Zingium

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Zingium is a Latinization of the Arabic word زنج zanj, which can be roughly translated as "Land of the Blacks". This is an archaic name for the band of East African coast in modern-day Kenya and Tanzania, including Zanzibar (whose name includes a form of the word zanj). The inhabitants of East Africa were considered by Arabs to be the most culturally primitive of the three Black African regions long known to Arabs (the other two were Nubia nuba in modern Sudan and southern Egypt, and Abyssinia ħabaš in the modern Ethiopia/Eritrea area), and East Africa served as a source of slaves for the Middle East for many centuries.

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