Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar

Barghash was a son of Said bin Sultan and contested Majid's rule of Zanzibar. In 1859 he led an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow his half-brother and was sent into exile in Bombay.

After Majid's death he became sultan and oversaw major building and administrative projects in Stone Town. Barghash modernised parts of Stone Town and ruled while Zanzibar faced intensifying British pressure over slavery and expanding European intervention in East Africa.

In M. M. Kaye’s Trade Wind, in 1859 Boston heiress Hero Athena Hollis travels to Zanzibar to join her uncle, the American consul, determined to oppose the island's slave trade.