Sultanate of Pate

The Sultanate of Pate was a Swahili city-state centered on Pate Town on the southwestern coast of Pate Island in the Lamu Archipelago off the northern coast of what is now Kenya, existing from at least the start of the thirteenth century, when the town was re-founded in 1203 by members of the Nabhani family from Oman, until 1895. It functioned as a major Indian Ocean trading hub frequented by Arab, Persian and Indian merchants, and long competed with the neighboring city-states of Lamu and Takwa for regional economic dominance, reaching its height of prosperity and cultural achievement in the eighteenth century, known as the Golden Age of Pate. The sultanate declined through continuous warring with its neighbors from the late eighteenth century onward, its population falling from roughly seven thousand to about three hundred by 1892, and it was ultimately subjugated by Lamu in the late nineteenth century; from 1858 part of its territory had also become known as Wituland.