We must now turn to the history of the spread of Islam on the other side of the continent of Africa, the inhabitants of which were in closer proximity to the land where this faith had its birth. The facts recorded respecting the early settlements of the Arabs on the East Coast are very meagre; according to an Arabic chronicle which the Portuguese found in Kiloa [1109] when that town was sacked by Don Francisco d’Almeïda in 1505, the first settlers were a body of Arabs who were driven into exile because they followed the heretical teachings of a certain Zayd, [1110] a descendant of the Prophet, after whom they were called Emozaydij (probably أمّة زيديّة‎ or people of Zayd). The Zayd here referred to is probably Zayd b. ʻAlī, a grandson of Ḥusayn and so great-grandson of ʻAlī, the nephew of Muḥammad: in the reign of the caliph Hishām he claimed to be the Imām Mahdī and stirred up a revolt among the Shīʻah faction, but was defeated and put to death in A.H. 122 (A.D. 740). [1111] They seem to have lived in considerable dread of the original pagan inhabitants of the country, but succeeded gradually in extending their settlements along the coast, until the arrival of another band of fugitives who came from the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, not far from the island of Baḥrayn. These came in three ships under the leadership of seven brothers, in order to escape from the persecution of the king of Lasah, [1112] a city hard by the dwelling-place of their tribe. The first town they built was Magadaxo, [1113] which afterwards rose to such power as to assume lordship over all the Arabs of the coast. But the original settlers, the Emozaydij, belonging as they did to a different Muhammadan sect, being Shīʻahs, while the new-comers were Sunnīs, were unwilling to submit to the authority of the rulers of Magadaxo, and retired into the interior, where they became merged into the native population, intermarrying with them and adopting their manners and customs. [1114]