Swahili Coast · a Light

A dated inscription of 1107 sits in a Zanzibar village mosque

In the fishing village of Kizimkazi at the southern tip of Zanzibar there is a small mosque whose prayer niche carries a foundation inscription in floriated Kufic script. It gives a date corresponding to 1107, which makes it the oldest dated Islamic inscription known in East Africa. The letters are cut into coral stone, the local building material along the whole coast, quarried soft from the reef and hardening in the air. Excavations further north at Shanga on the Kenyan coast have found the postholes of a timber mosque dating from around the eighth century, rebuilt in stone later. Islam arrived on this coast by sea and by trade, and it left dated stone behind it.

Kizimkazi, Zanzibar · inscription dated 500 AH, 1107 CE