ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:

HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Volume 7

A HISTORY OF THE ARAB STATE OF

ZANZIBAR
A HISTORY OF THE ARAB STATE OF
ZANZIBAR

NORMAN R. BENNETT
First published in 1978 by Methuen & Co Ltd
This edition first published in 2017
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© 1978 Norman R. Bennett
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Norman R. Bennett

A History of
the Arab State
of Zanzibar

Methuen & Co Ltd

First published in 1978
by Methuen & Co Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE
© 1978 Norman R. Bennett
Photoset by Red Lion Setters, Holborn, London
Printed in Great Britain
at the University Printing House
Cambridge

ISBN 0 416 55080 0 (hardback)

Distributed in the USA by

HARPER & ROW PUBLISHERS, INC.
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to Jeanne
 Contents

Acknowledgements viii
I Early history 1
II The rise of Zanzibar 14
III The flourishing years 60
IV The loss of independence 124
V British rule in Zanzibar, 1890-1914 165
VI British rule in Zanzibar, 1914-39 197
VII The downfall of the Arab State of Zanzibar 239
Notes 269
Bibliographical essay 287
Index 298
Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Abdul Sheriff and Fred Cooper for their

gracious permission to read their unpublished theses, and
to Anthony Clayton for sending me copies of his studies on
the 1948 Zanzibar general strike. I am equally grateful to
Jeanne Penvenne for reading and commenting upon the
manuscript, and I am even more grateful for her quick
actions in saving it when an unexpected ocean breeze blew
most of it out of our window in Parede. Andi Truax typed
part of the manuscript with her usual thoroughness.
This study began when I had the good fortune to hold a
Ford Foundation Africa Training Grant and it was helped
over the years by grants by William O. Brown and A.A.
Castagno, late directors of the African Studies Center of
Boston University. Finally, my thanks go to the many
individuals in Zanzibar who made my stay in 1959, and my
visits in 1962 and 1963, both pleasant and fruitful, especi-
ally to John Gray, Salim Barwani, William and Aileen
Belcher, Guy Figg and Ruth Bennett.

