Short Abstract

Sofala is mentioned in Arabic texts from the 10th century as a source of gold and other exotic commodities. This session examines the nature of trade and politics ‘beyond Sofala’ by adopting an African prism and focusing particularly on African actors and networks within the southern African region.

Long Abstract

For centuries, during the Global Middle Ages, Southern Africans developed far-reaching trade networks that connected them to Central and East Africa and to the many shores of the Indian Ocean. Some fragments of these networks have been found and put in place, but many tiles of the mosaic are still missing. In particular, much focus has been given to locating the ‘land of Sofala’, first mentioned in Arabic texts of the 10th century as a source of gold, and to reconstructing the long-distance links between Sofala and the wider Indian Ocean world. Our aim in this session is to examine the nature of trade and politics ‘beyond Sofala’ by placing them through an African prism. This can be achieved by drawing on a diversity of sources, from settlement ruins, trade items, cartography, travel accounts, official records, historical linguistics and oral histories. The panel brings together studies from archaeologists and historians that deal, among others, with: the historical actors animating such networks (traders, rulers, commoners); the various nodes in the networks (sites of production or consumption, entrepôts, political capitals, palaces); the materiality of trade (trade items, infrastructure such as roads, harbours, settlements); the inner workings of the network (payment, barter, gift, customs, value systems). By focusing on the ways in which things, people and ideas moved across the southern African region, the session brings to the fore the worldviews of those that participated in trade, providing insights into how concepts of distance, connectivity and trade were articulated in Southern Africa.

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