The document was issued more than 116 years ago, to be precise on the 3rd of November 1910.
This was a British passport whose holder was from the Zanzibar Islands.
The single page, paper document carried the name of one Khoja Habib Noormohamed.
The passport reads: “These are to request and require in the Name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern, to allow Khoja Habib Noormohamed, a British Indian subject born at Zanzibar, who is traveling to Kerballa via Bombay.”
“He is accompanied by his wife Sherbanoo and one son Ahmed. They are to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford assistance and protection of which they may stand in need.”
The salvaged remains of the said passport indicated that the document, under any circumstance should never be valid after five years commencing on the date of its issuance.
Apparently, this was Khoja Habib’s first Ziyarat to Karbala, essentially a journey of faith that would later define his life.
He reportedly traveled from Chake Chake, on the Pemba Islet of Zanzibar, where he owned and cultivated some 46 clove plantations, heading to Lindi, along the Indian Ocean coastline on southern parts of the East African mainland.
The journey, from the Isles to the mainland, possibly conducted on dhows or mast ships, must have taken months.
The year 1910 was during the time when massive earthquakes rocked the region and incidents of sea turbulence were common.
Lindi was later to become part of German East Africa which later formed the Tanganyika mainland and eventually Tanzania, after uniting with the Isles.
Anyway, Khoja Habib Noormohamed was to become the first President of the Lindi Jamat in 1924.
Chacha to Marhum Hamza Ali Noormohamed and grandfather of Habib and Muslim Habib, he passed away in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in India around 1927, returning from his second Ziyarat—his life complete, his legacy enduring.