History Of Zanzibar: From The Middle Ages To 1856
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: front hinges cracked; sticker on the copyright page.
Long before the age of European imperialism, the island of Zanzibar stood at the crossroads of a vast Indian Ocean trading world — a jewel of commerce, culture, and conquest whose layered past is meticulously reconstructed in John Gray's authoritative chronicle. History of Zanzibar: From the Middle Ages to 1856 traces the island's remarkable trajectory from its earliest medieval inhabitants and Arab settlements through the era of Portuguese dominance, the rise of the Omani Sultanate, and the complex web of the East African slave trade, culminating in the death of Seyyid Said in 1856 — the pivotal moment that reshaped the political destiny of the entire East African coast. Gray, a distinguished jurist and historian who served in British East Africa, writes with the precision of a legal mind and the sweep of a seasoned scholar, drawing on Arabic manuscripts, Portuguese archives, and British colonial records to present a narrative of rare depth and authority. History of Zanzibar stands as a landmark work of African historiography, offering an indispensable account of an island whose strategic significance shaped the destinies of civilisations stretching from the Persian Gulf to the heart of the African continent — leaving the reader to wonder how much of that forgotten world still echoes in Zanzibar's stone-walled streets today.
Author: John Gray
Format: Hardback
Published: 1962, Oxford University Press
Genre: African history
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: front hinges cracked; sticker on the copyright page.
Long before the age of European imperialism, the island of Zanzibar stood at the crossroads of a vast Indian Ocean trading world — a jewel of commerce, culture, and conquest whose layered past is meticulously reconstructed in John Gray's authoritative chronicle. History of Zanzibar: From the Middle Ages to 1856 traces the island's remarkable trajectory from its earliest medieval inhabitants and Arab settlements through the era of Portuguese dominance, the rise of the Omani Sultanate, and the complex web of the East African slave trade, culminating in the death of Seyyid Said in 1856 — the pivotal moment that reshaped the political destiny of the entire East African coast. Gray, a distinguished jurist and historian who served in British East Africa, writes with the precision of a legal mind and the sweep of a seasoned scholar, drawing on Arabic manuscripts, Portuguese archives, and British colonial records to present a narrative of rare depth and authority. History of Zanzibar stands as a landmark work of African historiography, offering an indispensable account of an island whose strategic significance shaped the destinies of civilisations stretching from the Persian Gulf to the heart of the African continent — leaving the reader to wonder how much of that forgotten world still echoes in Zanzibar's stone-walled streets today.