Swahili Coast Architecture

Swahili Coast architecture is the building tradition of the trading city states that grew up along the East African coast, in what is now Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, from around the tenth century onward, shaped by the region's centuries of Indian Ocean trade with Arabia, Persia and India as well as by its African roots. Its principal building material is coral rag, blocks of coral limestone cut from the reef and set with a lime mortar, with walls typically finished in a smooth coral lime plaster, and its houses and mosques are frequently distinguished by elaborately hand carved wooden doors, often set with raised bosses and geometric or floral relief carving as a mark of a household's status. The ruined city of Kilwa Kisiwani in present day Tanzania preserves some of the tradition's grandest surviving structures, including the Husuni Kubwa palace complex, built in the fourteenth century for the sultans of Kilwa as one of the largest stone buildings in sub-Saharan Africa at the time, alongside the city's Great Mosque, one of the oldest standing mosques on the East African coast. Stone Town, the historic core of Zanzibar City, remains the tradition's best preserved living example, its coral stone buildings and carved doors recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.