The Lost Libraries of Zanzibar: Indian Ocean Scholarship Under the Busaidi

In Episode 100 of The History of Zanzibar, Lucas and Luna explore a forgotten chapter of East African intellectual life: the manuscript libraries that flourished in Stone Town and beyond under Busaidi rule. They trace how Omani sultans, Indian merchants like Jairam Sewji, and Swahili scholars built collections of Arabic, Persian, and Kiswahili works — from Islamic jurisprudence and poetry to navigation manuals and medical treatises. The episode focuses on the 19th-century library of Mtoni Palace, the personal collection of Sayyid Said bin Sultan, and the fate of these manuscripts after the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890. Lucas explains how European collectors like Sir John Kirk and Johann Ludwig Krapf acquired many texts, now scattered in Berlin, London, and Leiden. The hosts discuss a 2021 project to digitally reunite the Zanzibar manuscript corpus, including the only known copy of a Swahili epic about the Yaqub family. A short mid-episode note on listener support for ad-free research brings the conversation back to local memory and the fragility of archives. #Zanzibar #Busaidi #Manuscripts #IndianOcean #Swahili #Oman #StoneTown #MtoniPalace #SayyidSaid #JairamSewji #JohnKirk #JohannLudwigKrapf #Colonialism #Archives #DigitalHumanities #SwahiliEpic #History #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo