Factz wants links. I can understand that, as his are no good. This is Sofala. It's on the coast, at the mouth of the Buzi river.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs...4154/5067751398_4dc6fe70f3_z.jpg&action=click
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Did everyone notice the depiction of Sofala island in the middle of the Buzi River in the second OP post?
https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs...ttp://users.rowan.edu/~mcinneshin/101/wk11/im
ages%2Fzimgold.jpg&action=click
The Great Zimbabwe gold field:
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https://answers.yahoo.com/question/...Buzi river and the Great Zimbabwe gold fields
" Best Answer: 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.
Sofala's position as the principal entrepot of the Monomatapa gold trade prompted Portuguese chronicler Tomé Lopes to identify Sofala with the Biblical Ophir and its ancient rulers with the dynasty of the queen of Sheba. 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.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 AD. 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 and the Monomatapa. Sometime in the 10th C., Sofala emerged as a small trading post erected by Arab merchants from Mogadishu (modern Somalia), to trade cotton cloth for Monomatapa 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. 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."
http://www.mozambique.co.za/About_Mozambique-travel/mozambique-info.html
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Sofala does not mean "go dig" in Somali, it means "lowlands" in Arabic. Sofala was originally a small island in the Buzi river and is now part of the Buzi river estuary. There is no gold under it.
There are a number of good Shirazi links in this thread:
https://www.somalispot.com/threads/the-shirazi-settlement-of-east-africa.42241/
Especially this one:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/180168...d122f4cafa14535&seq=11#page_scan_tab_contents
"Shirazi" referred to the region of the Persian Gulf, and included the Arabs there.
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http://www.wernerhermans.com/downloads/Ancient Arab settlements of the Swahili Coast.pdf
Ancient Arab settlements of the Swahilli Coast: Note the photos of Mog near the bottom. (Mog was the boundary between Barbar and Zanj. Merka was conquered by the Biimaal. Baraawe spoke a Swahili dialect. The Shirazis are thought to have moved south from either the Banaadir or the Lamu area to create the Swahili culture.
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Ibn Batuta was clearly not describing Somali dhaqan or Somali political titles. Mogadishu was an Arab, Persian and probably Indian enclave until the Yemeni governor was killed by the Hiraab about 1624. It was thereafter until the Italians under Yemeni or Omani control whenever their fleets were in port. Hiraab/Abgal strength remained in the hinterland, and Hawiyye groups generally soon went on to drive the Ajuraan south. The Cadcads were never expelled. Some of the great trading houses intermarried with the Abgaal leadership, but retained control of the trade. Reer Faqi and the Muzzaffars were Yemeni.
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The Oxford Research Encyclopedias are nothing like Wiki. You don't get to "edit" the articles. In this article the Chinese said 12th century coast and interior Somali people were different. 16th century Mogadishu traded with Melaka in Southeast Asia, but in Indian ships. The Bajunni built small sewn fishing boats called "mtepe"and larger "ba" boats used for transportation, but the people were safe on their islands because the Shirazis only wanted to trade, and Oromo and later Somalis themselves, until Hafun, did not have ships.
The Swahili in the African and Indian Ocean Worlds to c. 1500
http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/...0277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-152
"Along the Somali coast, the 12th century, Chinese author Chau Ju-kua had noted a contrast between pastoralists in the interior and cosmopolitan mercantile societies in coastal cities like Brava and Mogadishu. Coastal societies were stratified, with the king and his ministers living in brick houses and wearing jackets and turbans, while the common people lived in huts made of palm leaves and wrapped themselves in cotton stuffs but went bareheaded and barefooted.
24 According to the Kilwa Chronicle, Mogadishu had initially controlled the Sofala gold trade before it was overtaken by Kilwa. It was visited in the 14th century by Ibn Battuta who said that the Sultan was “in origin from the Barbara, and his speech is Maqdishi,” presumably Somali, although he also knew Arabic. He wore fabrics imported from Jerusalem and Egypt. There was an elaborate commercial system, with touts taking merchants to their respective hosts who provided accommodation and transacted their business, while scholars like Ibn Battuta were received by the
Qadhi.
25 The Chinese Ming expeditions in the early 15th century found houses at Mogadishu that were four or five stories high. In the early 16th century, Barbosa reported that wealthy people exchanged their produce for colored silks and satins, gold, silver, porcelain, pepper, rice, and other cereals from Cambay, and Pires adds that traders from Mogadishu, as well as those from Mombasa, Malindi, and Kilwa, traded as far as Melaka in Southeast Asia, although apparently in Indian ships from Cambay.
26"
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The East African ports were entrepot traders. They stockpiled goods and waited for ships to come to them. Clients of the Somali ports, with Somali sailors, participated with the Omanis in the siege of Mombassa, but not the ports themselves, and the Ajuraan were also not represented. The earlier shipping down the coast to Sofala and back was done by Shirazis in Shirazi ships.
The Pungwe river basin article has nothing to do with Sofala. The rest of Factz' links are just bad interpretation and bad reading. The more recent scholarly links are above and come to very different conclusions.
