Kilwa Sultanate

The Kilwa Sultanate was a Swahili trading state centered on the island of Kilwa off the coast of what is now southern Tanzania, whose authority at its height extended along much of the Swahili Coast of East Africa. According to local tradition the sultanate was founded in the tenth century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi, a Persian prince from Shiraz, though the extent of Persian settlement in its founding remains debated among historians. Kilwa grew wealthy as a hub of the Indian Ocean trade, controlling access to gold exported from the Zimbabwean plateau through the port of Sofala and exchanging it for cloth, ceramics and other goods from Arabia, Persia, India and China. The sultanate's prosperity and independence declined after Portuguese forces sacked Kilwa in the early sixteenth century, and the once-dominant city-state never fully recovered its former standing among the Swahili Coast trading towns.