Centuries–19th Century: (The Swahili Coast’s Ancient Commercial Heritage — Monsoon-Driven Indian Ocean Trade, the Rise of Mogadishu and Mombasa, the Portugue…

Centuries–19th Century: (The Swahili Coast’s Ancient Commercial Heritage — Monsoon-Driven Indian Ocean Trade, the Rise of Mogadishu and Mombasa, the Portuguese Destruction of the Golden Age, and the Omani Reconquest at the End of the Seventeenth Century): The East African coast had as long an international commercial history as anywhere on the Atlantic littoral. Overseas contacts can be dated back centuries and perhaps millennia — the alternating patterns of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean facilitated seasonal journeys within a triangle linking India, Arabia, and East Africa. From central East Africa came ivory, gold, and slaves, though the slave trade remained limited in scale until the late eighteenth century. This ancient commerce gave rise to Swahili culture along the coast, inspiring the foundation of major coastal towns such as Mogadishu and Mombasa — first and foremost trading settlements combining African, Arabic, and Islamic culture, characterized by high architectural achievement and considerable wealth. The arrival of the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth century spelled the end of what had been something of a golden age — the Portuguese attacked and subdued much of the Swahili coast, destroying the rich commerce that was their lifeblood, though trade continued on a reduced scale. But the Portuguese conquest proved ephemeral: at the end of the seventeenth century, a fleet from Oman drove the Portuguese from most of the coastal settlements, and from that point the Swahili coast was loosely under Omani suzerainty.