Mombasa suburb on the mainland which contains a beach, oil refineries, housing estates etc. Moi International Airport and the Port Reitz District Hospital are in Port Reitz. Mombasa is also a county and divided into six constituencies and thirty wards. Mombasa is a major trade centre and home to Kenya's only large seaport, the Kilindini Harbour. "Kilindini" is an old Swahili term meaning "deep". The port is so-called because the channel is naturally very deep. Kilindini Harbor is an example of a natural geographic phenomenon called a ria, formed at the end of the last glacial period when the sea level
Mombasa c. 1300. The Mandhry Mosque, built in 1570, has a minaret that contains a regionally specific ogee arch. This demonstrates that Swahili architecture was an indigenous African product and disproves assertions that non-African Muslims brought stone architecture to the Swahili Coast. During the pre-modern period, Mombasa was an important centre for the trade in spices, gold, and ivory. Its trade links reached as far as the Indian subcontinent and modern-day China and oral historians today can still recall this period of local history. History shows that there were trade links between Mombasa and Cholas of South India. Throughout the early