Advantages Of Human Resource Planning Business Essay

Advantages Of Human Resource Planning Business Essay Human resource planning is really important that without this all planning will finally end up as a mere guess work. Even if the predictions or forecast is not always successful, it is still needed because the forecasts can be quite useful which will give a basis. Upon this basis it is able to avoid ad hoc problems to an extent. Therefore human resource planning should be articulated along with the organisational planning. A dearth of particular category of employee or particular kind skills will affect the organisation in achieving its goals. Rapid changes in technology, marketing, management etc., will result in need of particular category an skilled persons. Changes within an organization in its design and structure will affect manpower demand. Demographic changes like the altering profile of the manpower in terms of age, sex, education etc. The Government policies in regard to reservation, child labour, working conditions etc. Different labour laws affecting the demand and supply of labour. Pressure from trade unions, politicians etc. Advantages of Human Resource Planning: Human Resources Planning (HRP) expects not just the needed quality and quantity of employees instead decide the accomplish plan for all the occasions of human resource management .The major advantages of Human resource planning are: It assures the corporate plan of the firm. The HRP elucidates doubts and alters to the upper limit potential and enables the organization to have right kind of people at right time in right place. It allows background for progress and growth of employees through training, development etc. It aids in anticipating the cost of salary increasing, improved benefits etc. It also helps to predict the cost of pay offs, incentives and all other cost of human resources which facilitates the formulation of budgets in an organization. To forecast the changes in abilities, aptitude and attitude of personnel. It results in the advancement of different origins of human resources to encounter the organizational goals and objectives. It also aids in taking measures to amend human resource shares in the form of enhanced output ,business turnover etc It facilities the control of all the functions, operations, contribution and cost of human resources Planning as an organisational business strategy: Planning process in a strategic way is often accomplished by networking with in and outside the organisation. The focus is therefore on strengthening the networking with the internal human resource professionals and external human resource persons which will be rooted in sharing information, technology, tools necessary for planning and development of personnel. The outcome depends on effective implementation of the developed tools and resources needed. Out of these a sustainable and feasible strategy has to be formulated. The most important thing to be noted here is that the strategy formulated should be articulated with the overall business strategy of the organisation. For this they will consult different human resource managers and all the line managers in the organisation. In order to ensure highest possible utilization of the tools they will work in close conjunction with the managers. This will be aimed in creating a sound personnel data base and tools for the line managers. Long term planning for success in short term: Though long term planning is advised the daily operational pressures would cause the long term planning to give way to short term planning. This might cause the plans ultimately to be less successful. It can be very expensive too. Quite lot of lead time is needed for recruiting, developing talented personnel. This will require long term economic plans. For a successful planning, all the factors need to be interconnected. The impact of short term planning will be to rely on current work force for all the organisational activities. But so as to achieve long term goals of an organisation it must have some changes made in the current human resources. It should be able to foresee the future needs of the organisation even in worst external scenario. Now the focus has been shifted from long range planning to strategic planning. What long range means is to predict for a particular time in future the amount of demand of an organisations services and to analyse in what area that demand will occur in future. This is often used to determine the demand in certain situations like expansion, adding of more services to the existing situation, capital needs etc. But later when the industries became volatile and the external scenario became dynamic the long range planning was replaced by strategic planning. The idea behind long range planning is that the firm will continue its rendering of services so as to match with its demand. But the idea underlying behind the strategic planning is that there are lot of economic, social, political, technological and competitive changes happening. By understanding all these changes to analyse whether the organisation will be able to provide services that would meet these challenges or whether it should m ove to further new services and products. Though it will take considerable time to evolve a strategy, time span is not the important focus here. It might even take generations to evolve and implement a strategy. Therefore it is better to use long term and short term to describe the time that it will take for a strategy to implement. CHAPTER 2 Literature Review: Human beings are the most important assets in hospitals. Machines and other equipments which are integral parts of delivering health care require the human touch, expertise, and commitment for their full utilization and application in delivery of health care. Therefore planning of human resources is the key to any health care provision. The objective of human resource (HR) policy is to attract, recruit, retain and develop competent personnel and Create a continuously learning health care organisation. (B.Ray) Human resource planning is the projection of the number of people required and the type of people in terms of skill mix required for the organisation so as to achieve the desired goals and objectives of the organisation. This means that human resource planning is an important add on to the strategic plans. But evidence shows that the connecting bridge between human resource planning and strategic management is not stressed in practice (Baird et al.1983, De sancto-1983; Ohan Rynes-1983). Reason to this non utilisation is found in focus of human resource planning literature. Almost all the research focuses on human resource supply and demand forecasting (Zedeck Casci-1984). Extra care may be taken in developing a statistical model of manpower planning, but little care is given to gaining managerial acceptance of such plans. Thus there exist a huge gap between available techniques and their use because important organisational realities are not projected in to the models (Zedeck Casc io,1984) Rapid environmental change, globalization, innovations to provide competitive products and services, changing customer and investor demands have become the standard backdrop for organizations. To compete effectively, firms must constantly improve their performance by reducing costs, enhancing quality, and differentiating their products and services. To improve firm performance and create firm competitive advantage, HR should focus on better and new set of priorities. These newly set priorities should be more organisational, business and strategic oriented and less focussed towards old traditional HR functions like staffing, training, appraisal and compensation. Business strategic priorities include team-based job designs, flexible workforces, quality improvement practices, employee empowerment and incentive compensation (Jing and Huang 2005). SHRM was designed to diagnose firm strategic needs and planned talent development which is required to implement a competitive strategy and achieve operational goals (Huselid et al., 1997). Apart from report proof on the strategic importance of human resource planning, studies of organisation practices give an indication of its arousing grandness for strategic applications. A study interviewed human resource executives from 137 companies to describe the reasons why their companies were following human resource forecasting, which an important part of human resource is planning. The most important three reasons were for bringing up their human resources (77.6 percent), for avoiding personnel shortages (73.1 percent), and to collect information for decisions (73.1 percent). Another set of reasons for human resource forecasting included the following: optimistic action efforts (63.6 percent), budgeting (62.1 percent), and career planning (59.7 percent)

Essay --

Statistical Interpretation of United Arab Emirates Trading Patterns I have chosen to research the trade patterns of United Arab Emirates because, in my view, it is one of the most important players in the world in terms of trade. Furthermore, trade has influenced the living standard in this area, such that, the standard of living in Dubai, for example, has increased comparably. United Arab Emirates has mostly developed due to the petroleum and natural gas exports. In the following paragraphs I will present statistics and data regarding not only oil and natural gas trading patterns, but also commodities. The United Arab Emirates is one of the 10 largest oil and natural gas producers in the world, and is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). The UAE has had a great impact on oil trade because of its natural endowments. According to OPEC, its share of world reserves is of 8.1%. The most abundant factor of production, oil, has brought them a comparative advantage and specialization, which contributed to the country’s development. According to the data presented by Central Intelligence Agency, United Arab Emirates was ranked on the 24th place in the world in terms of total Imports and 19th place in total exports in 2012. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2078rank.html In the WORLD FACTBOOK it is said that the UAE has an open economy with high per capita income. In recent years, successful efforts have been made regarding economic diversification and nowadays, the GDP based on oil and natural gas output has decreased to 25%. Since the discovery of oil 30 years ago, UAE has been through important transformations and h... ...in 2012, a 38% increase since 2011. However, imports to the US from the UAE have remained approximately the same, at over $2 billion. The data can be found on the website of the US Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5200.html#2010 As a conclusion, I believe that United Arab Emirates are focusing more and more on diversifying their exports and not depending so much on the oil ones. As far as their partners are concerned, I believe that in the future India will continue to be the top trading partner of UAE, being followed by China and Japan. China is in need of more and more oil because it has recently been ranked as the World’s top importer of crude oil. Japan, on the other hand, continues to depend on the Middle East countries for oil imports, being the world’s third largest net oil importer. (US Energy Information Administration).

‘In what ways is “Pride and Prejudice” a Cinderella story?’ Essay

Cinderella stories, of one type or another, have remained enduringly popular for hundreds of years. There are Cinderella tales originating from every culture and every time period up to the present day. They reflect the ‘rags to riches’ fantasies of storytellers from all around the world. But what constitutes a Cinderella story? Even though they exist in a vast variety of forms, most have a very similar basic plot. Firstly, there is always a heroine, whose fortunes are to be the focal point of the tale. She is naturally innocent, kind, gentle and beautiful, and always has hardships to bear. For example, in the French version, upon which the Disney animated film is based, Cinderella lives with her weak-willed father and her ‘evil’ stepmother and stepsisters who treat her appallingly; she is forced to act as a servant to them and is dressed in rags. Very often in these stories, there are a number of magical animals that help Cinderella in some way, and along with Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, enable her to go to the ball, which invariably she has been prevented from attending by her cruel family. At the ball, Cinderella and Prince Charming meet and fall in love instantly, but Cinderella forgets her Godmother’s deadline, and has to rush off suddenly, unintentionally leaving behind only one clue as to her true identity for the love-struck hero. After one final setback, usually resulting from Cinderella’s interfering and vain stepsiblings, the Prince and his love are re-united and go back to the Palace to be married immediately. Cinderella forgives her family, and they join the happy couple at court and all live ‘happily ever after.’ This is the most well known of the â€Å"Cinderella† plots, but as I have said, other versions exist such as â€Å"Katie Woodencloak† and â€Å"Cindermaid†. â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†, Jane Austen’s classic novel, was first published in January 1813. It was designed to appeal to the fashionable novel-reading public of the day, and it was an instant success for its author, and has remained consistently so. With the pretty and likable Elizabeth Bennet marrying the rich and handsome Mr Darcy at the end of the book, at first glance, â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† seems like a typical Cinderella tale. In this essay, I will be investigating the similarities and differences it has to the Cinderella story I have outlined above. For me, Elizabeth is the first obvious ‘Cinderella’ in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†. She is one of five Bennet sisters, intelligent, witty and impetuous with an independent streak in her, as we find out when she insists that she walk to Netherfield to visit her ill sister. Elizabeth, like Cinderella, has a family who can make life very difficult for her at times. Her father is loving, but like Cinderella’s father, is weak-willed; â€Å"Her father, contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his youngest daughters.† (Chapter 37.) This trait in her father’s disposition allows Lydia to elope with Mr Wickham from Brighton. Elizabeth’s mother and sisters also inhibit her, not by being malicious or unkind, as with Cinderella, but by their rudeness and hysterical behaviour; â€Å"†¦and in the unhappy defects of her family a subject of yet heavier chagrin. They were hopeless to remedy.† (Chapter 37.) â€Å"Her mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation.† (Chapter 18.) These unattractive qualities in her relatives, as well as her family’s lower social status, prove to have an unfavourable effect on Mr Darcy’s feelings towards her, even though he admits he loves her. Mr Darcy believes Lizzy’s connections to be ‘inferior’; â€Å"He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed†¦His sense of her inferiority†¦of the family obstacles which judgement had always opposed to inclination were dwelt on with warmth.† (Chapter 34.) Although Elizabeth does not suffer the deprivation that Cinderella does (dresses are no problem for Lizzy as they are for Cinderella), and in fact lives comfortably, the Bennets live under the threat that when Mr Bennet dies, they will lose their home Longbourn, because there is no male heir to the estate. So Cinderella’s ‘poverty’ situation could, theoretically affect Elizabeth at some point in the future. Therefore, it is very important for the five Bennet daughters to marry well, to ensure the family’s future security and status. This fact differentiates Cinderella from Elizabeth, as she is fiercely discouraged from going to the ball by her by her jealous stepsisters, where as Elizabeth (and her sisters) are actively encouraged to look for husbands with good fortunes by going to dances. Cinderella spontaneously falls in love with Prince