Tabora

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Tabora (disambiguation) .

Tabora
Tabora
Coordinates	5 ° 1 ′  S , 32 ° 48 ′  E Coordinates: 5 ° 1 ′  S , 32 ° 48 ′  E
Basic data
Country	Tanzania
region	Tabora
height	1241 m
Residents	160,608 (2012)
founding	circa 1820

Tabora is located northwest of the capital Dodoma

Tabora is a city in Tanzania and has about 160,608 inhabitants. It is located at an altitude of 1241  m around 1140 km from the port city of Dar es Salaam in the inland of Tanzania. In the 19th century, Tabora was a central trading center for the East African caravan trade . With the construction of the railway during the German colonial era , this importance was lost. Today Tabora the regional capital is Tabora , seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tabora , home of the Western Province of the Moravian Church of Tanzania ( Moravian ) and an Anglican diocese.

history

Tabora 1906

The club building in Tabora 1906

Indian shops in the Tabora market, 1906

founding

Tabora was founded as a trading post in the 1820s by two Indian merchants, Musa Mzuri and his older brother. They chose the location near some extensive scattered settlements in the center of the area inhabited by the Nyamwezi . The Nyamwezi are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group who maintained a lively caravan trade culture in the East African interior and probably sent caravans to the coast of the Indian Ocean as early as 1800 .

The Indian traders, who were driven by the search for ivory in particular , were soon followed by other merchants from the Swahili coast. In the course of the following decades, Tabora and the neighboring settlements became the hub and the most important transshipment point for the booming caravan trade between the coast and the hinterland. From here caravans set out for Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika , the Congo, the inter- lake area and Buganda , slaves for the clove plantations of Zanzibar and Pembas , ivory and rubber for export to Europe and America were brought to the coast, copper wire, pearls, fabrics and Firearms flowed into the region as payment.

After 1860, the Sultan of Zanzibar appointed a political representative among the Arabs and Swahili resident in Tabora , who acted as the representative of the Zanzibar Arabs and as a negotiating partner with the local Nyamwezi rulers. The Arabs promoted the integration of the settlements, but overall their numbers were small and their influence on regional politics is often overestimated by travelers and in the research literature. Their leaders had local influence; the well-known Arabic trader Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi (called Tippu Tip) reported in his memoir that his father was married to the daughter of the ruler of Unyanyembe Fundikira and that he himself enjoyed the respect of a local ruler.

The place grew rapidly, in 1871 it already had about 5000 inhabitants. The economic center was the market in Tabora, but the place retained its village character through the juxtaposition of different settlements, of which Kazeh and Kwihara are mentioned particularly frequently in travel reports. It was not until around 1860 and 1880 that Tabora established itself as a term for the settlement conglomerate.

German colonial times

On August 1, 1890, Emin Pasha concluded a so-called protection treaty with the leading Arabs of Tabora over Tabora and the entire region of the Nyamwezi, called Unjanjembe by the Germans . This treaty was illegal in two respects: on the one hand, it annexed - at least on paper - a large part of the African hinterland for the German Empire; on the other hand, the Arabs, who had large land holdings in Tabora, were by no means authorized to sign for the other residents of the region. In fact, apart from a military station over which the flag of the empire was hoisted, relatively little changed in Tabora until the railway was built in 1908. Due to its distance from the coast, the city was far removed from the colonial centers of power, the area was considered difficult to control despite individual military actions by the colonial troops, taxes could hardly be enforced and in some cases were not even levied.

Even economically, Tabora, which is far from the coast, was of no interest to German settlers until the railway was built. The caravan trade remained the economic pillar. In 1895, 23 Arabs, 3 Indians and 40 Swahili and their families were among the 15,000 inhabitants. Most of the inhabitants of Tabora were employed in agriculture, in addition to their own consumption, mainly food was produced to equip the caravans. Many men continued to work as porters or equip caravans themselves. Goods also remained largely the same in the first two decades of colonial rule.

Nevertheless, the city was considered as a possible capital by State Secretary Bernhard Dernburg because of its central and strategically favorable location , but this could not be implemented due to the low proportion of Europeans among the residents.

With the completion of the Mittellandbahn from Dar es Salaam to Tabora on July 1, 1912, a fundamental structural change took place. The movement of goods was switched to rail and the caravan trade came to a standstill almost immediately. Numerous German trading companies were established; in 1913 there were already 26 German companies, including four inns and a pharmacy. However, unlike in the Usambara region , agriculture remained in local hands. One company each of the protection force and the police were stationed here.

Unlike in many colonial cities and such as Dar es Salaam, Tabora did not develop a separate European quarter during the German colonial rule, which was separated from the residential areas of the local population by a green belt, rather the dwellings of the Europeans were distributed almost throughout the city .

Belgian and British colonial times

In 1916, Tabora was captured by Belgian colonial troops under the leadership of General Charles Tombeur (Tombeur de Tabora) after fierce fighting and formally belonged to the British colony - renamed Tanganyika - from 1920 . The German residents were deported across Africa to France. The economic upswing that had been announced in Tabora in the last years of the German colonial era through the construction of the railway did not continue after the British colonial administration took over.

In 1928 the railway line from Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria was opened, which did not stimulate the economy around Tabora. Rather, many goods that had previously passed through Tabora were now transported via the railway line to Lake Victoria and through Kolonia Kenya to the port on the Indian Ocean. Even when diamonds were discovered nearby in 1940, that didn't change much.

In 1925, the Boys Central Government Secondary School was set up in Tabora, which was designed as a cadre forge for future administrative employees and was later also referred to as the Eton of Tanganyika . From 1937 the later first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere , attended this school.

