Note 232 — ABU MOHAMMED HIGHT LAZYBONES.

I have explained the word in my “Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast,” vol. i. chapt. v. There is still a tribe, the Wadoe, reputed cannibal on the opposite low East African shore. These blacks would hardly be held “sons of Adam.” “Zanj” corrupted to “Zinj” (plur. Zunúj) is the Persian “Zang” or “Zangi,” a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard g; and, with the suffixion of the Persian -bár (region, as in Malabar) we have Zang-bár which the Arabs have converted to “Zanjibar,” in poetry “Mulk al Zunúj” = Land of the Zang. The term is old; it is the Zingis or Zipgisa of Ptolemy and the Zingium of Cosmas Indicopleustes; and it shows the influence of Persian navigation in pre-Islamitic ages. For further details readers will consult “The Lake Regions of Central Africa” vol. i. chapt. ii.