• Currency: Tanzanian Shilling (Tsh.).
• Approximate exchange rate: $1 = Tshs. 1000/-
• Time code: GMT+3.
• Language: Kiswahili and English
• Electricity: 2250 – 240 V AC, 50 Hz.
• International Dialing Code: + 255
• Credit cards accepted: American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Barclaycard.
• Getting to Zanzibar by Air: From all major European Cities. There are daily flights from Momabasa, Nairobi, Kenya & Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
• Visas: Visas are obtainable at the entry point.

Zanzibar Weather Information (pop up)

Health

• Consult with the units of tropical medicine in your hometown in order to get proper information about prevention.
• In Zanzibar is in the tropics, therefore it is important to take precautions against Malaria.
• Malaria comes through mosquito bites; in order to avoid it, please take with you mosquito repellent and, especially before sunrise and after sunset.
• Wear light clothes.
• It is also important to remember that Zanzibar is only 6 degrees south Equator, so it is extremely important to use creams to protect the skin against the negative effects of being exposed for too long to the sun.

Dressing

• Zanzibar is a Muslim society therefore visitors are advised to wear decently.

GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND CULTURE

Zanzibar is an archipelago that consists of two main islands, Unguja (commonly known as Zanzibar) and Pemba, plus a multitude of small islets numbering 50 approximately. It is a coral formation with a surface of 1000 square miles, located in the north west of the Indian Ocean, 6 degrees south Equator, 25 miles east Tanzania mainland. Unguja, Pemba and Tumbatu islands are the only inhabited ones. Unguja or Zanzibar Island is about 60 miles long and 20 miles broad, occupying a total surface of 650 square miles.

With a total population of almost one million, here three religions live together: Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. The Stone Town is the capital town, considered the only functioning Swahili town in East Africa and declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site.

Anchored in front of Tanzania mainland’ coast, Zanzibar condenses within its name 2000 years of History. Although small in size, it has been of capital importance along the history of the East African coast.

From the beginning of the Christian era, the populations of the coast developed a farming and fishing civilization that included commercial exchanges along the coast and islands and with other points of the Indian Ocean; traders from the Arabian Peninsula married local women and, as a result, a cosmopolitan society evolved along the coast and islands. In Zanzibar, evidences of these first settlements come from Unguja Ukuu, a site 20 km south from the Stone Town, which dates back to the first half of the first millennium A.D. It is one of earliest know trading sites on the whole of the coast.

B y the 10 th century A.D., Islam spread along the coast and islands. This process has been considered the origin of a civilization known as Swahili. “Swahili” was the name given to the coastal cultural ensemble by the Muslim traders, a word that means “coast” “shore” ( Sahel, in Arabic). Thus, Waswahili are the people of the coast. In the village of Kizimkazi, in the south of Zanzibar, is found one of the earliest evidences for Islam on the coast: the inscription of the mosque is dated in 1107 A.D.

The Swahili civilization lived its Classic period until the arrival of the Portuguese, who sought the monopole of commerce and the political control of the coast by force; but the Swahilis never gave up, and they fought the Portuguese for two hundred years: in the 18 th century, assisted by the Omani Arabs, the Swahilis removed the Portuguese from the coast. Then, the Omani Arabs decided to settle.

Seyyid Said bin Sultan (1804-1856), sultan of Oman, located in 1840 the base of his East African operations in what at that time was just a small fishing village in Unguja island, and was to become today’s Stone Town; and he moved to the place, followed by a large number of Omani families. From Zanzibar the Al Busaidi family created an empire that based its economy on the production of cloves and coconuts on the islands using slave labor and on the Eastern African transit trade for which Zanzibar was almost the sole Centerport. And thus the archipelago became the center of a vast trading empire whose economic influence embraced from Mogadiscio ( Somalia) in the north up to Cape Delgado ( Mozambique) in the south, penetrating deep into the interior of the continent until the region of the Great Lakes.

The growing importance of Zanzibar attracted also Indians and Africans who wanted to benefit from the economic prosperity; and besides, thousands of Africans were brought as slaves. These groups came to join and amplify the already existing social and cultural diversity of the islands.

The empire had been integrated during the 19 th century into the international economic system throughout trade, and there were both European and American commercial firms and agents in Zanzibar. The strongest western political influence over the Sultanate came from Great Britain. The demand for the total suppression of the slave trade at the end of the 19 th century gave Great Britain ideological cover for progressively increasing their influence over the sultan. And in 1890 Zanzibar became an official Protectorate of the British Empire. The Protectorate lasted since 1890 until 1963, when Zanzibar reached its Independence as a kingdom, with the sultan as the head of the State. But only one month later, on January 1964, a revolution overthrown the Government. And three months later the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar signed with Tanganyika a union treaty that gave rise to the United Republic of Tanzania.

Today, Zanzibar has a semi-autonomous government within the Union, and its main economic activities continue to be agriculture, fishing and export of cloves; however, in the last decade tourism has become a capital activity.

Amazing facts about Zanzibar

• Zanzibar was the first East African town with electricity (in 1870s).
• Zanzibar was the departure point of Livingstone in his journey to search the source of the Nile river.
• The species Red Colobus Monkey is endemic to Zanzibar, and it is not found anywhere else in the world.