Mombasa is part of the Augustinian history of East Africa, but is given a separate Augnet page because it was the destination of the first Portuguese Augustinian missionaries on the eastern coast of Africa.
In 1593 they began building Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island.
But their control of the northern coast did not revive its prosperity and by 1600 Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean was in serious decline.
In the first decades of the 1600s they won some tribute paid to the king of Portugal.
And amid this success, Augustinian friars came to Fort Jesus in 1597 they were the first Portuguese missionaries to arrive on the east coast of Africa.
Towards the end of the 16th century they were active in Mombasa and Malindi. Melinde is on the African on mainland, and is now Malindi in Kenya.
Christian effort centred not on the converting of the pagans who had no organised religion, as the African coast was largely already a Muslim sphere of influence.
It must be admitted that the Muslim religion was one for which the Portuguese had low regard because of the Muslim occupation of Portugal previously.
More accurately the priests were chaplains to the Portuguese settlements, in which Portuguese men often wed local women, who were then baptised along with their sons and daughters of combined racial origin.
As well, there were individuals who entered the Portuguese sphere of influence and adopted the Christian religion, some for example being slaves of whom the Portuguese had become the new masters upon capturing them from local rulers.
Portuguese immigration to East Africa slowly increased, and an Augustinian-educated sultan ruled Malindi, Mombasa and Pemba (an island near Mombasa).
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