Lane-Poole — On an Arabic Inscription from Rlwdeda. 49 



times ; but when the Muslim Arabs first made settlements on the coast 

 is not stated in any of the general Arabic histories. There was 

 evidently no definite invasion at the time of the great Mohammadan 

 expansion in the seventh century, or it would have been recorded. 

 The only authority we possess, and that at second hand, is a ' chronicle 

 of the kings of Quiloa' which was discovered when Francisco de 

 Almeida, the Portuguese viceroy, took that island in 1505. An 

 abstract of this history — the original is apparently lost, — appears in 

 the celebrated Da Asia of Joao de Barros^, who seems to have had the 

 work at his disposal ; and a modern Arabic ms. from Zanzibar in the 

 British Museum (Or, 2666), entitled S.L^ j\^\ j 'i^\ L-jk^', 

 contains a brief history of Kilwa (Quiloa) which has evidently been 

 compiled from some such earlier source as the Chronica dos Reys de 

 Quiloa cited by Barros. According to this solitary authority there 

 were three independent settlements of Muslims on the Zanzibar coast. 

 Eirst a number of the schismatic sect of Zeydis — whose leader, Zeyd 

 ibn 'All, a descendant of the prophet, was executed for proclaiming 

 himself as the Mahdi in 740 by the Omayyad caliph Hisham', — 

 emigrated to the African coast, somewhat north of the modem 

 Zanzibar, to escape persecution. Barros calls them ' Emozaydij ', 

 which, as Mr. Arnold suggests*, is probably a corruption of TJmma 

 Zeydlya, ' the people of Zeyd'. These were followed in the first 

 half of the tenth century by a second (but orthodox) band of 

 fugitives, who left their homes near the Bahreyn on the Arabian 

 coast of the Persian Gulf in consequence of the oppression of the 

 amir of Lasah (probably el-Hasa), and settled at the same place as 

 the Zeydis, whom they drove into the interior. This second colony 

 founded the great port of Makdashu (Magadaxo) which became the 



1 Dec. I, liv. viii, cap. 4. 



2 Published by Mr. S. Arthur Strong in the Journal of the R. Asiatic Society , 

 1895, 385-430. 



2 Et-Tabari, Annales, ed. de Goeje et alii, 111, 1742 ff. 



* Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, 278, 279. 



