The Antemoro kingdom (tenth/sixteenth to thirteenth/nineteenth centuries) was founded by Islamised traders and craftsmen who had sailed from the cosmopolitan mercantile towns of the northern coast of Madagascar and settled on the southeast coast at the end of the ninth/ fifteenth century, later forming the aristocracy of the kingdom. Knowledge of texts written in Arabic characters was the basis of the power of this aristocracy. The manuscripts show an Islamic legacy, but also point to connections with the East African coast, India and Indonesia.
