The Swahili is the name given to the coastal people who historically could be found as far North as Mogadishu (Somalia) and as far south as the Rovuma River (Mozambique). They share a common language, widely spoken by non-Swahilis, called Ki-Swahili, and enjoy a city-based fusion of African and Arab culture....

Swahili (also called Kiswahili) is the Bantu language and the most widely spoken non-european language in Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people who inhabit a 1500 km stretch of the East African coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. It is spoken by over 50 million people, of whom there are approximately five million first-language speakers and thirty to fifty million second-language speakers...

According to Arab oral tradition, Islam first came to Africa with Muslim refugees fleeing persecution in the Arab peninsula. This was followed by a military invasion, some seven years after the death of the prophet Mohammed in 639, under the command of the Muslim Arab General, Amr ibn al-Asi. It quickly spread West from Alexandria in North Africa (the Maghreb), reducing the Christians to pockets in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia....