The important depôt was again attacked in 1589 by a savage host from the south, called by contemporary historians, ‘Zimbas’[‘Zimbas’]:[[7]] the city was taken by the savages; and after plunder and massacre, it was again occupied by Thomé de Souza Coutinho. In 1592, according to the Mombasah Chronicle, Shaho bin Misham, its last Shirazian Sultan, was succeeded by Ahmad the Shaykh of Melinde. Two years afterwards a fort was built by order of the Viceroy Matthias d’Albuquerque, and in 1596 D. Francisco da Gama re-established the Portuguese rule. If we may believe the Dominican monk João dos Santos, who was present during the war waged with the Monomotapa about the mines of Chicova, the conduct of the European foreigners was ‘outrageous and unreasonable,’ and it soon led to the usual consequences. The first deadly blow against the conqueror was struck by Yusuf bin Ahmad, alias Dom Jeronymo Chingoulia, the Nana Sahib of the Eastern Coast. A son of Ahmad, the first Melinde Sultan of Mombasah, he was sent at an early age to Goa, under the charge of Augustine monks, with orders to bring him up in the true religion; he was baptized in A.D. 1627, and, after writing a submissive letter to the Pope, he was permitted to return home, and was imprudently promoted to the chieftainship in August, A.D. 1630. The convert began by making Moslems eat pork, and by similar demonstrations of zeal. When all suspicions were laid at rest, Yusuf, no longer Jeronymo, collected 300 savages, entered the fortress in order to visit its commander, Pedro Leitão de Gamboa; and at a given signal stabbed the latter with his own hand, whilst his followers killed the captain’s wife and daughter, together with the priest, who was saying mass. The surviving Portuguese barricaded themselves for a week in the Augustine convent, but opened the doors when the young Sultan promised to spare their lives. He at once caused all the wretches to be arrowed, and the holy buildings to be profaned and destroyed. Brave as he was cruel, he defended during three months his city against a large fleet and armament sent by the Viceroy D. Miguel de Noronha, Count of Linhares; he beat off Francisco de Moura, and having captured two Portuguese vessels, he dismantled the citadel, burnt the city, destroyed the trees, and escaped with his ‘Pandis’ to Southern Arabia.
Fatal example! Mombasah thus learned that Europeans were easily conquered. The wasted island was re-occupied by the Portuguese, and the citadel was repaired in A.D. 1635. But after Hormuz and Maskat had fallen into the hands of the Persians and the Arabs, the Yurabi Imam of Oman, Sultan bin Sayf, besieged Mombasah about A.D. 1660, and, after five years’ investment, captured only the fort. His son and successor, Sayf bin Sultan, whose squadron was aided by the noble Arab tribe Mazrui, and by the dependent Wasawahili, again attacked the Portuguese, recovered the fort, massacred its defendants, and established an Arab governor. This decisive event took place on the 9th of Jemadi el Akhir, A. H. 1100 (December 14, 1698), a date celebrated in many a local ballad.
I have sketched the modern history of Mombasah when chronicling that of Zanzibar. Sayyid Said, wiser than the Portuguese, secured his conquest by the Tarquinian operation of striking down all the tallest growth. For our temporary protectorate Capt. Boteler is the best authority, and since A.D. 1837 the place has no name in the annals of the coast. The traveller, as well as merchant, must lament that we abandoned its cause; had England retained it, the interior would long ago have been opened to us. This lament may seem strange in the days when we propose to give up Gibraltar, as we have given up Java, Sicily, and the Ionian Islands—conquests hard won by blood and gold, and parted with for a song.
The harbour of Mombasah is spacious and land-locked; without exception, the best on the Zanzibar coast. Its magnificent basin is formed by one of those small coralline islands which, from Suez to Cape Corrientes, have long been the centres of commerce with peoples who, brutalized by barbarism, and incapable of civilization, would have converted mainland depôts into scenes of rapine and bloodshed. Of this chain the principal links, the Tyre, the Alexandria, and the Araduses of East Africa, are Masawah, old Zayla, Berberah—in the 16th century an islet—Makdishu, Lamu, Wasin, ancient Mtanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafiyah, the original Kilwa, and Mozambique. The island is a mass of coralline, that forms scarps and dwarf cliffs, 45 to 60 feet high, everywhere except on the west, where there is a tongue of sand, and where the level ground is covered with the fertile humus of decayed vegetation; the shape is an irregular oval, about 3 miles long by 2½ broad, and this flat surface is capable of growing the richest produce. The soil, excessively permeable and bone-dry after a few hours following the heaviest downfalls, allows neither swamp nor bog. Eastward, or outside, there is good riding-ground defended on both sides by reefs; inside a double sea-arm moats the islet in every direction from the coast. This channel of coral-rag and oyster-rock, about 280 yards wide at the mouth, broadens northwards into a deep and secure basin, Captain Owen’s[[8]] Port Tudor, so called from the officer who surveyed it, and westward of the islet is Port Reitz, a longer and a wider water. Vessels usually lie under the town opposite English Point, where they find safe anchorage. In the South-West monsoon, however, between May and September, square-rigged ships must be warped out, and in so doing they run some risk of being wrecked.
