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datable to the 8th or 9th centuries A.D. Their size indicates that they were built not simply for agricultural settlements but for substantial trading towns. The gold trade of Sofāla could not have sprung “like Venus from the waves” ; it seems logical to rely upon these indications. The answer to the problem will lie in systematic excavation. Al-Masʿūdī says that Sofāla lies at the utmost end of the land of Zand̲j̲ . It adjoins the Wāḳwāḳ country, the name of this being possibly an onomatopoeic word which suggests click-speakers [see further
on an island near to the Tanzanian coast, 150 miles south of Dār al-Salām (8° 58′ S. , 39° 34′ E .). It is the site, covering about one km. 2 , of the capital of a region which stretched from the Rufiji River to Sofala in mediaeval times and was the greatest of the Islamic trading states in East Africa . Barros, Da Àsia , 1552, preserves an anonymous abbreviated Chrónica dos Reyes de Quiloa , composed perhaps before 1507; an independent 16th century
think of it as an area rather than what later was the settlement of Sofala , south of the present city of Beira , which at the turn of the 9th/15th century was ruled by a s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ appointed by the Sultan of Kilwa [ q.v. ]. The distinctions become yet clearer in al-Idrīsī , who divides the eastern African coast into four sectors: Bilād al-Barbarā (or Barābara ), the present Somali coast [see somalia ]; Bilād al-Zand̲j̲ [see zand̲j̲
ports and harbours mentioned by Ibn Mād̲j̲id in his works. Of the three urd̲j̲ūzas , the first is called al-Sufāliyya (ff. 83a-96a) (on Sofala , on the east coast of Africa) and deals with the knowledge of the mad̲j̲rās (day’s journey by sea) and astronomical calculations from Malabar , Konkan, Gud̲j̲arāt, Sind , al-Aṭwāḥ up to Somaliland , and from there to the regions of al-Sawāḥil (east coast of Africa ), Zand̲j̲bār , Sofala, Madagascar and its islands. It also deals with
Land̲j̲ūya , a corruption of al-Ungud̲j̲a , the Swahili name for Zanzibar, pairing it with an island of forests and valleys which he calls Ḳanbalū . Geographically this is satisfactory, for Pemba is hilly and wooded, as opposed to the flatness of Zanzibar. Al-Masʿūdī travelled thither with ʿUmānī shipowners in 304/916, and gives an account of its trade. Buzurg b. S̲h̲āhriyār (d. ca . 956) speaks of it as a trading station on the way to Sofāla , but in spite of these dates the thirty ancient sites so far identified have yielded no archaeological
brought to Egypt in increasing numbers.” Recent excavations at Rās Ḥāfūn by H. N. Chittick, as yet unpublished, disclosed Egyptian pottery of Roman Imperial date, probably 2nd to 3rd century A.D. Apart from some ruins of uncertain date that are possibly South Arabian , Maḳdis̲h̲ū is stated by a 16th century Chrónica dos Reyes de Quiloa , preserved in a summary form by João de Barros , to have been founded by “the first people of the coast who came to the land of Sofala [ q.v. ] in quest of gold.” This date is uncertain
“south of ʿIrāḳ” . Ferrand equated this Wāḳwāḳ of the South with al-Masʿūdī’s Wāḳwāḳ near Sofāla , which he claims as Madagascar (see EI 1 IV, 1105); but there is no clue that Ibn al-Faḳīh’s Wāḳwāḳ was in Africa. Judging from the number of texts placing Wāḳwāḳ in Southeast Asia (see Ferrand, Le Wâqwâq , est-il le Japon? ), there is no reason why this should not be the location of Wāḳwāḳ. It is possible that Ibn al-Fakrh, confused by the conflicting statements that he had before him, came to the conclusion (as did Ferrand) that the only solution
merca mkwaja mombasa mtambwe mkuu mozambique pate pemba sofāla wāḳwāḳ
local sultanate based on Kizimkazi, where a number of (later) stone buildings survive. João de Barros preserves a second History of Kilwa , originally written in Arabic, in a Portuguese translation. It was redacted perhaps in 1505. It asserts that Sulaymān b. al-Ḥasan of Kilwa (r. 1170-89) made himself “lord of the commerce of Sofāla ” [ q.v. ], and of the islands of Pemba, Mafia and Zanzibar, and a great part of the mainland shore” . In 1224 Yāḳūt’s Muʿd̲j̲am al-buldān reports that
there from East Africa (the land of Sofāla ) by transit caravan through the Libyan oasis of Awd̲j̲ila [ q.v. ]. In the Mag̲h̲rib , Ḳayrawān and Gafsa were, for tanning, two reputed centres, which is confirmed, in the 10th/16th century, by Leo Africanus (ed. Schefer, iii, 80, 163-9); all these leopard skins went to the Turks of Central Asia , Byzantium and as far as the peoples of the Danube and southern Russia (see M. Lombard, La chasse et les produits de la chasse , 578). For the Near East, Aden was the centre of trade in the skin of the leopard
