Malindi

Sister cities

• Taicang

History

Malindi developed as part of the emerging Swahili civilisation in the 5th–10th centuries. Bantu-speaking farmers moved into the area, where they smelted iron, built timber and wattle houses thatched with palm leaves, spoke a local dialect of kiSwahili, and engaged in regional and sometimes long-distance trade. The resurgence of the Indian Ocean trade networks at the end of the first millennium led to larger settlements, increased long-distance trade, and greater social complexity. Beginning in the 11th century, the Swahili along the coast were acting as middlemen for Somali, Egyptian, Nubian, Arab, Persian, and Indian traders. They began building walled towns, coral houses, and elites converted to Islam, often speaking Arabic. The Malindi Kingdom appears to have been formed around the 9th century AD and to have grown powerful in the two centuries before Vasco da Gama ushered in the Portuguese colonisation of the region, the latter leading to the decline of the civilisation. The city of Malindi, founded around 850 AD, was in a somewhat more northerly location than the modern city, and appears to have been destroyed around 1000 AD. There are sparse signs of habitation for the next two centuries, then recovery and prosperity in the 1200s. The first written reference to the present-day Malindi likely comes from Abu al-Fida (1273–1331), a Kurdish geographer and historian. He wrote that Malindi was situated to the south of the mouth of a river which began in a mountain hundreds of miles away. This mountain may be Mount Kenya, where the Galana River rises. Thus, Malindi has existed as a Swahili settlement since at least the 13th century. Once rivalled only by Mombasa for dominance in this part of East Africa, Malindi has traditionally been a port city. In 1414, the town…