History

When the great stone enclosure city of Great Zimbabwe was abandoned around 1450 AD — most likely because the surrounding land could no longer support the concentration of population and cattle that the kingdom required — the ruling Rozvi (also called Butua) elite relocated westward and established a new capital at Khami, in territory with access to richer grazing lands and the gold and ivory trade routes running to the Mozambican coast. Over the following two centuries, Khami grew into the largest and most architecturally sophisticated of the successor states of the Zimbabwe Tradition.

The Rozvi state became one of the most important intermediaries in the Indian Ocean trade network linking the interior of southern Africa with the Portuguese colonial ports of Sofala and Tete on the Mozambican coast. Portuguese traders visited Khami and brought European ceramics, glass beads, and cloth in exchange for gold, ivory, and cattle. The Chinese Ming porcelain found in the ruins arrived via this same Indian Ocean network, testifying to the global reach of Khami’s commercial connections in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In 1683 a Nguni (Ndebele) military force destroyed Khami, killing the Rozvi king and dispersing the population. The site was abandoned and the architecture fell into ruin. European awareness of the ruins dates to the 1890s; the first systematic archaeological investigations were carried out by Neville Jones in the 1930s, and UNESCO inscribed the site in 1986 as part of a serial nomination that also includes Great Zimbabwe and Khami’s satellite sites.