StapleZanzibar
Wali wa Nazi
Rice cooked in coconut milk, served under every curry and grilled fish on the islands. The first thing a Zanzibari cook teaches and the hardest to get exactly right.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
Zanzibari Arabs
The Omani and Hadrami families of Stone Town — who moved a sultanate from Muscat to Zanzibar, built the clove economy on slavery, gave the island its carved doors and its taarab, and were killed or driven out in their thousands in 1964.
Identity
Population: A small minority today; before 1964 roughly a sixth of the archipelago's population
Location: Stone Town and the western plantation belt of Unguja, and the towns of Pemba
Language: Kiswahili as first language for most; Arabic in religious and, historically, official use
Language family: Semitic (Arabic) alongside Bantu (Swahili)
Traditional governance: The Busaidi sultanate ruled from Zanzibar from 1832 until 1964, under British protection from 1890; the community held disproportionate landholding and office until the revolution.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Busaidi and Omani landholders
The ruling dynasty and the plantation families connected to it.
Hadrami
Yemeni families, more often religious scholars, traders and shopkeepers than planters.
Manga Arabs
Later Omani arrivals of modest means, shopkeepers and labour contractors, distinguished socially from the established families.
Culture
Clothing: Kanzu, embroidered kofia and the Omani dishdasha and khanjar dagger for ceremony; women's finery of gold and imported silk.
Food: Biriani, pilau, halwa, dates and coffee; the Zanzibari kitchen is the meeting point of Omani, Indian and Swahili cooking.
Ceremonies: Taarab orchestras performing Egyptian-influenced sung poetry, founded under sultanate patronage; Maulid; elaborate weddings with days of receptions.
Marriage customs: Islamic marriage with strong preference for cousin marriage among established families; concubinage with enslaved women was widespread before abolition, and much of the island's population descends from those unions.
Initiation rites: Quranic and Arabic schooling; for boys of established families, a period in Oman or with coastal scholars.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Zanzibar and Tanzania, at national rather than community level — 21 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Zanzibar
9 dishes
National dishZanzibar
Pweza wa Nazi
Octopus stewed in coconut milk with lime, cardamom and chilli, the dish Zanzibar is known for. Tenderising the octopus properly is most of the work.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishZanzibar
Mchuzi wa Samaki wa Nazi
also Fish in coconut curry
Reef fish simmered in coconut milk with tamarind, turmeric and green mango, the dish that most concisely explains Zanzibar's position in the Indian Ocean.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Street foodZanzibar
Urojo
also Zanzibar mix
A tangy turmeric and mango soup piled with bhajia, crisps, boiled potato and chutneys, assembled to order at Forodhani night market. Every stall makes it slightly differently.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Street foodZanzibar
Zanzibar Mishkaki
also Forodhani skewers
Beef skewers grilled at the Forodhani night market in Stone Town, sweeter and more heavily spiced than the mainland version, finished with tamarind.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastZanzibar
Zanzibari Biryani
Rice layered with spiced meat, fried onion and saffron and sealed to steam, made for weddings and Eid. Cardamom, clove and cinnamon are grown a few miles from the kitchen.
Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes
Festival & feastZanzibar
Kashata
also Coconut brittle, Kashata ya nazi
Grated coconut or peanuts cooked into caramelised sugar with cardamom and cut into diamonds. The sweet of Zanzibar's markets and of every Eid table.
Serves Makes about 30 pieces · 35 minutes
Regional specialityZanzibar
Mkate wa Kumimina
A soft baked rice cake with coconut and cardamom, whose name means poured bread. Cut in wedges and eaten with tea or at the end of a meal.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus soaking
Drink & sweetZanzibar
Spice Tea
also Chai ya tangawizi
Black tea boiled with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, clove and black pepper, using the spices the islands were colonised for. Drunk all day and offered to every visitor.
Serves 4 · 20 minutes
Tanzania
12 dishes
StapleTanzania
Ugali
Maize meal cooked stiff and turned out as a mound, eaten with fish, beans or greens across the whole country. The measure of a cook is whether it holds together cleanly.
Serves 6 · 25 minutes
StapleTanzania
Makande
also Maize and bean stew
Maize and beans simmered slowly with coconut milk, the Chagga and Pare version of the East African staple. Richer and looser than Kenyan githeri.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes, plus soaking
National dishTanzania
Nyama Choma na Kachumbari
Goat grilled slowly over charcoal, chopped and eaten with a tomato and onion salad. Ordered by weight at a nyama choma joint and shared standing around the board.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
National dishTanzania
Mchemsho
also Boiled one-pot
Everything boiled together in one pot — plantain, potato, cassava, carrot, beans and meat — in a light broth. Northern Tanzania's household dinner, and what a Tanzanian cooks when feeding a crowd.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Chipsi Mayai
A chip omelette cooked flat in a pan and cut in wedges, sold from every street griddle in Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Cheap, filling and universally eaten.
