Rhapta

The Location and Importance of East Africa's first Port

Bibliographic Data

ID6041979
AuthorsBashir A Datoo (University of Dar es Salaam, corresponding author)
Year1970
Volume5
Issue1
Pages65-75
Publication date1970-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAzania Archaeological Research in Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0067-270X • E-ISSN: 1945-5534
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00672707009511528
OpenAlexW2072142348
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited14

The first extant document on the East African coast, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, signifies Rhapta as its only trading port. It subsequently became a “metropolis” in Ptolemy's Geographia. First, the chief topographical clues in the location of Rhapta are reviewed against a background of meteorological conditions in the western Indian Ocean. It is shown that it is not possible to identify a site but merely to delimit a locality, which is deduced to lie between the mouths of the Pangani and Rufiji rivers, and that it is arguable that there is a higher probability of port location in its northern rather than southern section. Second, J. I. Miller's thesis of Rhapta as a key link-port in the cinnamon route which extended from the Far East to the Rea Sea via East Africa is critically examined. It is alternatively hypothesised that Rhapta owed its economic importance to the growth in demand for ivory in the Mediterranean world from the latter part of the first century B.C. That port, however, occupied only a peripheral position in the commercial system of the western Indian Ocean

Archaeology · Extant taxon · Geography · Mediterranean climate · Mediterranean sea · Middle East · Port (circuit theory · Position (finance · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Travel Writing and Literature