Zanzibar History & Culture

 When most of the western world was still sunk in the darkness of  the Middle Ages, Zanzibar was already a meeting place for traders from the great Oriental cultures – China, Persia and Arabia. It nestle in the middle of a mercantile civilization, stretching from Somalia in the north  down  the coast of  East Africa to Mozambique in the south. This kingdom and its  inhabitants  were known as the Swahili the people of coast. 

They traded gold, ivory and cloth with visitors from  across the India Ocean, built handsome stone houses and had well development system of government, Envoys, merchants and even pirates from as far away  as Japan and Russia came to Zanzibar and its environs in sailing ships, blown across the seas by the by the north east monsoon and returning, their holds laden with trade goods, on the south west wind .be confined on the island until the ships which were to transport them north were made ready.

In 1828 the flagship of Sultan Seyyid Said, one of  Oman’s most  powerful and influential rulers, landed at  Zanzibar. The Sultan had  previously been too busy defending Oman against its many would-be conquerors to visit the island in person, but he was enchanted by what he saw. In contras to the dry, rocky desert of Oman, Zanzibar was  green, lush and filed with source of fresh water. More importantly, it had strategic advantages – safe, defensible and close to the African mainland, the source of his wealth, In 1840 Said moved his entire household to Zanzibar  and declared it the new capital of his empire. Said and his many relatives and associates built numerous  places, bath house and country manors on Zanzibar, and introduced the commercial farming of cloves, sugar and other crops. Said’s empire went from strength to strength, fuelled all the time by the flow of miserable humanity that marched in chains from the regions of the great lakes and beyond, to be sold for  ever hinger prices in  the great slave market in the middle of stone town.

which saw the slave market destroyed and an Anglican cathedral built in its back to the Omani sultans. But the reign of the new sultan was short-lived – he was ousted in 1964 by a violent revolution. and  today lives quilety on the south coast  of  England. After the revolution the new Zanzibar government of main -land  Tanganyika to form a single state, renamed Tanzania Zanzibar was run along socialist, single – party lines by the new revolutionary government, and received political support and financial aid from countries such as Bulgaria, East Germany and China. However in the 1980s the first presidential election took place, and Zanzibar’s economy slowly become less state-controllde, with same private  sector enterprise being allowed. the first half of the 1990s saw  the rise of a multi-party  system of government  and the development of Zanzibar’s newest  industry-tourism.