Zanzibar is an island — really a small group of islands — in the Indian Ocean, just off the east coast of Africa, opposite Tanzania. For hundreds of years it was one of the great crossroads of the Indian Ocean: Arab, Persian, Indian and African traders met there, and the town grew rich on cloves, ivory and, for a long and terrible period, the slave trade. Its old quarter, Stone Town, still shows all of that in its buildings and its carved wooden doors. In 1964 Zanzibar joined with Tanganyika, the country on the mainland, to make a new country. The new name was built from the two old ones: Tan- from Tanganyika and Zan- from Zanzibar, giving Tanzania. So Zanzibar today is not an independent country; it is part of Tanzania, though it keeps its own president and government for local matters. Today most English speakers meet the word as the name of a beach holiday place — white sand, blue water, spice tours. It has also become a kind of word for "somewhere impossibly far away and exotic", the way Timbuktu is used. Someone might say "I'd follow you to Zanzibar" simply meaning "anywhere". Because English speakers hear it that way, the name turns up in song titles, restaurant names and shop signs all over the world.