Kizimkazi Historic Mosque

This guide to the Kizimkazi Historic Mosque in Zanzibar City starts with a name carved into the wall beside the prayer niche, left by a sheikh named Said bin Abi Amran Mfaume al Hassan bin Muhammad, who dated the mosque's founding to the year 1107 in the Western calendar. It asks why some historians call this the oldest standing Islamic building on the East African coast, and follows the later legends, from Persian princes to disputed repairs, that have grown up around that single line of Kufic script. Look for the flowering script itself, cut just to the left of the niche facing Mecca.