Kingdom of Zimbabwe

Kingdom of Zimbabwe
*Zimbabwe*
Kingdom of Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
13th century–16th/17th century
	Zimbabwe Bird
Capital	Great Zimbabwe
Religion	Belief in Mwari
Government	Monarchy
Mambo
History
• Established	13th century
• Fall of Mapungubwe, rise of Great Zimbabwe	c. 1300
• Abandonment of Great Zimbabwe	16th/17th century
Area
• Total	50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi)
ISO 3166 code	ZW
Preceded by	Succeeded by
	Gumanye
	Kingdom of Mapungubwe
Kingdom of Mutapa
Kingdom of Butua
Today part of	Zimbabwe, Mozambique

Aerial view of Great Enclosure and Valley Complex, looking west

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe was a Shona kingdom located in modern-day Zimbabwe. Its capital was Great Zimbabwe, in today's Masvingo, which is the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa. Around 1300, Great Zimbabwe replaced Mapungubwe as the most important trading centre in the interior, exporting gold to the Indian Ocean trade via Swahili city-states. The capital had a population of 10,000 and the Zimbabwe state was composed of over 150 smaller zimbabwes and likely covered 50,000 km² (19,000 square milles).

Etymology

The Kingdom Of Zimbabwe derives its name from its capital, Great Zimbabwe. The name "dzimbabwe" is Shona for "great house of stone", from the nouns 'dzimba-' meaning "great house" and 'ibwe' meaning "-stone". "Zimbabwe" derives from Zimba-ra-mabwe or Zimba-re-mabwe, translated from the Karanga dialect of Shona as "houses of stones" (dzimba = augmentative noun of imba, "house"; mabwe = plural of ibwe, "stone"; ra/re = preposition for of).^[1]^[2]^[3]

History

Origins and rise

The region had been inhabited by the San dating back over 100,000 years, and was inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples from 150 BC, who from the 4th century formed various agricultural chiefdoms.^[4]^: 11–12 An early settlement and predecessor was Gumanye.^[5] The site of what would become Great Zimbabwe had been occupied since 1000 by speakers of proto-Karanga (south-central Shona).^[6]^[7] The settlement lay on the margins of mainstream developments occurring to its south from the 10th century in the Limpopo-Shashe Basin, where states and chiefdoms competed over gold and other goods for the Indian Ocean trade.^[8] In the 13th century Great Zimbabwe was on the fringe of the Mapungubwe state.^[9]^: 55

From the 12th century, Great Zimbabwe wrestled with other settlements, such as Chivowa, for economic and political dominance in the Southern Zambezi Escarpment. Agriculture and cattle played a key role in developing a vital social network, and served to "enfranchise management of goods and services distributed as benefits within traditional political and social institutions", while long distance trade was crucial for the transformation of localised organisations into regional ones. This process rapidly advanced during the 13th century, which saw large dry masonry stone walls raised, and by 1250 Great Zimbabwe had become an important trade centre. Gold production increased rapidly during this time.^[8] By 1300, trade routes had shifted north as merchants bypassed the Limpopo and Mapungubwe by travelling the Zambezi into the gold-producing interior, precipitating Mapungubwe's rapid decline and the dominance of Great Zimbabwe.^[10]

Apogee

At its peak Great Zimbabwe covered 7.22 km² and became a centre for industry and political power.^[11] At Great Zimbabwe's centre was the Great Enclosure which housed royalty and had demarcated spaces for rituals. Commoners surrounded them within the second perimeter wall, and its population was around 10,000.^[8] Great Zimbabwe dominated trade routes despite not directly controlling village-based mining and smelting, and engaged in the Indian Ocean trade via Swahili city-states such as Sofala.^[6] The state was composed of over 150 smaller zimbabwes, and likely covered 50,000 km².^[12]^[13]^: 7 The institutionalisation of Great Zimbabwe's politico-religious ideology served to legitimise the position of the king (mambo), with a link between leaders, their ancestors, and God.^[14]^[15]