Nantucket and Parede, 1976

I Early history

‘There is surely nothing more beautiful on earth’ exclaimed

an early twentieth-century visitor at his first sight of the
island of Zanzibar,[1] sharing a reaction common to most
travellers to that Indian Ocean island. Located between
latitudes 5°40' and 6°30' S., the low-structured coralline
island of Zanzibar, the largest such island lying off the
African continent, is marked by small hills reaching a peak
elevation of about 440 feet. The East African mainland,
separated from Zanzibar at its nearest point by a distance
of twenty-two miles, is visible on clear days from the
island’s hills. The verdant lushness of its vegetation made
Zanzibar a welcome haven for sea voyagers of all national-
ities. And about twenty-five miles northeast of Zanzibar,
between 39°31' and 39°50' E. longitudes, lies the island of
Pemba, described in the early nineteenth century by a
British naval officer as ‘one of the most fertile islands in
the world, [with] luxurious vegetation springing spon-
taneously from the soil.’[2] Earlier Arab visitors had
concurred, designating it the Green Island (Jazirat al
Kuthra) because of the endless shadings of that colour
presented to view. Pemba presented an even more impres-
sive appearance than Zanzibar, its steep ridges and
descending valleys providing the smaller island with a more
elevated look which belied its maximum height of 311 feet.
Once ashore on Zanzibar, observers quickly confirmed
their favourable first impressions. The island extends
about fifty-four miles in length, along a NNW-SSE axis,
2 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
and twenty-four in breadth, with a total area of approxi-
mately 640 square miles. It possesses on its western coast a
fine anchoring place for sailing vessels, sheltered on all
sides by coral reefs, thereby providing a secure haven at all
seasons of the year. Zanzibar’s, and Pemba’s, eastern
coast are open to the full force of the Indian Ocean,
consequently offering no useful anchorages. The triangu-
lar-shaped peninsular where the city of Zanzibar is now
located, until relatively recently virtually separated from
the rest of the island at high tide, provided mariners and
merchants with a safe location away from the potentially
hostile populations of both the island and the African
mainland. Ample provisions always were available, while
Zanzibar contained what has been described as the finest
water supply present between Alexandria and the Cape of
Good Hope. Its former abundance of good timber — also
once present in Pemba — additionally provided resources
for the repairs often required by visiting vessels after the
long and at times hazardous voyage from the distant Asian
continent. In all, Zanzibar offered an ideal central location
for the seaborne traders of the Indian Ocean, functioning
as a port for receiving and storing of produce from the
nearby mainland for eventual transfer to the sailing craft
following the regular monsoon winds prevailing between
East Africa and southwestern Asia and India.
Pemba, the smaller island, is about forty-five miles long
and fourteen miles broad, with an area of 380 square miles,
separated from Africa by a channel of between thirty-five
and forty miles. Fewer vessels visited the Green Island,
since it lacked satisfactory deep-water harbours, but it
none the less attracted visitors because it shared many of
the advantages possessed by Zanzibar. Temperatures in
both islands range between the mid-70s and 80s°F., living
conditions being made even more pleasant by the prevail-
ing ocean winds. The southwest monsoon winds blow from
 Early history 3
March or April to September; those of the northeast
monsoon blow from November or December to March.
The islands’ abundant vegetation is ensured by two rainy
seasons: the greater rains, or masika, falling from about
mid-March to the end of May in the period before the
commencement of the southwest monsoon; while the lesser
rains, or mvuli, fall before the beginning of the northeast
monsoon, from October to December, both giving Zanzi-
bar an annual average of from sixty to seventy inches and
Pemba one of over seventy inches. This typical humid
monsoon climate, normally lacking any sharp extremes of
temperature or unusual variations in rainfall, naturally
attracted immigrants from less-favoured regions; by the
nineteenth century it provided an environment making both
islands the principal source of the world’s supply of cloves.
The earliest inhabitants of Zanzibar and Pemba, because
the closeness of the two islands to the African mainland
made passage via small craft easy and regular, must have
been of the same stock as the first East African peoples.
Ancestors of the present Bantu-speaking populations of
the coast probably reached this region during the first
milennium of the Christian era, absorbing or displacing the
then present peoples who possibly included representatives
of Bushmanoid, Cushitic, or even Indonesian groupings,
the latter on the long voyage from their homeland to
