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Kingdom of Butua

Key Points

    • The Kingdom of Butua or Butwa (c. 1450 - 1683) was a pre-colonial African state located in what is now southwestern Zimbabwe. It arose from the collapse of Great Zimbabwe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. 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 of the BakaLanga people until 1683. The ruling dynasty based its capital at the stone city of Khami. Its people were ancestors of the Bakalanga.
    • The site of Khami reveals seven built-up areas occupied by the royal family with open areas in the valley occupied by the commoners. The ruins include a royal enclosure or Hill Complex, which had to be on higher ground than other buildings, stone walls and hut platforms, and also a Christian cross believed to have been placed by a contemporary missionary. Other platforms are believed to have been cattle kraals and a 6m-high by 68m-long retaining wall with a chequered pattern. Recent excavations (2000–2006) have revealed that the walls of the western parts of the Hill Complex were all decorated in chequer, herringbone, cord, as well as variegated stone blocks.
    • Several artefacts such as ritual drinking pots, iron and bronze weapons, copper objects and ivory divining pieces are also found at Khami.
    • The BakaLanga 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. The BakaLanga are thought to have built Khami, Lusvingo, Mapungugwe and other ruins scattered across western Zimbabwe and east Botswana.
    • In 1683, the kingdom was conquered by the Rozwi Empire.


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Ruins of Khami, Zimbabwe, near Bulawayo (Torwa Dynasty)
Steps leading into the ancient city of Khami.
The ruins of Khami, capital of the Butua Kingdom.
The outer wall of Khami





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External Links

The Ancient Khami Ruins in Zimbabwe: the Capital of the Kingdom of Butua

Luswingo Heritage Site

Khami Ruins National Monument




This page uses materials from Wikipedia available in the references. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

References


Wikipedia contributors. (2017, March 29). Kingdom of Butua. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:46, February 3, 2019, from Link
Wikipedia contributors. (2018, September 21). Torwa dynasty. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:48, February 3, 2019, from Link
Wikipedia contributors. (2019, May 16). Khami. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:21, May 25, 2019, from Link