The town of Bagamoyo is the oldest town in Tanzania, founded by the end of the 18th century. It was the original capital of German East Africa and one of the most important trading ports along the East African coast. Today the town has circa 30,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the District of Bagamoyo, recently being designated as a world heritage site. The United Republic of (Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania in Swahili) is a country on the east coast of central Africa. ... German East Africa was Germanys colony in East Africa, including what is now Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of Tanzania. ... Categories: Africa geography stubs | Eastern Africa ... Elabana Falls is in Lamington National Park, part of the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves World Heritage site in Queensland, Australia. ...

Location

Bagamoyo is located on 6°26’ Southern latitude and 38°54’ Eastern longitude. It lies 75 km north of Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of the Indian Ocean, close to the island of Zanzibar. Latitude, denoted φ, gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the Equator. ... Map of Earth showing curved lines of longitude Longitude, sometimes denoted λ, describes the location of a place on Earth east or west of a north-south line called the Prime Meridian. ... Dar es Salaam (دار السلام), formerly Mzizima, is the largest city (pop. ... The Indian Ocean is the third-largest body of water in the world, covering about 20% of the Earths water surface. ... Map of Zanzibars main island Zanzibar, Tanzania, comprises a pair of islands off the east coast of Africa called Zanzibar (Unguja) (1994 est. ...

History

Bagamoyo's history has been influenced by Indian and Arab traders, by the German colonial government and by Christian missionaries. . About 5 km south of Bagamoyo, the Kaole Ruins with remnants of two mosques and a couple of tombs can be dated back to the 13th century and show the importance of Islam in those early Bagamoyo times. Until the middle of the 18th century, Bagamoyo was a small and insignificant trading center where most of the population were fishermen and farmers. Main trading goods were fish, salt and gum among some other things. A mosque is a place of worship for followers of the Islamic faith. ... A tomb is a small building (or vault) for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. ... (12th century - 13th century - 14th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. ...

In the late 18th century Muslim families settled in Bagamoyo, all of which were relatives of Shamvi la Magimba in Oman. They made their living by enforcing taxes on the native population and by trading in salt, gathered from the Nunge coast north of Bagamoyo. In the first half of the 19th century, Bagamoyo became a trading port for ivory and slave trade, with traders coming from the African interior, from places as far as Morogoro, Lake Tanganyika and Usambara on their way to Zanzibar. This explains the meaning of the word Bagamoyo ("Bwaga-Moyo") which means "Lay down your Heart" in Swahili, as the slaves were shipped by dhow to Zanzibar and never saw their home country again. The Sultanate of Oman is a country in the southwestern part of Asia, on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. ... Ivory is a hard, white, opaque substance that is the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals such as the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, mammoth, etc. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Morogoro is a city with an urban population of just over 200,000 (as of 2002) in the southern highlands of Tanzania, 190 km west of Dar es Salaam. ... Fishermen on Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika is a large lake in central Africa (3° 20 to 8° 48 South and from 29° 5 to 31° 15 East). ... Map of Zanzibars main island Zanzibar, Tanzania, comprises a pair of islands off the east coast of Africa called Zanzibar (Unguja) (1994 est. ... Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see Kiswahili for a discussion of the nomenclature) is an agglutinative Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. ...

Slave trade officially ended in the year 1873, but well to the end of the 19th century slaves were sold and traded in Bagamoyo.

In 1868, Bagamoyo's Muslim presented the Catholic "Fathers of the Holy Ghost" with land for a mission north of the town, the first mission in East Africa. This caused resistance by the native Zaramo people which after an intervention by the French consul if Zanzibar was put down by Sultan Majid and after 1870 by Sultan Barghash. Originally the mission was intended to house children who were resued from slavery, but it soon expanded to a church, a school, and some workshops and farming projects. A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ... Catholic is a term generally used in relation to the members, beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. ... A mission literally means something that is sent, from the Latin word missum, sent. Thus we may refer to space exploration expeditions as space missions, or to a diplomatic outpost in a foreign territory as a diplomatic mission. Christian missions are movements or outposts of Christian proselytism. ...

But Bagamoyo was was not only a trade center for slaves, ivory and copra, it was also a starting point for some renowned European explorers. From Bagamoyo they moved out to find the source of the River Nile and explored the African inner lakes. Some of these were David Livingstone, Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, Henry Morton Stanley and James Augustus Grant. Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. ... David Livingstone David Livingstone (March 19, 1813–May 1, 1873) was a Scottish missionary and explorer of the Victorian era, now best remembered because of his meeting with Henry Morton Stanley which gave rise to the popular quotation, Livingstone was born in the village of Blantyre in Lanarkshire, Scotland and... Richard Burton, portrait by Frederic Leighton, National Portrait Gallery, London Sir Richard Francis Burton (March 19, 1821 - October 19, 1890), British consul, explorer, translator, and Orientalist, was born at Barham House, Hertfordshire, England. ... John Hanning Speke (May 4, 1827-September 15, 1864) was an officer in the British Indian army, who made three voyages of exploration to Africa. ... Sir Henry Morton Stanley (January 29, 1841-May 10, 1904) was a 19th century Welsh-born journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. ... James Augustus Grant (April 11, 1827 — February 11, 1892) was a Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa. ...

Bagamoyo was the German headquarters of German East Africa in 1891. In the first year of World War I, a British air attack and naval bombardment was launched on Bagamoyo, the Germans overrun and the German garrison taken. Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ...

When Seyyid Said, Sultan of Oman, decided to move his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1940, Bagamoyo's importance began to decline.

Today

Today, Bagamoyo is a centre for dhow sailboat building. The Department of Antiquities in Tanzania is working to maintain the ruins of the colonial era in and around Bagamoyo and to revitalize the town. The Bagamoyo College of Arts (“Chuo cha Sanaa”) is an internationally famous arts college in Tanzania, teaching traditional Tanzanian painting, sculpture, drama, dancing and drumming. A dhow is a traditional boat design with one or more triangular sails, called lateens. ...

Weblinks

• Bagamoyo photos (http://www.fotofenster-nohe.de/bagamoyo/index.htm)