KILWA IS 



south, these people, now known as the Emozeides 

 (or Emozaidi), were m turn driven out by an in- 

 cursion of Arabs from Central Arabia, under whose 

 control Mogdishu became a thriving and populous 

 port, the metropoUs, indeed, of East African trade. 



Kilwa was the second of these towns to be estab- 

 hshed, since we learn that, about the fourth century 

 of the Mohammedan era, one Ali, a Persian, a son 

 of the Sheik of Shiraz, embarked from Ormuz with 

 a few followers and sailed for Mogdishu. Here, 

 owing to sectarial differences with the Arabs whom 

 he discovered there, who, though followers of the 

 prophet, had adopted certain peculiarities of ritual 

 to which the virtuous Ali found himself unable to 

 conform, he set sail again, and, shaping a course 

 to the south, purchased the island of Kilwa from 

 the natives then residing upon it, and proceeded 

 to establish there a small hierarchy of his own, far 

 from family dissension or religious controversy— a 

 hierarchy of which he was to be at once the ruler 

 and guide. The settlement rapidly grew, as the 

 sound principles and inherent justice of Sheik Ali 

 attracted large numbers of the more peacefully 

 inclined. An imposing fortress was constructed, 

 and houses of timber and thatch gave place to the 

 flat-roofed, stone edifices so characteristic of the 

 East of to-day. It is also stated that the town 

 increased so rapidly in size that soon the slender 

 minarets and shapelydomes of its numerous mosques 

 and other buildings gave it the stately yet graceful 

 appearance of a thriving Eastern city. 



Our next authoritative observer of the events 

 which crowded thick and fast upon each other on 



