Kilwa District: History
The area that is now Kilwa district has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. The area is the ancestral home to four Bantu people groups, namely the Mwera people and the Matumbi people together with the Machinga people later Shiraz. The Matumbi being historically the majority native group inhabiting the most land in the district. They are the natives of the entire central and northern Kilwa district and Kilwa's islands. The Machinga people are native to the south eastern section of the district to the border with Lindi District. The Mwera inhabit the south west part of the district.The Shiraz people inhabit central coast mainly Kilwa kisiwani, Songo mnara and Pande Division.
The four tribes became swahilized in the 9th century with the arrival of Islam in the region. The sultanate of Kilwa is reputed to have been founded about 975 by Ali ibn Ḥasan, a Persian prince from Shiraz. The new state, at first confined to the town of Kilwa, extended its influence along the coast from Zanzibar to Sofala, and the city came to be regarded as the capital of the Zanj region. An Arab chronicle gives a list of over forty sovereigns who reigned at Kilwa in a period of five hundred years, and the region was transformed into one of the wealthiest Swahili city states on the continent by the 14th century. Kilwa district is known globally for its Middle Ages Swahili historical sites from Middle Ages on the islands Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara which are part of the seven Tanzanian World Heritage Site.
The Swahili city-state of Kilwa was once the greatest Swahili port city but met its end on July 1505 when the Portuguese burned and looted the city. However in 1512 the Portuguese, whose ranks had been decimated by fever, temporarily abandoned the place. Subsequently Kilwa became one of the chief centres of the slave trade. Towards the end of the 17th century it fell under the dominion of the imams of Muscat, and on the separation in 1856 of their Arabian and African possessions became subject to the sultan of Zanzibar.
In 1866 the area of what is now Kilwa district was occupied by Germans who established their headquarters at Kilwa Kivinje and used it as a base to quell the Maji Maji rebellion that was based on the Matumbi Hills north of the Kilwa district.
In 1918 when Tanganyika became a British protectorate, Kilwa Masoko was chosen as it is the district seat and they built a deepwater port to assist with their commercial vessels. To this day Kilwa Masoko remains the capital of Kilwa district. During the British occupiation the district was one of six councils established in 1947 in lindi region. Post independence, in 1984 Kilwa was officially designated as a district council.