This well-written, well-researched book offers a careful argument about architectural history and its cultural contestations along the Swahili coast, with emphasis on the city of Mombasa.
* Journal of African History *
Overall, Meier's text is beautifully written, comprehensive, and convincing. There are moments when her data seem slightly miscellaneous, but this is a particular challenge of interdisciplinary work. The text is of great value to scholars of East Africa in a number of fields, including archaeology, anthropology, history, and art history, and those interested in material culture and spatial studies more generally.
* African Archaeological Review *
Meier's book Swahili Port Cities provides an invaluable and unique contribution to understandings of the complex history intertwining places, objects, and people along the littoral fringe of present-day Kenya and Tanzania. In so doing, it provides a solid foundation for scholars in any discipline investigating similar questions elsewhere.
* H-AMCA *
Meier's book is a vital addition to the field, demonstrating the importance and complexity of Swahili architecture and material culture in the modern era and the insights they offer into wider issues of identity and politics.
* Abe Journal *
Swahili Port Cities is an original, well-researched, and nicely crafted reading of the architectural and urban histories of a rare East African Islamic universe and its related aesthetic ways, which are somewhat removed from the worlds of Middle Eastern Islam and its architecture. At the same time, this universe challenges our received constructions of things African.
* Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians *
