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Parsis had established a lasting presence in Zanzibar generations before Freddie Mercury was born there. Through migration, trade, professional work, religious institutions, social life and politics, a small community became influential—until the 1964 revolution brought profound disruption and prompted most to leave.
How did Parsis first come to Zanzibar?
Parsi connections to Zanzibar’s islands began through trade. A later settlement account attributed to Hoshang Kased says that Maneckji Mistry, a trader from Surat, settled in Zanzibar in 1845 and subsequently brought his family. That is a reported account of an early permanent settler, not an uncontested claim about the first Parsi to arrive.
A larger movement gathered pace around Sultan Barghash, who spent time in Bombay before becoming sultan in 1870. According to Ajay Kamalakaran’s 2022 history for Scroll, his exposure to the city helped shape his interest in Parsi expertise, and he arranged for specialists to move to Zanzibar. The island’s place in Indian Ocean networks mattered too: clove exports, food supplies and steamship routes connected Zanzibar with merchants and workers from India.
The migration took place within a broader commercial and colonial order, not outside it. Zanzibar’s wealth and connections were bound up with trade, political authority and slavery. Parsi professional opportunities and the community’s achievements should be understood in that setting, rather than treated as evidence that the island’s social hierarchies had disappeared.
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How did a small community establish its institutions?
Religious organization gave the community a durable centre. The Zoroastrian Anjuman was founded in 1875. In 1882, Sohrabji Darukhanawala brought the priest Ervad Bhicaji P. Sidhwa from Udwada. A ritual fire was established in a room in Darukhanawala’s home; community buildings and a cemetery followed, with Barghash granting land for the cemetery. A Tower of Silence was never built.
Parsis also took up work in fields that connected commercial life with the island’s administration. Scroll’s account names physician Dr Pestonji B. Nariman, public works official Bomanjee M. Darukhanawala and chief police inspector Maneckji Dalal. British jurisdictional and legal arrangements, the article says, encouraged further migration of Parsi advocates and police officers.
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Richard Francis Burton, a British explorer and writer, noted the arrival of Parsi commercial agents in 1859, writing: “To the general consternation of Europeans, two Parsee agents lately landed on the island, sent by some Bombay House whose name they concealed,” as quoted in Scroll. The description captures a European observer’s response to the newcomers; it is not a neutral account of how the island’s different communities regarded them.
How large was Zanzibar’s Parsi community?
It remained comparatively small even as its members held professional and civic roles. Scroll reports that the population grew from 26 people in 1884 to 215 in 1945, citing historical work by John Hinnells. These are reported historical counts, not a modern independently checked census series.
What was Parsi social and civic life like?
The community maintained cultural practices linked to Parsis in India while interacting with other Indian communities and Europeans. Scroll’s account describes a Parsi Club, social events with Goans, badminton and tennis facilities, and cricket teams. Members also raised money for causes in India, including contributions to India’s National Indian Defence Fund during the 1962 India-China War.
Such descriptions give a sense of organized community life, but period writing can carry the assumptions of its time. In her 1908 book Glimpses of East Africa and Zanzibar, British writer Ethel Younghusband called Parsis “By far the most superior of the natives of India who have come to Zanzibar.” The phrase reflects a colonial hierarchy and gaze; it should not be repeated as a factual ranking of people.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did Parsis participate in Zanzibar’s politics?
Community life extended into local print and electoral politics. Rati Bulsara, a prominent Parsi community member, published Adal Insaf, a weekly newspaper in Gujarati, English and Kiswahili. He won the Stone Town constituency in Zanzibar’s first legislative council elections in 1957. In 1959, the newspaper received a one-year publishing ban for anti-colonial propaganda, according to Scroll.
This political record matters in its own right: it places Parsi public life within Zanzibar’s debates about colonial rule, rather than making the community’s history only a story of trade or of a future rock star.
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What happened to the community after the 1964 revolution?
The January 1964 revolution ended Zanzibar’s constitutional monarchy. Scroll describes subsequent violence against Arab and Indian minorities. It reports no Parsi deaths in its account, but says most Parsis left, while some lost property and landholdings. The experiences were not uniform: a handful remained, and the sacred fire was maintained until the mid-1980s.
Leaving was not simply the end of a period of prosperity. It meant displacement and loss for many, while the fate of those who stayed differed. The evidence cited here does not establish the community’s current size or the present condition and accessibility of its historic communal buildings.
Where does Freddie Mercury fit into the story?
Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town in 1946 to a Zoroastrian Parsi family. The Freddie Mercury Museum’s biography says he attended school in Zanzibar, went to school in Panchgani, India, returned to Zanzibar in 1962, and left with his family for England in 1963 as political upheaval approached. He co-founded Queen in 1970.
His life offers a memorable family connection to Zanzibar’s Parsi history, not a substitute for it. The Anjuman, professional work, clubs, newspapers and political participation all belong to a community story that had begun well before his birth.
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