Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania.

A document written around AD 1200 called al-Maqama al Kilwiyya discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa to Ibadism, as it had recently been affected by the Ghurabiyya Shia doctrine from southern Iraq.

According to local oral tradition, in the 11th century the island of Kilwa Kisiwani was sold to Ali bin Hasan, son of the "King" of Shiraz, in Persia. Another tradition relates that his mother was African ("Abyssinian"). Ali bin Al-Hasan is credited with founding the island city and with marrying the daughter of the local African king. Tradition also relates that it was the child of this union who founded the Kilwa Sultanate. Archaeological and documentary research has revealed that over the next few centuries, Kilwa grew to be a substantial city and the leading commercial entrepot on the southern half of the Swahili coast (roughly from the present Tanzanian-Kenya border southward to the mouth of the Zambezi River), trading extensively with states of the African hinterland and interior as far as Zimbabwe. Trade was mainly in gold, iron, ivory, and other animal products of the African interior for beads, textiles, jewelry, porcelain, and spices from Asia.