Swahili Coast in the context of "Indian Ocean slave trade"

Islam in Africa is the continent's second most widely professed faith behind Christianity. Africa was the first continent into which Islam spread from the Middle East, during the early 7th century CE. Almost one-third of the world's Muslim population resides in Africa. Muslims crossed current Djibouti and Somalia to seek refuge in present-day Eritrea and Ethiopia during the Hijrah ("Migration") to the Christian Kingdom of Aksum. Like the vast majority (90%) of Muslims in the world, most Muslims in Africa are also Sunni Muslims; the complexity of Islam in Africa is revealed in the various schools of thought, traditions, and voices in many African countries. Many African ethnicities, mostly in the northern half of the continent, consider Islam as their traditional religion. The practice of Islam on the continent is not static and is constantly being reshaped by prevalent social, economic, and political conditions. Generally Islam in Africa often adapted to African cultural contexts and belief systems forming Africa's own orthodoxies.

In 2014, it was estimated that Muslims constituted nearly half of the population of Africa (over 49%) with a total population of around 437 million and accounting for over a quarter (about 27%) of the global Muslim population. Islam is the main religion of North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Sahel, the Swahili Coast, and West Africa, with minority immigrant populations in South Africa.

The Kilwa Sultanate was a sultanate, centered at Kilwa (an island off modern-day, Kilwa District in Lindi Region of Tanzania), whose authority, at its height, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast. According to the legend, it was founded in the 10th century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi, a Persian prince of Shiraz.

Pemba Island (Arabic: الجزيرة الخضراء, al-Jazīra al-khadrāʔ; Swahili: Kisiwa cha Pemba) is a Tanzanian island forming part of the Zanzibar Archipelago, lying within the Swahili Coast in the Indian Ocean.

Zanj (Arabic: زَنْج, adj. زنجي, Zanjī; from Persian: زنگ, romanized: Zang) is a term used by medieval Muslim geographers to refer to both a certain portion of Southeast Africa (primarily the Swahili Coast) and to its Bantu inhabitants. It has also been used to refer to Africans collectively by Arab sources. This word is also the origin of the place-names Zanzibar ("coast of the Zanji") and the Sea of Zanj.

The latinization Zingium serves as an archaic name for the coastal area in modern Kenya and Tanzania in southern East Africa. The architecture of these commercial urban settlements is now a subject of study for urban planning. For centuries the coastal settlements were a source of ivory, gold, and slaves, from sections of the conquered hinterland, to the Indian Ocean world.

The Sabaki languages are the Bantu languages of the Swahili Coast, named for the Sabaki River. In addition to Swahili, Sabaki languages include Ilwana (Malakote) and Pokomo on the Tana River in Kenya, Mijikenda, spoken on the Kenyan coast; Comorian, in the Comoro Islands; and Mwani, spoken in northern Mozambique. In Guthrie's geographic classification, Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika.