Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Scattered clans of hunter-gatherers, followed by farmers and cattle herders,
settle the East African plains, the well-watered highlands and the lakeshores of
what is modern-day Tanzania.
1st century AD
Monsoon winds push Arab trading ships to the East African coast. They are fol-
lowed later by Islamic settlers who mix with the local population to create
Swahili language and culture.
1331
Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visits Kilwa, finding a flourishing town of
10,000 to 20,000 residents, with a grand palace, a mosque, an inn and a slave
market.
1498
Searching for a route to the Orient, Portuguese sailors arrive on the East African
coast and establish a coastal trade in slaves and ivory that lasts for 200 years.
c 1400- 1700
In several waves, small bands of nomadic cattle herders migrate south from the
Sudan into the Rift Valley - ancestors of today's Maasai.
19th century
Zanzibari slave trader Tippu Tip, tapping into the export slave trade that had
thrived since the 9th century, controls a commercial empire stretching from the
Congo River to the coast.
1840
The Sultan of Oman sets up court in a grand palace facing the lagoon on Zan-
zibar, from where he exerts his authority over coastal mainland Tanganyika.
1840s- 60s
The first Christian missionaries arrive from Europe. In 1868 the first mainland
mission was established at Bagamoyo as a station for ransomed slaves seeking
to buy their own freedom.
1856
British explorers Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke venture in-
land from Zanzibar, searching for the source of the Nile and finding Lake Tan-
ganyika and Lake Victoria.