Madagascar. And visitors from the regions of the Red Sea,
Arabia, the Persian Gulf and the Indian peninsula early
sailed to East Africa and its islands via the prevailing
monsoon winds. The earliest surviving written documents
containing information concerning East Africa, the Peri-
plus o f the Erythrean Sea written sometime during the first
to third centuries A.D. by a Greek-speaking inhabitant of
Egypt’s Red Sea littoral, and the Geography of the Greek
scholar Ptolemy, as probably emended for East Africa
during the fifth century, portray a regular and busy
4 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
commerce between outsiders and the local populations.
But the descriptions of the region, which was a minor
segment of the greater Indian Ocean mercantile world, are
tantalizingly brief. Its peoples are noticed only as ‘men of
the greatest stature, who are pirates, inhabiting] the whole
coast and at each place have set up chiefs.’[3] No sites from
this distant era yet have been discovered and there are no
clear indications in the documents to provide certain
information about either Zanzibar or Pemba. In both
accounts the main East African mercantile settlement, the
southernmost port on the coast, was Rhapta, a settlement
now usually postulated to have been located in the Rufigi
River delta of the Tanzanian coast. An island, Menou-
thias, is mentioned, which perhaps might be Mafia, south-
ward of Zanzibar, but it also might describe an amalgam
of all the off-shore East African islands. Whatever their
location, the various settlements were under some form of
political control from the city of Mouza (Mocha) in the
Yemen, with the Arabian merchants arriving to reside and
trade for the East African staples of ivory, turtle shell,
rhinoceros horn and coconut oil — but not for slaves —in
return for such items as metal goods —mostly iron
weapons and tools — and glass vessels. Despite the paucity
of surviving information from this era, it is nevertheless
clear that vital processes of commercial and cultural inter-
action were occurring between the indigenous populations
and the foreign visitors who, as in later centuries, came to
‘trade and intermarry with the mainlanders of all places’. [4]
From the fifth to the tenth centuries there is virtually no
knowledge, either from written sources or from archaeo-
logical findings, of events occurring along the East African
coast. But visitors from the regions of southwest Asia
:ertainly continued their quest for the ivory and other
-esources of the coast. During this era the prophet
Muhammad brought forth his message to the peoples of
 Early history 5
Arabia, and from the seventh century the East African
coast doubtless received the first representatives of the
Islamic religion which henceforth became an increasingly
integral part of the lives of its inhabitants. By the tenth
century it becomes possible, from surviving Arabic sour-
ces, to identify actual locations along the coast settled or
visited by Arabian and Persian Gulf peoples. The noted
Muslim traveller, al Mas’udi (died c.945), made two jour-
neys to East Africa where the local populations he descri-
bed, called Zenj, almost certainly were Bantu speakers.
Mas’udi mentioned Qanbalu island, probably Pemba,
wherein lived inhabitants of mixed Arab and indigenous
origins subject to a Muslim ruling family. The Arabs had
been settled in Qanbalu long enough to have adopted the
language — which cannot yet be clearly identified — of the
Zenj. The settlers probably came mostly from the Persian
Gulf regions, but there also were present Arabs from other
parts of their peninsula and possibly, according to some
surviving traditions, inhabitants from the then flourishing
centre of Daybul, located near the mouth of the Indus River.
Mas’udi additionally records a trade for gold, origina-
ting from regions now encompassed in Zimbabwe
(Rhodesia) to the Mozambique coast, which served as the
basis, along with the continuing commerce in ivory and
other local commodities, for an increasing prosperity for
the settlements along the coast. The earliest important
settlement yet excavated, dating from the ninth century, is
the then prosperous town of Manda, located near Lamu on
the northern Kenyan coast. By the eleventh and twelfth
centuries Muslim towns flourished along the Banadir coast
of Somalia, then inhabited by Bantu-speaking popula-
tions, the result of immigrants mostly originating from the
littoral of the Persian Gulf who intermarried with the
Bantu. From this intermingling originated the Shirazi
peoples, their name stemming from the eastern Persian
6 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
Gulf region around Shiraz, a centre containing both Per-
sian and Arabian inhabitants. During this era the Shirazi
apparently developed a settlement at Shungwaya, located
midway between the Juba and Tana rivers, which later
probably served as a major dispersal point for many of the
eventual northeast Bantu inhabitants of East Africa.
From the second half of the twelfth century members of
this Persian Gulf-African amalgam migrated to the south,
