Sofala
Encyclopedia
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Monomotapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank
Sofala Bank
The Sofala Bank is Mozambique's major shelf area covering the largest part of the continental shelf, about 80 nautical miles from the coast of Sofala to the shelf break...

 in Sofala Province
Sofala Province
Sofala is a province of Mozambique. It has an area of 68,018 km² and a population of 1.676.131 . Beira is the capital of the province. The province is named for the ruined port of Sofala.- Districts :Districts of Sofala Province include:...

 of Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

.

History

One of the oldest harbours documented in Southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...

, medieval Sofala was erected on the edge of a wide estuary formed by the Buzi River
Buzi River
Buzi River is a river in Mozambique. Buzi flows eastward through the Manica and Sofala provinces of Mozambique. It then empties to the Mozambique Channel west of Beira, forming an estuary.The Buzi River is long, with a drainage basin in size...

 (called Rio de Sofala in older maps). Sofala was founded about the year 700 AD. The Arabs had frequented the coast since 915, followed by traders from Persia.

The Buzi river connected Sofala to the internal market town of Manica
Manica, Mozambique
Manica is a market town in western Mozambique, lying west of Chimoio in the province of Manica. Originally the centre of the Kingdom of Manica, it grew around the gold trade but is now best known for the Chinamapere rock paintings. The Penha Longa Mountains lie north of the town.- Transport :It...

, and from there to the goldfields of Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which existed from 1100 to 1450 C.E. during the country’s Late Iron Age. The monument, which first began to be constructed in the 11th century and which continued to be built until the 14th century, spanned an...

. Sometime in the 10th C., Sofala emerged as a small trading post erected by Somali merchants and seafarers
Somali people
Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family...

 from Mogadishu
Mogadishu
Mogadishu , popularly known as Xamar, is the largest city in Somalia and the nation's capital. Located in the coastal Benadir region on the Indian Ocean, the city has served as an important port for centuries....

 (modern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

), to trade cotton cloth for gold and ivory. In the 1180s, Sultan Suleiman Hassan of Kilwa
Kilwa Kisiwani
Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania.- History :A document written around AD 1200 called al-Maqama al Kilwiyya discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa to Ibadism, as it had recently been effected by the Ghurabiyya...

 (in present-day Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

) seized control of Sofala, and brought Sofala into the Kilwa Sultanate
Kilwa Sultanate
The Kilwa Sultanate was a Medieval sultanate, centered at Kilwa , whose authority, at its height, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast. It was founded in the 10th century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi...

 and the Swahili
Swahili culture
Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people living on the east coast of Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique as well as on the islands in the area, from Zanzibar to Comoros, who speak Swahili as their native language....

 cultural sphere. The Swahili strengthened its trading capacity by having, among other things, river-going dhow
Dhow
Dhow is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Some historians believe the dhow was invented by Arabs but this is disputed by some others. Dhows typically weigh 300 to 500 tons, and have a...

s ply the Buzi and Save
Save River (Africa)
The Save is a 400km river of southeastern Africa, flowing through Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The river has its source in Zimbabwe, some 80 km south of Harare, then flows south and then east, from the Zimbabwean highveld to its confluence with the Odzi River...

 rivers to ferry the gold extracted in the hinterlands to the coast.

Sofala's subsequent position as the principal entrepot of the Monomatapa gold trade prompted Portuguese chronicler Thomé Lopes
Thomé Lopes
Thomé Lopes or Tomé Lopes was a Portuguese scrivener, writer of an eyewitness account of the second journey of Vasco da Gama to India .Thomé Lopes's background is obscure...

 to identify Sofala with the Biblical Ophir
Ophir
Ophir is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon is supposed to have received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, every three years.- Citations :...

 and its ancient rulers with the dynasty of the queen of Sheba. Although the notion was mentioned by Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 in Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

, among many other works of literature and science, it has since been discarded. The name Sofala is most probably derived from the Arabic for 'lowlands', a reference to the flat coastlands and low-lying islands and sandbanks that characterize the region.

Although the revenues from Sofala's gold trade proved a windfall for the Sultans of Kilwa
Kilwa Sultanate
The Kilwa Sultanate was a Medieval sultanate, centered at Kilwa , whose authority, at its height, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast. It was founded in the 10th century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi...