On the N. West Point, where a little battery commanded the passage, Mombasah Island is separated from the mainland by a shallow ford, and possibly this canal may be artificial. Here I should be inclined to place the New Fosse[[9]] of the Periplus, and to identify, as do Vincent and Stuch, the Pyralaon Islands, with Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mafiyah. M. Guillain, by a careful calculation of distances, would transfer the site further north to the natural channel between Patta, Mandra, Lamu, and the mainland. But whilst errors of numerals are easily made, and readily copied in manuscripts; and whilst mistakes of distance can easily be accounted for, it is hard to believe that the Phœnician, Egyptian, and Greek merchants would have neglected the finest harbour and the best site for trade upon the whole Azanian shore. Moreover, there is nothing in the text to prevent the Pyralaon Islands being those off the Benadir, and the Fosse being about the modern ford of Mkupa on the west of the Island of Mombasah.
Said went on shore as the anchor ran out, and presently returned, accompanied by Lakhmidas Thakurdas, the Banyan Collector of Customs, with a civil message from the Jemadar, or Fort Commandant. Other visitors were Hari, a young Bhattia, speaking English learned at Zanzibar, and a certain Rashid bin Salim, a captain’s clerk, whose son is commanding a Kisawahili caravan in the Ukamba-ni country. With them we landed at a natural jetty in the N. Eastern front of the town, and where the dents of cannon-balls mark the position of a battery. Hence we ascended the cliff by a flight of steps in a dark dwarf tunnel, which is a reminiscence of the English. Further to the N. West is the wharf, constructed in 1825 by Lieut. Emery, and near it vessels generally lie. The tunnel opens upon the Mission House, a double-storied box of coarse masonry; the ground-floor belongs to Sayyid Said, and Shangora, the Msawahili ‘care-taker,’ duly supplied the key. To the right and left were other similar tenements, all more or less dilapidated, and the S. Eastern point was occupied by a small Custom House painfully whitewashed.
We are now in the Gavana (i. e. Governo), at present the Arab town, as opposed to the Mji wa Kale, Harat El Kadimeh, the ‘old quarter,’ the Black Town of the Portuguese. The site of the former is a dwarf rise at the S. Eastern and seaward edge of the Island, and it faces to the N. East, where over the pure blue channel orchards and verdure and wells of pure water commend the mainland as a villeggiatura. The form of the settlement is a parallelogram running N. West to S. East, and it was separated from the Black Town by a wall 10 to 12 feet high. This, under the Mazrui Shaykhs, was repaired and provided with a few bastions; between the Gavana and the citadel, however, a defensive work was not judged necessary, and now—an excellent sign—the rampart is rapidly falling to ruins. Here are the tombs of the local heroes who made Mombasah a historic name, and under a shed repose the remains of the Mazara governors, beginning with Mohammed bin Usman. The tombs are of masonry, and are distinguished by bearing epitaphs, which are somewhat in the style of prayers recited before the graves of Walis at Meccah and El Medinah. Amongst them is the sepulchre of Khuwaysah bint Abdillah, a woman apparently with a soul, for Allah is begged, to ‘make her home Paradise, with the best of its inmates.’
