Early History of Mozambique

Mozambique as a unified entity did not exist until the country was declared a Portuguese colony in 1752.

Before then the area was a collection of separate kingdoms, with the country's two largest rivers - the Zambezi in the North and the Limpopo in the South - providing natural boundaries between three communities of different tribes: the Makua, Maravi and the Yao north of the Zambezi; the Thonga south of the Limpopo; and the Shona in the land between the two rivers.

In 1498 Vasco da Gama's naval expedition rounded the Southern Cape of Africa and arrived on Mozambique Island. By this time Arab trading settlements had already existed for centuries along the country's coastline. Local Arab sultans exercised political control of the coastal areas, and most of the coastal population followed Islam.

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