Historical Sites.

Travel through history.

Maruhubi Palace

The ruins of Maruhubi Palace can be found four kilometres north of Zanzibar Town, just a few steps from the beach. The palace is named after the former landowner, an Arab of the Al-Marhuby tribe.

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Between 1880-1882 the palace was built by Sultan Barghash, the third Arab sultan of Zanzibar, who used the building to accommodate his wife and about 100 concubines. The sultan himself lived in a separate palace in Zanzibar Town. In 1899 the Maruhubi Palace was destroyed by a fire, leaving only a few remains, including some massive stone columns which supported a large wooden balcony which surrounded the upper floor. In the old Persian-style bathhouse, the separate bathrooms for the women and the sultan's own large bathroom can still be seen. On the same grounds are the original water reservoirs now overgrown with water lilies and large mango trees once imported from India.

Nowadays, the beach behind the palace is used by fishermen as a harbour and a place to maintain their traditional dhows. A small admission fee to visit the ruins may be charged by a guard.







Tanzania has a long history of human habitation stretching back to our most distant ancestors. The so- called 'Bantu Migrations', occurring between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago, brought agricultural and pastoral knowledge to the area as competing groups spread over the country in search of fertile soil and plentiful grazing for their herds.

European missionaries and explorers mapped the interior of the country by following well-worn caravan routes, including Burton and Speke who in 1857 journeyed to find the source of the Nile. Traditional ways of life remained largely intact until the arrival of German colonisers in the late 19th century.

 On the Swahili Coast, Indian Ocean trade began as early as 400BCE between Greece and Azania, as the area was commonly known. Around the 4th century AD, coastal towns and trading settlements attracted Bantu-speaking peoples from the African hinterland. They settled around mercantile areas and often facilitated trading with the Arabs and Persians, who bartered for slaves, gold, ivory and spices, sailing north with the monsoon wind.

Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the settlements of Kilwa Kisiwani and the Zanzibar Archipelago reached their peak, with a highly cosmopolitan population of Indian, Arab and African merchants trading in luxury goods that reached as far as China. The completion of Portuguese domination in 1525 meant that trade, for a short time, was lessened, but rival Oman Arab influences soon took control of the caravan routes and regained complete control of the islands, even going so far as to make Zanzibar the capital of Oman in the 1840s.

In the late 19th century, British influence in the Zanzibar Archipelago, in contrast to German influence on the Tanzanian mainland, slowly suppressed the slave trade and brought the area under influence of the Empire. Local  rebellions in German East Africa, most notably the Maji Maji rebellion from 1905 to 1907, slowly weakened the coloniser's grip on the nation and at the end of the First World War German ceded Tanganyika to English administration. Under the leadership of Julius Nyerere of TANU, popularly referred to as Mwalimu, or 'teacher', Tanganyika achieved full independence in 1962. Meanwhile, a violent revolution in Zanzibar ousted the Omani Sultancy and established a one-party state under the Afro-Shirazi Party in 1963. A year later, the United Republic of Tanzania was formed, unifying the Tanganyika mainland with the semi-autonomous island of the Zanzibar Archipelago, and merging TANU and the ASP to form CCM, Chama cha Mapinduzi, the party of the Revolution which rules Tanzania to the present day.


ENGARUKA.
Mysterious ruins of complex irrigation systems span the area around Engaruka, the remnants of a highly developed but unknown society that inhabited the area at least 500 years ago-and then vanished without a trace.

Engaruka is situated 63 kilometre north of Mto wa Mbu, on the road to Oldoinyo Lengai and Lake Natron.The village of Engaruka lies at the foot of the rift valley escarpment. Fast flowing streams from the escarpment are utilised to irrigating small plots and give the village a pleasant green look,in contrast to the surrounding plains where Maasai cattle graze side by side with herds of zebras. Birds of prey circle above the area looking for a kill, while remarkable looking secretary birds, beloved as snake killers strut across the plains. Dust cyclones are often seen on the horizon, they are feared as " devils fingers", bringing bad luck when they touch people.

