Zanzibar is a dream turned into an island: beaches of the finest white sand, impossibly turquoise water, lateen-sailed dhows silhouetted against the sunset and the scent of clove and cinnamon drifting in the air. This Indian Ocean archipelago, the legendary 'spice island', is the perfect complement to a safari: after the dust and adrenaline of the savannah, Zanzibar offers rest, sea and a fascinating culture, shaped over centuries at the crossroads of Africa, Arabia, Persia and India.
But Zanzibar is much more than beaches. Its heart is Stone Town, a maze of coral-stone alleys, palaces, mosques and bazaars, with its famous carved wooden doors, a World Heritage Site. It is the cradle of Swahili culture and language, was the capital of a powerful sultanate, the epicentre of the spice trade and, at its darkest, one of the largest slave markets in the Indian Ocean. Exploring it means travelling through that rich and complex history.
This practical guide covers Zanzibar through a traveller's eyes: how to combine Stone Town with the beaches of the north and east, what to see and do (the spice tour, Prison Island and its giant tortoises, the Mnemba Atoll for diving, Jozani Forest with its endemic monkeys), what excursions cost, how to get there by plane or ferry from the mainland, and what to keep in mind on a mostly Muslim island. The perfect finale —beaches and history— for a trip to Tanzania.
For millennia Zanzibar was a crossroads of Indian Ocean trade routes, where sailors and merchants from Africa, Arabia, Persia and India met, carried by the monsoon winds. From that mix came Swahili culture and its language, Kiswahili. From the 10th century, Persian (Shirazi) and Arab settlers and influences arrived, and Islam took hold on the island. The Portuguese arrived in the 16th century and were later expelled by the Sultanate of Oman, which in the 19th century made Zanzibar its capital: Sultan Said moved his court to the island, which became the world's largest producer of cloves and a huge centre of the ivory trade and, tragically, the slave trade, with people captured on the mainland. In 1890 Zanzibar became a British protectorate. It gained independence in 1963 and, after the bloody Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, which overthrew the sultanate, it united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania, keeping a semi-autonomous status. Stone Town, witness to all this history, is a World Heritage Site. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The spice archipelago: Stone Town and its Swahili, Arab and colonial history, the beaches of Unguja, green clove-growing Pemba and the reefs of Mafia.
Read the history of Zanzibar and the islands →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of Zanzibar is, above all, the history of an encounter. Sitting at the exact point where the Indian Ocean monsoon winds pushed ships between Africa, Arabia, Persia and India, the island was for millennia a key stop on the oldest maritime trade network in the world. The monsoons set the rhythm of life: they blew in one direction for half the year, bringing merchants from Arabia and India, and in the opposite direction for the other half, carrying them home loaded with African goods.
From that centuries-long contact between peoples, something new and unique was born: Swahili culture. Along the coast of East Africa, from Somalia to Mozambique, and especially on islands like Zanzibar, the mixing of African Bantu peoples with Arab and Persian traders and settlers gave rise to a blended, urban and cosmopolitan civilisation, turned towards the sea and trade. Its language, Kiswahili (Swahili), is a Bantu language enriched with plenty of Arabic vocabulary. It became the lingua franca of the whole region and is today an official language of Tanzania and Kenya.
Zanzibar, with its prime location and good harbours, was one of the hearts of this culture. Its people traded ivory, gold, hides, spices and other goods from the African continent, exchanging them for textiles, ceramics, glass beads and goods from the East. That trading spirit and that blending of peoples are the key to everything Zanzibar would go on to become.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Zanzibar took in successive waves of influence. According to tradition, from the 10th century onwards settlers and traders of Persian origin arrived from Shiraz. Known as the Shirazi, they mixed with the local population and helped consolidate the coastal settlements and Islam. Islam took hold as the majority religion and left a deep mark on the island's culture. Mosques were built, trade grew and small Swahili city-states flourished.
The balance broke in the 16th century with the arrival of the Portuguese. On their route to India, they took control of much of the East African coast, Zanzibar included, and dominated its trade for about two centuries. The Portuguese left a few traces but never put down deep roots.
