A Zanzibar sultan founded Dar es Salaam beside a village called healthy town
Dar es Salaam, East Africa's most populous city with more than 7 million people, started in 1865 or 1866 when Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar began building next to Mzizima, a modest fishing village. He named his project Abode of Peace, and it nearly faded away after he died.
Mzizima, whose Swahili name means healthy town, lay at the edge of the Indian Ocean trading network. Majid's death in 1870 sent his new town into decline, and revival came only in 1887, when the German East Africa Company set up a station. The settlement grew as the seat of German East Africa, and the Central Railway Line, built in the early 1900s, added industry.
World War I ended German rule. British and Empire forces overran the colony, the Royal Navy shelled the city from the monitor Mersey on 21 July 1916 and from HMS Vengeance a month later, and the Germans surrendered it on 3 September. As capital of British Tanganyika it developed along segregated lines under indirect rule, with European districts such as Oyster Bay apart from African ones such as Kariakoo and Ilala, and many traders and workers arrived from British India. Growth accelerated after World War II.
The Tanganyika African National Union led the territory to independence in December 1961, and the city stayed the capital when Tanganyika joined Zanzibar as Tanzania in 1964. Plans to relocate the capital inland to Dodoma date from 1973 or 1974, depending on the account, and the move was formally completed in 1996, yet most government offices stayed in Dar es Salaam. The socialist ujamaa policy of 1967 held back urban growth by urging people to stay in rural collective villages; it failed to stem poverty and hunger, and liberalisation in the 1980s ended it, with its defenders in government silenced by repression.
Today the city leads Tanzania in finance, media, film, fashion and the arts. It is the fifth-largest city in Africa and among the fastest-growing anywhere, with forecasts of more than 10 million people before 2030. It also serves as capital of a region of five districts, Kinondoni, Ilala, Ubungo, Temeke and Kigamboni, the last lying east across the Kurasini estuary.
Source: Dar es Salaam
