Gedi Ruins

Kenya has many unknown treasures waiting to be discovered one of them is Gedi, a wonderful lost city lying in the depths of the great Arabuko Sokoke forest. This is a place of great mystery, an archaeological puzzle that continues to engender debate among historians.

To this day, despite extensive research and exploration, nobody is really sure what happened to the town of Gedi and its people. This civilization was a powerful and complex Swahili settlement in the east africa coast with a population of over 2500, built during the 13th century. The ruins of Gedi include many houses, mansions, mosques and elaborate tombs and cemeteries.

Despite the size and complexity of this large (at least 45 acre) settlement, what has baffled historians most is how such a civilization could have existed without ever being mentioned in any historic writings or local recorded history. The nearby Portuguese settlement at Malindi seems to have had no contact with, or even known of its existence. The town has all the appearances of a trading outpost, yet its position, deep in a forest and away from the sea makes it an unlikely trading centre. What was Gedi trading, and with whom is what has left historians puzzled.

Also the quantity of porcelain found shows that it must have had a large and relatively prosperous population.

But the greatest of all of Gedi’s mysteries was its sudden and inexplicable desertion in the 17th century. The entire town was suddenly abandoned by all of its residents, leaving it to ruination in the forest. There are no signs of battle, plague, disturbance or any cause for this sudden desertion.

One current theory is that the town was threatened by the approach of the Galla, an inland tribe known to be outwardly hostile at that time, and that the townspeople fled ahead of their arrival. Yet once again, local recorded history fails to mention any such large scale evacuation at this time. No written account of either the rise or sudden fall of Gedi was ever made.

The ghostly ruins of Gedi lay within the forest that has overgrown and consumed the town. They had become a part of local folklore, regarded as a sinister lair of malevolent spirits, until archaeologists began to uncover the site in the 20th century. It was gazetted in 1948.

Today there is an excellent museum and well trained guides on hand to take visitors through the ruins. Gedi remains a mysterious and atmospheric place to visit. The pillars and stone walls, ruined mosques and tombs now lie among stands of trees. The stone floors are thick with leaves, and giant shrews scuttle through the deserted houses while birds and butterflies drift through the air.

Wandering through Gedi is an ideal way to spend a morning or afternoon, lost among the secrets of the past.

Gedi’s Dated Tomb - The Dated Tomb consists of a large oval tombstone with an epitaph incised in plaster, partially erased but sufficiently legible for the date A.H. 802/A.D. 1399 to be read. The importance of the tomb is that it provides a fixed point in time to which the other buildings at Gedi can be related.

Gedi’s Tomb Of The Fluted Pillar - Next to the Dated Tomb is the Tomb Of The Fluted Pillar. This is one of the forms taken by the pillar tombs, which are found all along the coast of East Africa. They are said to be phallic, although Arabs or Africans do not often recognize this significance. It is possible that they are related to the naturalistic phallic pillars found on graves of the Hamitic people of Ethiopia and Somalia, or to the monolithic pillars of Madagascar. In either case they are evidence of African elements in the Arab culture of the coast.

Gedi’s Great Mosque - The Great Mosque, built in the middle of the fifteenth century and rebuilt a hundred years later, is a typical East African congregational mosque or Jumaa. The plan is rectangular with three doors in each of the long walls. It is approached through a courtyard with a well, conduit and cistern at the north end and an octagonal pillar tomb at the southeast corner. Beyond the courtyard is a covered veranda, with a small store and a flight of steps going up to the roof from which the call to prayer was given. In the north wall of the mosque, the Mihrab, once decorated with porcelain bowls, shows the direction of Mecca. To the right of the Mihrab stands a Minbar, or pulpit, of three steps. The roof was supported oil three rows of six rectangular pillars, the middle row running down the center of the building and obscuring the view of the Mihrab. This is a curious arrangement, only found in East Africa. The square niches in the pilasters along the walls arc for lamps. Below the rectangular pillars can be seen the square pillars of the original mosque. The partition wall cutting off the rear three bays was probably a final modification when the roof had partially collapsed and only part of the mosque was being used. Outside the mosque on the west is another veranda, which is an addition.

Gedi’s Palace - At a distance of a few hundred yards from this side of the Great Mosque is the Palace, which, with its Annexe, covers an area of about a quarter of an acre.
The main entrance consists of a pointed arch on a platform, approached by a flight of steps with a bench on either side, which leads down to a sunken court. Sunken courts, which served as reception rooms, are a feature of the domestic quarters at Gedi. In the floor of the court are two sumps for rainwater. These are found in all the streets and courts of the town, and sometimes also in the rooms. To the left of the reception court is a large well and an open court. In the middle is a sump with a larger hole than the rainwater sumps, and the court was probably used for washing clothes.