It is unclear to what extent coercion and conflict played in Great Zimbabwe's growth and dominance due to this being challenging to recognise archaeologically. While the Great Enclosure served to display prestige and status, and to reinforce inequalities between elites and commoners, it likely also served to deter contestation for political power amid the close linkage between wealth accumulation and political authority, with rivals for power, such as district chiefs and regional governors, located outside the settlement in prestige enclosures.^[15] The perimeter walls also likely served a defensive purpose, indicating warfare was conventional.^[14]

Dating since at least the 15th century, the Mutapa state had once controlled the expanse of territory between the rivers Zambezi, Mazowe, Ruenya, Hunyani and the Umvukwe Range.^[16] When Mutapa leadership left north, it was believed that only their most recent ancestors would follow them, with older ancestors staying at Great Zimbabwe and providing protection there. A Shona king's claim to land is through their ancestors, and this would have greatly inhibited the legitimacy of Mutapa's leaders.^[15]

Decline

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. 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."^[16]

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 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.^{[citation needed]}

Government

The social institution had a Mambo as its sacred leader, aided by a designated brother or sister,^[15] 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.^[17]

Society and culture

Great Zimbabwe was likely a centre for crafts and a place of great religious significance,^[4]^: 17 however, unlike at Mapungubwe, rainmaking centres and cults were kept distant from the centre of power, and it was often entrusted to native members of particular regions.^[8] There was a mystical relationship between leaders and the land, and a link between leaders, their ancestors, and God.^[15] The mambo's first wife held authority over his other wives.^[15] Royalty initially lived at the Eastern and Western enclosures, with archaeological research uncovering ritual spears, gongs, and soapstone bird effigies. The public surrounded them until the space became too limited for the growing population and the royalty moved to the Great Enclosure, constructed throughout the 13th and 14th centuries. The Great Enclosure partitioned domestic and public spaces, the latter likely used for rituals. Nobles resolved disputes in a private court, while commoners resolved them in public.^[15] Common homes were built out of mud on wooden frame structures.^[8]^[14] Exotic goods found in the kingdom's region acquired local meanings in rituals, aesthetics, and status, such as Persian earthenware bowls and Chinese celadon.^[12]

Economy

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe had a mosaic political economy which embedded production and circulation to address needs at individual, household, village, district, capital, and state levels within a multidimensional environment dependent on local qualities. This system later incorporated global trade, however imports were minimal and it was not solely responsible for the region's economic development.^[12]

Great Zimbabwe's wealth was derived from cattle rearing, agriculture, and the domination of trade routes from the goldfields of the Zimbabwean Plateau to the Swahili coast. Cattle was important to the elites in the kingdom since their wealth came from the management of cattle.^[18] Salt, cattle, grain, and copper were traded as far north as the Kundelungu Plateau in present-day DR Congo.^[19]^[4]^: 17 They had extensive regional and long-distance trading networks with central Africa, the Swahili coast, the Persian Gulf, India, and the Far East.^[8]^[12]

Stone masonry

The rulers of Zimbabwe (called Mambo) brought artistic and stonemasonry traditions found across the Zambezi and Limpopo basins, including at Mapungubwe. The construction of elaborate stone buildings and walls reached its apex in the kingdom.

Historiography and European interactions with Great Zimbabwe

European antiquarians looted and pillaged Great Zimbabwe and similar structures from the 1890s to 1920s, greatly inhibiting the work of future archaeologists. The colonial government pressured archaeologists to deny that the structure was built by indigenous Africans, and the refutation of various fantastical and dehumanising theories, along with other activities of the antiquarians, dominated the historiography of Great Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century.^[8]