The materials of the Gavana are brown thatch huts, clustering round a few one-storied, flat-roofed boxes of glaring lime and coral rag, equally rude within and without. On the N. West lies the ‘native’ half, which prolongs the Arab quarter beyond the enceinte; this suburb is wholly composed of sun-burned and wind-blackened hovels, forming a labyrinth of narrow lanes. Outside the faubourg clusters a thicketty plantation of cocoa and fruit trees; here was the favourite skirmishing-ground between the Sayyid’s troops and the Mazrui defenders of the city. Mombasah is, as far as Nature made her, pleasing and picturesque, but man has done his best to spoil her work. A glorious ‘bush,’ a forest of tall trees, capped by waving palms, laced with llianas, and studded with shady mangoes, thick guavas, and fat baobabs, here forming natural avenues, there scattered as in a pleasure-ground, overspreads the vicinity of the town, whilst the more distant parts to the West, S. West, and N. West, are dense wild growths, virgin, as it were, and still sheltering the monkey and the hog, the hyæna and the wild cat. The presence of man is known only by some wretched hut, or by a dwarf Shamba-plot of meagre cultivation.
We inquired for the tomb of the Resident, Lieut. John James Reitz, who died whilst exploring the Pangani river, and was buried here in 1823. The site was once a church, but it has been turned into a cattle-yard by the Banyans, and now it enjoys the name of Gurayza ya Gnombe (bullock church). Besides some fine old masonry-revetted wells, still supplying the best water, the only traces of the Portuguese and the ‘twenty churches of Mombasah’ are ruins of three desecrated fanes, especially the Gurayza Mkuba (great church), the Augustine convent which lies in the north-eastern part of the Gavana. It is not to be compared for interest with the Jesuit remains upon the Rio de São Francisco. The people no longer show, as in 1824, the heap of masonry under which, says Boteler (ii. 1-20), they had buried the Moslems who fell during the second massacre of the Portuguese. I did not see the pillar or obelisk and the ruined fort to the S.S. East of the citadel, shown in Captain Owen’s chart. The Gurayza Mdogo is near the Augustine convent, and has now all the semblance of a dwelling-house. The battery or citadel, built by the Portuguese in 1594, and repaired in 1635, has been so much altered that it is now an Arabo-Msawahili construction. Its position is excellent, outside and S. East of the Gavana, pointing to the N. East, with complete command, at a distance of 600 fathoms, over the narrow northern entrance, and wanting only a reform in the batteries à fleur d’eau, and clearing out the interior of sheds and forage, to be a match for all the fleets of Arabia. Originally a quadrangle, some 120 yards square, with 4 bastions facing the cardinal points, it was sunk below the level of the coralline rock, which thus forms the footing of the walls, and which supplies a broad, deep moat. According to the Mombasah chronicle, the stones were brought ready cut from Portugal: the phrase is ‘Do Reino,’ which Capt. Owen has rendered ‘from Rainu,’ and elsewhere is commemorated ‘The Sultan of Rainu.’ The S.S. Western is the strongest side, whence a land attack might be expected: the other flanks are rich in dead ground, and the N.N. West front protects the Gavana. My sketch of the north-eastern face, taken from the Mhoma-ni Shamba, on the opposite side of the creek, shows a picturesque yellow pile, with tall, long, and buttressed curtains, which appear slightly salient, enclosing towers studded with, perpendicular loopholes; three tiers of fire opposite the entrance to the northern harbour; a place d’armes; a high don-jon with a giant flag-staff, conspicuous for 5 or 6 miles from the south, and sundry garnishings of little domes and luxuriant trees, some even growing out of the wall cracks.
Hearing that strangers are admitted to the Fort—Mrs Rebmann has often visited it—I proceeded to the head-quarters of the Jemadar. Arrived at the land gate leading to the inner Barzeh or vestibule, my attention was directed to the Portuguese inscription before alluded to. It is half defaced by the Arabs, but this is of the less consequence as copies have been published by Captains Owen and Guillain.[[10]] At the angles of the western and southern bastions are also scutcheons in stone bearing the names Baluarte São Felippe and Baluarte Alberto. That to the north was called Baluarte São Matthias (from Matthias de Albuquerque), but here, as on the south side, the inscriptions have disappeared, probably by the fire of the enemy. A sentinel at the gate waved his hand and cried, Sir! Sir! (go! go!); but I persisted in sending for the Jemadar Tangai, who took my hand and led me towards a shed of leafy branches, some 15 paces outside the Fort. Here, he assured me, the Sayyid himself used to faire anti-chambre; but I could see only hucksters and negroes. We parted in high dudgeon, nor did we ever become friendly. Saíd bin Salim, who during this scene had remained below and afar off, showed us the chief mosque—there were eight when Lieut. Emery visited the town[[11]]—and a formless mass of masonry, which marks the last resting-place of some almost forgotten heroes.[[12]]