Serves 2 · 25 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Mishkaki
also Marinated beef skewers
Beef marinated in papaya, ginger and spice, threaded on sticks and grilled over charcoal on every Tanzanian street corner after dark. The papaya is what makes it tender.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastTanzania
Pilau
Spiced rice with beef or goat, made for weddings, Eid and Christmas. The onions must be fried genuinely dark, which is where the colour comes from rather than from any powder.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastTanzania
Mkate wa Sinia
also Vitumbua tray bread, Rice tray cake
A soft, faintly sweet rice and coconut cake steamed or baked in a tray, cut into diamonds and served at coastal weddings and at the end of Ramadan.
Serves 10 · 1 hour, plus 6 hours soaking and rising
Regional specialityTanzania
Mchuzi wa Samaki
Fish curry in coconut milk with tamarind, from the Swahili coast. The tamarind is what separates the coastal version from anything cooked inland.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Regional specialityTanzania
Ndizi na Nyama
also Machalari, Green banana and beef stew
Green cooking bananas stewed with beef until they take on the meat's flavour and thicken the pot. The Chagga dish of Kilimanjaro, and one of Tanzania's most beloved.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Drink & sweetTanzania
Kahawa na Tangawizi
Black coffee boiled with ginger and sold from brass pots carried through the streets of Zanzibar and Dar, poured into tiny cups and drunk in one.
Serves 6 small cups · 20 minutes
Drink & sweetTanzania
Togwa
also Fermented maize drink
Lightly fermented maize and millet drink, sour and faintly fizzy, drunk cold through the day. Non-alcoholic, probiotic, and given to children and the sick.
Serves Makes 2 litres · 30 minutes, plus 24 hours fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
The Sultanate That Moved SouthHistorical account
Said bin Sultan of Oman moved his capital to Zanzibar in 1832, recognising that the island's cloves, ivory and slave trade were worth more than Muscat. For sixty years Zanzibar was the commercial hub of the western Indian Ocean, and the routes its financiers opened reached Lake Tanganyika and the eastern Congo.
1964Historical account
In January 1964, a month after independence, an armed uprising overthrew the sultanate. Estimates of the dead range from several thousand to over ten thousand, overwhelmingly Arabs and South Asians; survivors fled to Oman, Britain and the Gulf. The revolution ended a century of Omani rule, and Zanzibar united with Tanganyika within months.
Proverbs
“Mwenye kuchoma moto hukumbuka joto.”
“The one who lit the fire remembers the heat.”
Consequences return to their authors.
“The door is finer than the house behind it.”
Said of Stone Town's carved doors, and of display generally.
“Cloves smell sweet and cost dear.”
The plantation economy's moral accounting.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Islamic cosmology; Ibadi tradition among Omani families and Shafi'i Sunnism among Hadrami and Swahili Muslims, coexisting in one town.
Beliefs: Ibadi and Sunni Islam; strong scholarly tradition with libraries and madrasas; sharia courts under the sultanate; Sufi orders active among Hadrami families.
Ancestors: Genealogy meticulously kept, linking families to Omani and Hadrami origins; graves in Stone Town and in Oman maintained by descendants on both sides.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Allah
The one God
The Prophet Muhammad
Honoured in the Maulid recitations that shaped island music
Sufi saints
Order founders venerated particularly in Hadrami tradition
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Stone Town — a dense maze of coral-rag houses, mosques, baths and palaces, UNESCO-listed since 2000; plantation houses in the clove belt.
Building techniques: Coral rag and lime with thick walls and inner courtyards; monumental carved teak doors with brass bosses; the House of Wonders, built in 1883 as the first building in East Africa with electricity and a lift.
Village layout: Merchant house with baraza bench at the street, courtyard within, women's quarters above; narrow lanes designed for shade rather than for wheels.
Artifacts
Carved Zanzibar doors
Architecture
Teak doors with chain, lotus, fish and Quranic motifs, the town's signature.
Taarab orchestra instruments
Instrument
Oud, qanun, violin and nay of the sung poetry tradition.
House of Wonders (Beit al-Ajaib)
Heritage site
Sultan Barghash's palace, later a museum, partly collapsed in 2020 and under restoration.
Khanjar dagger
Regalia
Curved Omani dagger worn as a mark of status.
Historical Timeline
1698
Omani forces expel the Portuguese from Mombasa, establishing Omani power on the coast.
1832
Said bin Sultan moves the Omani capital to Zanzibar.
1873–1897
Under British pressure the slave trade and then slavery itself are abolished.
1890–1963
British protectorate over the sultanate; the plantation economy continues.
1964
Revolution overthrows the sultanate; thousands killed and many thousands more exiled.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO: Stone Town of ZanzibarUNESCO
- Britannica: Zanzibar — historyEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources