Beyond the Blue Horizon by Brian Fagan

Author:Brian Fagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2012-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.3 Stone town architecture at Songo Mnara, Tanzania, with the arches of the mosque in the left of the picture. Songo Mnara is a fourteenth- to sixteenth-century offshoot of Kilwa Kisiwani, on an island just to the south. The quality of the coral-built architecture is notable at the site, and this monumental style is extended to the domestic architecture and a series of very grand houses of the period. Courtesy Stephanie Wynne-Jones.

Life along the coast centered around the “stone towns,” with their flourishing Muslim congregations, whose mosques almost invariably rose within 1,100 yards (1,000 meters) of the shore, so strong was the coastal orientation, although there was no formal convention. The new architecture was in mud and coral, then, by the thirteenth century, wholly in coral—stone houses, palaces, and other structures forming compact towns, often with courtyards. The switch to coral masonry may reflect the changing focus of the trade away from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, where coral buildings were in common use. Mangrove poles formed the ceilings, their length restricting the size of rooms, making small rooms a common feature of coastal architecture.

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