MONOMOTAPA. In old maps of south-east Africa, de rived originally from Portuguese and from Dutch sources, an extensive region on the cuama or Zambezi and to the south of it is styled regnum monomotapae. The precise character of the kingdom has been the subject of much discussion, and some mod em historians relegate the monomotapa to the realm of myth. But such scepticism is unjustifiable since all Portuguese writers from the beginning of the 16th century onwards reiterated the assertion that there was a powerful rule known far and wide by that title.
The word "monomotapa" is of Bantu origin and has been variously interpreted. Father J. Torrend, Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages (p. Ioi) renders it "Lord of the water-elephants," and remarks that the hippopotamus is even to the present day a sacred animal among the Karanga. The earliest recorded bearer of the name is Mokomba Menamotapam, mentioned by Diogo de Alcacova in 1506 as father of the Kwesa rimgo Menamotapam who ruled at that date over Vealanga, a kingdom that included Sofala. His capital was called Zumubany, an obvious corruption of the term "Zimbabwe," the residence of any important chief. Portuguese chroniclers not only refer to the territory and the people of the monomotapa as "Mocaranga" (i.e., of the Karanga tribe), but explicitly assert that the "emperor" himself was a "Mocaranga." Consequently, he must have been a negro, and the Dominican who records the baptism of Dom Filippe by a friar of the order in the middle of the 17th century actually states that this "powerful king" was a black man ("corn as carves pretas"). This seems to controvert the assumption that there existed in southern Rhodesia a ruling caste of different racial origin from the general Bantu population.
It is difficult to arrive at an estimate of the extent of territory over which this great negro chief exercised direct or indirect control. The most extravagant theory is naturally that which was expressed by the Portuguese advocates in connection with the dispute as to the ownership of Delagoa Bay. The crown of Portugal based its case against England on the cession of territory contained in a well-known treaty with the monomotapa (1629), and stated that this monarch's dominions then extended nearly to the Cape of Good Hope. A more moderate and usual view is given by Diogo de Couto, who in 1616 speaks of "a dominion over all Kaffraria from the Cabo das Correntes to the great river Zambezi." Several 17th-century writers extend the "empire" to the north of the Zambezi, Bocarro giving it in all "a circum ference of more than three hundred leagues." It was "divided among petty kings and other lords with fewer vassals who are called inkosis or fumos." According to these authors, however, including Dos Santos, the paramountcy of the monomotapa was impaired in the I7th century by a series of rebellions. His zim babwe, wherever it may have been in earlier days, was now fixed near the Portuguese fort of Masapa, only a short distance south of the Zambezi. A Portuguese garrison was maintained in it, and the monarch himself from the year 1607 onwards was little more than a puppet who was generally baptized by the Dominicans with a Portuguese name.