Population development

The following overview shows the number of inhabitants by area since the 1978 census.

year	population
1978 (census)	67,388
1988 (census)	92,779
2002 (census)	126.089
2012 (census)	160.608

economy

• Agriculture (tobacco, corn, viticulture and honey)
• textiles

Transport links

The city has roads, a small airport, and a train station, which is located on an important railway junction. From Tabora there is one route to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, another route to Mwanza on Lake Victoria and another route via the capital Dodoma to Dar Es Salaam on the Indian Ocean. There is also a railway line to the southern district town of Mpanda. Up until now, the city can only be reached by car via dirt roads from the north and east.

Climate diagram

Tabora
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     18th   28 18th     16   29 17th     16   29 18th     10   29 17th     2.1   29 16     0.7   29 14th     0.1   28 19th     0.2   31 16     0.3   32 18th     2.7   32 19th     11   30th 19th     17th   29 18th Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: Tanzania Meteorological Agency, data: 1971–2000; wetterkontor.de

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Tabora Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 28.0 28.8 29.3 29.0 29.3 28.9 28.4 30.6 32.1 32.3 30.1 28.7 O 29.6 Min. Temperature (° C) 17.6 17.4 17.5 17.2 15.9 13.9 19.1 16.0 17.8 18.9 18.6 18.1 O 17.3 Precipitation ( mm ) 17.55 15.98 15.84 10.40 2.07 0.74 0.08 0.17 0.29 2.70 11.04 17.26 Σ 94.12 Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 6.3 6.6 7.0 7.9 8.4 9.1 10.2 10.3 9.5 8.6 7.1 6.2 O 8.1 Rainy days ( d ) 13 11 12 10 3 0 0 0 1 3 11 16 Σ 80 Humidity ( % ) 70 71 72 73 66 54 50 49 42 48 58 71 O 60.3 Source: Tanzania Meteorological Agency, data: 1971–2000; wetterkontor.de

Sons of the city

• The future president Julius Nyerere attended high school in Tabora

Trivia

In 1912, the biscuit manufacturer Bahlsen named a type of biscuit after this place.

literature

• Jürgen Becher, Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Tabora. Urban development under German colonial rule, 1885–1914, Stuttgart 1997 Excerpts online via google book search .
• Carl Falkenhorst, Black Princes, Part 2: East Africa, Leipzig 1892.
• Achim Gottberg, Unyamwezi. Collection of sources and history, Berlin 1971.
• Juhani Koponen, People and Production in Late Colonial Tanzania. History and Structures, Helsinki 1988.
• Stephen Rockel, A Nation of Porters . The Nyamwezi and the Labor Market in Nineteenth-Century Tanzania, in: Journal of African History 34 (2000) 3, pp. 173-195.

Web links

Commons : Tabora  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Single receipts

1. ↑ Some Internet sites state that Tabora carried the name Weidmannsheil in the , which goes back not least to an earlier version of this article. This claim is unfounded and blatantly wrong. The German Colonial Lexicon (an encyclopedia of the German colonies) from 1913 does not mention Weidmannsheil in its entry on Tabora or in its detailed maps. It could be confused with a hunting lodge called Waidmannsheil, which was built by Richard Böhm and Paul Reichard in 1881 far east of Tabora on the Ugalla River (tributary of the Malagarassi, which flows into the Tanganyika) and which was destroyed by fire in 1882. See Ornithologische Zentralblatt January 1882, p. 9; Letter from Böhm v. 8/30/1881 (scanned online text) ; also Richard Böhm, Letters from East Africa, ed. Hermann Schalow, Leipzig 1888, p. 112 (letter of August 16, 1882) , archive.org
2. ↑ Wikiarchiv Population Census 2002
3. ^ Britannica.com - Tabora
4. ↑ Richard F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, Vol. 2, Vol. I, p. 326, Vol. II; Pp. 223-226
5. ↑ Maisha ya Hamed bin Mohammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu Tip kwa maneno yake mwenyewe, kimefasiriwa na WH Whitely (toleo la Kiswahili - Kiingereza), East Africa Literature Bureau 1974 §2, p. 12/13, German translation: Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi, autobiography of the Arab Schech Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi, called Tippu Tip, transcribed and translated by H. Brode, in: Mitteilungen des Seminare für Orientalische Sprachen 3 (1902), pp. 175-277, 4 (1903), pp. 1-55
6. ↑ Carl Falkenhorst, Black Princes. Pictures from the history of the dark continent, part 2: East Africa, Leipzig 1892, p. 44
7. ↑ Jürgen Becher, Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Tabora. Urban development in Tanzania under German colonial rule, 1885–1914, 1997, p. 89.
8. ↑ Jürgen Becher, Dar es Salam, Tanga and Tabora, p. 104.
9. ↑ Andreas Eckert, Rule and Administration. African bureaucrats, state order and politics in Tanzania, 1920–1970, Munich 2007, pp. 68f.
10. ^ Tanzania: Regions and Cities - Population Statistics in Maps and Tables. Retrieved January 7, 2019 . 
11. ↑ African Journal of Agricultural Research (PDF; 86 kB)
12. ↑ Wildlife Safaris - Tabora
13. ↑ Taboratex
14. ↑ Tanzania Meteorological Agency: Climatic information Tabora. World Meteorological Organization, accessed October 27, 2012 . 
15. ↑ Reiner Meyer: The advertising art of the Bahlsen biscuit factory in Hanover from 1889-1945 . Münster 1999, p. 147