The Kingdom of Zimbabwe (c. 1220–1450) was a medieval Shona ( Karanga) kingdom located in modern-day

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

. Its capital, today's

Masvingo Masvingo is a city in south-eastern Zimbabwe and the capital of Masvingo Province. The city is situated close to Great Zimbabwe, the national monument from which the country takes its name and close to Lake Mutirikwi, its recreational park, th ...

(meaning fortified), which is commonly called

Great Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. Con ...

, is the largest stone structure in precolonial

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...

. This kingdom came about after the collapse of the

Kingdom of Mapungubwe The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (or Maphungubgwe) (c. 1075–c. 1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda. ...

Name

The name "Zimbabwe" stems from a

Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today Shona may also refer to: * ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing * Shona (given name) * S ...

term for Great Zimbabwe, a medieval city in the country's south-east whose remains are now a protected site. Two different theories address the origin of the word. Many sources hold that "Zimbabwe" derives from ''dzimba-dza-mabwe'', translated from the Karanga dialect of Shona as "houses of stones" (''dzimba'' = plural of ''imba'', "house"; ''mabwe'' = plural of ''bwe'', "stone"). The Kalanga-speaking Shona people live around Great Zimbabwe in the modern-day

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

. Archaeologist

Peter Garlake Peter Storr Garlake (11 January 1934 - 2 December 2011) was a Zimbabwean archaeologist and art historian, who made influential contributions to the study of Great Zimbabwe and Ife, Nigeria. Life Garlake began his career in African art and arc ...

claims that "Zimbabwe" represents a contracted form of ''dzimba-hwe'', which means "venerated houses" in the Zezuru dialect of Shona and usually references chiefs' houses or graves.

History

Origin

Although the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was formally established during the medieval period, archaeological excavations in the region suggest that state formation here was considerably more ancient. Earlier theories suggested that in the early 11th century, people from the

in Southern Africa moved north into the Great Zimbabwe area. Newer research and evidence shows that the Great Zimbabwe site had been occupied as early as 600 AD and that the city and Kingdom were an evolution of the Gumanye and Gokomere cultures, some of which are still in existence today.

Rise of Mutapa

Dating since atleast the 15th century, the Mutapa state had once controlled the expanse of territory between the rivers

Zambezi The Zambezi River (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers , slightly less than hal ...

Mazowe Mazowe is a village in Mashonaland Central province in Zimbabwe. Notable people *John Bredenkamp *Fortune Chasi *Chenhanho Chimutengwende *Paul Tangi Mhova Mkondo *Auxilia Mnangagwa *Grace Mugabe *Joseph Msika Joseph Wilfred Msika (6 Decembe ...

, Ruenya, Hunyani and the

Umvukwe Range The Mvurwi range of mountains is located in northern Zimbabwe. It stretches about 160 km from Lake Manyame, just west of Harare, north to the Zambezi Escarpment. Its high point is at about 1728 metres. It is an important chromium Chromiu ...

. In approximately 1430, Prince Nyatsimba Mutota from the Great Zimbabwe travelled north to the Dande region in search of salt. He then defeated the Tonga and Tavara with his army and established his dynasty at Chitakochangonya Hill. The land he conquered would become the

Kingdom of Mutapa The Kingdom of Mutapa – sometimes referred to as the Mutapa Empire, Mwenemutapa, ( sn, Mwene we Mutapa, pt, Monomotapa) – was an African kingdom in Zimbabwe, which expanded to what is now modern-day Mozambique. The Portuguese language, P ...

. Within a generation, Mutapa eclipsed Great Zimbabwe as the economic and political power in Zimbabwe. By 1450, the capital and most of the kingdom had been abandoned. D.N. Beach in 2014 argued that "Because of the reluctance or inability of many researchers to work in Rhodesia and Mozambique in the last 15 years, the history of the Mutapa state has been heavily dependent upon the work of D.P. Abraham, at least as far as traditions are concerned."

Aftermath

The end of the kingdom resulted in a fragmenting of proto-Shona power. Two bases emerged along a north–south axis. In the north, the Kingdom of Mutapa carried on and even improved upon Zimbabwe's administrative structure. It did not carry on the stone-masonry tradition to the extent of its predecessor. In the south, the

Kingdom of Butua The Kingdom of Butua or Butwa (c. 1450–1683) was a pre-colonial African state located in what is now southwestern Zimbabwe. Butua was renowned as the source of gold for Arab and Portuguese traders. The region was first mentioned in Portugues ...

was established as a smaller, but nearly identical, version of Zimbabwe. Both states were eventually absorbed into the largest and most powerful of the Shona states, the

Rozwi Empire The Rozvi Empire (1684–1866) was a Shona state established on the Zimbabwean Plateau by Changamire Dombo. The term "Rozvi" refers to their legacy as a warrior nation, taken from the Shona term ''kurozva'', "to plunder". They became the mos ...

Government

The social institution had a ''Mambo'' as its leader, along with an increasingly rigid three-tiered class structure. The kingdom taxed other rulers throughout the region. The kingdom was composed of over 150 tributaries headquartered in their own minor zimbabwes. They established rule over a wider area than the

Mapungubwe The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (or Maphungubgwe) (c. 1075–c. 1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda ...

, the Butua or the Mutapa.

Economy and culture

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe controlled the

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is ...

and gold trade from the interior to the southeastern coast of Africa. Asian and Arabic goods could be found in abundance in the kingdom's region. Economic domestication, which had been crucial to the earlier proto-Shona states, was also practiced. The Great Zimbabwe people mined

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ( ...

s like

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

Cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...

was important to the elites in the kingdom since their wealth came from the management of cattle. The rulers of Zimbabwe (called Mambo) brought artistic and stonemasonry traditions from

. The construction of elaborate stone buildings and walls reached its apex in the kingdom.

References

Sources

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