Sultanate of Malindi

The Sultanate of Malindi was a Swahili city-state on the coast of what is now Kenya, whose original settlement appears to have formed around the ninth century AD before being destroyed around 1000 AD; the town later re-emerged at its present site by the thirteenth or fourteenth century and grew into a powerful regional trading center by the fifteenth century. In 1414 Malindi's ruler sent an envoy bearing a giraffe as a gift to Ming dynasty China, and in 1498 the sultanate gave Vasco da Gama a warm reception that contrasted sharply with his hostile treatment at Mombasa, leading Malindi to ally with Portugal, which established a trading post there in 1502 that lasted until 1593. Malindi used its Portuguese alliance to help defeat its rivals Kilwa and Mombasa in 1505, but the sultanate declined sharply after the Portuguese relocated their regional base to Mombasa in 1593.