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The Zanzibar Archipelago (Funguvisiwa la Zanzibar, in Swahili, Arabic: أرخبيل زنجبار) is a group of islands off the coast of mainland Tanzania in the sea of Zanj. The archipelago is also known as the Spice Islands. There are three main islands with permanent human settlements, Zanzibar island, Pemba island, and Mafia island.
Zanzibar [a] is an insular semi-autonomous region which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania.It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 km (16–31 mi) off the coast of the African mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba Island.
In 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman, which developed an economy of trade and cash crops, with a ruling Arab elite and a Bantu general population. Plantations were developed to grow spices; hence, the moniker of the Spice Islands (a name also used for the Dutch colony the Moluccas, now part of Indonesia).
Zanzibar and Pemba were world-famous for their trade in spices and became known as the Spice Islands; in the early 20th century, they produced approximately 90% of the world's supply of cloves. Zanzibar was also a major transit point in the African Great Lakes and Indian Ocean slave trade. Zanzibar attracted ships from as far away as the United ...
Unguja and the surrounding islands are divided into three regions: Zanzibar Central/ South (capital: Koani), Zanzibar North (capital: Mkokotoni) and; Zanzibar Urban/ West (capital: Zanzibar City). Unguja belongs to Zanzibar, which is defined by the Tanzanian Constitution as "a part" of Tanzania with a high degree of autonomy.
Stone Town is located on the western coast of Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago. Former capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate, and flourishing centre of the spice trade as well as the Indian Ocean slave trade in the 19th century, it retained its importance as the main city of Zanzibar during the period of the British protectorate. [1]
With a land area of 988 square kilometres (381 sq mi) [1] it is situated about 50 kilometres (25 nautical miles) north of Unguja, the largest island of the archipelago. Surrounded by relatively deep water, the island of Pemba is thought to have been a part of the mainland, which split off along the Pemba rift approximately 10 million years ago ...
Learning the location of the so-called "spice islands", heretofore a secret from the Europeans, were the Maluku Islands, mainly the Banda, then the world's only source of nutmeg and cloves. Reaching these was the main purpose for the Portuguese voyages in the Indian Ocean.
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