along with the wall surrounding the central enclosure; and the coral blocks were subsequently reused to build what was Shanga's first indisputable mosque, a much larger building than its predecessor but - like it - close by the well, which was of course needed for ritual ablutions. The community had built a new Friday Mosque large enough to accommodate all the adult men in the community for the first time. Estimates of about ninety worshippers would serve a population of around four hundred. Associated with this mosque and around it were the first stone tombs, of faced coral and plaster. They also began to produce textiles, developed more refined variants of Tana ware, and imported greater quantities of white glazed, sgraffiato, and Chinese pottery. Simultaneously or a little later Muslim tombs are built both within the central enclosure and outside the settlement altogether. The advent of Islam as a majority religion is in this last quarter of the eleventh century.

 

By 1250-1325, Shanga had shifted its trade to southern Arabia (as indicated by a shift from Persian sgraffiato to Arabian black-on-yellow pottery), largely abandoned textile and iron production, and become a developed mercantile economy.

 

A two-stage evolution can be noted in the house architecture. First, in the mid-thirteenth century, the daub-walled structures make increasing use of coral rag, bonded by mud and removing the timber supports. The surface is plastered and whitewashed.

The next stage is the replacement of mud with lime mortar; this occurs c. AD 1300. These new stone walls are often built directly over the foundations of the earlier walls. It is to this period of building that the present ruined town largely belongs with buildings which can be directly compared to the Waungwana houses of Lamu.

 

Early Shanga seems to have been laid out very much in the fashion of a Mijikenda kaya. Each individual gateway into the central enclosure was associated with a particular clan—in the Shanga case, there seem to have been seven clans. Some support for this comes from the external cemetery at Shanga, where there were seven distinct areas of burial.

The original model suggested four basic entrances to the settlement, and these may reflect four basic demes, which must have remained largely endogamous. These four demes may have reflected four basic groups living together in the community. The faunal evidence provides some clue as to their origins; architectural evidence from the standing buildings provides other clues, which suggest the following reconstruction:

-Deme A: north, clan 1, agriculturalists with ironworking elements important. Very few stone buildings in this area during the fourteenth century; iron slag and furnaces present.

-Deme B: east, clans 2 and 3, pastoralist. Major area of large stone enclosures (probably for the keeping of cattle, with accumulations of dung) and multiroom houses.

-Deme C: south, clan 4, maritime traders. Uniform stone houses; main concentration of guest rooms for visiting merchants attached to courtyards. Significantly this group lies on the seaward side of the settlement.

-Deme D: west, clans 5, 6 and 7, craftsmen. Stone houses of non-standard plan, suggesting modification of workshops. Excavations produced high concentrations of bead-making equipment and spindle whorls as well as tanning pits.

It is very tempting to link these four groups with the four stone buildings in the central area, located for easy and equal access for each clan. As such, these buildings could have served as the ritual and communal centre for each deme. The basic structure of the community would have been a multicultural alliance where each deme contributed to the success of the settlement through exchange conducted within the central enclosure.

 

Shanga reached its peak between 1325 and 1375, as people built new houses and two new mosques of coral rag and lime as cement, and imported pottery became more plentiful. The difference in plan between the mud and stone houses was very slight, with courtyards and toilet areas.

Thereafter, the town went into slow decline, and by 1400-1425, it was in ruins, its Friday mosque burned, and its houses abandoned, as its inhabitants left for Siyu and Pate.

 

History Siyu

Howard Brown in his history of Siyu, a town on Pate Island, from the 11 th to the 19h centuries.

While not extensively involved in trade, Siyu was a thriving community of weavers and embroiderers, woodworkers, leatherworkers, metalworkers, copyists, and book binders. It was, in short, a prosperous though ordinary town, overshadowed by its wealthier neighbors, Pate and Lamu. As neither a local fishing village nor an international trading center, Siyu was a middling middleman society of the sort that probably predominated along the coast and can tell us a great deal about Swahili societies in general.

While Siyu's historical development followed the general Swahili pattern, it was also intensely local, reflecting its own particular social composition and neighbors. Siyu was probably founded in the 11th century as a mud and thatch village, but by the 16ch century it had grown into a large stone town, perhaps the largest town on Pate Island, with extensive farms on the adjacent mainland.

Coral and Limestone

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Taken from: RESOURCES OF THE OCEAN FRINGE AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE MEDIEVAL SWAHILI Edward Pollard 2018.

 

It is generally known that Coral was the building material of the Swahili in Medieval times.

Apart from its construction use, limestone and reef coral were also employed as a flux in iron production. It occurs at Bwembweni in connection with iron-making dating to tenth–thirteenth centuries (Ichumbaki and Pollard 2015). It is likely that the initial iron smelting from ore was undertaken outside the urban area as in Bwembweni, which is situated a bit away from the medieval settlement of Kaole.

Indications of an important lime industry, along Kilwa Kisiwani’s east coast in the medieval period, derive from substantial collections of reef coral and evidence of limemaking discovered in excavations on Mvinje Island and Msangamla Bay (Pollard 2008a:274–5). Undecorated pottery, fishbone, animal bone and shellfish within the same context at Mvinje Island Cave, and pottery found among reef materials at Kilwa, all dated to the fourteenth– sixteenth century, suggest exploitation of these resources during Kilwa’s prosperous phase (ibid.).

At Kilwa Kisiwani, Chittick’s (1974: 39–40) excavations exposed twelfth-century lime kilns, and comparable pits have been located at Songo Mnara (Fleisher and Wynne-Jones 2012: 193–4). Chittick (1974: 39–40) described an alternative and earlier method of limemaking which, despite the strictures noted above concerning production in an urban area, was conducted beside the Great House (behind the Great Mosque) itself rather than externally. His trench contained lime kilns from a period when stone buildings were first introduced to the area. Feeder trenches led into the kilns, with blocking stones placed to shut off the draught after the required temperature was obtained.