, and allowed them to finance the expansion of the Swahili commercial empire all along the East African coast, Sofala was not a mere subsidiary or outpost of Kilwa, but a leading town in its own right, with its own internal elite, merchant communities, trade connections and settlements as far south as Cape Correntes
Cape Correntes
Cape Correntes is a cape or headland in the Inhambane Province in Mozambique. It sits at the southern entry of the Mozambique Channel.•...

 (and some across the channel in Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

). Formally, Sofala continued to belong to the Kingdom of Monomatapa, the Swahili
Swahili people
The Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group and culture found in East Africa, mainly in the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya, Tanzania and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil,...

 community paying tribute for permission to reside and trade there. The Sultan of Kilwa only had jurisdiction on the Swahili residents, and his governor was more akin to a consul
Consul (representative)
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...

 than a ruler. The city retained a great degree of autonomy, and could be quite prickly should the Sultan of Kilwa try to interfere in their affairs. Sofala was easily the most dominant coastal city south of Kilwa
Kilwa Kisiwani
Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania.- History :A document written around AD 1200 called al-Maqama al Kilwiyya discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa to Ibadism, as it had recently been effected by the Ghurabiyya...

 itself.

Portuguese Arrival

Portuguese explorer and spy Pêro da Covilhã
Pêro da Covilhã
Pedro or Pêro da Covilhã was a Portuguese diplomat and explorer.He was a native of Covilhã in Beira. In his early life he had gone to Castile and entered the service of Alphonso, Duke of Seville...

, travelling overland disguised as an Arab merchant, was the first European known to have visited Sofala in 1489. His secret report to Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

 identified Sofala's role as a gold emporium (although by this time, the gold trade was quite diminished from its heyday). In 1501 Sofala was scouted from the sea
2nd Portuguese India Armada (Cabral, 1500)
The Second Portuguese India Armada was assembled in 1500 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral. Cabral's armada famously discovered Brazil for the Portuguese crown along the way...

 and its location determined by captain Sancho de Tovar
Sancho de Tovar
Sancho de Tovar, 6th Lord of Cevico, Caracena and Boca de Huérgano was a Portuguese nobleman of Castilian birth, best known as a navigator and explorer during the Portuguese age of discoveries. He was the sub-captain of the fleet that discovered Brazil in 1500, and was later appointed Governor of...

. In 1502, Pedro Afonso de Aguiar (others say Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...

 himself) led the first Portuguese ships
4th Portuguese India Armada (Gama, 1502)
The Fourth India Armada was assembled in 1502 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Vasco da Gama. It was Gama's second trip to India...

 into Sofala harbor.

Aguiar (or Gama) sought out an audience with the ruling sheikh Isuf of Sofala (Yçuf in Barros
João de Barros
João de Barros , called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia , a history of the Portuguese in India and Asia.-Early years:...

 Çufe in Goes). At the time, Isuf was engaged in a quarrel with Kilwa
Kilwa Sultanate
The Kilwa Sultanate was a Medieval sultanate, centered at Kilwa , whose authority, at its height, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast. It was founded in the 10th century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi...

. The minister Emir Ibrahim had deposed and murdered the legitimate Sultan al-Fudail of Kilwa, and seized power for himself. Isuf of Sofala refused to recognize the usurper and was looking for a way to shake off Kilwa's lordship and chart an independent course for Sofala. The Portuguese, with their powerful ships, seemed to provide the key. At any rate, the elderly sheikh Isuf realized it would be better to make allies rather than enemies out of them, and agreed to a commercial and alliance treaty with the Kingdom of Portugal
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...

.

This was followed upon in 1505 when Pêro de Anaia
Pêro de Anaia
Pêro de Anaia or Pedro d'Anaya or Anhaya or da Nhaya or da Naia was a Castilian-Portuguese 16th C...

 (part of the 7th Armada
7th Portuguese India Armada (Almeida, 1505)
The Seventh India Armada was assembled in 1505 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy of the Indies...

