50 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



metropolis of tlie Arabs on that coast. ^ The Morocco traveller 

 Ibn-Batuta visited this city in 1332, and describes it as a vast town, 

 "with numerous mosques, and under the rule of a Mohammadan sultan 

 called Sheykh Abu-Bekr ibn 'Omar. He mentions its trade with 

 Egypt, and says that Magadaxo was fifteen days' sail from Zeyla' on 

 the Eed Sea.^ It was situated about half-way between Zanzibar and 

 Bab-el-Mandeb. The third settlement of Muslims came early in the 

 eleventh century from Shiraz in Persia. Sailing from Hurmuz in 

 the Persian Gulf, and avoiding orthodox Magadaxo — for the new- 

 comers belonged to the Shi'a sect, — they proceeded further south to 

 Kilwa (Quiloa), where they found a previous Muslim settlement 

 and a mosque. Here they built a fort, and ruled until the coming 

 of the Portuguese. This was the most important of all the Arab 

 settlements, for the kings of Quiloa extended their sway north over 

 Mombasa,^ and south over Sofala,* where they entered into relations 

 with the native ruler, whom the Portuguese called the Monomotapa 

 or Benomotapa, a name which Professor Keane explains as Bantu for 

 'lord of the mines', but which the Portuguese understood as meaning 

 merely ' emperor'.^ 



Such is, in abstract, the little that we know about the Moham- 

 madan settlements on the east coast of Africa. Although the Quiloa 

 chronicle places the first arrival of Muslims not earlier than 740, 

 it is permissible to assume that other Muslims had preceded them, 

 since it is hardly probable that a band of persecuted fugitives would 

 have fled to an unexplored land, where the natives had the reputation 

 of cannibals, unless some others had shown them the way. That 

 there was some such early settlement, not only earlier than the date 



1 Cp. Eigby : Report on Zanzibar Bom., 47, where the migration of Arabs of 

 the tribe of el-Harith from the Bahreyn to East Africa and the foundation of 

 Magadaxo is placed about a.d. 924. 



"^ Ed. Defremery and Sanguinetti, ii, 180 if. 



3 Strong, J.R.A.S., 1895, 430. 



^ Barros, Dec. I, Uv. viii, cap. 4 ; Wilson, Monomotapa, 109. 



5 Barros, Dec. I, liv. x, cap. 1 ; Keane, Ophir, 9. 



