This idyllic Tanzanian island is the cradle of African Swahili culture—here's why

It’s hard to imagine what the Africans of Zanzibar made of the Persians when they arrived in the 10th century, sailing in on dhow boats that looked like winged angels of the sea. They were merchants, nobles and seafarers from the region of Shiraz, now part of modern-day Iran. It was the Islamic Golden Age — a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing across the Persian empire, which led some communities to expand their fortunes along the east coast of Africa.

Today, Afro-Shirazis still make up around half the population of this Tanzanian island. “My birth certificate says I’m Shiraz tribe,” says my guide, Maulid Omar Ali, his small, fluffy goatee wiggling as he cracks into a broad, toothy smile and proudly pushes out his dark chin. Mau for short, he’s showing me around Stone Town — the historic capital of Zanzibar, where he grew up — and attempting to school me on the waves of immigration that have washed over the island.

The Persians brought Islam and spice cultivation to Zanzibar, and the latter enticed other fortune-hunters — including Indian merchants in the 1500s. Led by Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese arrived soon after. Calling on Arabian allies, the Shirazis asked the Omanis to help them oust the Portuguese. “And with the Omanis came the British,” explains Mau as we pause at the tumble-down tower of Stone Town’s old Portuguese fort, the call to prayer flooding the sun-baked cobbled streets that lead to the old British Embassy.

It’s Stone Town’s melee of cultures — which unfolds like a 3D map of the world in the city’s architecture — that led to it achieving UNESCO status. Indian love ballads and snatches of cinnamon waft out of markets as we pass down alleyways flanked by townhouses with Portuguese-influenced shuttered windows; mildewed Anglican churches hide in sun-trap squares; and girls in flowing white hijabs flood out of schools advertised as ‘skuli’ — a Swahili word derived from the British.

This mash-up of influences is also what defines East African Swahili, spoken in Tanzania, Kenya and beyond. “The roots of Swahili culture are right here in Zanzibar,” says Mau. “There’s no single thing that’s Swahili: it’s a mixture of different cultures.” Even the language, he says, is 50% Arabic and 50% from other languages — including Parsi, Hindu, Portuguese, East African and British.

Swahili food, too, has taken on characteristics of immigrant cultures to create a unique culinary language. “We have a saying that we cook like Indians and eat like Arabs,” says Mau, as he leaves me at the door of a Stone Town institution, Lukmaan restaurant. Wooden ceiling fans whir above troughs of traditional Swahili dishes — spiced pilau, prawn curry, fried fish, dhal and shelves of samosas — as servers behind the counter flip chapatis onto a flatbread tower.

Over centuries, Zanzibar’s Swahili cuisine has fused catch from the island’s fishing villages with the natural bounty of the Arabian spice farms and the crowd-pleasing culinary prowess of Indian merchants — with delicious results. I take my time wielding a flaky chapati to mop up an aromatic lunch of lentil curry with cinnamon- and clove-infused biryani. My seat at Lukmaan’s busy roadside terrace is good people-watching territory, with a constant flow of men in woven kufi caps and white robes, both inherited from traditional Omani fashions, on their way to a nearby madrasa (religious school).

It was the Omanis who really grew spice production on the island in the 17th century, importing plants the Shirazis had proven could thrive here. My next stop, Tangawizi Spice Farm, is part of that legacy. “When people from mainland Tanzania come to Zanzibar, they’re surprised to see what we eat — most of them don’t use many spices in their cooking,” says farm host Habib Haji. Pausing at an unremarkable bushel, he scrunches up a yellow leaf and asks me to inhale. The scent makes my nose tingle. “It’s clove — the king of spices for us; it’s a real money-maker for Tanzania,” Habib explains, his wiry frame moving down the farm’s shaded dirt path to scrape bark from a nearby cinnamon tree and pluck a green globe that hides a candy-coloured seed of nutmeg.

Oman’s sultanate relinquished Zanzibar and its spice production in 1964, after the island became unified with mainland Tanzania when it was newly independent from Britain. “The first president of Zanzibar gave a hectare to each Shirazi family on the island and nowadays every family still has a farm or a hectare,” says Habib, as we pass traditional wattle-and-daub dwellings secreted away among the black pepper trees and vanilla plants, toddlers playing on the doorsteps. Like all spice farms on Zanzibar, Tangawizi now operates as a community enterprise, while earning extra income by running tours for travellers.

Tourism on Zanzibar didn’t take off in earnest until the 1980s and today its hotels mainly sit along the white-sand coastline, catering for those shaking off the dust after a mainland safari. Some, like mine, celebrate the island’s Swahili culture. Lux* Marijani lies around an hour’s drive north east of Stone Town, and its carved woodwork, Arabian horseshoe doorways and small external balcony seats remind me of the architecture of the former capital. It runs curry cooking classes in the kitchen gardens and lunchtime Swahili language lessons on the beach. At high tide, two-man dhow boats from local villages appear on the horizon like giant dragonflies and spread their sails at the shoreline.

Zanzibar’s wooden dhows are a defining aspect of the coastline. The larger ones — whose holds would once have carried spices from the plantations — are now used for boat tours around the island. The smaller vessels still serve a working purpose. “Each village would have just a few people who knew how to make these boats, it’s a talent,” says Abduli Rajab, a guide from Lux* Marijani who grew up in Pwani Mchangani, the village on the hotel’s doorstep. We’ve stopped to admire one of them pulled up on the beach, en route to Pwani Mchangani for a tour. He pats the dhow’s hand-fashioned rudder like an old friend, as he tells me how he’s from a family of fisherfolk but is the first generation to have chosen tourism instead of a life at sea.

We leave the shoreline to enter the archaic arrangement of streets, sand giving way to an earthen floor embedded with large shells and fossilised corals — the same type of stone that would have built most of Stone Town centuries ago, giving it its name. It’s in many of the single-storey houses here, too. We pass rattan fishing traps hanging outside one porch and several houses with ornately carved doors, like miniature versions of the ones in the capital. Abdul greets people in all directions with ‘Salam alaikum’. “Everyone in Zanzibar who’s born here, stays here,” he says, when I remark on the easy-going sense of community I’ve found on the island.

As I wander back along the blanched beach, watching people wade out to a sandbank that gleams in the sun, it’s not hard to imagine that the Persians who arrived centuries ago would have felt the same pull.