Mutapa Empire

On the northern edge of the Zimbabwean Plateau, above the Zambezi valley, Shona rulers built a state in the 15th century that controlled much of the region's gold and ivory trade with the Indian Ocean coast. Its kings bore the title Mwenemutapa, usually explained as "lord of the conquered lands", and Portuguese writers turned it into Monomotapa, a name they applied to the whole kingdom. The Mutapa state survived for more than four centuries, much reduced in its later years, until Portuguese conquest in the 1880s.

Shona traditions link the kingdom's beginnings to the decline of Great Zimbabwe, from which some Karanga people are said to have moved north. A hunter-warrior named Mutota is remembered as the founder who conquered Dande and built a stone-walled court, or zimbabwe; his son Matope is credited with subduing the Tavara and Tonga peoples along the Zambezi and with securing the trade routes used by Swahili merchants. Historians such as David Beach and Stan Mudenge caution that these traditions are compressed, and that Mutota and Matope may each stand for several generations of rulers. Archaeology nonetheless shows the state to have been a northward offshoot of the Great Zimbabwe culture, formed over the 14th and 15th centuries.

Around 1490 Changamire, a powerful governor in the south, killed the reigning Mwenemutapa and seized the throne, until the late king's son Chikuyo returned with an army around 1494. Provinces such as Uteve and Manyika gradually broke away. The Portuguese took Sofala in 1506 and soon replaced Swahili merchants along the Zambezi, founding Sena and Tete. In 1561 the Jesuit Gonçalo da Silveira baptised the young Mwenemutapa Negomo, but court opponents turned the king against him and he was strangled. A Portuguese army under Francisco Barreto set out to conquer the gold country, reaching Sena by 1571, but returned with nothing.

Under Gatsi Rusere, who came to the throne in the late 1580s, a revolt led by Matuzianhe drove the king from his capital, and he regained it around 1610 only with Portuguese musketeers, at the cost of promising them the kingdom's mines. After his death in 1623 or 1624 a succession war broke out. The Portuguese defeated his son Kapararidze in 1629 and installed a rival, Mavhura, who signed a treaty acknowledging the Portuguese king as overlord, opening the mines and expelling Muslim traders. Portuguese estate-holders, the prazeros, then carved out lands and raided for cattle and captives. From 1663 Mavhura's son Mukombwe partly rebuilt royal power, but locusts, smallpox and other epidemics in the late 1660s to around 1680 may, by Mudenge's estimate, have killed over half the population.

The Mwenemutapa ruled from a court enclosed by stone, advised by a council of ministers and surrounded by royal wives drawn from vassal families. Succession was meant to pass between brothers before moving to the next generation, but in practice it was often settled by force. Religious authority lay with the mhondoro, spirit mediums of past kings, and with the Dzivaguru rain cult of the Tavara; together they could support or check a ruler. The economy rested on farming and cattle, with gold, ivory and cotton cloth traded at market towns such as Masapa and later Dambarare.

In the 1680s Changamire Dombo, once keeper of the royal herds, defeated both Portuguese and Mutapa forces and went on to found the Rozvi Empire, which destroyed Dambarare in 1693 and around 1712 imposed vassalage on the Mwenemutapa. By the 18th century the kingdom had shrunk to the Zambezi valley around Chidima in today's Mozambique, and around 1760 it fragmented in civil war. Nguni groups fleeing the Mfecane passed through in the 1830s. The Portuguese conquered the kingdom in 1884, though Mwenemutapa Chioko led an armed coalition against them from 1897 until his death in 1902.

Our maps label the kingdom Mwenemutapa on the 1492, 1500, 1530 and 1600 maps, covering much of what is now northern Zimbabwe. By our 1700 map the plateau to its south-west is held by the Rozvi.