Mombasa
Mombasa is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. Buildings in the Central Business District are blue and white, representing the Indian Ocean. It is the country's oldest and second-largest city after Nairobi, with a population of about 1,208,333 people according to the 2019 census.
Mombasa's location on the Indian Ocean made it a historical trading centre, and it has been controlled by many countries because of its strategic location. Kenyan school history books place the founding of Mombasa as 900 AD. It must have been already a prosperous trading town in the 12th century, as the Arab geographer al-Idrisi mentions it in 1151. It was a part of the Kilwa Sultanate from approximately the early 14th century until the dissolution of the sultanate in 1513. The oldest stone mosque in Mombasa, Mnara, was built 1300. The Mandhry Mosque, built in 1570, has a minaret that contains a regionally specific ogee arch. The city later came under the occupation and control of the Omani Empire in the late 17th century.
In the late pre-colonial period, it was the metropolis of a plantation society, which became dependent on slave labour based around the ivory trade. Throughout the early modern period, Mombasa was a key node in the complex and far-reaching Indian Ocean trading networks. Its key exports then were ivory, millet, sesamum and coconuts.
Today, Mombasa is a tourism-based town, home to one of the state houses, with an extra-large port and an international airport.
History
Ancient and medieval
The founding of Mombasa is associated with two rulers: Mwana Mkisi and Shehe Mvita. According to legend, Mwana Mkisi is the original ancestor of Mombasa's oldest lineages within Thenashara Taifa. Families associated with the Twelve Nations are still considered the original inhabitants of the city. Mwana Mkisi was a queen from the pre-Islamic era, who founded Kongowea, the original urban settlement on Mombasa Island.Significantly, the names of both the queen and the city have linguistic and spiritual connections with Central Africa. "Mkisi" is considered the personification of "ukisi", which means "the holy" in kiKongo. "Kongowea" can similarly be interpreted as the Swahili locative of "kongo", which denotes the essence of civilizational order in central Africa. These legends can be read as an acknowledgement of the Bantu-speaking origins of the Swahili people.
Shehe Mvitaff superseded the dynasty of Mwana Mkisi and established the first permanent stone mosque on Mombasa Island. Mombasa's oldest extant stone mosque, Mnara, was built c. 1300. Shehe Mvita is remembered as a Muslim of great learning and so is connected more directly with the present ideals of Swahili culture that people identify with Mombasa. The ancient history associated with Mwana Mkisi and Shehe Mvita and the founding of an urban settlement on Mombasa Island is still linked to present-day peoples living in Mombasa. The Thenashara Taifa Swahili lineages recount this ancient history today and are the keepers of local Swahili traditions.
Most of the early information on Mombasa comes from the writings of Portuguese chroniclers in the 16th century.
The famous Moroccan scholar and traveller Ibn Battuta visited the area during his travels to the Swahili Coast. He noted the city, although he stayed only one night. He wrote that the people of Mombasa were Shafi'i Muslims, religious people, trustworthy and righteous. Their mosques were made of wood, expertly built.
The exact founding date of the city is unknown, but it has a long history. Kenyan school history books place the founding of Mombasa as 900. It must have been already a prosperous trading town in the 12th century, as the Arab geographer al-Idrisi mentions it in 1151. The oldest stone mosque in Mombasa, Mnara, was built 1300. The Mandhry Mosque, built in 1570, has a minaret that contains a regionally specific ogee arch. This suggests that Swahili architecture was an indigenous African product rather than being adopted from non-African Muslims who brought stone architecture to the Swahili Coast.
During the pre-modern period, Mombasa was an important centre for the trade in spices, gold, and ivory. Its trade links reached as far as India and China. Oral historians today can still recount this period of local history. Indian history shows that there were trade links between Mombasa and Cholas of South India. Throughout the early modern period, Mombasa was a key node in the complex and far-reaching Indian Ocean trading networks. Its key exports were ivory, millet, sesamum and coconuts.
Ivory caravans remained a major source of economic prosperity. Mombasa became the major port city of pre-colonial Kenya in the Middle Ages and was used to trade with other African port cities, the Persian Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, India and China.
