The History of Kaole Ruins and the Preservation of Cultural Practice of Bagamoyo Region from the 1860s to the 1960s

ABSTRACT: This paper traces the history of the Kaole ruins, near Bagamoyo on the Coast of Tanzania, and examines how the cultural practices of the Bagamoyo region were preserved between the 1860s and the 1960s. Drawing on observation and exhibition panels at the Kaole site museum, together with published historical and archaeological works, it first reconstructs Kaole’s development from the earliest settlement at Bwembweni (AD 600–700) into a thirteenth-century Shirazi Muslim trading town, and its decline around the sixteenth century. It then shows how Bagamoyo inherited Kaole’s role and became the leading Caravan Port of nineteenth-century East Africa. The paper argues that between the 1860s and the 1960s the region’s cultural practices survived mainly through the actions of communities themselves: Oral tradition, repeated ritual, religious leadership and the blending of old and new customs. These practices included Islam and the Maulid festival, Zaramo initiation and matrilineal kinship, the customs of the Caravan road, ngoma dance and pilgrimage to the Kaole tombs. Formal protection of the Kaole ruins came late, with the first conservation work in 1958 and the Antiquities Act of 1964. The study concludes that Kaole is the starting point for understanding both the growth of Bagamoyo and the preservation of its heritage. Keywords: Kaole ruins; Bagamoyo; Swahili coast; cultural heritage; Zaramo; Maulid; heritage preservation; Tanzania