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The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and largest structures located in Southern Africa. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as 11 m (36 ft) extending approximately 250 m (820 ft).
At Great Zimbabwe's centre was the Great Enclosure which housed royalty and had demarcated spaces for rituals, while commoners surrounded them within the second perimeter wall. The Zimbabwe state was composed of over 150 smaller zimbabwes and likely covered 50,000 km² (19,000 square miles).
The name "Zimbabwe" stems from a Shona term for Great Zimbabwe, a medieval city in the country's south-east.Two different theories address the origin of the word. Many sources hold that "Zimbabwe" derives from dzimba-dza-mabwe, translated from the Karanga dialect of Shona as "houses of stones" (dzimba = plural of imba, "house"; mabwe = plural of ibwe, "stone").
The Mapungubwe people, a Bantu-speaking group of migrants from present-day South Africa, inhabited the Great Zimbabwe site from about AD 1000 - 1550, intermarrying with san bushmen people the native shona talk of this as the story of the tavara being the bantu and shava being the bushmen . From about 1100, the fortress took shape, reaching its ...
This Kalanga state further refined and expanded upon Mapungubwe's stone architecture, which survives to this day at the ruins of the kingdom's capital of Great Zimbabwe. From c. 1450 –1760, Zimbabwe gave way to the Kingdom of Mutapa. This Kalanga state ruled much of the area that is known as Zimbabwe today, and parts of central Mozambique.
The name "Zimbabwe", based on a Shona term for Great Zimbabwe, an ancient ruined city in the country's south-east, was first recorded as a term of national reference in 1960, when it was coined by the black nationalist Michael Mawema, [5] whose Zimbabwe National Party became the first to officially use the name in 1961. [6]
Among Afrocentrists the name 'Alkebulan' (also spelled 'Al Kebulan' or 'Alkebu Lan') is sometimes used a replacement for 'Africa.' Users often erroneously claim that it derives from the Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' (in reality Bilad as-Sudan ), or alternatively that it comes from one or more indigenous African languages and means 'Garden of ...
Great Zimbabwe, which gave the modern nation its name, was a political and economic powerhouse, its influence rippling throughout Southern Africa. The city was part of an extensive trading network, exchanging gold, ivory, copper, and iron for luxury goods from as far afield as China and the Persian Gulf, a testament to the globalised world of ...