ABSTRACT
The crumbling ruins of the Great Mosque of Kilwa sit on a small island in the western Indian Ocean just off the East African coast of southern Tanzania. The ruinous state of the structure today—while still quite impressive in its grand, albeit fading beauty and monumental form—belies the wealth, grandeur, and powerful global role held by the Kilwa sultanate in the past. 1 Located within the former palace complex that stretches across Kilwa Kisiwani (Kilwa on the Island), the mosque continues to bear witness to long and complicated, layered histories, ebbs and flows of wealth, and alternating rises and declines of power as the rulers and conquerors of Kilwa sought to dominate prolific trade in the Swahili coast region over the centuries (Figure 7.4.1).
