A tiny tropical island off Tanzania's coast has seen a disproportionate amount of action throughout its history. Graham Mercer discovers the story behind Kilwa Kisiwani's beguiling ruins.

The beginnings of Kilwa Kisiwani are swathed in myth, but one thing is clear: this seemingly insignificant island, only 8km long, has been destined to occupy a place in East Africa's history out of all proportion to its size.

In total, Kilwa actually comprises three settlements, situated on the Tanzanian coast 220km south of Dar es Salaam as the Pied crow flies, but closer to 300km by road. Kilwa Kivinje ("of the casuarinas") and Kilwa Masoko ("of the market") are both on the mainland, 25km apart. Just offshore from Masoko is Kilwa Kisiwani ("on the island"). It is the story of the latter that is the most intriguing.

One version suggests that it was settled by Omanis around 700AD. Another talks of a Shirazi prince who arrived three centuries later and is said to have bought the whole place from a local headman in return for a length of cloth equal to its circumference.

Whatever its origins, Kilwa was praised in 1332 by the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta as "one of the most beautiful and well-constructed towns". Almost 200 years later the Portuguese were obliged to agree. Bristling with superior, anti-Islamic prejudices, their mindset must have suffered a serious shake-up. For instead of mud huts they found "a Moorish town with many fair houses of stones and mortar".

And instead of savages they found literate Muslims, "some fair and some black, finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver in chains and bracelets and many jewelled earrings". Their elegance was no doubt enhanced by all the perfumes of Arabia.

Gold was so common that ivory was relatively more expensive, for since about 1300 all the gold from the mines of the Monomotapa kingdom in Zimbabwe had passed through Kilwa, via Mozambique. Kisiwani became known as "the jewel of the Zanj coast" because of its wealth and the expressions of that wealth, its beautiful buildings.