Engaruka is one of Tanzania's most important historic sites. Some 500 years ago, a farming community of several thousand developed an ingenious irrigation and cultivation system. The water that flowed from the rift escarpment was channelled into stone-built canals and led to stone-bench terraces. Measures were taken to prevent soil erosion and the fertility of the plots was increased by using the manure of stall fed cattle. For unknown reasons, the farmers left Engaruka around 1700. Now, three centuries later, the ruins still give a good impression of the highly specialised , integrated agricultural economy, very remarkable for that period of African history


Engaruka historical village.

Engaruka is an abandoned system of ruins in the Great Rift Valley of northern Tanzania, famed for its irrigation and cultivation system. It is considered one of the most important Tanzanian archaeological sites.

Sometime in the 15th century, an iron age farming community with a large continuous village area on the footslopes of the Rift Valley escarpment, housing several thousand people developed an intricate irrigation and cultivation system, involving a stone-block canal channelling water from the “Crater Highlands” rift escarpment to stonelined cultivation terraces.

Measures were taken to prevent soil erosion and the fertility of the plots was increased by using the manure of stall fed cattle. For an unknown reason Engaruka was abandoned at latest in mid-19th century.

The site still poses many questions, including the identity of the founders, how they developed such an ingenious farming system, and why they left. The site has been linked to the Sonjo, a people living some 60 miles to the northwest known for their use of irrigation systems in agriculture and similar terraced village. New studies have revealed lot of unknown perspectives of the past of Engaruka, for example the Middle Stone Age and Neolithic Stone Age occupation history of the area.
The first explorer to record the existence of these ruins was Dr. Gustav Fisher, who passed them on July 5, 1883, and compared them to the tumbled-down walls of ancient castles. Drs Scoeller and Kaiser mentioned the ruins of “Ngaruku” including great stone circles and dams in 1896-97. The first detailed and archaeological investigation was by Hans Reck, in 1913.

Engaruka ruins.


KILWA KISIWANI.
The Island of Kilwa Kisiwani and the nearby ruins of Songo Mnara are among the most important remnants of Swahili civilisation on the East African coast. The area became the centre point of Swahili civilisation in the13th century, when it controlled the gold trade with Sofala, a distant settlement in Mozambique. After a brief decline under the rule of the Portuguese, Kilwa once again became a centre of Swahili trade in the 18th century, when slaves were shipped from its port to the islands of Comoros, Mauritius and Reunion.

The town Kilwa as such is divided into three different towns. Kilwa Kivinje, Kilwa Masoko and Kilwa Kisiwani with Songo Mnara and Sanje Ya Kiti. Kilwa Masoko is however the least interesting history wise, but the modern town right now, and centre of operations as well as location of all modern day facilities. The others are the places to go for historical reasons.

Kilwa Kivinje, was in the 19th Century an Arabian slave and ivory trading town, where caravans started off into the interior. With the end of the Arab time at the end of the 19th century, the German colonial government built a fort and extended the town. From German times one can still find a Market Hall, the big Fort with a canon from the 1st World war, and two pillars one for the tribal dead of the Maji Maji War fought between the local tribes of Southern Tanzania and the German Colonial government and the other for two German traders also killed during the same Maji Maji War.

	The picture on the left was made in the 1920´s to 1930´s by Bill Harvey a Game Scout in the area of Kilwa & Selous Game Reserve. The picture on the right was made in 2004.

Kilwa Kisiwani, is where one will find the greatest collection of ruins. Directly on the Northern shore one will find the old Omani Fort, which is built on the foundations of the old Portuguese fort, in the early 19th Century, and where still an old wooden door remains. The Big Mosque is from the 12th Century and was further extended up to the 15th Century. It was said to be the largest mosque in East Africa. The Great House directly south of the mosque was once a complex building which was most likely the Sultan´s palace. In it there are four graves, of which one is rumoured to be of a Sultan. The small mosque from the 15th Century is the best kept building on the island, and still in use today. The large complex of walls in the west of the island is called "Makutani" (in the great wall). In the middle is a palace from the 18th Century, south of it, another Sultanas palace, with a mosque from the 15th Century. All the way to the east of the island there are the ground walls of the "Husuni Kubwa", once the largest building in tropical Africa. Songo Mnara, another island with 14th to 15th Century houses and mosques. Some of which still show high walls and even parts of their roofs

LINDI.

