Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe was a Shona kingdom on the plateau of present-day Zimbabwe, ruled from its stone capital. Around 1300 it displaced Mapungubwe as a leading inland trading power, sending gold to ports such as Sofala.

In the early fifteenth century the gold trade shifted north and the royal prince Nyatsimba Mutota founded Mutapa. Power passed to Mutapa and to Butua at Khami, while Great Zimbabwe remained inhabited. In the sixteenth century Mutapa kings kept wives and rituals in the city; it was abandoned in the seventeenth century.