ABSTRACT
The houses of the wa-ungwana merchants were often multi-story structures, consisting of a series of long narrow rooms contiguously arranged along their long side, progressing into more restrictive interior spaces. The merchant elites of the fifteenth century similarly displayed their status through the building of elaborate stone-built houses, many of which became quite refined in detail and construction, while the majority of the population lived in dwellings built of mud, timber and thatch. Houses were generally single-story structures with flat roofs, spanned by mangrove poles harvested from the tidal fringes which due to their structural limitations, restricted the depth of the rooms to a maximum of around eight feet. One explanation for the apparent absence of markets along the Swahili coast may be due to the general lack of permanent structures often associated with marketplaces and market institutions within East Africa, as similarly noted in Barth's earlier account from Central Africa.
