Kilwa and the Arab settlement of the East African Coast

The aim of the inquisitorial studies is often described as extending the frontiers of our knowledge; but the study of the remoter past of Black Africa is rather the discovery of islands in the ocean of our ignorance, or the sighting from afar of mountains protruding through the mists which obscure knowledge of what rivers and ridges lie between. Soon a rift in the clouds will make plain the valleys of which we had guessed—or reveal instead an unimagined landscape.