Their power was swept away by the Sultanate of Oman, the Arab power of the Persian Gulf, which drove the Portuguese out of the region at the end of the 17th century and extended its influence over the Swahili coast. Zanzibar thus came into Oman's orbit, and that was a decisive change: the island, already rich and strategic, was about to become the centre of a trading empire. The link with Oman would leave a lasting mark on its architecture, its society and its fate over the following centuries.
The 19th century was Zanzibar's golden age, and also its darkest. The Sultan of Oman, Said bin Sultan, was so taken with the island's wealth and position that around 1832-1840 he moved his capital there. That made Zanzibar the centre of a powerful sultanate that controlled trade across the western Indian Ocean. Under his rule, cloves were planted on a large scale across the plantations of Zanzibar and Pemba. The island became the world's largest producer of cloves and a byword for 'the Spice Island'.
The sultanate's prosperity, however, rested largely on two brutal trades: ivory and, above all, slaves. Zanzibar became one of the largest slave markets in the world. Caravans from the interior of East Africa captured men, women and children and marched them in terrible conditions to the coast. From there they were shipped to Zanzibar and sold at the Stone Town slave market, either to work on the clove plantations or to be sent on to Arabia, Persia and beyond. At its peak, tens of thousands of people are estimated to have passed through this trade every year, in one of the most atrocious chapters of the region's history.
International pressure, led by Britain and the abolitionist movement, forced the Zanzibar slave market to close in 1873. The Anglican cathedral of Stone Town was later built on the site of that market. According to tradition, its altar marks the spot where the whipping post stood, as a memorial to that horror and a condemnation of it. Remembering this history soberly is an essential part of understanding Zanzibar.
In the 19th century, European greed for Africa reached Zanzibar too. In 1890, as the continent was carved up among the colonial powers, the island became a British protectorate, although it formally kept its sultan as a figure of authority. A famous episode dates from British rule: the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, considered the shortest war in history. It lasted only about 38 minutes, after the British fleet shelled the sultan's palace following a succession dispute.
The protectorate lasted for decades, until the wave of decolonisation reached the island. In December 1963, Zanzibar gained independence as a constitutional monarchy under the sultanate. But the new arrangement was very short-lived. The island's society was deeply divided: a minority of Arab origin held power and wealth, while the majority of African origin was pushed to the margins. This was a direct legacy of the era of the sultanate and slavery.
In January 1964 the Zanzibar Revolution broke out. In this violent uprising, the African population overthrew the sultan and the Arab-led government. The revolution was bloody: thousands of people of Arab and Indian origin were killed or fled amid scenes of great brutality, in one of the most traumatic chapters of the island's history. The sultanate was abolished and a republic was proclaimed.
A few months after the revolution, in April 1964, Zanzibar took the step that would shape its political future. It joined Tanganyika (the mainland territory, independent since 1961) to form a new country, the United Republic of Tanzania. The name itself combines 'Tan-' from Tanganyika and 'Zan-' from Zanzibar. It was an unusual union, negotiated by the leaders Julius Nyerere and Abeid Amani Karume, and Zanzibar kept a considerable degree of autonomy.
Since then, Zanzibar has been a semi-autonomous territory within Tanzania. It has its own president, government and parliament for internal affairs, while it shares foreign policy, defence and other union matters with the mainland. This autonomy and the island's distinct identity, which is Muslim, Swahili and island-based, mean that Zanzibar keeps a character of its own, along with occasional political tensions with the union government.
In recent decades, tourism has become the island's main economic engine. Visitors come for its idyllic beaches, its diving and the great historical and cultural value of Stone Town, which UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site in 2000. Alongside tourism, spice growing (cloves above all) and fishing are still part of local life. Today Zanzibar offers travellers a fascinating crossroads: dream beaches and a history with a thousand layers, Swahili, Persian, Arab, Portuguese and British, with its light and its shadows, which you can feel in every alleyway of the Stone Town.