eventually reaching Kilwa, a small island, just off of the
southern Tanzanian coast. The lowest surviving levels of
Kilwa now excavated probably date from the ninth cen-
tury; it gained a Shirazi dynasty near the close of the
twelfth century. By the thirteenth century the Somali coast
town of Mogadishu was the dominant centre along the
entire East African littoral, a position achieved by gaining
control of the gold passing from the interior through the
Sofala region of Mozambique. But by the end of the
century Kilwa had developed into a principal rival of the
northern city and, under a new dynasty originating from
the Hadramawt region of Southern Arabia, eventually
displaced Mogadishu by securing control of Sofala’s gold
trade. Our information concerning Zanzibar and Pemba
during this period is scanty. Unguja Ukuu, a town located
between the present city of Zanzibar and Kizimkazi (on the
southwestern tip of the island), probably was inhabited by
Muslim peoples at an early date. Kizimkazi certainly was
under Muslim rule, since we possess a surviving mosque
inscription in Arabic Kufic script dating from 1107. Noth-
ing is known, however, of the ruler who built the mosque.
Kilwa at times exercised a domination, of which the details
are unclear, over other coastal settlements, including those
on both islands of Pemba and Zanzibar. But by the
fifteenth century Zanzibar had escaped this control, even
developing enough prosperity to emulate Kilwa in the
minting of its own coinage. Zanzibar nevertheless remained
 Early history 7
a secondary coastal polity when, during the second half of
the fifteenth century, Kilwa began to lose its position of
prominence probably due to reasons connected with inter-
nal dynastic strife. It was replaced as the leading coastal
power by the cities of Mombasa, which began to be
important in the fifteenth century, and by Pate, located in
the Lamu archipelago, which rose in the sixteenth century.
In summarizing the condition of life along the East
African littoral by 1500, we find therefore a series of
independent and competing polities ruled by Muslim Afro-
Arab or Shirazi dynasties. The latter groupings comprised
the dominant political, social and economic force in each
of the settlements, dominating African populations not yet
fully integrated into Islamic manners of life. There were
always present many Arab and Persian Gulf visitors, there
largely for commerce, who also were not fully integrated
into local life. But many of the visitors intermarried within
the local populations during their stays, further carrying
on the already centuries-old mixture of African and south-
west Asian ethnic groups. In this busy commercially orien-
ted civilization, the dominant classes lived in a style of life
marked by a healthy material prosperity. But, doubtless
because of their location upon the fringe of the greater
Islamic Indian Ocean mercantile world, the coastal 61ite
never attained any distinction •for developing centres of
innovative intellectual life. None the less, by 1500, the
many mercantile polities did possess the firm beginnings of
their own distinctive cultural patterns. Their inhabitants
were becoming the Swahili peoples of East Africa, eventu-
ally developing the Swahili language, a Bantu tongue with
significant word borrowings from Arabic, while incorpora-
ting African beliefs into their pervading Islamic pattern of
life in a manner similar to many other evolving indigenous
societies of Africa and Asia.
In 1498 the arrival in the Indian Ocean of three small
8 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
Portuguese vessels under the command of Vasco da Gama
signalled the beginning of important changes for the
inhabitants of that ocean’s shores, particularly for those
living along the East African littoral. The numerous indep-
endent settlements, stretching from Mozambique to the
Somali coast, clearly were no match for the superior naval
and organizational capacities of the Portuguese who sig-
nalled their supremacy by a crushing defeat off Diu in
India in 1509 of a combined Muslim fleet of Egyptian,
Persian and Arabian vessels. But many of the East African
city-states remained relatively free of overt Portuguese
domination for about a century because of the simul-
taneous involvement of the limited Portuguese forces in
more important Indian Ocean localities. Yet even without
a major Portuguese presence, the impact of the newcomers
had an increasingly devastating effect upon the inhabitants
of the coast. Kilwa, already in eclipse because of its loss of
control of the gold trade, underwent an early Portuguese
occupation. Although soon evacuated, Kilwa never
regained its former dominant position. The rising polity of
Mombasa demonstrated great determination in resisting
the European invaders; it was sacked three times by the
Portuguese before they removed its dynasty and began a
permanent occupation in 1592. Malindi, a rival to Mom-
basa, sought to profit from the Portuguese arrival, allying
with them from the time of da Gama, a union which
