History at a glance

For over thousands  years, the monsoons that blow across the Indian Ocean have played a major role in connecting the lands of Arabia, India and Persia with the coastline of East Africa, including the Zanzibar archipelago. With the aid of the northeast monsoon, the overseas navigators sailed to Zanzibar and return when the southwest monsoon took over. Zanzibar islands were already inhabited by people who are believed to be fishermen that reached the islands from the African mainland in dugout canoes and settled there during the 1^st millennium BC.

The first European arrivals were Portuguese navigators searching for a trade route to India. They arrived Zanzibar at the end of the 15^th century and set up a trade base in the northern part of the islands.

The Omani Arabs and the Portuguese fought long battles over who should be ruling  the islands. The conflict terminated at the end of the 17^th century when the latter were conquered  by the Omani. As the result, Zanzibar became infamous as the major hub for slave trade. In 1840, the Omani Sultan Sayyid Said bin Sultan moved his residence and court from Muscat to Zanzibar, turning the island into an Arab state and an essential center of trade and politics in the region. In 19^th century, Zanzibar became a base for most prominent European explorers such as Livingstone and Stanley who set off for their expeditions into the African interior from the islands.

In 1890 the British and German Empires signed the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty that declared  Zanzibar British protectorate. It lasted until 1963 which was the year when the British terminated the protectorate and the state gained its independence. In 1964, the last sultan of Zanzibar Sayyid Jamshid bin Abdullah Al Said and his court  were deposed as a result of  the revolution. In the same year, Zanzibar and its mainland neighbor country Tanganyika unified to form the United Republic of Tanzania.