UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
Azania, 44 as the Romans called the east coast of Africa south of Ras
Hafun, was probably not economically unified. It consisted rather of a
series of market-towns each with its own chief, each dependent on its own
narrow hinterland for export commodities and each visited directly by the
monsoon dhows. The Periplus mentions a number of places such as
Sarapion, probably a few miles north of Merca, Nikon, probably Burgao
(Port Dunford), and the Pyralean Islands which have been identified with
the Lamu archipelago. At these places ships could lie at anchor but there
is as yet no reference to any commercial activities at them. South of the
Lamu archipelago there is indeed a change in the character of the coastline,
as the Periplus so accurately described. Two days' sail beyond lay the island
of Menouthias, 'about 300 stadia [about 55 kilometres] from the mainland,
low and wooded'. 45 Pemba is the first major island that the northern
mariners would encounter, and probably the only one that could have been
reached in two days from Lamu. Moreover, Pemba is in fact 50 kilometres
from the mainland, as against 36 kilometres in the case of Zanzibar.
Menouthias, however, was not a commercially important port. It provided
a kind of tortoiseshell which was in greatest demand after that from India,
but the island's only major economic activity described in the Periplus
was fishing. 46
The only market-town along the coast south of Ras Hafun mentioned
in the Periplus was Rhapta. According to that document the emporium
was two days' sail beyond Menouthias, and Ptolemy says that it was located
on a river of the same name 'not far from the sea'. 47 Baxter and Allen
argue that if the two days' voyage began from the northern end of Pemba
and ended at a river some distance from the sea, the most probable location
of Rhapta would be somewhere up the Pangani river, which formerly had
a northern mouth. Datoo argues that in view of sailing conditions Rhapta
was probably located between Pangani and Dar-es-Salaam. 48 Rhapta was
apparently governed by a local chief but under the overall suzerainty of
the south-west Arabian state. The Periplus, however, gives the impression
that that suzerainty consisted of little more than a monopoly of external
44. The term firstoccurred in Pliny, Vol. VI, p. 172, where it seems to refer vaguely to the
sea outside the Red Sea. In the Periplus, 15, 16 and i8, and in Ptolemy, Vol. I, pp. 17,
121, the term definitely refers to the east coast of Africa. It has been suggested that it is
a corruption of Zanj which was later used by Arab geographers and which appears in
Ptolemy and Cosmas as Zingisa and Zingion respectively; G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, 1968.
See also W . H. Schoff, 1912, p. 92. I have excluded from consideration the parts on the
Gulf of Aden which formed a separate economic region whose major economic activities
included the export of frankincense and myrrh, and the re-export of cinnamon from southeast
Asia, neither of which characterized the coast south of Ras Hafun: see B. A. Datoo,
1970b, pp. 71-2.
45. Periplus, 15; B. A. Datoo, 1970b, p. 68; G. Mathew, 1963, p. 95.
46. Periplus, 15.
47. ibid., 16; Ptolemy, Vol. I, p. 17, quoted in J. W . T. Allen, p. 55.
48. H. C. Baxter, p. 17; J. W . T. Allen, pp. 55-9; B. A. Datoo, 1970b, pp. 68^9.
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