part 1 - Iccrom

MEASURING HERITAGE CONSERVATION PERFORMANCE
6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation
the Stone Town adjacent to the former creek, with a
focus on one specific street: Khod Bazaar (a bazaar
street, where from historic times onwards mainly
Indian shops were to be found, Figure 1). The Stone
Town consists of eight wards (mitaa), which each
have their distinctive character.
In the DT, RF and the NF, several attributes that
convey the OUV of the Stone Town can be distinguished.
In these documents 26 attributes are found
both on the urban scale and on level of the individual
building. 5 For the research represented in
this paper, there were two attributes that were highlighted:
the baraza and the carved door. As stated
in the NF: “The Stone Town is an agglomeration of
various architectural traditions from the East African
coast and the world of the Indian Ocean” (URT,
1999, p. 12). Both the barazas and the carved doors
are two attributes in which this cultural fusion can
be seen very explicitly. “[…] the different quarters of
the town were not segregated but bound together by
an intricate network of intimate narrow lanes and a
great series of social nodes, such as mosques, coffee
places and barazas i.e. meeting points that have created
a cosmopolitan whole” (URT, 1999, p. 13). The
barazas can be ascribed to two groups of people in
Zanzibar, Arab and Indian, but each of them gives
form to the barazas in a different way. The carved
doors are an even broader example, for there are
four types of carved doors: 6 Swahili, Arab, Indian
domestic and Indian merchant doors.
Figure 1. The Kiponda mita and the Khod Bazaar (red)
relative to the Stone Town.
These attributes are analysed by dividing them into
these different groups and subsequently authenticity
and integrity will be determined as stated Section
1.
In order to assess the authenticity and integrity of
the carved doors and the barazas, physical research
has been conducted, which resulted in the maps
seen in Figure 2 and Figure 3. Figure 2 indicates the
buildings that contain carved doors. The doors have
been specified to their distinctive origin, being Swahili
(orange brown), Arab (darkish brown), Indian
domestic (brown), Indian merchant (light brown)
and other (beige). The four photographs included
in the figure show the Swahili (left), Arab (middle
left), Indian domestic (middle right) and the Indian
merchant door (right) and clearly depict the distinctive
typology.
Authenticity is about form and design, materials
and substance, use and function, traditions and
location as well as setting, as has been stated in the
Background section, above. Swahili doors are rectangular
and are made up from local timber. The
doors are very simplistic and lack elaborate carvings.
The centre post and/or the lintel are the only
places where one may find carvings, indicating the
status, profession or symbolism associated with the
inhabitant. These doors were the first to be found
in Stone Town and are associated with a domestic
function.
Save the centre post, the respective door does not
clearly suffer from adverse effects of development
and/or neglect. Moreover, all the features that convey
the property’s significance are present. It is
therefore safe to say that the door is intact.
Like the Swahili door, the Arab door is rectangular
and shows right angles in both posts and lintel.
The construction is easily read from the rivets on
the door. The stout rivets — typical of early Arab
doors — are very plain and minimalist, unlike the
extrovert bosses of the Indian domestic doors. The
door is probably made from local wood since the
Indian people imported teak wooden doors, which
endure the Zanzibari climate better. The function
— often elaborately depicted by the carvings on the
door frame — is most likely to be domestic, due to a
lack of a distinct trade made visible in the carvings.
However, the carvings depict the usual carvings of
the Arab doors of Zanzibar; the chain that frames the
door is meant to keep evil spirits out and protect the
inhabitants of the house. Moreover, the chain illustrates
the occupancy of a slave trader. The abstract
image of the fishes at the bottom of the outer post is
Vroomen, Y.; ten Hoope, D.; Moor, B.; Pereira Roders, A.; Veldpaus, L.·& B. Colenbrander. 2012. Assessing the cultural significance
of World Heritage cities: Zanzibar as a case study. In Zancheti, S. M. & K. Similä, eds. Measuring heritage conservation performance, pp.
67-74. Rome, ICCROM.
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