Zanzibar!

Location:
Tanzania, Zanzibar

Zanzibar, history, tourism

By Steve Foreman

ZANZIBAR

Isles of fragrance, lily-silver’d vales.

Love-whisp’ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.

From “The Dunciad” by Alexander Pope

The Islands of Zanzibar, with their spice-laden plantations, equatorial forests and sun-drenched beaches, are a paradise of sights and sounds and romance that cries out for the poet’s pen. History is written here – carved in stone and stained with blood. Silken slippers once walked these grassy swards and perfumed sherbets dropped from bejewelled fingers into the hungry soil. Zanzibar is where the museums themselves are the exhibits, and fishing boats sail right out of the history books.

It is believed that the Zanzibar Archipelago has been inhabited for well over 2000 years.

In AD60, a Greek merchant reported to the Syrian geographer, Marinus, the existence of Arabic trading settlements along the East African coast, many dating from the 1st century.

As trade between Zanzibar, Arabia and Persia flourished between 12th and 15th centuries, the Islands became a powerful city-state and attracted many settlers from Saudi Arabia, India, Yemen, Oman and Persia. The seas became the haunts of marauding pirates, bent on plundering the heavily laden merchant ships that plied between these various nation-states. It is said that the lost treasures of the infamous Captain Kidd are still lying somewhere around Misali Island, awaiting rediscovery.

In 1499, the Portuguese arrived, in the form of the peerless navigator, Vasco da Gama. His countrymen soon followed, forcibly occupied the islands, and put an end to this golden age of free trade. The Portuguese era did not last very long and very few Portuguese settlers stayed after the colonial powers moved on to fresher pastures, challenged first by the British and later by the Omani Arabs in the mid-16th century.

By the 19th Century, Oman had solidified its control over Zanzibar, and it became a major trading point and clearing-house for hundreds of thousands of slaves and countless tons of ivory. From this illustrious island, great trading caravans and famous explorers, such as Burton, Livingstone, Speke, Krapf and Rebman, launched their lengthy and perilous expeditions into the interior.

Drawn from as far away as Central Africa, great numbers of slaves perished on the debilitating journeys through the savage hinterlands to reach the coast.

Even so, at the height of the slave trade, every year between 30,000 and 50,000 poor wretches arrived alive and were funnelled through the Zanzibar slave market.

Although most of these were to be sold and transported to Arabia, Persia and the Indian Ocean Islands, many were used as labourers in big plantations on Zanzibar and a lot of families and their progeny remained there and settled. Members of the non-African population are primarily descendants of the Shiraz people from Persia. All the ethnic groups make up a total population of almost 1,000,000 residents

Think, in this battered caravanserai

Whose doorways are alternate night and day

How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp

Abode his hour or two, and went his way.

From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyahm.”

The important capital town of Zanzibar Island is a World Heritage Site. In Stone Town, one can spend many idle hours wandering through the narrow labyrinthine streets and alleyways where mosses and lichens cling to damp crumbling coral-rag walls and pools of sunlight wash the small squares and street-front cafes in a warm glow. The narrow lanes snake between over 2,000 buildings where shops, market stalls and restaurants vie for space with various monuments and structures of cultural pride. Every turning gives on to a new vista, be it a quiet courtyard scene of old men chatting under looming shade trees, or a busy corner with a crowd of people watching International football on a TV set, balanced precariously on a stack of orange crates. The chants of the Quran may draw you toward a cool and ancient Madrasa tucked away in a sleepy corner, or you may glance up at the girlish laughter tinkling down from a latticed balcony high above, where dark eyes flash within the velvet shadows.

Just outside Stone Town stands the sadly neglected Livingstone House. Sultan Said Majid, who ruled Zanzibar and Tanzania’s coast from 1856 to 1870, built it around 1860. This building is named for the well-known and respected missionary-cum-explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who used it as a base for his wanderings. During the second half of the 19th century, several other European missionaries and explorers, such as Burton and Speke, used it as the starting point for their expeditions to the interior of Africa.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert, all alone…

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

From “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelly

A trip to the many ruins and old buildings of Zanzibar is a voyage of discovery through time. The journey can take one from Stone Town’s narrow streets and coral-rag walls - clad with rank lichens and sun-faded plaster, to tended gardens and lily-ponds; overlooked by towering pillars who stand like sentinels of the past, guarding the hidden tombs of time gone by.

Like sweat from the pores of a slave, the ruins ooze history and legend from their cracked stone and mossy walls, and the echoes one hears within are not just of these tropical isles, but also of desert lands and ancient civilisations far away in distance and time.

Put down your camera and move away from that gaggle of noisy children. Sit on that tumbled column, look around you and listen…

The laughter of sloe-eyed concubines echoes within the hollow chambers of the Persian baths. From the deep dark pit, moaning and wailing wafts up on the thin, clear air and evaporates like tears in the sunlight. From beyond the sturdy wall, stern voices – Persian and Arabic – drift up, ordering ships to be made ready even as the invaders’ cannons boom from offshore.

Gone is the glory but the memory remains.