Island of Mozambique
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / height missing
Ilha de Moçambique and Mozambique is an island and city in both Mozambique and namesake of the country. It is located in the province of Nampula. The município Ilha de Moçambique has 54 315 inhabitants ( 2005); of which about 14,000 live on the island.
Geography
The small island has an area of 1.5 km ² and is a coral formation. A few kilometers wide strait separating it from the mainland. About this now leads from the port Lumbo a 3.8 km long, narrow bridge, the cars, but can not pass buses or trucks.
History
Muslim merchants from Zanzibar led here earlier trade. The island was part of the Asian- African trade network.
Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 as the first European to see the sheikh of the island, Ben Moussa Mbiki, from which the name derives Mozambique. The meeting is to be peaceful. 1506 occupied the Portuguese Tristão da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque the city.
On the northern tip of the island is Fort São Sebastião, built in 1508 under Afonso de Albuquerque with tremendous expenditure of money; the stones were numbered from Europe.
The city had previously, especially when the slave trade flourished, a great importance. Due to its favorable geographical location, the island developed into the most important port in the country.
The city was at the end of the 19th century seat of the Governor General, a bishop and a German consul, had a stately governor's palace, a cathedral, Customs House, Arsenal and great factories of French, Swiss and German trading houses. The streets was described as narrow and angular. The population consisted of 150 Europeans, mostly Portuguese, several hundred members of the Bania caste, which had trade with India in their hands, some Chinese and Arabs, and 4000 to 5000 Makua. Ilha de Moçambique was until 1898 the capital of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, but was then Lourenço Marques (today Maputo ) replaced.
Since then, the city fell increasingly. The consequences of the Civil War, after deduction of the Portuguese were recognizable.
The island belongs since 1991 because of their colonial UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Gallery
Church on the Ilha de Moçambique
Capela de Nossa Senhora do Baluarte of Fort São Sebastião
Beach of Ilha de Moçambique
Mosque on Ilha de Moçambique