纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 060基尔瓦陶器碎片（6）（在线收听）

The people of Kilwa clearly loved foreign pottery. They used it for dining and they also adorned their houses and mosques with it, setting decorated bowls into walls and arches. Pottery, of course, was only one element in the thriving import-export trade that made Kilwa's fortune - but it happens to be the toughest and the most enduring. Also coming in, though, were cottons from India - a trade that continues to this day - Chinese silks, glass, jewellery and cosmetics. In exchange, Kilwa was trading luxuries, commodities and slaves. A later Portuguese visitor conjured up the rich exchanges that took place at harbours like Kilwa:

"They are great traders in cloth, gold, ivory and diverse other wares, with the Moors and other heathen of India. And to their haven come every year many ships with cargoes of merchandise, from which they get great store of gold, ivory and wax."

Other exports included iron ingots much in demand in India, timber used for building in the Gulf, rhino horn, turtle shell and leopard skin. Many of these were brought over huge distances from inland Africa. Gold, for instance, came from Zimbabwe far to the south, and it's the trade from Kilwa that eight hundred years ago made Zimbabwe such a rich and powerful kingdom, that it could construct that supreme, mysterious monument, Great Zimbabwe.