Christ Church Cathedral: an Anglican altar built on the site of Zanzibar’s largest slave market

In Stone Town, the historic capital of Zanzibar, in Tanzania, Christ Church Cathedral stands on the site of East Africa’s largest slave market. The market was closed as an open market in 1873, following the decree of Sultan Barghash banning the trade, which was tied to a treaty negotiated with Britain, the Frere Treaty of 5 June 1873. The Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) bought the site that same year. The foundation stone was laid on Christmas Day 1873 and the cathedral opened for worship on Christmas Day 1879, after some six years of work carried out under the inspiration of Bishop Edward Steere, third Anglican bishop of Zanzibar, who is credited with the unusual concrete barrel-vault roof. Some sources give a separate formal consecration as late as 1903, but that date is not confirmed by more than one source and should be treated as uncertain. Steere died shortly before the building was finished and, according to a tradition reported by some sources, is buried behind the altar. The cathedral is built of local coral stone, in a style that joins English perpendicular Gothic to decorative details of Islamic inspiration. It has a rose window and stained glass, a choir ceiling made of mangrove poles (boriti) in the traditional Swahili building technique, and an outer plaster of marble dust in the local technique known as «neeru». According to local and church tradition the high altar was placed exactly where the whipping post of the market stood, and a circle of white marble surrounded by red marble is said to mark the spot. It should be said plainly that this is a traditional siting and a deliberate act of religious commemoration by the builders, not a verified archaeological reconstruction of the exact position of the original post. Inside there is also a wooden cross, kept as a relic, which tradition holds was made from the wood of the Chitambo tree in Zambia, under which the heart of the explorer and missionary David Livingstone was buried in 1873. It is an association handed down with devotion, but no source consulted provides certain documentation of its provenance. Beneath the cathedral are the underground cells once used to hold enslaved people, open today to visitors as part of a commemorative route. Between 2013 and 2016 a major restoration, carried out by the Anglican diocese of Zanzibar together with World Monuments Fund Britain and financed in part by a contribution from the European Union and by funds from the United States embassy for cultural preservation, stabilised the walls and the roof and restored the rose window. In June 2016 the cathedral opened an exhibition centre devoted to the history of the slave trade in East Africa. It remains the active seat of the Anglican diocese of Zanzibar, reorganised in 2001 after a period of weakening that followed the Zanzibar revolution of 1964. It stands inside the UNESCO World Heritage site «Stone Town of Zanzibar», inscribed in 2000 as a historic urban ensemble, of which the cathedral is one of the most significant buildings but not a separate inscription.