In the 14th and 15th centuries, the city of Kilwa on the East African coast was a thriving trade center with as many as 20,000 inhabitants. The people of Kilwa traded cloth from the local weaving industry for gold from the African interior, glass beads from India, and fine pottery from China. Dhows, triangular- sailed ships that crossed the Indian Ocean, crowded Kilwa's harbor. But one day in 1505, a different sort of fleet arrived. Its 22 European ships carried 1,500 soldiers commanded by Viceroy Francisco de Almeida of Portugal, under orders from his king to seize Kilwa. East Africans had seen such ships before. Just six years earlier the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama, the first European to sail around the tip of Africa, had landed at several East African ports on his way to India. Returning to Portugal, he had told the king about the prosperity and safe harbors of these trading ports. Portugal wanted some of those ports to expand its trading empire.