Mikindani
Mikindani is a historic coastal town located in Mtwara-Mikindani District of Mtwara Region in Tanzania. The name comes from the Swahili word mikinda which means "young coconut trees". Therefore, the term "Mikindani', literally means "the place where there are young coconut trees" in old Swahili language. Mikindani is part of the city of Mtwara and is governed by the Mtwara Mikindani Municipal Council. The site is a registered National Historic Site.
Overview
About 50 kilometres north of the Mozambique border, in the Tanzanian Mtwara Region, is the location of settlement of Mikindani. Mikindani was a thriving port in the 19th century, when it participated in the trades of ivory, gum copal, and slaves for the Indian Ocean plantation system. It served as the starting point for Dr. David Livingstone's final expedition into the interior of Africa in 1866 during that time period. Kilwa, a significant Swahili city, has been the subject of archaeological studies in the area surrounding Mikindani. Mikindani participated in Indian Ocean trade during the first millennium CE, used marine resources with mixed farming subsistence practises, and extensively shared coastal trends.However, as the millennium went on, Mikindani's material culture and economy set itself apart from that of northern coastal settlements. They did not follow Swahili patterns of historical development during the second millennium, which was strikingly evident in the absence of distinctive Indian Ocean import ceramics and the emergence of a new local ceramics style with ties to the interior and the south rather than Swahili sites further north. By the middle of the second millennium, when the town reintegrated with the Indian Ocean world, these differences from the rest of the Swahili coast were partially erased. However, the significance of interior linkages was still retained, as demonstrated by surviving material culture parallels.
History
Early history
Recent archaeological studies have substantiated the historical expectations regarding the ancient utilization of the Mikindani Bay area, indicating that human occupation extended into the Late Stone Age, specifically the final centuries before the Common Era. Notably, the archaeological findings reveal that the inhabitants of Mikindani participated in significant cultural developments associated with Swahili civilization along the East African coast. This participation included the establishment of Iron Age agricultural settlements in the early first millennium CE and the adoption of red-painted Swahili Ware ceramics during the mid-second millennium. However, it is important to note that they did not engage in the cultural advancements characteristic of the early second millennium flourishing of the Swahili region.Despite evidence of early settlement, there is no historical documentation to support the designation of Mikindani as a major center of Swahili culture. The town, referred to as either Mikindani or Quindarmis, is not mentioned in the historical records of other Swahili towns until the accounts of the nineteenth century. In terms of pre-nineteenth-century stone architecture, the region appears to have possessed only modest stone mosques at Pemba and Msemo, along with a possible royal residence or a Portuguese fortified structure at Mikindani, as noted in European accounts.
The scarcity of such buildings, especially when contrasted with the extensive stone architecture—comprising multiple mosques, numerous stone structures, and occasional monumental buildings—found in other prominent Swahili centers is noteworthy. Historical narratives suggest that Mikindani was smaller in both size and population compared to major centers such as Kilwa or Mombasa. Nevertheless, European accounts consistently recognized Mikindani and its neighboring settlements around Mikindani Bay as regionally significant. This regional importance, coupled with involvement in interregional trade and the relative absence of substantial stone architecture, underscores Mikindani's classification as a mid-level Swahili town during the latter part of the second millennium.
The settlement of Mikindani is first mentioned in written history in the latter half of the eighteenth century in relation to French involvement in the slave trade, although several of these early records, such as one from David Livingstone in 1866, offer architectural evidence for a much longer habitation. In fact, archaeological study in the area surrounding Mikindani has shown that there has been intensive habitation since the fifth century and that there has been occupation since the final centuries BCE. The original inhabitants were the Makonde people
In comparison to other Swahili towns and cities, Makonde communities such as those in Mikindani were modest in size. They struck a balance between a matrilineally organised ritual authority for the offspring of early settlers and founders and a strong ambivalence towards authority and a propensity to disintegrate through small-scale movements in response to problems like drought and raiding, to acquire new land to support extensive agricultural patterns of bush fallowing, or out of simple ambition. Due to these traits, Makonde communities were able to survive on their own in spite of Portuguese pacification efforts, slave raids, and the actions of many African war leaders.
Mikindani is situated in the Swahili Coast, a cultural area spanning from Mozambique to Somalia. It is situated 250 kilometres south of Kilwa, a significant Swahili city, at the southernmost point of that coast. Iron Age fishing and agricultural communities gradually became more integrated into the social and economic networks of the Indian Ocean in the second part of the first millennium. This transformation was sparked by the conversion of many coastal populations to Islam.
