Also called Empire of Great Zimbabwe, Mwene Mutapa, Munhumutapa or Mutapa, the Kingdom of Monomotapa was a kingdom in southern Africa that existed between 1450 and 1629. Today the lands of Monomotapa constitute the territories of Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique. The capital of this great empire was Great Zimbabwe.
Birth and Apogee of the Empire
The period preceding the kingdom of Monomotapa is between the 4th and 15th centuries. The people of the mining farmers called Batonga come from the South of Zimbabwe and settled the mining areas in the West. In the 11th century, the builders called Shonas also arrived. They build agglomerations of stone, the most immense and bizarre of which is Great Zimbabwe, a city built between 1100 and 1450. Literally, the term means “house of stone”. The last to arrive were the farmer-pastoralists called Yakaranga or Mokaranga. The latter came from present-day Shana and were headed by a military clan called Rozwi.
In 1440, Nyatsimba Mutota known under the pseudonym of war Mutapa, of the Rozwi clan, began the conquest of the Rhodesian plateau. On his death, his son succeeded him. Called Matope, he is reputed to be a great conqueror. He occupied a territory that extended over almost all of present-day Zimbabwe and part of Mozambique. He reigned from 1450 to 1480. He is considered the true founder of the Monomotapa Empire. Both Mutota and Matope were nicknamed Mwene-Mutapa meaning “lord of the wastelands” and translated into Portuguese as Monomotapa meaning “lord of the mines”.
The kingdom reached its peak in 1440 thanks to the gold trade. Coming from the interior of the empire, this gold was exported to the port of Sofala in the south of the Zambezi delta. The main buyers were Indians. The latter exchanged textiles from Gujarat for gold. Jealous, Portuguese and Arab traders put pressure on the Indians. Then the Portuguese tried to dominate the kingdom in 1505 but failed to penetrate, remaining stuck in the coast for a long time.
The history of southern Africa was greatly influenced by the gold mines of Monomotapa. Indeed, the Europeans, in view of the abundance of gold in the kingdom, began to believe that the Monomotapa held the legendary gold mines of King Solomon, a biblical character. It was this belief that prompted the Dutch East India Company to found the Cape Colony, this colony that would eventually become the state of South Africa, one of the most powerful in Africa today. However, Monomotapa did not have the largest gold reserves. But South Africa and the area that today corresponds to Johannesburg. But this discovery was made two centuries later.
Decline of the Empire
After having known more than 20 kings, the empire began to lose its aura due to internal struggles. The battles of rival factions favored the depletion of the rivers of gold. Subsequently, the gold trade was replaced by the sale of slaves. Thus, the Arab states of Zanzibar and Kilwa became dominant in the region thanks to the sale of blacks to Arabia, Persia and India.
Finally in 1607, the Portuguese won the monopoly of gold mining in the whole region. In 1629, the Portuguese definitively seized the empire. The survivors of the royal families undertook the creation of another Mutapa kingdom in Mozambique. They were called Karanga or Mambos and reigned over the region until 1902 without having the same influence as the previous empire.