Charming – she had only desperately wanted to go to the ball, and nothing more. But Elizabeth must be convinced of the true goodness of Mr Darcy’s personality before she will overcome her prejudices and dislike of him. Elizabeth’s opinion of Mr Darcy is changed by her hearing his housekeeper at Pemberley speak of how good and kind he really is, and also when Mr Darcy sends a letter to her explaining the misunderstandings about Mr Wickham and the Jane-Bingley affair. It is only after realising her actual feelings for him, and being attracted by his large estate, that Lizzy is prepared to love and marry Mr Darcy. Cinderella is a servant in her household, and although Elizabeth is certainly not a servant, she does aid and support her difficult family, along with her sister Jane, through use of her intelligence and sensibility. Of course, the main reason Elizabeth can be compared to Cinderella is that she is the disadvantaged heroine who marries her Prince and is taken off to his palace in a fairy tale ending; â€Å"‘Good gracious! Lord bless me! Only think! Dear me! Mr Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! My sweetest Lizzy! How rich and how great you will be!'† (Chapter 59.) Elizabeth’s family, like Cinderella’s family, also benefit from this happy ending – the Bennets often visit Lizzy at her new home, and Mr Darcy’s wealth means that they never need worry about losing their home or status again. Mrs Bennet is especially thrilled by the match. Another Bennet sister can be successfully compared with Cinderella – Jane. She is the eldest daughter, and like Cinderella, is very kind, but also little naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve; â€Å"What a stroke this was for poor Jane! Who could willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind†¦Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear one, without involving the other.† (Chapter 40.) She also marries a ‘Prince Charming’ with whom she is truly in love, Mr Bingley, who has a ‘palace’ and holds a ball there early in the novel. One thing that makes Jane even more similar to Cinderella in my opinion is that she falls in love with Mr Bingley straight away, even though his meddlesome sisters, Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst, as well as Mr Darcy, try to stop affections developing between them. This reminds me of the way Cinderella was prevented from trying on the glass slipper by her stepsisters. Unlike Mr Darcy, Mr Bingley has no qualms about Jane’s lower standing in society, and immediately allows himself to fall in love with her, like Prince Charming does with Cinderella at the ball. Similarly, it is at the Netherfield ball, held by Mr Bingley, where Jane and he first display a fondness for each other. Although Jane is like Cinderella in all these ways, she cannot be directly linked with her, as she is not the leading character in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice,† like Elizabeth. Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley are the two men who are most comparable to the Prince in Cinderella. They are both rich men with large estates and good breeding who marry ‘below themselves.’ Mr Darcy is a proud and arrogant man, who we find out later in the book, actually has a compassionate and generous personality. At first, Mr Darcy does not feel it is appropriate for him to marry into a lower class, but he cannot contain his love for Elizabeth, and this love eventually conquers his pride as I have detailed above. This is unlike Prince Charming because in â€Å"Cinderella†, the Prince does not mind when he finds out that his unidentified ‘Princess’ is really a poor servant girl – Cinderella’s status doesn’t matter to him at all. Mr Bingley, on the other hand, is like Prince Charming in that he doesn’t care about Jane’s background, and loves her anyway. Mr Bingley’s character is summed up by this quote; â€Å"‘He is just what a young man ought to be,’ said she, ‘sensible, good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners! – so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!’ ‘He is also handsome,’ replied Elizabeth, ‘which is what a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.'† (Chapter 4.) For Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, as with Prince Charming, it is love at first sight with Jane and Elizabeth at the Meryton ball, even if Mr Darcy dare not admit his feelings for some time. When Mr Darcy does propose to Elizabeth, she turns him down, but he remains persistent in trying to assure Lizzy of his good nature, and in the same way as the Prince tracks down Cinderella, Mr Darcy proposes for a second time and Lizzy accepts. It was the letter that Mr Darcy gave to Elizabeth at the Collins’ that revealed his true character to her and this enabled her to accept and love him. In the same way, Cinderella’s glass slipper allows the Prince to find her. It could be concluded that these objects provide the key to identifying the suitors in their true light and make it possible for the characters to eventually marry. I think that there are several people in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† who could be considered either ‘stepsisters’ or a ‘stepmother’ to Lizzy or Jane. Evidently their own mother and sisters have some qualities similar to those in â€Å"Cinderella.