Kingdom of Zimbabwe

Kingdom of Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
c. 1220–1450
Zimbabwe Bird
Capital	Great Zimbabwe
Religion	Belief in Mwari
Government	Monarchy
Mambo
• c. 1220-?	Rusvingo (first)
History
• Abandonment of Mapungubwe for Zimbabwe	c. 1220
• Zimbabwe conquest of Mutapa	1430
• Abandonment of Zimbabwe for Mutapa	1450
ISO 3166 code	ZW
Preceded by Succeeded by Kingdom of Mapungubwe Kingdom of Mutapa Kingdom of Butua

Towers of Great Zimbabwe.

Part of a series on the
History of Zimbabwe
Ancient history Leopard's Kopje c. 900–c. 1075 Mapungubwe Kingdom c. 1075–c. 1220 Zimbabwe Kingdom c. 1220–c. 1450 Butua Kingdom c. 1450–1683 Mutapa Kingdom c. 1450–1760
White settlement pre-1923 Rozvi Empire c. 1684–1834 Mthwakazi 1823-1894 Rudd Concession 1888 BSA Company rule 1890–1923 First Matabele War 1893–1894 Second Matabele War 1896–1897 World War I involvement 1914–1918 Colony of Southern Rhodesia 1923–1980 World War II involvement 1939–1945 Malayan Emergency involvement 1948–1960 Federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953–1963 Rhodesian Bush War 1964–1979 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) 1965 Rhodesia under UDI 1965–1979 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia June–December 1979 Lancaster House Agreement December 1979 British Dependency 1979–1980 Zimbabwe 1980–present Gukurahundi 1982–1987 Second Congo War 1998–2003 Coup d'état 2017
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The Kingdom of Zimbabwe (c. 1220–1450) was a medieval Shona (Karanga) kingdom located in modern-day Zimbabwe. Its capital, Lusvingo, now called Great Zimbabwe, is the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa. This kingdom came about after the collapse of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe.

Name[]

The name "Zimbabwe" stems from a Shona 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").^[1][2][3] The Karanga-speaking Shona people live around Great Zimbabwe in the modern-day province of Masvingo. Archaeologist Peter Garlake 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.^[4]

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

Culture and expansion[]

The rulers of Zimbabwe brought artistic and stonemasonry traditions from Mapungubwe. The construction of elaborate stone buildings and walls reached its apex in the kingdom. The institution of was also used in Zimbabwe, 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.^[5] They established rule over a wider area than the Mapungubwe, the Butua or the Mutapa. Mark Cartwright

Economy[]

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe controlled the ivory and gold trade from the interior to the southeastern coast of Africa. Asian and Arabic goods could be found in abundance in the kingdom. Economic domestication, which had been crucial to the earlier proto-Shona states, was also practiced. The Great Zimbabwe people mined minerals like gold, copper and iron. They also kept livestock, as it is explained by its^[who?] theory of cattle hypothesis.^{[citation needed]}

Rise of Mutapa and decline of Zimbabwe[]

In approximately 1430 Prince 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 2014 argued that "Because of the reluctance or inability of many researchers to work in Rhodesia and Mozambique in the last fifteen 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 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

See also[]

• Great Zimbabwe
• Kingdom of Mapungubwe
• History of Zimbabwe
• Kingdom of Butua
• Kingdom of Mutapa
• Khami
• Danangombe

References[]

Sources[]

• Peters, Carl (1902). The Eldorado of the Ancients. London: C. Arthur Pearson.
• Griffith, Francis Llewellyn (1903). Archæological Report. Egypt Exploration Fund.
• 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.

^{[1] [2]}