Nairobi — A ninth century kingdom in Malindi is at the heart of a major archaeological excavation that has interested the Chinese, who are trying to establish when their forefathers started interacting with the East African coast.

Chinese and Kenyan archaeologists will dig up two sites around Mambrui village and Khatib Mosque, believed to have been the main city of the ancient kingdom. The experts will also carry out underwater excavations near Shanga in Lamu, where a Chinese ship sank some 600 years ago.

Prof Qin Dashu of the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University in Beijing arrived in Mombasa on Tuesday with two other experts from China ahead of the works, that begin on Sunday.

Prof Qin said this was part of the 10-man team that will try to find the old Malindi city and how it related with Chinese merchants and sailors. "There is very scanty information about ancient Malindi. This work will help us understand what sort of influence it had on trade between East Africa and China," he said in an interview at the Mombasa Old Law Courts, which also houses the offices of the head of coast archaeology, Dr Herman Kiriama.

Dr Kiriama said there was a strong link between China and the East African coast and the findings in Malindi will help to shed light on the conditions under which the ship capsized in Lamu in the 15th century. "The Chinese sailors in the Zheng He fleet were coming to visit the Kingdom of Malindi which had a vibrant maritime link with China.

"These findings will also help us understand what type of technology the sailors used because the ship that capsized was carrying a giraffe that had been given by the Sultan of Malindi as a present to a Chinese leader," Dr Kiriama said.

As part of the preparations, he said, two officials from the National Museums of Kenya have been trained on underwater archaeology and will be joining the Chinese experts in November when work to find the shipwreck starts. Dr Kiriama said the Chinese government will spend Sh200 million for the excavation on land in Malindi and underwater in Lamu.

"We are excited about the project because we hope, after this, we will be able to set up a maritime museum to house all the artifacts that would have been excavated along the Kenyan coast. The sunken ship is believed to have been part of an armada commanded by Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He, who reached Malindi in 1418. According to Kenyan folklore, reportedly backed by recent DNA testing, a handful of survivors swam ashore.

One of the descendants of the Chinese sailors is Baraka Badi Shee of Siyu village in Patte island whose daughter, Mwamaka Sheriff, is studying in China. According to folklore, after killing a python that had been tormenting a village, the survivors were allowed to stay and marry local women, creating an African-Chinese community, whose descendants still live in the area.

According to Dr Kiriama, a likely shipwreck site has been identified near Lamu Island. "By examining this shipwreck, we hope to clarify the first contact between China and East Africa," he said.

Be the first to Write a Comment!

Copyright © 2010 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.