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According to the Coastal traditions, Islam was first brought to East Africa by the Arabs in the early eighth century A.D. during the reign of 'Abd al Malik ibn Marwan. Mas'udi, writing in the tenth century, mentions a settled Muslim population in such centers as Lamu and Mombasa. The oldest known inscription is from the early twelfth century A.D., on a mosque in Zanzibar. During the fourteenth century, the Islamic culture was at its height; all inscriptions are in Arabic, on the numerous monuments which they left behind. The arrival of the Portuguese who monopolized the trade on the Indian Ocean delivered a severe blow to the prosperity of the Islamic peoples who had hitherto formed the network of commercial connections that linked all the major ports of the Indian Ocean, such as Mombasa, Mozambique, Malindi, Mogadishu, Muscat, Ormuz, Oman, Cambay, Goa, Malacca, and Majunda and Madagascar.
After the Portuguese power declined, the mercantile cities regained their independence except Goa, and the Arabs reclaimed many of their ancient interests and commercial connections. It is possible that the progress of Islam was slowed down during the period of Portuguese domination, but Islam certainly did not lose any ground that it had previously occupied. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Arabs continued to trade with the cities of East Africa, and many settled there, as they had done during the Middle Ages. At the same time, people from "Upcountry", the majority of whom spoke Bantu languages, continued to settle on the Coast where the opportunities lay. In other words, the miscegenation of the Arabs with the Bantu speaking peoples of East Africa went on in the way it had started, and the "Swahili' or Coastal Arabs became the Swahili or Bantu speaking Muslims, many of whom are indistinguishable from African types, all of whom possess this indefinable mark of distinction that sets them off against the other African peoples, this adabu "courteous behaviour" that signifies the civilization of which they are so proud.
The use of Swahili
The Swahili language was first noted by al-Mas'udi, but the oldest preserved text is dated 1652. By that time it was already a full-fledged literary language, showing every sign of an independent evolution that must have taken place during...