Stone Town of Zanzibar- Africa Natural Tours ( africanaturaltours.com )
Stone Town of Zanzibar: Africa Natural Tours
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Stone Town of Zanzibar
The
Stone Town of Zanzibar is a fine example of the Swahili coastal trading towns
of East Africa. It retains its urban fabric and townscape virtually intact and
contains many fine buildings that reflect its particular culture, which has
brought together and homogenized disparate elements of the cultures of Africa,
the Arab region, India, and Europe over more than a millennium.
Brief synthesis
Located on a promontory jutting
out from the western side of Unguja island into the Indian Ocean, the Stone
Town of Zanzibar is an outstanding example of a Swahili trading town. This type
of town developed on the coast of East Africa, further expanded
under Arab, Indian, and European influences, but retained its indigenous
elements, to form an urban cultural unit unique to this region.
The Stone Town of Zanzibar
retains its urban fabric and townscape virtually intact and contains many fine
buildings that reflect its particular culture, which has brought together and
homogenized disparate elements of the cultures of Africa, the Arab region,
India, and Europe over more than a millennium.
Old fort
The buildings of the Stone Town,
executed principally in coralline ragstone and mangrove timber, set in a thick
lime mortar and then plastered and lime-washed, reflect a complex fusion of
Swahili, Indian, Arab and European influences in building traditions and town
planning.
The two storey houses with long
narrow rooms disposed round an open courtyard, reached through a narrow
corridor, are distinguished externally by elaborately carved double ‘Zanzibar’
doors, and some by wide vernadahs, and by richly decorated interiors. Together
with, the simple ground floor Swahili houses and the narrow façade Indian shops
along “bazaar” streets constructed around a commercial space “duka”.
The major buildings date from
the 18th and 19th centuries and include monuments such as
the Old Fort, built on the site of an earlier Portuguese church; the house of
wonder, a large ceremonial palace built by Sultan Barghash; the Old Dispensary;
St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Cathedral; Christ Church Anglican Cathedral
commemorating the work of David Livingston in abolishing the slave trade and
built on the site of the last slave market; the residence of the slave trader
Tippu Tip; the Malindi Bamnara Mosque; the Jamat Khan built for the Ismaili
sect; the Royal Cemetery; the Hamamni and other Persian baths.
Anglican Church in stone town
Together with the narrow,
winding street pattern, large mansions facing the seafront and open spaces
these buildings form an exceptional urban settlement reflecting the
longstanding trading activity between the African and Asian seaboards. In particular
the Stone town’s is also marked by being the site where slave-trading was
finally terminated.
Criterion (ii): The
Stone Town of Zanzibar is an outstanding material manifestation of cultural
fusion and harmonization.
Criterion (iii): For
many centuries there was intense seaborne trading activity between Asia and
Africa, and this is illustrated in an exceptional manner by the architecture
and urban structure of the Stone Town.
Criterion
(vi): Zanzibar has great symbolic importance in the suppression
of slavery, since it was one of the main slave-trading ports in East Africa and
also the base from which its opponents, such as David Livingstone, conducted
their campaign.
Integrity
The individual buildings in the
Stone town manifest, through their structure, construction materials and
techniques, the interchange and influence of the different cultures around the
Indian Ocean rim.
The outstanding universal value
of the property resides in the character of the assemblage of blocks (cluster)
and buildings, the layout of the Town including the relationship of buildings
to the open spaces, streets, roads and gardens, the character of the littoral
edge viewed from the sea, and the nature of access to the sea from the land.
These are all still intact but
the buildings are vulnerable to deterioration and the visual aspect from the
sea is vulnerable to inappropriate development. Work on the Malindi Port
development project, including the loss of two historic warehouses, and
erection of new, inappropriately scaled and designed port facilities without
prior approval has created a precedent on how unintegrated development, and
legitimate modern inspiration of Zanzibaris, if not well thought through and
articulated, could be a threat to the integrity of the property.
The property boundary
coincides with the boundary of the Urban Conservation Area including the port
area to the north, bounded by beaches along the north-west and south-west, open
areas to the east and older part of Darajani Street. The buffer zone covers the
historic part of Ng’ambo that includes part of the modernist buildings of
Michenzani and the main road of Mlandege.
Authenticity
The ensemble of the town largely
preserves its historic urban fabric and landscape. The buildings, their uses,
and the layout of the streets continue to express the interchange of human
values around the Indian Ocean rim.
The materials and the skills of
construction used in the town are still widely used in the Zanzibar archipelago
and the Swahili coastal zone. The local artisans are competent in both the
traditional building techniques and the skills needed to produce quality
construction materials, namely laterite-sand, lime and coral stone.
Traditional materials and
construction techniques are still being employed to a large extent, though
there is growing competition from modern materials, designs, and techniques.The
continuity of traditional uses of most of the buildings in the historic town as
residential and commercial space maintains the town as an important
administrative and economic centre of the archipelago. Yet, the authenticity of
the Stone Town in its setting is vulnerable to the inappropriate scale and
design of new development in the property and its buffer zone.
Protection and
management requirements
Cultural property in the
Zanzibar archipelago is protected under the “Ancient Monuments Act” of 1948.
This legal framework protects individual monuments and sites Gazetted in the
Official Gazette. Responsibility for the monitoring and management of these
monuments falls within the jurisdiction of the Department of Museums and
Antiquity.
The Town and Country Planning
act of 1955 also provides a clause to protect historically important houses.
The Stone Town has been protected as a conservation area since 1985, under the
Town and Country Planning Act of 1955.
Finally, values, boundaries and
features have been further protected by the Stone Town Conservation and
Development Act of 1994 and the associated Master Plan which specifies actions
and strategies to be taken to safeguard, conserve and develop the values of the
Stone Town. Together with these legal frameworks, the Stone Town Conservation
and Development Authority (STCDA) which was created in 1985 has a full mandate
to coordinate and supervise the Master Plan of 1994.
Many buildings of the Stone Town
are also protected by other institutions such as the Department of Housing and
Human Settlement and the Commission of Waqf. A Management Plan for the property
was prepared by the STCDA in consultation with all stakeholders, in 2007, with
the stated vision to: “protect and enhance the Stone Town cultural heritage
leading to it being well preserved as a sustainable human settlement supportive
of its cultural diversity and maintaining it’s Outstanding Universal Values”.
The Stone Town is not only an
historic living town but also a commercial and socio-cultural centre of the
Zanzibar Archipelago. As such, the property is subject to the pressure of
development, manifested through traffic problems, changes of land uses and the
lack and high expense of accommodation inside the Stone Town.
Tourist development since 1990
is an important factor in the development pressure on the town. However the
absence of clear policies on heritage promotion, cultural tourism, and the lack
of a strategy on how to accommodate tourism development, and on how to
revitalize public spaces could result in random development that could threaten
its Outstanding Universal Value.
The management system set
out in the Management Plan (2007), produced by comprehensive consultative
approach under the supervision of STCDA aimed to mitigate these pressures.
Nevertheless, an integrated and sustainable conservation and development
approaches are urgently needed in order to develop practical sustainable
management strategies to ensure that the overall coherence of the town and its
highly distinctive town planning, architecture and traditional methods and
materials of construction are sustained.
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