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Medieval Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe) has
earned much acclaim for it magnificent and massive stone structures. The
structures were so impressive many erroneous stories were dreamed up to
deny credit to the black natives; today, though, all scholars agree that
the black people of the region with, "no one from the outside world
to guide them,"1
developed and built the massive stone castles and walls.
Origins, Government and Economy
Little is known of the origins of Great Zimbabwe, yet we do know that a
small number of Iron Age people were living in the Great Zimbabwe by at
least the 4th century AD. A significant settlement took place
in the 10th or 11th century, and by the 14th
century the foundation a powerful kingdom was in place.2
Although gold became the
nation's major source of wealth, "Most historians," D.T. Niane
notes, "agree that gold was not the origin of the wealth of Zimbabwe,"
but, like many African cultures, it was, "the considerable
development of cattle on the grass plateau which was free of the tsetse
fly."
From about the late twelfth
century," Peter Garlake tells us, "diversification,
expansion, affluence, and a concomitant of these, increased social,
economic and functional specialization took place in both cultures so
that in the end, entire settlements could, like areas within sites, be
built and used for limited functions by certain groups or clusters of
people."3
With the expansion of the metal trade and textile production--as demonstrated by the increase of spindle
whorls--Zimbabwe became a flourishing feudal state from AD 1250-1750:
stretching over 500 miles from the Zambezi
River to Transvaal.4
There were some central cities
in Great Zimbabwe but most people lived in small villages as farmers or
cattle-herders.5
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Architecture
"All serious scholars now perceive Great Zimbabwe as an essentially
African development, built of local raw material and according to
architectural principles that have endured from the use of these media
over many centuries."6
~B.M. Fagan, Oxford
Archeologist
The first stonewalls of the
region were built in the 13th century. Today over 300 stone
walls from medieval times stand in the land of modern Zimbabwe and its surrounding
nations. These structures have been lauded as, "very curious and
well-constructed," as early as 1501 by the Portuguese de Goes, and
as possessing, "exceptionally sophisticated drystone masonry,"
as studied recently by University of New England Archeologist, Graham
Connah.7
The greatest ruins are
located in the, "Great Zimbabwe." Great Zimbabwe is a sixty-acre site
obtaining two massive stone structures. One, the "Acropolis,"
is a succession of stone buildings located on a high hill that overlooks
a much larger enclosure, called the "elliptical building." The
"elliptical building" was likely a royal palace and fort. It is
over 300 ft long and 220 ft wide-somewhat larger than a football field.8The
wall surrounding the castle is 244 meters long, 10 meters high, and 5
meters thick.9
As noted by Connah,
"There was never any doubt about its African origins in the minds of those who real
understood the archaeological evidence,"10
Still, ridiculous stories were dreamed up to deny credit to the blacks of
the region. The two most popular stories were that Phoenicians built the
structures, or they were King Solomon's mines. Even though all the
evidence clearly disproved these theories beyond a doubt the public
gladly accepted the fictional stories; their misperception of black Africa was of savage cannibalistic spear
throwers running around in their underwear--it was too difficult to believe those blacks could
have built what they clearly had.
Archeologists were never
fooled. On behalf of the British Association as early as 1905,
Egyptologist, David Randall MacIver, examined the structures and
observed, "whether military or domestic, there is not a trace of
Oriental or European style of any period whatever (while) the character
of the dwellings contained within the stone ruins, and forming and
integral part of them, is unmistakably African?the arts and manufactures
exemplified by objects found within the dwellings are typically African,
except when the objects are imports of well-known medieval or
post-medieval date."11
The style is easily traced
to early architecture of the region. "The architecture of Great
Zimbabwe," B.M. Fagan, an archeologist from the University of
California and Oxford reports, "is a logical extension of the large
enclosures and chiefs' quarters which were built of grass, mud and poles
in other African states, but merely constructed here in stone?.The Great
Enclosure itself was divided into a series of smaller enclosures, in
which the foundations of substantial pole-and-mud houses are to be seen.
It was presumably the dwelling place of the rulers of Great Zimbabwe, an
impressive and politically highly significant structure?..With the
exception of the conical tower, which is a unique structure of unknown
significance there is nothing in Great Zimbabwe architecture which
is alien to African practice."12
The Heritage of World
Civilization, a book
compiled by Harvard and Yale historians, asserts that the,
"civilization was a purely African one sited far enough inland never
to have felt the impact of Islam."13
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Fall of Zimbabwe
In the 1490's much
of the kingdom's population was forced to move north due to land
exhaustion. The only way the people could have remained would have been
through irrigation or artificial fertilization, neither of which could be
done in the Savannah
woodland near Great Zimbabwe.14
Consequently southern portions of the great state broke off and became
independent. The Portuguese' destruction of the Swahili Coast/Inland
Africa/ Indian trade, (see Swahili
Coast and Fall of Africa) which
had been a vital economic function of the region, crippled Zimbabwe's
economy. East Africa and Zimbabwe
had reached its apogee in the 15th century, but a century later it was
mostly destroyed.
Basil Davidson wrote the
following passage on Zimbabwe's
place in medieval Africa:
"The foundations of Zimbabwe
go back to much the same period as the foundations of Ghana. The initial raising of
the walls of the, "Acropolis," and the, "elliptical
building," was not much later than the time when Mali grew strong, and Timbuktu and Djenne saw their
transformation into seats of thought and learning. The miles of careful
terracing and the hilltop forts and store-pits and stone dwellings of
Niekerk and Inyanga were made while Mohammed Askia and his successors
ruled the Western Sudan."15
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1Davidson,
Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Boston: Little
Brown, 1959, 281
2Africa
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century/ editor, D.T. Niane (London;
Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 533
3Ibid,
533
4Iliffe,
John. African: The History of a Continent. Great
Britain: University
of Cambridge, 1995,
101
5Africa
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century/ editor, D.T. Niane (London;
Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 535
6Ibid,
532
7Connah,
Graham. African Civilizations. Armidale, N.S.W., Australia: University of New
England, 1998, 193
8Davidson,
Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Boston: Little
Brown, 1959, 243
9Ibid,
193
10Connah,
183
11Davidson,
Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Boston: Little
Brown, 1959, 255
12Africa
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century/ editor, D.T. Niane (London;
Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 542
13The
Heritage of World Civilizations: Volume One: To 1650, 4th ed. Editor,
Owen, Cralyce. Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Simon & Shuster, 1997, 512
14Africa
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century/ editor, D.T. Niane (London;
Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 548
15Davidson,
Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Boston: Little
Brown, 1959, 282
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