† Mrs Bennet, though inadvertently, hinders any marriage between her daughters and ‘respectable’ men through her inappropriate and embarrassing manner – she is chaotic and thoughtless and gives her family a bad reputation. Jane and Lizzy’s sisters, particularly Lydia and Kitty, are also shallow, selfish and silly young women, only interested in chasing after soldiers and visiting Meryton; â€Å"The two youngest of the family, Catherine and Lydia, were particularly frequent in these attentions; their minds were more vacant than their sisters†¦They could talk of nothing but officers.† (Chapter 7.) â€Å"Catherine, weak-spirited, irritable†¦and Lydia, self-willed and careless.† (Chapter 37.) Lydia’s disastrous elopement with Mr Wickham endangers the anticipated marriage between Jane and Mr Bingley because it disgraces the family. Through this, Lydia is unintentionally like Cinderella’s stepsisters, as she causes a last-minute hitch, which could ruin her sister’s hopes of happiness. In Cinderella, this hitch is the stepsisters preventing Cinderella from trying on the glass slipper by hiding her from the Prince ‘below stairs’. Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst, Charles Bingley’s sisters, are also like the ‘evil stepsisters’, only more so, in my estimation, than Mrs Bennet and her younger daughters, because they deliberately try to stop the marriages between the Bennet sisters, their brother and his friend taking place. It is revealed that Miss Bingley would like Mr Darcy for herself, and that she is jealous of Lizzy. They also try to persuade Mr Bingley that Jane does not love him in the hope he will forget about her when he is in London. Miss Bingley sends a letter to Jane, which convinces her that Mr Bingley does not care at all for her, which is not true. This, along with Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst’s officious airs, make them ‘stepsisters’ not only to the Misses Bennet but also to their brother. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the cold and obnoxious aunt of Darcy, is also a ‘stepmother’ to Elizabeth because she severely disapproves of the marriage between her and her nephew, Mr Darcy, and therefore tries her hardest to thwart their plans. She believes that Lizzy is of a lower social class and not ‘good enough’ for her nephew. Also, she wants to see Mr Darcy marry her daughter, the sickly Anne de Bourgh; â€Å"‘Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the assumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr Darcy is engaged to my daughter’†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢True, you are a gentleman’s daughter. But who was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition.'† (Chapter 56.) Even so, Lady Catherine does not successfully stop Elizabeth and Mr Darcy from marrying, and neither do Lizzy’s family or Miss Bingley, just as the stepsisters fail to stop Cinderella from marrying her Prince in the end. It is not explicitly apparent that there are any ‘Fairy Godmothers’ in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice,† but I think that Mrs Gardiner, Elizabeth’s aunt, can be regarded as aiding Lizzy throughout the novel. As well as the Gardiner’s help to the Bennets through their troubles with Lydia, Mr and Mrs Gardiner make it possible for Elizabeth to go to her ‘palace’ (Pemberley) for the first time, by taking her with them to Derbyshire. (The Fairy godmother in â€Å"Cinderella† also enables Cinderella to go to the palace.); â€Å"With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.† (Chapter 61.) Perhaps Jane in her continuing support of Lizzy and the Bennet family could also be seen as a ‘Fairy Godmother’ to them all. Another similarity between â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† and â€Å"Cinderella† is that the heroines in both stories go to at least one ball where they meet their future husbands. In â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†, there are two balls – the Meryton Ball and the Netherfield Ball, but in contrast with â€Å"Cinderella†, the future spouses do not immediately get on as well as Cinderella and Prince Charming do! – At the Meryton Ball Lizzy overhears Mr Darcy snubbing her whilst talking to Mr Bingley; â€Å"‘Which do you mean?’ and turning around, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.'