Description : Dar es-Salaam (/ˌdɑːr ɛs səˈlɑːm/; from Arabic: دار السلام, romanized: Dār as-Salām, meaning: Place of Peace) is the largest city and former capital of Tanzania. It is the largest city in East Africa and the seventh-largest in Africa, with a projected population of 5,275,315 in 2019. On the Swahili coast, Dar es-Salaam is an important economic centre and one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Until 1974, Dar es-Salaam served as Tanzania's capital city, at which point the capital city began to move to Dodoma, by order of president Julius Nyerere, which was officially completed in 1996. By the late 2010s it remained a focus of central government bureaucracy, although this is in the process of fully moving to Dodoma. It is Tanzania's most prominent city in arts, fashion, media, music, film and television and is a leading financial centre. The city is the leading arrival and departure point for most tourists who visit Tanzania, including the national parks for safaris and the islands of Unguja and Pemba. In the 19th century, Mzizima (Swahili for "healthy town") was a coastal fishing village on the periphery of Indian Ocean trade routes. In 1865 or 1866, Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar began building a new city very close to Mzizima and named it Dar es Salaam. The name is commonly translated as "abode/home of peace", based on the Arabic dar ("house"), and the Arabic es salaam ("of peace"). Dar es Salaam fell into decline after Majid's death in 1870, but was revived in 1887 when the German East Africa Company established a station there. The town's growth was facilitated by its role as the administrative and commercial centre of German East Africa and industrial expansion resulting from the construction of the Central Railway Line in the early 1900s.
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