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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

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 likely covered 50,000 km² (19,000 square milles).^[1]

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).^[2]^[3]^[4]

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.^[5]^: 11–12 An early settlement and predecessor was Gumanye, inhabited by the Karanga people (south-central Shona).^[6] The site of what would become Great Zimbabwe had been occupied since 1000.^[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 to 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. With a population of 10,000, commoners surrounded them within and outside the perimeter wall.^[12] The state was composed of over 150 smaller zimbabwes, and likely covered 50,000 km².^[13]^[14]^: 7 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.^[7]

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.^[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."^[15]

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 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.^[16]

Society and culture

Great Zimbabwe was likely a centre for crafts and a place of great religious significance.^[5]^: 17 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. Common homes were built out of mud.^[8]

Rainmaking centres and cults were kept distant from the centre of power, and it was often entrusted to native members of particular regions.^[8]

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.^[17]

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]^[5]^: 17 They had extensive regional and long-distance trading networks with central Africa, the Swahili coast, the Persian Gulf, India, and the Far East. Exotic goods found in the kingdom's region acquired local meanings in rituals, aesthetics, and status, such as Persian earthenware bowls and Chinese celadon.^[8]^[17]

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 attempted to deny the structure was built by indigenous Africans, with this point and its refutation, along with other activities of the antiquarians, dominating the historiography of Great Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century.^[8]