The port town of Lindi, in south-eastern Tanzania, was the final stop for slave caravans from Lake Nyasa during the heyday of the Zanzibar sultans. In 1909, a team of German palaeontologists unearthed the remains of several dinosaur bones in Tendanguru, including the species Brachiosaurus brancai, the largest discovered dinosaur in the world.

The dinosaur remains we discovered in 1912 at Tendeguru Village.


MIKINDANI.
Another  central port in the Swahili Coast's network of Indian Ocean trade, in the 15th century Mikindani's reach extended as far as the African hinterlands of the Congo and Zambia. The area became a centre of German colonial administration in the 1880's and a chief exporter of sisal, coconuts and slaves.






Mikindani (or Mikandani) means 'young palm trees' in KiSwahili. Mikindani is an old historical Swahili town, with over 50 ruined building dating back to pre-colonial times. It lines the shores of Mikindani bay, a safe and secluded harbour to the north of Mtwara - the regional capital.

The original Inhabitants of Mikindani were the Makonde Tribe who were joined in the 9th Century AD by Arab traders. A further influx of Arabs occurred in the 17th century under the Sultan Seyyid Said, the graves and mosques from this period can be seen.

In the 19th century under German colonial rule the fort (boma) a prison and a dock were constructed in the village. During World War I the prison was largely destroyed, what remained was turned into a customs house. In 1947 the British moved their base for the area to Mtwara where there is a superior harbour.

The town is set on the rolling hills of the southern coast of Mikindani Bay. this bay is a small heart shaped bay. The southern arm of the bay contains a small number of houses (and a holiday complex) called Litingi. On the far side of the bay mouth there is a small fishing village called Pemba.
The Town is right on the main Mtwara-Lindi road, about 10km from Mtwara. The town can be reached easily from Mtwara via regular bus services.

After Mtwara was founded and the local government moved there, Mikindani became a backwater. It has a large market and several restaurants. The town has increased in prosperity during the past decade, starting with the renovation of the boma as a hotel in the late 1990s. Since then other hotels, bars and a yacht club have been founded. Despite this, the majority of the population exists from subsistence farming.

The town is mainly Muslim though there is a significant Christian population.
It has access to excellent long sandy and unpopulated beaches, snorkeling, world class diving, in the Mnazi bay marine park with ECO₂ diving center, Mkonde and Rubondo plateaus and for a longer day out, the Newala Game reserve.

There are a couple of places to stay - the Old Boma being the highest standard - an old German building now renovated into a 5 star hotel, and the more economical 10 Degrees South - part of the ECO₂ diving center.

The town is home to Livingstone House, the place from which Dr. Livingstone set out on his last expedition.

The famous Dr Livingstone of "Dr Livingstone I presume" fame had a house here, which is still standing and in the process of renovation. The many other old ruined buildings are in a worse state of repair, however there is a project underway to restore them. A town walk is interesting as there are virtually no tourists at all.

NGORONGORO CONSERVATION AREA.
Humans and their distant ancestors have been part of Ngorongoro's landscape for millions of years. The earliest signs of mankind in the Conservation Area are at Laetoli, where hominid footprints are preserved in volcanic rock 3.6 million years old. The story continues at Olduvai Gorge, a river canyon cut 100 m deep through the volcanic soil of the Serengeti Plains. Buried in the layers are the remains of animals and hominids that lived and died around a shallow lake amid grassy plains and woodlands. These remains date from two million years ago. Visitors can learn more details of this fascinating story by visiting the site, where guides give a fascinating on-site interpretation of the gorge.




A view at Olduva Gorge on the way to Serengeti N.P.


ZANZIBAR.
The most obvious historical site in Zanzibar is Stone Town, a World Heritage Site and the oldest continuously inhabited city in East Africa, but Zanzibar has much more to offer visitors. From the ruins of numerous palaces stemming from the Omani sultancy, ancient, mosques (notably the mosque at Kizmkazi which contains the oldest known Swahili text), Persian bathhouses and colonial buildings ( in the Indian Colonial style), Zanzibar is an absolute treasure trove for the historically inclined.