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Kingdom Of Butua
The Kingdom of Butua or Butwa (c. 1450–1683) was a pre-colonial African state located in what is now southwestern Zimbabwe. Butua was renowned as the source of gold for Arab and Portuguese traders. The region was first mentioned in Portuguese records in 1512. The kingdom was governed by the Torwa dynasty until 1683 from its capital at Khami. Its people were ancestors of the Shona/Bakalanga. In 1683, the kingdom was conquered by the Rozwi Empire. The foundations of the Khami Ruins show a striking resemblance to the pattern of masonry at the base of the Zimbabwe Ruins. Hence the Kalanga are thought to have built Khami, Lusvingo, Mapungugwe and other ruins scattered across western Zimbabwe and east Botswana. Gallery File:Khamiruins1.jpg, The ruins of Khami, capital of the Butua Kingdom. File:Khamiruins2.jpg, Steps leading into the ancient city of Khami File:Khamiruins3.jpg, The outer wall of Khami See also *Torwa dynasty *Rozwi Empire *Naletale Naletale (or Nalatale) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can expand across the domains of the executive, legislative, and judicial. The succession of monarchs in many cases has been hereditical, often building dynastic periods. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have also happened. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements. Monarchs can carry various titles such as emperor, empress, king, queen, raja, khan, tsar, sultan, shah, or pharaoh. Monarchies can form federations, personal unions and realms with vassals through personal association with the monarch, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khami
Khami (also written as ''Khame'', ''Kame'' or ''Kami'') is a ruined city located 22 kilometres west of Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe. It was once the capital of the Kingdom of Butwa of the Torwa dynasty. It is now a national monument, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Context The settlement that we see today was a development of the architectural form that emerged at Great Zimbabwe in the 13th century AD and a local Leopard's Kopje culture that built platforms of rough walling on which houses would be constructed. Khami marks an innovation that recognised the environment in which was built. The area around Khami, being riverine, is hot and had problems with malaria. The stone found at Khami (laminar granite) was different from the ones found in other areas of Zimbabwe (biotite). With a mixture of dolerite, this stone was harder to quarry and produced shapeless building stone. It can be estimated that over 60% of the stone produced at these quarries would not be of build ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ikalanga
Kalanga, or ''TjiKalanga'' (in Zimbabwe), is a Bantu language spoken by the Kalanga people in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It has an extensive phoneme inventory, which includes palatalised, velarised, aspirated and breathy-voiced consonants, as well as whistled sibilants. Kalanga is recognised as an official language by the Zimbabwean Constitution of 2013 and is taught in schools in areas where its speakers predominate.The iKalanga language is closely related to the Nambya, TshiVenda, and KheLobedu languages of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Classification and varieties Linguists place Kalanga (S.16 in Guthrie's classification) and Nambya (in the Hwange region of Zimbabwe) as the western branch of the Shona group (or Shonic, or Shona-Nyai) group of languages, collectively coded as S.10. Kalanga has a dialectal variation between its Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mwari
Mwari also known as Musikavanhu, Musiki, Tenzi and Ishe, is the Supreme Creator deity according to Shona traditional religion. It is believed that Mwari is the author of all things and all life and all is in him. The majority of this deity's followers are concentrated in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Mwari is an omnipotent being, who rules over spirits and is the Supreme God of the religion. The same deity is applied and also referred to as Inkhosi in Northern and Southern Ndebele. Mwari's reverence dates back to the age of the ancient king ''Monomotapa'', of the Mutapa Kingdom on the Zambezi River. Etymology The name "''Mwari''" in Shona means the force behind Creation. The word itself signifies, resembles and is interpreted as "God", but only in the religious context. The furthering of this term's acceptance is when the Christian missionaries interpreted the Bible for the locals, in which they used the term "Mwari" instead of "God". History The nomadic Bantu we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare. The second largest city is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 15 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona language, Shona, and Northern Ndebele language, Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu peoples, Bantu people (who would become the ethnic Shona people, Shona) built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe which became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century, controlling the gold, ivory and copper trades with the Swahili coast, which were connected to Arab and Indian states. By the mid 15th century, the city-state had been abandoned. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, fol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental ( native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides). Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the western Indian Ocean islands (including the Comoros). An Arab diaspora is also present around the world in significant numbers, most notably in the Americas, Western Europe, Turkey, Indonesia, and Iran. In modern usage, the term "Arab" tends to refer to those who both carry that ethnic identity and speak Arabic as their native language. This contrasts with the narrower traditional definition, which refers to the descendants of the tribes of Arabia. The religion of Islam was developed in Arabia, and Classical Arabic serves as the language of Islamic literature. 93 percent of Arabs are Muslims (the remainder consisted mostly of Arab Christians), while Arab Muslims are only 20 percent of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe, and its Iberian portion is bordered to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and east by Spain, the sole country to have a land border with Portugal. Its two archipelagos form two autonomous regions with their own regional governments. Lisbon is the capital and largest city by population. Portugal is the oldest continuously existing nation state on the Iberian Peninsula and one of the oldest in Europe, its territory having been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times. It was inhabited by pre-Celtic and Celtic peoples who had contact with Phoenicians and Ancient Greek traders, it was ruled by the Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torwa Dynasty
The Torwa dynasty was the ruling family of the Butua kingdom that arose from the collapse of Great Zimbabwe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, founded perhaps by the legendary Dlembeu. History The Torwa dynasty of the kalanga people based itself at the stone city of Khami from 1450 to 1683. Cattle and gold brought prosperity. The new culture at Khami developed both the stone building techniques and the pottery styles found at Great Zimbabwe. Masons continued to refine Great Zimbabwe’s tradition of building precise stone walls. At Khami several artefacts are found, such as ritual drinking pots, iron and bronze weapons, copper objects and ivory divining pieces. Artifacts from Europe and China are reminders that Khami was once a trade centre. During this period the first Europeans arrived. The first known European visitor was Antonio Fernandes, a Portuguese "degredado" (convict exile) serving his term in Sofala, who entered the Zimbabwean plateau in 1513. There had always ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bakalanga
The Kalanga or Bakalanga are a southern Bantu ethnic group mainly inhabiting Matebeleland in Zimbabwe, northeastern Botswana and Limpopo Province in South Africa. They are historically related to the Nambya, Karanga, Bapedi and Venda. Current day BaKalanga people are descendants of the Leopard Kopje’s people who greatly influenced civilization in the Southern sphere of the African continent. BaKalanga history shows and tells us that they are the builders of the Mapungubwe Empire which was Southern Africa’s first uniform Kingdom. From Mapungubwe they were also part of the Karanga Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe (Nzimabwe,or Nzi we Mabwe-TjiKalanga language). Upon the fall of the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom they went on to build the Khami ruins found in today’s Matebeleland Province in Zimbabwe and lastly proceeded on to occupy the Domboshaba (Botswana) and Njelele (Zimbabwe) shrines. Kalanga people also believe in rainmaking rites like their BaLobedu and VhaVenda counterparts as w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rozwi Empire
The Rozvi Empire (1684–1866) was a Shona state established on the Zimbabwean Plateau by Changamire Dombo. The term "Rozvi" refers to their legacy as a warrior nation, taken from the Shona term ''kurozva'', "to plunder". They became the most powerful fighting force in the whole of Zimbabwe. History In 1683, Portuguese militia tried to take control of the gold trade in the interior of Africa by invading the Rozvi empire. However, the Rozvi, armed with their traditional spears and shields, repelled these attacks and maintained control of the gold mines, until their empire collapsed. The Rozvi were led by Changamire Dombo, and his son Kambgun Dombo whose power was based in Butua in the southwest of Africa. The Rozvi were formed from several Shona states that dominated the plateau of present-day Zimbabwe. They drove the Portuguese off the central plateau, and the Europeans retained only a nominal presence at one of the fair-towns in the eastern highlands. Changamire brought th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
