> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.travel-info.co.zw/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Precolonial Kingdoms of Zimbabwe

> The history of Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, Khami and the Torwa state, the Mutapa state and the Rozvi, and their gold and ivory trade with the Swahili coast.

**Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a Shona state that flourished from about 1100 to 1450, grew rich on gold and ivory traded through the Swahili coast, and gave the modern country its name.** It was one link in a long chain of African states on the Zimbabwe plateau: Mapungubwe before it, then Torwa at Khami, the Mutapa state in the north and finally the Rozvi. Archaeologists call this shared building and political tradition the "Zimbabwe culture".

**Written by [Bryan Fawcett](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/about-this-guide.md).**

> [!NOTE]
>
> **Last reviewed: 25 October 2026** against the UNESCO World Heritage Centre listings for Great Zimbabwe, Khami and Mapungubwe, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chirikure and others, "A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe" (*Antiquity*, 2013). Dates for these states come from archaeology, oral tradition and Portuguese records, and historians still debate many of them.

## Timeline of the Zimbabwe culture

| State | Approximate dates | Centre | Visit |
| - | - | - | - |
| Mapungubwe | c. 900–1300 | Limpopo–Shashe confluence (now in South Africa) | Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa |
| Great Zimbabwe | c. 1100–1450 (occupation continued later) | Near Masvingo | [Great Zimbabwe](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/destinations/great-zimbabwe.md) |
| Torwa (Butua) | c. 1450–1680s | Khami, near Bulawayo | [Khami Ruins](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/khami-ruins.md) |
| Mutapa | 15th–17th centuries (weaker state survived later) | Northern plateau and Zambezi valley | No major site open to visitors |
| Rozvi (Changamire) | 1680s to early 19th century | South-west and central plateau | [Naletale](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/naletale-ruins.md), [Danangombe](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/dhlo-dhlo-ruins.md) |

## Mapungubwe (c. 900–1300)

Mapungubwe lies at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana meet. UNESCO describes it as the first indigenous kingdom in southern Africa and, at its height, the largest in the subcontinent. Its rulers lived on top of Mapungubwe Hill, set apart from ordinary people in the settlements below.

Mapungubwe controlled the routes that carried gold and ivory from the interior to the East African coast and on to India and China. In return, its elite received Chinese porcelain and Persian glass beads. UNESCO's view is that Mapungubwe was abandoned at the end of the 13th century, when the climate became drier and the land could no longer feed so many people, and that power shifted north to Great Zimbabwe.

Not all archaeologists accept that Mapungubwe was simply the forerunner of Great Zimbabwe. Professor Shadreck Chirikure of the University of Cape Town has argued that the evidence for this is weak and that Mapungubwe may have survived well after 1290.

Mapungubwe itself is in South Africa, in Mapungubwe National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003.

## Great Zimbabwe (c. 1100–1450)

Great Zimbabwe is about 30 km from Masvingo. UNESCO calls it "a unique testimony to the Bantu civilization of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries", and it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1986.

### When was Great Zimbabwe built?

Dates differ between sources:

* **UNESCO** says the site was built between 1100 and 1450, with the Hill Ruins lived in continuously from the 11th to the 15th century.
* **A 2013 radiocarbon study** (Chirikure, Pollard, Manyanga and Bandama, *Antiquity*) concluded that stone walling probably began at the end of the 12th or start of the 13th century, peaked in the 14th and 15th centuries, and that people went on living there until at least the 16th century and probably into the 17th.

The safest summary is that Great Zimbabwe was at its height in the 14th and 15th centuries.

### What you see at the site

The site has three main areas:

* **The Hill Complex**, an "acropolis" on a granite hill, generally thought to be the royal residence. The famous soapstone birds, now a national emblem of Zimbabwe, were found here.
* **The Great Enclosure**, built in the 14th century from cut granite blocks laid in regular courses without mortar. Its outer wall is about 250 metres around and up to 11 metres high, and Britannica describes it as the largest single ancient structure in sub-Saharan Africa. Inside is the Conical Tower, whose purpose is still unknown.
* **The Valley Ruins**, groups of homes and walled enclosures spread through the valley below the hill.

### How many people lived there?

Estimates range from about 10,000 to 20,000 people at its height. UNESCO says the population exceeded 10,000. Britannica and the Metropolitan Museum of Art give figures of up to 20,000, many living outside the stone walls.

### Why it declined

UNESCO says the capital was abandoned around 1450 because the area could no longer produce enough food for so many people and the land had been deforested. Other suggested causes include exhausted gold deposits and drought. Whatever the cause, power moved to new centres: Khami in the south-west and the Mutapa state in the north.

### Who built Great Zimbabwe?

The ancestors of today's Shona people built Great Zimbabwe. Colonial-era writers claimed that Phoenicians, Egyptians or other outsiders must have built it, and linked the site to the Queen of Sheba. The archaeologist David Randall-MacIver concluded in 1905 that the ruins were medieval and African, and Gertrude Caton-Thompson's excavations in 1929 confirmed it. Modern archaeology and UNESCO recognise Great Zimbabwe as an African achievement. The word *zimbabwe* is Shona for "stone houses".

Plan a visit with our [Great Zimbabwe guide](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/destinations/great-zimbabwe.md).

## Gold, ivory and the Swahili coast

The wealth of Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Mutapa came from long-distance trade:

* **Exports:** gold from the plateau's mines and rivers, ivory, copper and animal hides.
* **Route:** goods went down to the coast, especially the port of Sofala in present-day Mozambique. In the 14th and 15th centuries Sofala was an outpost of the Kilwa sultanate (in present-day Tanzania), which taxed the gold that passed through it.
* **Imports:** glass beads, cloth and glazed ceramics from across the Indian Ocean. Excavations at Great Zimbabwe have found Chinese and Persian porcelain and glass beads, and coins from Kilwa.

