THE INFLUENCE OF ZANZIBAR EMPIRE

The Zanzibar Empire under the Sultanate stretched from Cape (Rãs) Asir in the Banadir coast of Somalia to the Ruvuma river at the Cape Delgado, and inland beyond the great lakes. In addition, its ruler held sway over all the south-eastern corner of Arabia. His influence stretched beyond even these extensive borders. At the time of the heyday of the Empire, Zanzibar became celebrated in the well-known saying that: "When you play flute at Zanzibar, all Africans as far as the Lakes (Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria) dance." This Zanj Empire has passed, but much of its influence remains. Swahili, identified as an Afro-Islamic language is one of the first seven most principal languages of the world. It has spread far and wide from Zanzibar to Congo, the fomer Zaire. In Southern Arabia, Western India and Madagascar, there are people who speak Swahili. Many of the Creoles in Mauritius and Rêunion are of Zanzibar origin. Their language, though French in its vocabulary, is Swahili in its grammar. One may even hear in the Creole of Mauritius folk-lore similar to the Swahili of Zanzibar. It was recently in 1960's that Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda adopted Swahili as their national and political, but not the official language unlike Zanzibar. Its nationality was possible due to the non-ethnic identity of Swahili, according to some allegation. Therefore, Swahili is the language of Muslims in East Africa, similar to Arabic in the Muslim world. The Zanzibar Swahili, derived from the Sumarian dialect is the only language which has borrowed a higher proportions of its vocabulary from Arabic than English has from Latin.
But soon after the demise of the Anglo-Dutch Colonialism in East Africa, Zanzibar was kept in isolation from the Muslim world since 1964 due to the fact that it was the only country in East Africa where the Islamic Law was the fundamental law of the country. Zanzibar was not only the most active opposition to aggressive encroachment of the Christian powers from Kenya to Tanganyika, but the intellectual center of Swahili culture and Islamic education in this African region. Former Principal of the Zanzibar Muslim Academy, Sheikh Sayyid bin Omar bin Abdullah bin Abu Bakr bin Salim (1917-1988), graduated from the Oxford University of London stated that the Zanzibar islands were instrumental in the penetration of the Shafi'i school to Tanganyika (Tanzania), Kenya and Uganda around the period of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), a Professor of Nidhamiyãh Shafi'i Muslim Academy in Baghdad and disciple of Abdullah Muhammad Idriss al-Shafi'i (767-820), founder of Shafi'i School of Jurisprudence.
This can be substantiated by the globetrotter from Morocco Abu Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Zawati al-Tunzi (1304-1378), famous as Ibn Batuta who visited the East African Muslim islands, including Mombasa and Pemba, the two sister islands of Zanzibar. He explained the presence of Muslim community with Islamic Schools, scholars of Shafi'i Fiqh (Jurisprudence) and descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in the East African islands. Sheikh Abdullah Saleh al-Farsy (1912-1982), an international historian and great ulama of Zanzibar has described some intellectual Shafi'i ulama of Zanzibar during the Sultanate, though it was under the British Colonialism. The Sultans used to send Shafi'i scholars to Tanganyika for its Islamization.