City-states on the east coast of Africa grew in size and prosperity as they took advantage of wind patterns to participate in Indian Ocean trade. Their people were united by a shared religion, Islam, and a shared language, Swahili. Products from the interior of the African continent were sold by the Swahili traders to merchants from Arabia, Persia, and India. In exchange, they purchased goods from India, Southeast Asia, and China. Enslaved Africans were also sold in the Swahili city-states.

The most powerful of the states was Kilwa, which had grown wealthy through its control of the gold-rich city of Sofala. When the Portuguese arrived in the late fifteenth century, they attempted to leverage the cities’ discontent with Kilwa’s dominance to gain control of the region’s trade, but a Somali-Ottoman alliance and the Omani Sultanate ultimately drove them from all the city-states except Mozambique.

All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/3-3-the-swahili-coast

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