History of Zambezi

located on one the southerly islands of the delta, near the Luabo river. Most old nautical maps denote the Luabo entry as Cuama, the entire delta as the 'rivers of Cuama' and the Zambezi river proper as the 'Cuama river'.

Nonetheless, already in 1552, Portuguese chronicler João de Barros notes that the same Cuama river was called Zembere by the upriver people of Monomatapa. The Portuguese Dominican friar João dos Santos, visiting Monomatapa in 1597, reported it as Zambeze (Bantu language frequently shifts between z and r) and inquired into the origins of the name, and was told it was named after an upriver people or settlement.

The River Cuama is by them called Zambeze; the head whereof is so farre within Land that none of them know it, but by tradition of their Progenitors say it comes from a Lake in the midst of the continent which yeelds also other great Rivers, divers ways visiting the Sea. They call it Zambeze, of a Nation of Cafres dwelling neere that Lake which are so called." - J. Santos Ethiopia Oriental, 1609

Thus 'Zambezi' is a derivation from a locality, probably named 'M'biza' (or something very close to that) in the original Bantu.

The Monomatapa notion that the Zambezi was sourced from a great internal lake might be a reference to one of the African Great Lakes. Indeed, one of the names reported by early explorers for Lake Malawi was 'Lake Zambre' (probably a corruption of 'Zambezi'). The Monomatapa story complied with the European notion - drawn from classical antiquity - that all the great African rivers - the Nile, the Senegal, the Congo, now the Zambezi too - were all sourced from the same great internal lake. The Portuguese were also told that the Mozambican Espirito Santo 'river' (actually an estuary formed by