The stone city near Masvingo that gave Zimbabwe its name. Built between about 1100 and 1450 CE by the ancestors of the Shona, it was the capital of a powerful trading state. Its three parts are the Hill Ruins, the Great Enclosure with its conical tower, and the Valley Ruins. Example of what you can…
Heart of the Kingdom of Aksum in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, which traded across the Red Sea through the port of Adulis. Its monuments include carved stone stelae, the tallest still standing over 23 metres, royal tombs and palace ruins. Example: King Ezana’s 4th-century inscriptions in Greek, Sabaean and Ge’ez, an early record of…
Eleven medieval churches hewn out of the living rock in the mountains of Ethiopia, attributed to King Lalibela’s plan for a “New Jerusalem”. Lalibela is still a place of pilgrimage. Example: Biete Ghiorgis, the House of St George, carved in the shape of a cross and reached through trenches cut in the rock.
A Swahili port city on an island off southern Tanzania that grew rich on Indian Ocean trade: gold and ivory from the interior for goods from Arabia, India and China. Kilwa minted its own coins from the 11th to the 14th century; Ibn Battuta visited in 1331–1332. Example: the Great Mosque, built in the 11th…
A city at the edge of the Sahara in present-day Mali that became an intellectual and spiritual capital in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Sankore university, many Qur’anic schools and a busy trade in salt, gold and manuscripts. Example: its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, built of earth and regularly…
The Ethiopian king to whom tradition attributes the eleven rock-hewn churches of the town that bears his name, conceived as a “New Jerusalem” at a time when pilgrimage to the Holy Land had become difficult. Example: Biete Medhani Alem, believed to be the largest monolithic church in the world.
Emperor (mansa) of Mali at the height of its power in the early 14th century. UNESCO links his name to the first building of Timbuktu’s Djingareyber Mosque, on his return from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Example: the Djingareyber Mosque, rebuilt and enlarged in 1570–1583, still dominates the city.
A king remembered in the Manding oral tradition. The sacred balafon of Nyagassola, the Sosso-Bala, is said to have been played by him; it has carried the epic of Sunjata, the founder of the Mali Empire, and the Kouyaté griots still guard it. Example: watch UNESCO’s film on the Sosso-Bala in the Griot Fireside.
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