Mombasa

Mombasa's location on the Indian Ocean made it a historic trading centre, and it has been controlled by many countries because of its strategic location. Kenyan school history books place the founding of Mombasa as 900 AD. It must have already been a prosperous trading town in the 12th century, as the Arab geographer al-Idrisi mentions it in 1151. It was a part of the Kilwa Sultanate from approximately the early 14th century until the dissolution of the sultanate in 1513. The oldest stone mosque in Mombasa, Mnara, was built c. 1300. The Mandhry Mosque, built in 1570, has a minaret that contains a regionally specific ogee arch. The city later came under the occupation and control of the Omani Empire in the late 17th century.

In the late pre-colonial period, it was the metropolis of a plantation society, which became dependent on slave labour based around the ivory trade.