A place built
by visitors.
The name Zanzibar comes from the Persian Zangi-bar — the coast of the Zangi. The archipelago is made up of Unguja (which most travelers call Zanzibar) and its quieter sister Pemba. Stone tools tell us people have been here for at least 22,000 years.
The first farmers were Bantu. In the 1st century BC, merchants from Yemen, Persia, and India arrived; in the 6th century, Islam followed. Stone Town rose as a fortified trading center in the 11th–12th centuries. Kiswahili — a Bantu language with deep Arabic borrowings — grew out of the conversations between traders and locals.
The Portuguese came with Vasco da Gama in 1499. The Sultan of Oman took control in 1698, setting up an elite that prospered on spice, ivory, and — until the British protectorate in 1890 — the slave trade. Zanzibar won independence in 1963 and, a year later, joined mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania.