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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 in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants and seafarers from Mogadishu.〔''The Horizon History of Africa'', vol. 1, p. 143.〕 ==History== One of the oldest harbours documented in Southern Africa, medieval Sofala was erected on the edge of a wide estuary formed by the Buzi River (called ''Rio de Sofala'' in older maps). Sofala was founded about the year 700. 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, and from there to the goldfields of Great Zimbabwe. Sometime in the 10th century, Sofala emerged as a small trading post erected by Somali merchants and seafarers from Mogadishu (modern capital of Somalia), to trade cotton cloth for gold and ivory.〔 In the 1180s, Sultan Suleiman Hassan of Kilwa (in present-day Tanzania) seized control of Sofala, and brought Sofala into the Kilwa Sultanate and the Swahili cultural sphere.〔Portuguese chronicler João de Barros (Dec. I, Lib. 10, Cap. 2 (p. 388 ff.) relates the fable behind the conquest: Mogadishu merchants had long kept Sofala a secret from their Kilwan rivals, who up until then rarely sailed beyond Cape Delgado. One day, a fisherman caught a large bite off Kilwa and was dragged by the fish around Cape Delgado, through the Mozambique Channel, all the way down to the Sofala banks. The fisherman made his way back up to Kilwa to report to the Sultan Suleiman Hassan what he had seen. Hearing of the gold trade, the sultan loaded up a ship with cloth and immediately raced down there, guided by the fisherman. The Kilwan sultan offered a better deal to the Monomatapa, and was allowed to erect a Kilwan factory and colony on the island and nudge the Mogadishans permanently out.〕 The Swahili strengthened its trading capacity by having, among other things, river-going dhows ply the Buzi and Save 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 to identify Sofala with the biblical Ophir and its ancient rulers with the dynasty of the Queen of Sheba.〔Lopes, Thomé (1504) ''Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ultramarinas, que vivem nos dominios portuguezes, ou lhes são visinhas'', Academia das Ciências de Lisboa. (p. 163 ) at Google Books〕 Although the notion was mentioned by Milton in ''Paradise Lost'', 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, 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 (and some across the channel in Madagascar). Formally, Sofala continued to belong to the Kingdom of Monomatapa, the Swahili 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 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 itself. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sofala」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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