† Both stories highlight the importance of ‘the ball’ as a major social event; very often it was the only opportunity for people to meet and socialise. At her ball, Cinderella has a curfew to comply with – she must be home by midnight or else her magical clothes and coach will turn back into rags and a pumpkin. There is no literal deadline in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†, but time is running out for the women in the novel, as they must marry well, while they are still potentially ‘desirable’ wives, if they want to be secure and assured of a future free from want. This fear is shown in the story by the plight of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the repellent Mr Collins because she knows it will probably be her last opportunity to gain a husband and therefore a house of her own; â€Å"Mr Collins was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome†¦But still he would be her husband†¦and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.† (Chapter 22.) An important component of the â€Å"Cinderella† fairy tale is magic, and magical animals, and as I have found neither one of these in â€Å"Pride and Prejudice†, it is almost certainly one of the biggest differences between the two stories. This shows us that Austen’s novel is not a fable but that the events in the book could have actually occurred in early 19th century society. From examining the text of â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† and several â€Å"Cinderella† tales, I have found many similarities, and some differences between the two narratives. I conclude that although Jane Austen did not intentionally design her novel to be like a fairy tale, there is a definite resemblance to â€Å"Cinderella†. The plot and subplots of the novel are clearly more complex than in â€Å"Cinderella†, but most of the individuals have counterparts in the other story. As I said at the beginning of this essay, the main heroine, whether you consider her to be Elizabeth or Jane, ‘gets her guy’. In both stories, the wedded couple and their families are more happy and secure than at the start of the tale – they all ‘live happily ever after’, with Lizzy moving to Pemberley, just as Cinderella moves to the palace. Some people may regard the ending of â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† as the most unrealistic and ‘fairy story’ part of the book. In reality life was very hard, even for the rich, at this time. For example, Elizabeth, like many young women at that time, may have died in childbirth a year later, or perhaps Mr Bingley may have been badly injured a month after the novel finishes in a hunting accident. In my view, â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† is simply a daydream; a world into which the reader can escape to avoid the unpleasantries which no doubt occurred in the Georgian period, but which Jane Austen chose to ignore. By doing this, Austen created one of the best-loved and most interesting â€Å"Cinderella† stories to date.

Timeline of the Medieval Traders on the Swahili Coast

Based on archaeological and historical data, the medieval period of the 11th through 16th centuries AD was the heyday of Swahili Coast trading communities. But that data has also shown that the African merchants and sailors of the Swahili Coast began to  trade in international goods at least 300-500 years earlier. A timeline of the major events on the Swahili coast: Early 16th century, the  arrival of Portuguese and the end of Kilwas trading powerCa 1400 start of Nabhan dynasty1331, Ibn Battuta visits Mogadishu14th-16th centuries, a shift in trade to the  Indian Ocean, the heyday of coastal Swahili townsCa 1300, the  start of Mahdali dynasty (Abul Mawahib)Ca 1200, first coins minted by Ali bin al-Hasan in Kilwa12th century, a rise of Mogadishu11th-12th centuries, most coastal people converted to Islam, a shift in trade to the  Red Sea11th century, start of Shirazi dynasty9th century, slave trade with the  Persian Gulf8th century, the first mosque built6th-8th centuries AD, trade established with Muslim traders40 AD, author of Periplus visits Rhapta The Ruling Sultans A chronology of ruling sultans can be derived from the Kilwa Chronicle, two undated medieval documents recording an oral history of the large Swahili capital of Kilwa. Scholars are skeptical of its accuracy, however, particularly with respect to the semi-mythical Shirazi dynasty: but they are agreed on the existence of several important sultans: Ali ibn al-Hasan (11th century)Daud ibn al-HasanSulaiman ibn al-Hasan (early 14th c)Daud ibn Sulaiman (early 14th c)al-Hasan ibn Talut (ca 1277)Muhammad ibn Sulaimanal-Hasan ibn Sulaiman (ca 1331, visited by Ibn Battuta)Sulaiman ibn al-Husain (14th c) Pre  or Proto-Swahili The earliest pre or proto-Swahili sites date to the first century AD, when the unnamed Greek sailor who