Iran’s Historical Influence in East Africa

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On December 12, 1963 AD, Kenya in east Africa gained independence from Britain. It was occupied as of early 20th century and formally proclaimed a British colony in 1920. After World War 2, the Kenyan people led by Jomo Kenyatta launched their uprising. The monopoly of whites and racial strife took the country to the brink of civil war in the 1950s, forcing the British to draft a constitution and hold elections. In the February 1961 parliamentary polls, the indigenous Africans won the most number of seats, and two years later complete independence was achieved.
The Republic of Kenya covers an area of 582,646 sq km. It has a coastline on the Indian Ocean, and its capital is Nairobi. It shares borders with Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. Over 15 percent of the 40 million population of Kenya is Muslim. Kenya has a rich Islamic cultural past in view of the fact that by the 8th century Arab and Persian settlements had sprouted along the coast.
At its height, the Kilwa Sultanate, centered in what is now Tanzania, and founded by the Iranian nobleman, Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi, over a thousand years ago, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast, including Kenya. The Persian rulers would go on to build elaborate coral mosques and introduced copper coinage. During this period, people of Yemen and Oman also settled on the coast and set up many autonomous city-states, including Mombasa, the leading port city of Kenya. This blending of cultures left a profound influence on the local Bantu Swahili culture and language. Mombasa, which has a Muslim majority population, has had trade links with commercial centers in Iran, Arabia, and India.