Pate (Paté) Island (Swahili pronunciation: [ˈpate]) is located in the Indian Ocean close to the northern coast of Kenya, to which it belongs.

Like much of the Swahili Coast, Pate's history was marked by a steady transition from agricultural communities in the early first millennium into a specialized, urban trading society around the 10th century, likely earlier.

Islam spread down the coast from African Muslims in the Horn of Africa, helping to develop what would be known as the Swahili culture.

The Swahili port of Pate long vied with Lamu and Takwa (on Manda Island) for economic dominance of the area, and came into prominence around the 14th century.

Faza town, on the North coast, known by the name of Ampaza by the Portuguese,[1] dates back at least to the 14th century.

Archeological evidence suggests Pate was a prominent location in local trade networks by the 10th century.

[5] However, recent archaeological findings (by Neville Chittick and later, Mark Horton) suggest that the references in the Chronicle to Pate's early history are wrong, and that the town is younger.

The 18th century was known as the "Golden Age of Pate", when the town was at its height of powers and also prospered in fine arts.

Builders constructed some of the finest houses on the Swahili coast, with extensive elaborate plaster works.

The Utendi wa Tambuka, one of the earliest known documents in Swahili, was written in the royal Yunga palace in Pate Town.

[citation needed] In 1845 Siyu gave Seyyid Said one of his greatest military defeats, in this battle the famous Amir Hemed was killed and was buried in Rasini where his grave exists to date.

It is believed Amir Hemed was very swift with his sword to the extent of stopping all arrows and spears shot at him in battlefield.

When Amir Hemed swiftly lifted his sword to stop the first arrow the second shot his chest from the arm pit.

Some of the diplomats who answered that Amir Hemed is still alive were spared but they were imprisoned for life at fort Jesus in Mombasa which was also under the Sultan then.

[citation needed] When Siyu finally succumbed to Zanzibar's dominance, under Sultan Majid in 1863, it was one of the last towns on the whole of the Swahili Coast to do so.

Lying slightly north of Rasini, the fishing port straddles 2° 4'11.90"S and 41° 8'29.92"E, and is the southern reach of the Kizingitini-Kiunga Spiny lobster fishery.

[11] The excavations also revealed a major break in the development of Shanga in the mid or late 11th century, with the destruction and the rebuilding of the Friday Mosque[12] Horton relates this to the writing of the historian João de Barros, about members of an Arab tribe, generally believed to be Qarmatians, who arrived at the Swahili coast.

The Washanga ("the people of Shanga") consist of a clan who still live in the nearby Swahili town of Siyu.

[15] Rezende's description of Siyu in 1634 states that "the kingdom of Sio has no king but is ruled by governors"[16] In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported a surprising encounter on the island of Pate.