References

^ "Zimbabwe – big house of stone". Somali Press. Archived from the original on 3 May 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2008.
^ Lafon, Michel (1994). "Shona Class 5 revisited: a case against *ri as Class 5 nominal prefix" (PDF). Zambezia. 21: 51–80.
^ Vale, Lawrence J. (1999). "Mediated monuments and national identity". Journal of Architecture. 4 (4): 391–408. doi:10.1080/136023699373774.
^ ^a ^b ^c Mlambo, A. S. (2014). A history of Zimbabwe. Internet Archive. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02170-9.
^ Chirikure, Shadreck; Manyanga, Munyaradzi; Pikirayi, Innocent; Pollard, Mark (1 December 2013). "New Pathways of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa". African Archaeological Review. 30 (4): 339–366. doi:10.1007/s10437-013-9142-3. ISSN 1572-9842.
^ ^a ^b Delius, Peter; Chewins, Linell; Forssman, Tim (2024). "Turning South African History Upside Down: Ivory and Gold Production, the Indian Ocean Trading System and the Shaping of Southern African Society, 600–1900 AD". Journal of Southern Africa Studies. doi:10.1080/03057070.2024.2436329#d1e350. ISSN 0305-7070.
^ Huffman, Thomas N.; du Piesanie, Justin (2011). "Khami and the Venda in the Mapungubwe Landscape". Journal of African Archaeology. 9 (2): 189–206. ISSN 1612-1651.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Pikirayi, Innocent (2020), Smith, Claire (ed.), "Great Zimbabwe, 1100–1600 AD, Rise, Development, and Demise of", Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 4696–4709, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_2666, ISBN 978-3-030-30018-0, retrieved 20 December 2024
^ Huffman, Thomas N. (2005). Mapungubwe : ancient African civilisation on the Limpopo. Internet Archive. Johannesburg : Wits University Press. ISBN 978-1-86814-408-2.
^ Chirikure, Shadreck; Delius, Peter; Esterhuysen, Amanda; Hall, Simon; Lekgoathi, Sekibakiba; Maulaudzi, Maanda; Neluvhalani, Vele; Ntsoane, Otsile; Pearce, David (1 October 2015). Mapungubwe Reconsidered: A Living Legacy: Exploring Beyond the Rise and Decline of the Mapungubwe State. Real African Publishers Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-1-920655-06-8.
^ Meredith, Martin (14 October 2014). The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-61039-460-4.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Chirikure, Shadreck (1 June 2020). "New Perspectives on the Political Economy of Great Zimbabwe". Journal of Archaeological Research. 28 (2): 139–186. doi:10.1007/s10814-019-09133-w. ISSN 1573-7756.
^ Oyekan Owomoyela (2002). Culture and customs of Zimbabwe. Internet Archive. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-31583-1.
^ ^a ^b ^c Kim, Nam C.; Kusimba, Chapurukha M.; Keeley, Lawrence H. (2015). "Coercion and Warfare in the Rise of State Societies in Southern Zambezia". The African Archaeological Review. 32 (1): 1–34. ISSN 0263-0338.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Huffman, Thomas N. (1 April 2014). "Ritual Space in the Zimbabwe Culture". Journal of Archaeological, Ethnographic and Experimental Studies. 6 (1). doi:10.1179/1944289013z.0000000008. ISSN 1944-2890.
^ ^a ^b Beach, D.N. (1976). "The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence". History in Africa. 3: 1–17. doi:10.2307/3171558. JSTOR 3171558. S2CID 162965634.
^ Owomoyela 2002, p. 7.
^ "Great Zimbabwe (11th–15th Century)". MET museum.
^ Mugabe, Bedone (2022). Circulation of copper and copper alloys in hinterland southern Africa: material evidence from Great Zimbabwe (1000-1700CE) (Thesis).

Sources

Böhmer-Bauer, Kunigunde (2000). Great Zimbabwe: eine ethnologische Untersuchung. R. Köppe. ISBN 389645210X.
Oliver, Roland & Anthony Atmore (1975). Medieval Africa 1250–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 738. ISBN 0-521-20413-5.
Owomoyela, Oyekan (2002). Culture and Customs of Zimbabwe. Westport: Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-31583-1.
Stewart, John (1989). African States and Rulers. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 395. ISBN 0-89950-390-X.
Wieschhoff, H. A. (2006). The Zimbabwe-Monomotapa Culture in Southeast Africa. Whitefish: Kessinger. p. 116. ISBN 1-4286-5488-7.