The Swahili towns of the East African coast were the middlemen, linking the gold fields of the interior to Arabia, India and China. When the Portuguese arrived on the coast in the early 1500s and settled at Sofala in 1505, they tried to take over this trade.

## Khami and the Torwa state (c. 1450–1680s)

After Great Zimbabwe declined, the Torwa dynasty ruled the south-west of the plateau, a state the Portuguese called Butua. Its capital was **Khami**, 22 km west of present-day Bulawayo. UNESCO dates the Torwa period to between about 1450 and 1650 at Khami.

Khami's builders added something new: terraced platforms held up by stone retaining walls, decorated with chevron and chequered patterns. Khami still has the longest decorated wall in the region. Finds there include Chinese Ming porcelain and Spanish and Rhineland pottery, many of them now in the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo.

Britannica records that the Rozvi under Changamire conquered the Torwa state in 1683. Khami was abandoned, and UNESCO notes the site was finally deserted during the 19th-century Ndebele incursions. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

Visit: [Khami Ruins](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/khami-ruins.md).

## The Mutapa state (15th–17th centuries)

The Mutapa state (also written Mwene Mutapa or Monomotapa) grew up in the north of the plateau, towards the Zambezi, from about the mid-15th century. *Mwene Mutapa* was the title of its ruler. Shona oral tradition names **Nyatsimba Mutota** as its founder and his son **Matope** as the ruler who expanded it.

Mutapa's wealth came from gold and ivory traded with Muslim Swahili merchants and, from the 16th century, with the Portuguese. Key events:

* **From the 1530s:** Portuguese traders moved inland and set up trading markets (*feiras*) in Mutapa territory.
* **Around 1600:** weakened by internal disputes, Mutapa rulers turned to the Portuguese for military help, which led to growing Portuguese interference.
* **1629:** after a failed attempt to drive the Portuguese out, the reigning Mwene Mutapa was deposed. His successor was forced to grant the Portuguese wide trading and mining rights.

A reduced Mutapa state survived in the Zambezi valley for a long time afterwards, but it never regained its earlier power. Britannica notes that there is little evidence to link the origins of Mutapa directly to Great Zimbabwe, although Shona oral tradition does.

## The Rozvi state (1680s–early 19th century)

The Rozvi state was ruled by kings with the title **Changamire**. Under **Changamire Dombo** (ruled c. 1684–95) it conquered the Torwa state in 1683 and, in the 1690s, drove the Portuguese out of their trading markets in the Zambezi valley. The Rozvi then dominated much of the south-west and centre of present-day Zimbabwe for over a century.

The Rozvi built in stone in the tradition of Great Zimbabwe and Khami. Their best-known sites are **Naletale**, with the most elaborately decorated walls of any Zimbabwe site, and **Danangombe** (Dhlo Dhlo).

The Rozvi state broke up in the early 19th century, when Nguni-speaking groups moving north from present-day South Africa during the Mfecane attacked it. The last of these groups were the Ndebele under Mzilikazi. Read on in [The Ndebele kingdom](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/history/ndebele-kingdom.md).

Visit: [Naletale Ruins](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/naletale-ruins.md) and [Danangombe (Dhlo Dhlo) Ruins](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/dhlo-dhlo-ruins.md).

## Other stone-built sites

The Zimbabwe culture was not the only tradition on the plateau. In the Eastern Highlands, the farming communities around Nyanga built stone-walled terraces, stone-lined pits and enclosures. You can see them at [Ziwa National Monument](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/ziwa-ruins.md). Smaller stone ruins are scattered across the country; see [minor ruins](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/minor-ruins.md).

## Related guides

> **[Zimbabwe history timeline](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/history.md)**

> **[UNESCO World Heritage sites](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/heritage/unesco-world-heritage.md)**

> **[Great Zimbabwe](https://www.travel-info.co.zw/destinations/great-zimbabwe.md)**

## Sources

* [UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Great Zimbabwe National Monument](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364/)
* [UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Khami Ruins National Monument](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/365/)
* [UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/)
* [Antiquity — Chirikure, Pollard, Manyanga and Bandama, "A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe: re-threading the sequence of a vandalised monument" (2013)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/bayesian-chronology-for-great-zimbabwe-rethreading-the-sequence-of-a-vandalised-monument/0BFAF99EA338FB35BE0056D50BD8BF65)
* [University of Cape Town News — "Mapungubwe not the origin of Great Zimbabwe" (16 May 2012)](https://news.uct.ac.za/article/-2012-05-16-mapungubwe-not-the-origin-of-great-zimbabwe)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Great Zimbabwe](https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Zimbabwe)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Matapa (Mutapa)](https://www.britannica.com/place/Matapa-Southern-African-empire)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Torwa](https://www.britannica.com/place/Torwa)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Changamire dynasty](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Changamire-dynasty)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Rozwi](https://www.britannica.com/place/Rozwi-historical-state-Africa)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — David Randall-MacIver](https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Randall-MacIver)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Sofala](https://www.britannica.com/place/Sofala)
* [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Southern Africa: European and African interaction from the 15th through the 18th century](https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/European-and-African-interaction-from-the-15th-through-the-18th-century)
* [The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Great Zimbabwe (11th–15th century)](https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/great-zimbabwe-11th-15th-century)
* [The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Eastern and Southern Africa, 1000–1400 A.D.](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/07/afa.html)
* [World History Encyclopedia — Mutapa](https://www.worldhistory.org/Mutapa/)

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