culminated with the Portuguese awarding in 1593 the rule
of Mombasa to its Shirazi dynasty.
Zanzibar and Pemba, both of which remained second-
rank polities at the opening of the sixteenth century, had
less intensive relationships with the new political and
economic masters of the Indian Ocean world. Pemba then
customarily was ruled by about five independent princes,
while Zanzibar had two or three independent territorial
divisions, one of them centred on its nearby island of
 Early history 9
Tumbatu which normally separated itself from events
occurring on the remainder of Zanzibar. Following a brief
offshore communication with a Zanzibar ruler by da Gama
on his return voyage from India in 1499 the first significant
meeting between the island’s inhabitants and the Portu-
guese came in 1503 when Ruy Lourenjo Ravasco anchored
off Unguja Ukuu. The initial encounters were unsatisfac-
tory, leading to hostilities where the superior artillery of
the visitors brought a quick victory. The chastened Zanzi-
bari ruler then agreed to become a vassal of the Portu-
guese, marking the submission by an annual tribute of 100
miticals in gold. But the Portuguese did not occupy the
town, relations remaining strained in succeeding years until
in 1510 an expedition led by Duarte de Lemos arrived to
collect unpaid tribute. The Zanzibaris resisted payment,
leading the Portuguese to attack Unguja Ukuu. Its ruler
fled to the African coast and the invaders secured no
tribute for their efforts. In the late 1520s the Portuguese
captain Nuno da Cunha arrived at the island. Receiving a
hostile reception he sailed to the location of the modern
city of Zanzibar, there establishing a satisfactory relation-
ship with its inhabitants. Some of the Portuguese were left
on the island, because of losses to their fleet, when da
Cunha left; all were well treated, eventually safely reaching
their compatriots in Mombasa. It also is possible that da
Cunha founded the first Portuguese trading establishment
upon the island. The continuing cordiality between Portu-
guese and Zanzibaris was marked by aid dispatched by the
Zanzibari ruler to the Portuguese in their 1529 quarrel with
Mombasa. In 1570, when the island was suffering from a
serious mainland invasion which had left the ruler’s city in
ruins, the Portuguese provided support to help expel the
invaders. Subsequently, at an unknown date, the Portu-
guese established a permanent trading settlement in Zanzi-
bar, in the area of the present-day capital city, on a
10 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
location then occupied only by a few fishermen. English
visitors found the small establishment still in operation in
1591.
Meantime the Portuguese, stimulated during the 1580s
by Turkish threats to their East African holdings, decided
to make Mombasa the principal bastion north of their fort
upon Mozambique island. The construction of the massive
fortress of Fort Jesus began in 1593, thus ensuring hence-
forth the nearby islands of Pemba and Zanzibar of more
intimate connections with the affairs of the Portuguese. In
the succeeding years relationships between the islanders
and the Portuguese remained peaceful, with the Zanzibari
ruler gaining the position of a nontributory ally of the
Portuguese crown. There was usually present a small group
of Portuguese settlers and priests — a church was located
on the site of the contemporary old fort — who generally
lived without major friction with their Muslim neighbours.
The free and easy conduct of the residents, however, led
Gaspar de Bernadino to lament in 1606: ‘Would to God
they were fewer, since in those parts they are accustomed
to live as much according to their will as against the Divine
Will.’[5] But in the early 1630s Zanzibar and Pemba were
drawn into difficulties emanating from Mombasa. The
transplanted Malindi dynasty at first had prospered in
Mombasa, one result of their move being the gaining of
control over Pemba which served as a useful supplier of
provisions for their capital. As a consequence there fol-
lowed an important migration of Shirazi elements to the
island, including many individuals from the declining city
of Malindi. Prior to falling under the sway of Mombasa
the usual four or five separate rulers resident upon Pemba
apparently had been supplanted during the course of the
sixteenth century by one ruler, including one individual
whom the Portuguese had sent to India for education. He
also married a Portuguese subject. On his return, however,
 Early history 11
in 1599 he failed to receive the acceptance of Pemba’s
inhabitants, the affair dragging on unresolved into the
seventeenth century.
In Mombasa, following the death of the first ruler of the
Malindi dynasty, relations between the inhabitants and the
Portuguese progressively deteriorated. An attempted solu-
tion to the problem was the sending of a future ruler,
Yusuf bin Hasan, to India where he accepted Christianity
and was educated in Portuguese ways before returning to
assume his position in Mombasa. Yusuf, however, became