Sixteenth-century Portuguese voyager Duarte Barbosa wrote,
" is a place of great traffic and has a good harbour in which there are always moored small craft of many kinds and also great ships, both of which are bound from Sofala and others which come from Cambay and Melinde and others which sail to the island of Zanzibar."
Portuguese domination
was the first known European to visit Mombasa, receiving a chilly reception in 1498. Two years later, the town was sacked by the Portuguese. In 1502, the sultanate became independent from Kilwa Kisiwani and was renamed as Mvita or Manbasa.The Portuguese had since had encounters with the city several times; first under Francisco de Almeida in 1505, later under Afonso de Albuquerque in 1522 to quell an attempted mutiny by the sultan's nephew in Pemba and Zanzibar, and finally the destruction of the city under Nuno da Cunha again in 1528 after the Malindi sultan failed to pay tribute.
In 1585, a military expedition of the Ottoman Empire, led by Emir 'Ali Bey, successfully captured Mombasa, and other coastal cities in Southeast Africa from the Portuguese. However, Malindi remained loyal to Portugal. The Zimba overcame the towns of Sena and Tete on the Zambezi, and in 1587 they took Kilwa, killing 3,000 people. At Mombasa, the Zimba slaughtered the Muslim inhabitants, but they were halted at Malindi by the Bantu-speaking Segeju and went home. This stimulated the Portuguese to take over Mombasa a third time in 1589, and four years later they built Fort Jesus to administer the region. Between Lake Malawi and the Zambezi mouth, Kalonga Mzura made an alliance with the Portuguese in 1608 and fielded 4,000 warriors to help defeat their rival Zimba, who were led by chief Lundi.
After the building of Fort Jesus, Mombasa was put by the Portuguese under the rule of members of the ruling family of Malindi. In 1631 Dom Jeronimo, the ruler of Mombasa, slaughtered the Portuguese garrison in the city and defeated the relief force sent by the Portuguese. In 1632 Dom Jeronimo left Mombasa and became a pirate. That year the Portuguese returned and established direct rule over Mombasa.
Omani rule
With the capture of Fort Jesus in 1698, the town came under the influence of the Imamate of Oman, subordinate to the Omani rulers on the island of Unguja, prompting regular local rebellions. Oman appointed three consecutive Governors :- 12 December 1698 – December 1698: Imam Sa'if ibn Sultan
- December 1698 – 1728: Nasr ibn Abdallah al-Mazru'i
- 1728–12 March 1728: Shaykh Rumba
- 1746–1755: 'Ali ibn Uthman al-Mazru'i
- 1755–1773: Masud ibn Nasr al-Mazru'i
- 1773–1782: Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mazru'i
- 1782–1811: Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Mazru'i
- 1812–1823: 'Abdallah ibn Ahmad al-Mazru'i
- 1823–1826: Sulayman ibn 'Ali al-Mazru'i
British rule and independence
On 25 May 1887 Mombasa was relinquished to the British East Africa Association, later the Imperial British East Africa Company. It came under British administration in 1895.It soon became the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate and the sea terminal of the Uganda Railway, construction of which was started in 1896. Many workers were brought in from British India to build the railway, and the city's fortunes revived. The Sultan of Zanzibar formally presented the town to the British in 1898.
Mombasa became the capital of the Kenya Colony Protectorate of Kenya, sometime between 1887 and around 1906. The capital was later moved because medical officers warned that the ground was swampy, and urged Sir James Hayes Sadler, then Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate, to plead with London to move the town elsewhere to mitigate potential disease. Nairobi has since been Kenya's capital to date.
The Mombasa tusks, one of the city's best-known monuments, were originally constructed in 1952 by the British administration of the Kenya Colony, commemorating the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the city.
In 2018, as part of an effort to increase tourism, Mombasa County Governor Hassan Joho issued a directive requiring that all buildings in the Old Town and the Central Business District be painted white with Egyptian blue trim and banned all signs from their walls or canopies. Transport, Infrastructure and Public Works County Executive Tawfiq Balala stated that the city wanted to be "the most photographed in Africa".