48 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



ploration may reveal Himyaritic inscriptions. Nothing is more pro- 

 bable than that the sea-faring Arabs of the Yemen and Hadramawt 

 should have been in close commercial relations "with the east coast of 

 Africa and have discovered the mineral resources of Ehodesia where 

 numerous gold-mines still testify to very ancient "workings. 



"What the ancient Himyarites probably did in almost prehistoric 

 times, the mediaeval Arabs undoubtedly carried on. There is every 

 reason to believe that the predominant influence of Arab traders, 

 and in some parts even of Arab rulers, Tvas continuously maintained 

 along the east coast of Africa as far south at least as Beira do"WTi 

 to the arrival of the Portuguese at the close of the jSiteenth century. 

 When Yasco da Gama reached Sofala, the mediaeval port near Beira 

 (towards which the ancient sites and gold routes of Rhodesia evidently 

 converge), he found 'Moorish', i.e. Arab, traders employing natives 

 to work the gold mines^, and seized Arab dhows laden with gold dust. 

 There is no doubt that this commerce had been going on for centimes, 

 if not for some thousands of years. The references in the works of 

 Arabic geographers and travellers, scanty and vague as they are, 

 sufficiently prove that Sofala was well-known as a port for the gold 

 trade. El-Mas'udi, writing in the middle of the tenth century, 

 mentions Sofala (which is itself an Arabic word, meaning ' low- 

 country') as the terminus of the voyages of the merchants of the 

 Persian Gulf, and adds that ' the country of Sofala and "Wak-"Wak 

 produces quantities of gold and other marvels.'^ El-BirunI, Ibn-Sa'id^ 

 and Yakut refer to this trade, and el-Idrisi says that in all the land 

 of Sofala gold is found in abundance, sometimes in nuggets of a {rati) 

 pound's weight.* 



Probably these commercial relations between Arabia and the east 

 coast of Africa had been uninterruptedly maintained from ancient 



^ J. de Ban-OS, Ba Asia, Dec. I, liv. x, cap. 1. 



2 Ed. Barbier de Meynard, i, 6, 7. 



3 Reinaud, Fragm. Ar., 112 ; Geogr. d' Ahotdfeda, Intr., 141. 

 * Jautert, i, 66. 