increasingly dissatisfied with his foreign masters and,
fearful of his own future, he seized control of Mombasa in
1631. But when the youthful rebel endeavoured to raise the
coast in support of his cause, many centres, including
Zanzibar, remained loyal to the Portuguese. Such obvious
disunity among the East African coastal peoples was a
primary reason for the continued domination of this
extensive region by the very limited number of Portuguese
individuals there resident.
By the mid-seventeenth century the presence of new
rivals in the Indian Ocean world began to undercut the
century-long Portuguese superiority. Dutch and British
competitors had moved to break the monopoly of the
Portuguese empire, especially in the years between 1580
and 1620 when the thrones of Spain and Portugal tempor-
arily were united. For East Africa, however, the most
dangerous opponents of the Portuguese were the Arabs of
Uman in southeastern Arabia. The Portuguese had seized
their principal city, Muscat, in 1507, holding it until 1650
when Sultan bin Saif, leader of the Yarubi dynasty,
regained possession. The Umanis continued upon the
offensive against their European enemies, and their East
African supporters. Answering requests for aid from a
Pemba delegation to Muscat, an Umani expedition, with
support from Pemba, raided in 1652 the Portuguese
12 A History o f the Arab State o f Zanzibar
establishment in Zanzibar. The ruler of the northern part
of the island, Mwana Mwema, quickly transferred her
allegiance to Uman, agreeing also to pay tribute. It was not
a wise decision. The Umanis were too distant and too
overcommitted to provide effective aid to their ally when
the Portuguese under Francisco de Seixas Cabreira
returned to destroy the queen’s town and to re-establish
their former position. [6] In the following decades Zanzibar
remained quiet, but Pemba consistently supported Umani
ventures against the Portuguese. Final Umani triumph
came following an epic seige of Mombasa, which was
bravely held by both Portuguese and East African defen-
ders, lasting from 1696 to 1698. All during the seige the
ruler of northern Zanzibar, Fatuma, attempted without
success to dispatch supplies to the doomed defenders of
Fort Jesus. With Mombasa’s fall, Zanzibar briefly re-
mained the only Portuguese occupied centre north of
Mozambique until the Umanis seized it, sending Fatuma to
Uman where she remained until allowed to return to
Zanzibar during the first decade of the eighteenth century.
With the enforced departure of the Portuguese from the
regions north of Cape Delgado, little remained, particu-
larly in Zanzibar and Pemba, to mark their two centuries
of domination in East Africa. Apart from an abortive
return to Mombasa and Zanzibar during 1728 and 1729 the
Portuguese henceforth virtually disappeared from the East
African scene. But the Umanis, despite their small garri-
sons at times present in Mombasa, Zanzibar, Pemba and
Kilwa, had too many foreign and domestic involvements to
maintain a permanently effective presence in East Africa.
When the Yarubi dynasty, reigning since 1624, fell to the
BuSaidi in 1741 the situation remained essentially the
same. Still, and importantly, the lack of a strong political
Umani involvement did not mean the cessation of commer-
cial and other contacts between individual Arabs and East
 Early history 13
Africans. The eighteenth century because of these continu-
ing relationships doubtlessly was a period of great influ-
ence in the continuing evolution of the Islamic culture of
the East African coast. Meanwhile the coastal polities
reverted as much as possible to their usual patterns of
independent action, with some at times even fruitlessly
seeking Portuguese support for their struggles amongst
themselves and with the Umanis. During this period Mom-
basa developed into the principal coastal power, attaining
its practical independence by defeating the BuSaidi in
1746. Thereafter the ruling Mazrui clan of Umanis, profit-
ing from a relatively stable succession of able leaders and
from an effective alliance with the Swahili and other
African populations of their neighbourhood, successfully
maintained their independence until the 1830s.
During the first half of the eighteenth century Zanzibar
and Pemba remained divided among several indigenous
rulers who acknowledged a distant Umani sovereignty
without any significant loss of local authority. In Zanzi-
bar, Hassan, the successor to Fatuma, concluded a specific
arrangement with Uman at some date after 1729, but the
details remain unknown. Around the middle of the century
the Mazrui successfully won control of Pemba from the
BuSaidi, a domination they maintained into the nineteenth
century, although they did share the rule of the Green
Island with their allies, the Umani Nabahani dynasty of
Pate, for some years. Zanzibar almost fell to the Mazrui
along with Pemba, but subsequently the island maintained
its subordinate position to the BuSaidi, becoming because
of its important location the principal stronghold of the
Umani dynasty in East Africa.