ABSTRACT
The East African ivory trade is an ancient one. It is mentioned in the first accounts of geographers and tr~vellers, and they give it more prominence than the slave-trade. It may have been the search for ivory which brought the first ships around Cape Guardafui, and then southwards along the East African coast. By the second century A.D. the coast, as far as 10" S., was 'subject under some ancient right to the sovereignty of the power which held the primacy in Arabia', and Arab merchants were exporting ivory from it in great quantity. I Reference to the export of ivory from the East African coast continues throughout the early and later middle ages. Al Masudi, writing in the early tenth century says that elephants were extremely common in the land of Zinj, and that it was from this country that large elephant tusks were obtained: 'Most of the ivory is carried to Oman whence it is sent to India and China'. Marco Polo refers to the East African coast and states: 'They have elephants in plenty and drive a brisk trade in tusks'.2 During the Portuguese domination of the coast from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, ivory continued to be an important export; it receives more mention in Portuguese records than does the slave trade. In the sixteenth century 30,000 lb. of ivory passed through the port ofSofala yearly.
