Note 93 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

Magadaxo was founded about the middle of the tenth century and remained the most powerful city on this coast for more than seventy years, when the arrival of another expedition from the Persian Gulf led to the establishment of a rival settlement further south. The leader of this expedition was named ʻAlī, one of the seven sons of a certain Sultan Ḥasan of Shiraz: because his mother was an Abyssinian, he was looked down upon with contempt by his brothers, whose cruel treatment of him after the death of their father, determined him to leave his native land and seek a home elsewhere. Accordingly, with his wife and children and a small body of followers, he set sail from the island of Ormuz, and avoiding Magadaxo, whose inhabitants belonged to a different sect, and having heard that gold was to be found on the Zanzibar coast, he pushed on to the south and founded the city of Kiloa, where he could maintain a position of independence and be free from the interference of his predecessors further north.93