The Wasawahili race appears, from the ‘Kilwa Chronicle’ (Huma Chronica dos Reys de Quiloa) mentioned by De Barros (1st Decade of Asia, viii. 4, 5), to have been derived from the ‘Emozaydis’ (Amm Zayd) or followers of their Imam, Zayd bin Ali Zayn el Abidín bin Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet. He was proclaimed Khalifah at Kufa in A. H. 122 (A. D. 739), under the Khalifat of El Hesham bin Abd el Melek, the Ommiade, by whom he was conquered and slain. The pretender’s son, Yahya, fled to Khorasan, where the Abbasides were already making head against the Ommiades, and the tenets of his followers, the Zaydis, spread throughout Yemen, where they formed, and they still form, a numerous and influential class. Other ‘Shiah’ partisans took refuge from persecution in East Africa, fortified themselves upon the littoral about Shangaya, and, extending southwards, became lords of the land. Some generations afterwards an emigration of Sunni Arabs from El Hasa, in three ships, commanded by seven brothers flying from the tyranny of their chief, visited the coast, founded Makdishu and Brava, and extended to Sofala. The ‘Emozaydis,’ unwilling to accept orthodox rule, retired into the interior, intermingled with the Kafir race, and became the Bedawin of the country. The second Persian emigration took place early in our eleventh century. A certain Ali, son of a ‘Moorish’ Sultan Hasan, who governed Shiraz, by an Abyssinian slave, finding himself despised by his six brethren, fled with wife and family in two ships from Hormuz to East Africa. At Makdishu and Brava, finding Arabs of another faith (Sunnis), he went to Kilwa Island, bought land with cloth, took the title of Sultan, and fortified himself against the Kafirs and against the Moslems of Songo-Songo and Changa, whose dominion extended to Mompana (Mafiyeh). The latter, together with other islets, was conquered by his son, Sultan ‘Ali Bumale,’ and the dynasty lasted a grand total of 541 lunar years before the arrival of Cabral at Kilwa in July, A. D. 1500. These Shirazis originated the noble family of the Wasawahili, who do not claim descent from the older ‘Emozaydis.’[103]