Kaole Ruins, Bagamoyo

Older than the town it belongs to

Kaole is a field of ruins a few kilometres south of Bagamoyo, and it is the archaeological half of a day here. Tanzania Forest Services, which promotes it as a cultural and heritage site, places it 4.5 kilometres south-west of the town and dates the settlement to the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Its own directions describe the walk as about five kilometres south along the road past the arts college to the signboard for Kaole village, so treat either figure as approximate and the walk as an hour in the heat.

The important point is chronological. The remains here were built, in TFS’s account, under the administration of the Sultan of Kilwa, who controlled coastal trade before Bagamoyo had assumed any significance at all. Kaole is not an outlying feature of the caravan town up the road; it is a Swahili settlement of the Kilwa period that predates it by centuries, and the town that made Bagamoyo famous grew up long after Kaole had declined.

What stands there

TFS lists the remains of two mosques, one built in the thirteenth century and one in the fifteenth; twenty-two graves, the pillar tombs the site is known for; a dense stand of mangrove; a well it describes as a magic well; a small museum holding items used during the colonial era; and the old harbour.

One claim here is contested and worth flagging. TFS describes the thirteenth-century mosque at Kaole as the oldest in Tanzania and in East Africa. UNESCO’s description of the Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani, on the other hand, states that the Great Mosque of Kilwa Kisiwani — begun in the eleventh century by its current account, in the twelfth by the 1980 evaluation on which the inscription rests — is the oldest standing mosque on the East African coast. Both are Tanzanian government-facing sources and they cannot both be right. The safe form of words is that Kaole holds one of the oldest surviving mosques on this coast, which nobody disputes.

What else is on the site

Bagamoyo District Council names three tourist attractions for the whole district, and two of them are here: a snake park at Kaole and a crocodile ranch at Kaole, alongside the Caravan Serai in the town. They are commercial animal attractions rather than part of the archaeological site, and whether they belong in your day is a matter of taste rather than of interest.

The mangroves are the underrated part. They run along the creek behind the ruins and are quiet and good for birds early — see mangrove tours and bird watching. How Swahili coastal sites are read, and what standing remains from each period actually tell you, is covered in the guide to archaeological tours.

Practical notes

The site is open ground with tombs and low walls, very little shade and no shelter. Go early or late. A guide makes a substantial difference here, because pillar tombs and a mosque plan do not explain themselves; ask how they know what they are telling you, which is a fair question anywhere in Bagamoyo.

Common questions