authored the merchants guide Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, visited Rhapta on what is today the central Tanzanian coast. Rhapta was reported in the Periplus to be under the rule of Maza on the Arabian Peninsula. The Periplus reported that ivory, rhinoceros horn, nautilus and turtle shell, metal implements, glass, and foodstuffs were imports available in Rhapta. Finds of Egypt-Roman and other Mediterranean imports dated to the last few centuries BC suggest some contact with those areas. By the 6th to 10th centuries AD, people on the coast were living in mostly rectangular earth-and-thatch houses, with household economies based on pearl millet agriculture, cattle pastoralism, and fishing. They smelted iron, built boats and made what archaeologists called Tana Tradition or Triangular Incised Ware pots; they obtained imported goods such as glazed ceramics, glassware, metal jewelry, and stone and glass beads from the Persian Gulf. Beginning in the 8th century, the African inhabitants had converted to Islam. Archaeological excavations at Kilwa Kisiwani and Shanga in Kenya have demonstrated that these towns were settled as early as the 7th and 8th centuries. Other prominent sites of this period include Manda in northern Kenya, Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar and Tumbe on Pemba. Islam and Kilwa The earliest mosque on the Swahili coast is located in the town of Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago. A timber mosque was built here in the 8th century AD, and rebuilt in the same location, again and again, each time larger and more substantial. Fish became an increasingly important part of the local diet, consisting of fish on the reefs, within about one kilometer (one-half mile) from the shore. In the 9th century, connections between Eastern Africa and the Middle East included the export of thousands of slaves from Africas interior. The slaves were transported through Swahili coastal towns to destinations in Iraq such as Basra, where they worked on a dam. In 868, the slave revolted in Basra, weakening the market for slaves from Swahili. By ~1200, all of the large Swahili settlements included stone built mosques. The Growth of Swahili Towns Through the 11th-14th centuries, the Swahili towns expanded in scale, in the numbers and variety of imported and locally-produced material goods, and in trade relationships between the interior of Africa and other societies around the Indian Ocean. A wide variety of boats were built for sea-going trade. Although most of the houses continued to be made of earth and thatch, some of the houses were built of coral, and many of the larger and newer settlements were stone towns, communities marked by elite residences built of stone. Stonetowns grew in number and size, and trade blossomed. Exports included ivory, iron, animal products, mangrove poles for house construction; imports included glazed ceramics, beads and other jewelry, cloth, and religious texts. Coins  were minted in some of the larger centers, and iron and copper alloys, and beads of various types were produced locally. Portuguese Colonization In 1498-1499, the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama began exploring the Indian Ocean. Beginning in the 16th century, Portuguese and Arab colonization began to decrease the power of the Swahili towns, evidenced by the construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593, and the increasingly aggressive trade wars in the Indian Ocean. The Swahili culture fought variously successfully against such incursions and although disruptions in trade and loss of autonomy did occur, the coast prevailed in urban and rural life. By the end of the 17th century, the Portuguese lost control of the western Indian Ocean to Oman and Zanzibar. The Swahili coast was reunited under the Omani sultanate in the 19th century. Sources Chami FA. 2009. Kilwa and the Swahili Towns: Reflections from an archaeological perspective. In: Larsen K, editor. Knowledge, Renewal and Religion: Repositioning and changing ideological and material circumstances among the Swahili on the East African coast. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitututet.Elkiss TH. 1973. Kilwa Kisiwani: The Rise of an East African City-State. African Studies Review 16(1):119-130.Phillipson D. 2005. African Archaeology. London: Cambridge University Press.Pollard E. 2011. Safeguarding Swahili trade in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: a unique navigational complex in south-east Tanzania. World Archaeology 43(3):458-477.Sutton JEG. 2002. The southern Swahili harbour and town on Kilwa Island, 800-1800 AD: A chronology of booms and slumps.: Uppsala University.Wynne-Jones S. 2007. Creating urban communities at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania, AD 800-1300. Antiquity 81:368-380.