11th Century to 16th Century
Early in the second millennium, stone-built urban centres grew in number and a common, cosmopolitan material culture that mixed Islamic and Middle Eastern elements with African ones gave rise to a florescence of Swahili culture. During this time, Swahili towns maintained their independence and competitiveness while interacting with Indian Ocean traders, following various forms of Islam, and maintaining connections to the various African groups that made up their respective hinterlands. Even though Swahili people have continuously fought, cooperated with, and been ruled by colonial forces from Europe and the Oman since the sixteenth century, they have managed to preserve their own cultural identity.At Mikindani, the early second millennium marks a clear break from the centuries before it. This second phase is mostly a reorientation of Mikindani's exterior linkages away from the sphere of the Indian Ocean and towards the interior Rovuma River basin. The absence of any imported ceramics—which had become more prevalent elsewhere on the Swahili coast—from the archaeological record in the Mikindani region at this time is arguably the most noticeable feature. Even though tens of thousands of pieces of locally made pottery were found, none of the imported celadon, sgraffito, black-on-yellow, Islamic monochrome, Chinese stoneware, or other types of pottery were found.
Local pottery provide evidence for how the area thrived despite its residents' withdrawal from trade with the Indian Ocean; they relied on connections with interior communities. The pottery types made in the Mikindani region at the beginning of the second millennium were distinct from those made there in centuries prior as well as from those being developed further north at other Swahili sites along the coast. They are distinguished by thin-walled, well-fired open bowls and necked vessels with flattened, tapered rims and significant areal stamping or shell-edge impressions on their exteriors. In terms of decoration, vessel form, rim type, and production method, these varieties are similar to the Mwamasapa tradition made in northern Malawi and the Lumbo tradition made in northern Mozambique.
The archaeological record thus documents a change in cultural and economic ties when Mikindani's residents turned their focus inward rather than towards the Indian Ocean sphere. It is possible to propose a number of explanations for why that change took place. The development of Kilwa as a significant commercial and political hub would have been one crucial factor.
That Swahili city was well known for controlling access to trade and imported products even inside its own province, and it even claimed some degree of authority over the southern Tanzanian coast.
Second, given that Mikindani appears to have embraced Islam relatively late, rising cultural disparities are likely to have made the economically precarious situation that Mikindani held in the Indian Ocean worse. However, Mikindani's residents may have benefited from additional trade options along the Rovuma River even as their opportunities to take part in Indian Ocean trade grew increasingly limited. The similarities in culture that the local ceramics revealed linked Mikindani to the places that the Makonde's oral traditions identified as their ancestral homelands.
Second, given that Mikindani appears to have embraced Islam relatively late, rising cultural disparities are likely to have made the economically precarious situation that Mikindani held in the Indian Ocean worse. However, Mikindani's residents may have benefited from additional trade options along the Rovuma River even as their opportunities to take part in Indian Ocean trade grew increasingly limited. The similarities in culture that the local ceramics revealed linked Mikindani to the places that the Makonde's oral traditions identified as their ancestral homelands.
While most Tanzanian accounts place the Makonde's origin in an ill-defined area of northern Mozambique known as Ndonde before crossing the river, the ethnographer Jorge Dias' account of their history in Mozambique suggests that they began along the shores of Lake Malawi and then followed the Rovuma coastward. Given the range of Makonde group movements in southern Tanzania since the middle of the eighteenth century that have been historically documented, it is important to remember that the archaeological record should not be interpreted as confirming these oral stories.
However, when combined, these two datasets do indicate that Mikindani's residents, who faced dwindling opportunities in Indian Ocean trade, instead established significant cultural and economic ties with dispersed, expanding, non-Swahili communities in the interior throughout the early second millennium.
The people of Mikindani gradually started to reintegrate into the Indian Ocean region starting in the sixteenth century. They started buying imported ceramics, such as Chinese blue-on-white porcelain and different knockoffs made overseas. Imports were primarily limited to the communities around Mikindani Bay, which for the first time encompassed the permanent habitation of the majority of Mikindani's town. From such contexts, common Swahili Ware pottery were also found, particularly open bowls painted red and those with bands of punctate ornamentation on the neck. Ruined mosques are further evidence that at least some of the local inhabitants had converted to Islam. All of these traits imply that the people of Mikindani were once more a part of Swahili social, economic, and cultural life as well as Indian Ocean networks. Notably, this development took place as Kilwa's authority and influence were waning.
This is probably a result of efforts to uphold and preserve the crucial social, cultural, and economic networks that link the area to interior non-Swahili populations. It might also be the outcome of ongoing rivalry and unpredictability around Mikindani's position in Indian Ocean trade. While Kilwa's fall brought about previously unattainable opportunities, it also left a void in southern Tanzania that neighbouring Swahili centres hastened to fill. In fact, the power vacuum sparked rivalry that persisted into the nineteenth century between Mombasa, Zanzibar, the restored Kilwa polity, and others.