Zanzibar

Zanzibar stands on the western shore of Unguja, facing the East African mainland across a sheltered channel. Its stone town grew from the meeting of African, Arabian and Indian Ocean traditions. Narrow streets wind among mosques, houses and elaborately carved doors, while the harbour connects the island to the trading towns of the coast and the lands beyond the sea.

Portuguese influence reached the island in the sixteenth century, but Omani power later displaced it. The Old Fort was built on the site of an earlier Portuguese church, and Zanzibar grew in importance as an Omani commercial centre. In the early nineteenth century cloves were introduced and cultivated on the island, increasingly with enslaved labour. Sultan Said bin Sultan invested in the town and built his waterfront palace in 1835, as Zanzibar's role in the trade and politics of the western Indian Ocean expanded.