| Explanations in English |
8 the Arabs; lit. the people from beyond the sea. [1.2]
9 The Antalaotra were an Islamized group of Arab antecedents living on the west coast of Madagascar. They provided ritual specialists to several ruling groups, but were mainly active in trade and flourished with the development of the Swahili trading network that involved east Africa, Zanzibar, and the Comoros Islands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early eighteenth century their trading posts on the west coast were conquered by the Sakalava, with whose ruling dynasties they later intermarried. Their position was strengthened by the conversion of several of these dynasties to Islam in the nineteenth century. The Merina conquest of Mahajanga, however, disturbed their political position and economic activities; the end of the slave trade that came with the French conquest in 1895 led to their disappearance as an economically distinct group. [2.552#33]
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