) was granted permission by sheikh Isuf to erect a factory
Factory (trading post)
Factory was the English term for the trading posts system originally established by Europeans in foreign territories, first within different states of medieval Europe, and later in their colonial possessions...

 and fortress near the city. Fort São Caetano
Fort São Caetano
Fort São Caetano is a fort that was built in the 16th century in the present town of Sofala, Mozambique. The fort precisely dates from 1505. Pêro de Anaia assumed the title of Captain-General of Sofala and made Sofala the first Portuguese colony in the region....

 of Sofala was the second Portuguese fort in East Africa (the first, at Kilwa
Kilwa Kisiwani
Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania.- History :A document written around AD 1200 called al-Maqama al Kilwiyya discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa to Ibadism, as it had recently been effected by the Ghurabiyya...

, was built only a few months earlier). Anaia used stone imported for the purpose from Europe (it was subsequently reused for construction of Beira
Beira, Mozambique
Beira is the second largest city in Mozambique. It lies in the central region of the country in Sofala Province, where the Pungue River meets the Indian Ocean. Beira had a population of 412,588 in 1997, which grew to an estimated 546,000 in 2006...

's cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

).

The Portuguese fort did not last very long. Much of the garrison was quickly decimated by fevers (probably malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

). In late 1507, the new Portuguese captain of Sofala, Vasco Gomes de Abreu, captured the nearby island of Mozambique. Gradually, much of the Sofala garrison, officers and operations were transferred to the island, reducing Fort Sofala to a mere outpost. Nonetheless, colonial governors of Portuguese Mozambique would continue to bear 'Captain of Sofala' as their primary official title.

Aftermath

If not for its gold trade, Sofala would be likely have been avoided by both the Swahili and the Portuguese. The entrance to Sofala estuary was blocked by a long moving sand bank, which was followed by hazardous shoal
Shoal
Shoal, shoals or shoaling may mean:* Shoal, a sandbank or reef creating shallow water, especially where it forms a hazard to shipping* Shoal draught , of a boat with shallow draught which can pass over some shoals: see Draft...

s, allowing boats to approach safely only at high tide. The shores of Sofala were a mangrove swamp, replete with stagnant waters and malarial mosquitos. As a harbor, it was less than suitable for Portuguese ships, which is why the Portuguese were quick to seize Mozambique Island in 1507, and make that their preferred harbor.

The gold trade also proved to be a disappointment. The old goldfields were largely exhausted by the time the Portuguese arrived, and gold production had moved further north. Market towns were erected on the Zambezi
Zambezi
The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is , slightly less than half that of the Nile...

 escarpment, to which Sofala was less convenient as an outlet than the rising new towns of Quelimane
Quelimane
Quelimane is a seaport in Mozambique. It is the administrative capital of the Zambezia Province and the province's largest city, and stands 25 km from the mouth of the Rio dos Bons Sinais . The river was named when Vasco da Gama, on his way to India, reached it and saw "good signs" that he was on...

 and Angoche
Angoche
Angoche is a city of Nampula Province in Mozambique. The city was named António Enes until 1976, after the 19th century Portuguese journalist and colonial administrator, António José Enes...

.

The shifting sands and boundaries of the Buzi estuary have since allowed the sea to reclaim much of old Sofala. There are very few ruins in modern New Sofala to suggest the town's former grandeur and wealth.

In its heyday, the town of Sofala itself was formed by two towns, one close to the water on a sand flat, the other on higher and healthier ground. The Sofalese also had a satellite settlement to the north, at the mouth of the Pungwe River
Pungwe River
Pungwe River is a 400 km long river in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It rises below Mount Nyangani in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe and then flows eastward through the Manica and Sofala provinces of Mozambique. It then empties to the Mozambique Channel in Beira, forming a large estuary...

 called Rio de São Vicente in old maps. As grand old Sofala sank into the ocean, modern Beira
Beira, Mozambique
Beira is the second largest city in Mozambique. It lies in the central region of the country in Sofala Province, where the Pungue River meets the Indian Ocean. Beira had a population of 412,588 in 1997, which grew to an estimated 546,000 in 2006...

 was erected on the site of that outpost.

Sofala lost its remaining commercial preeminence once Beira
Beira, Mozambique
Beira is the second largest city in Mozambique. It lies in the central region of the country in Sofala Province, where the Pungue River meets the Indian Ocean. Beira had a population of 412,588 in 1997, which grew to an estimated 546,000 in 2006...

was established 20 miles to the north in 1890. The harbour was once reputed to be capable of holding a hundred vessels, but has since silted up due to deforestation of the banks of the river and deposition of topsoil in the harbour.
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