What is found in Gedi ruins? The historical and archaeological site known as the Gedi Ruins is located on Kenya’s coast. On July 29, 2024, it was designated as a World Heritage Site. The area is in the Kilifi District, inside the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, near the town of Gedi, also known as Gede. Gedi is one of the old Swahili coastal communities that stretch from Barawa, Somalia, to the Zambezi River in Mozambique. There are 116 recognised Swahili sites, ranging from southern Somalia to Vumba Kuu near the Kenya-Tanzania border. Since colonialists rediscovered the ruins at Gedi in the 1920s, it has been one of the sites most extensively excavated and studied, along with Shanga, Manda, Ungwana, Kilwa, and the Comoros.
The structural architecture of Gedi ruins
The 45 acres (18 hectares) of the Gedi ruins are located in the ancient Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Two walls separate the old town of Gedi; the outer wall covers 45 acres (18 hectares), while the inner wall covers 18 acres (7.3 hectares). The urban core is enclosed by the inner wall and consists of two mosques, a palace or Sheikh’s home, four huge dwellings, several clustered houses, and four enormous pillar tombs. Three further mosques and four additional homes are enclosed by the inner wall. Apart from two mosques, hardly many stone constructions have been identified between the inner and outside walls. There is one mosque and numerous other unidentifiable buildings just outside the outer wall.
Gedi has a well-established infrastructure in addition to being split by the inner and outer walls, which formed an urban core occupied by the site’s most important buildings and regions of occupation between and outside of the outer wall. Gedi’s architectural arrangements seem to follow a strict grid layout for the streets. In addition, several of the site’s main buildings had restrooms and sump pumps for collecting storm water. Most of the buildings at Gedi were domestic dwellings with thatched roofs, which were grouped between the outside and inner walls. The few buildings that have survived to this day were composed of coral stones that were taken from the Indian Ocean.
Coral became a more popular building material for significant buildings and affluent homes throughout the fourteenth century, despite the fact that several of the constructions precede that era. At Gedi, every building is a single-story construction. Similar techniques were used to build the walls and other coral structures using lime mortar, with most foundations being filled with stones and no deeper than one foot. When foundations were utilised, they were typically no more expansive than the wall they held up. Examples of non-utilitarian design aspects abound. The doors of the buildings feature pointed archways with square frames, while the tombs and mosques have porcelain inlaid or carved spandrels and architraves.
Walls
Similar construction methods were used for the outer and inner walls. The outer wall, which was plastered, was nine feet high and eighteen inches thick. The construction of the outer wall is thought to have occurred in the fourteenth century. The Portuguese presence along the coast in the sixteenth century is credited with building the inner wall, although the existence of gun ports suggests that the walls were not built earlier. Since Kirkman claims that the town’s walls and gates have little strength, it is uncertain whether the walls are actually useful as defensive fortification. This is consistent with the theory that the walls and building arrangement were intended to preserve social barriers. The outer wall’s strength and lack of gun ports notwithstanding, the inner wall is believed to have served as a fortress despite its more evident defensive role.
The Tomb
The pillar tombs at Gedi are examples of a type of architecture common to the ancient Swahili Coastal communities. They are composed of masonry-based buildings with a pillar or column on top. The pillar tombs at Gedi are characterised by ornamental recessed panels. Gedi features four enormous pillar tombs, but the “dated tomb,” which is inside the inner wall, is distinct from the others since it has an Arabic inscription with the year A.H. 802 (A.D. 1399) on it.
The Mosques
There are Wells and washing areas could have been utilised for purification before prayer in the mosques at Gedi. Nevertheless, unlike other places, they were not built with minarets for the call to prayer. The main chamber of Gedi’s mosques was usually arranged with anterooms on either side, and the roof was held up by wooden beams that rested on square stone pillars. The pillar-made aisles blocked the view of the Mihrab, which was located on the north walls facing Mecca.
Two of the mosques at Gedi have been designated as “Great Mosques.” Built in the fourteenth century, the rectangular structure inside the inner wall is the mosque commonly referred to as the Great Mosque. The centre area of the Great Mosque features three rows of pillars that support the roof, in addition to three entrances. A herringbone pattern is etched on the architrave of the east entrance, while a spear point with a shield on its spandrel is depicted in relief above one of the openings. The building also boasts one of the deepest foundations, with walls that are 21 inches broad and reach four feet into the subsurface.
The older part of the city, to the north of the walled city, was home to the second Great Mosque and dates back to the eleventh century. Seated on two previous mosques dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the current edifice was built in the 14 century. Stretching out from north to south, the mosque is 26 meters (85 feet) in length.
Since most people in Gedi lived in mud thatched homes outside of the city’s centre, the residential buildings that now stand are all inside the inner wall and are a good representation of the elite members of the community. The House on the Wall, the House on the West Wall, the House of the Dhow, and the Large House are the four largest houses. The House of Chinese Cash, the House of the Porcelain Bowl, the House of the Cistern, the House of the Two Rooms, the House of the Panelled Walls, the House of the Scissors, the House of the Venetian Bead, the House of the Sunken Court, the House of the Cowries, the House of the Iron Lamp, the House of the Iron Box, and the House of the Well are a group of smaller houses that are next to the palace or Sheik’s residence.
The Houses
The basic house at Gedi is a three-room construction that typically had a forecourt and domestic court, though the houses vary in size, number of rooms, and layout. The three-room arrangement often had a lengthy main room at the back of the house that had two storage spaces and bedroom accommodations. One of the back rooms included a trapdoor-accessible storage chamber close to the roof. Many of the buildings had latrines, which were often found at the rear of the main chamber, and some of the houses had wells in their courtyards. Built in the fourteenth century, the sunken courts of one of the oldest stone residences are long and narrow, in contrast to the broader and deeper courts of buildings constructed in the fifteenth century. There is a greater variation in the arrangement of passageways at the entrances of the houses than in other forms of housing because many of houses were densely concentrated and built to maximise the available space.
Hinterland
There is also a hinterland to Gedi, which consists of a number of minor sites with a mix of multiple dwellings or isolated mosques and graves. Kilepwa and Shaka’s sites are close by. Kilepwa, with its three stone homes, is situated nearer Gedi on an island in Mida Creek. There is a mosque at Watamu, a mosque and graves at Kiburugeni, and an isolated mosque near the west end of the stream.
The palace
The sheikh of the city lived in a palace that featured two anterooms, each with its own patio, off a vast central room. From the main hall, a number of residential rooms were accessible. The audience court and the receiving court were two further courts that could be reached through separate gates.
