Nyasa

Nyasa is the name given to the group of Bantu languages spoken around Lake Nyasa and the lower Zambezi: its chief members are Chewa, also called Nyanja, Tumbuka, the Malawian Tonga and the Sena group. Their speakers trace their roots to the Bantu pottery of Katanga dated to the 400s, and Chewa clans began settling the lake shore in the 1200s.

From the early 1400s the Chewa built the Maravi Empire, whose kalonga kings ruled central and southern Malawi on tribute in ivory. In the 1600s, under Kalonga Muzura, it stretched from the Luangwa River to the Zambezi and traded cloth and iron to the Mozambique coast.

After succession disputes fragmented it in the 1700s, its languages kept spreading among farming villagers, and the name Chewa was first written down by the Portuguese officer António Gamitto in 1831.