Kenya and Tanzania
Introduction: Islamisation and Urbanisation of the Swahili coast (1998-2001)
Our research in Kenya and Tanzania started in 1998 starting a PhD thesis on fortifications, islamisation and urbanisation on the Swahili Coast. The idea was to study Swahili medieval cities and their urbanisation through their relationship in local regional and international trade in the Indian Ocean. The fortifications were used to understand the state formation and the control of the economic ressources by the elite, wa-ungwana, mfalme and sultans. The second point of this study was to understand how and why the urbanisation and the coral stone architecture were connected to Muslim diasporas in East Africa. My PhD in Islamic archaeology was achieved and defended in May 2001 at Sorbonne University in Paris. The PhD thesis was published as a monograph in 2004: Pradines, S. Fortifications et urbanisation en Afrique orientale, Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 58, BAR S1216, Archaeopress: Oxford (2004), 374p.
