|
|
It is believed that the Zanzibar Archipelago has been inhabited for well over 2000 years. In 360 A.D, a Greek merchant reported to the Syrian geographer, Marinus, the existence of Arabic trading settlements along the East African coast, many dating from the first century. In the navigational guidebook of the time, the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, there is reference to the island of Menouthias, which many writers, travelers and historians believe to be Zanzibar. Shirazi traders from Persia began to make their way to East Africa, and by the 10th century or earlier had established settlements at several places in the islands, including Pemba and Unguja.
As trade between Zanzibar, Arabia and Persia flourished between 12th and 15th centuries, the Islands became powerful city-states, 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 the 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 "Heart of Darkness", a statement that has perturbed many local scholars.
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 Africans arrived alive and were funneled 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 laborers in big plantations on Zanzibar, and a lot of families and their progeny remained there and settled. People from other African ethnic groups later migrated voluntarily to the islands from the mainland, and their descendants, along with those of the slaves, now make up the majority of the three African ethnic groups who inhabit the archipelago.
Members of the non-African population are primarily descendants of the Shirazi people from Persia. All the ethnic groups makeup a total of almost 1,000,000 residents.
|