Lecture #5

The Mutapa State

 Origins and development of the Mutapa state
• Popular oral traditions have it that, following the depletion of salt reserves,
Nyatsimba Mutota, the last ruler at Great Zimbabwe left with his followers in the
direction of northern Zimbabwe in search of salt.
• Salt was said to have been found in the Dande valley in northern Zimbabwe
following which Nyatsimba Mutota settled there and founded the Mutapa State.
• A large body of opinion regards this account of the origins of the Mutapa state as
a myth.
• There is no evidence to suggest that the last ruler of GZ was the first ruler of
Mutapa State.
• The archaeological dating evidence also suggests that there is no direct causal
relationship between the collapse of the Zimbabwe state and the rise of the
Mutapa state.
• This is based on dating evidence obtained from stone built sites such as
Zvongombe and Kasekete that are directly associated with the Mutapa state which
have been dated from the early to middle part of the 16th century AD.
• While the sites of Kasekete, Zvongombe have been associated with the
Mutapa, the precise location of the state has been problematic. Pikirayi
thinks the state was based in the Mt Darwin area, where an archaeological
site (Baranda) with huge amounts of glass beads and other items of foreign
origion was found. Pikirayi thinks this site is the one referred to in
Portuguese documents as the Market (feira) of Massapa.

• Due to polotical interference bythe Portuguese and civil strife, the Mutapa
was driven further into the Zambezi valley. Some stone built sites in
Mozambique such as Songo could have been associated with the Mutapa.

• Some sites coulkd have been submerged under the Cahora Bassa dam
• There are indications that the Mutapa state was developing before the collapse
of the Zimbabwe state.

• In any case, it is inconceivable that an economically and politically sound state

system such as the Zimbabwe state would have failed to procure salt by other
means other than a mass migration especially considering an investment on the
scale of the construction of Great Zimbabwe as capital.

• While a cultural link did exist between Great Zimbabwe and the Mutapa state, it
is unlikely that there was a direct political succession.

• New dating evidence from Great Zimbabwe suggests that Great Zimbabwe
continued to be occupied for a considerable time well after the Mutapa state had
been established.
• Another debate surrounds the territorial or geographical extent of the Mutapa
state.
• Whilst some scholars saw it as an empire stretching from Botswana in the west to
Mozambique in the east others saw it as much smaller.
• Descriptions of the size of the Mutapa state relied heavily on Portuguese
records/documents which themselves may have been deliberately exaggerated.
• The Mutapa state appears to have occupied a triangle of land between the
Zambezi river in the north, the Hunyani river and Mvurwi range on the
southwest, and the Mazoe and Ruenya rivers on the southeast.
• Whatever the case may be, by the 19th century the state had shrank significantly
and was only confined to Chidima in the Zambezi valley.
• Prior to modern archaeological research in northern Zimbabwe which was
initiated in the early 1990s, the history of the Mutapa state was heavily
dependent upon the work of D.P. Abraham especially the oral traditions he
collected between around 1950 and 1971.
• The Mutapa state flourished from the 16th to the late 19th century AD.

• Portuguese documents show that it was a very powerful and successful system.

• The political economy of the state, like the Zimbabwe state, was based on several
branches of production.

• Portuguese documents clearly attest the importance of agricultural production,

cattle herding and external trade.

• The system however went into decline during the 19th century as a result of a
combination of factors of which internal strife and Portguese interference were
the most telling.

• By the end of the 19th century, the state was a shadow of it’s former self.