Sofala: the gold port that built a medieval trading empire

Sofala, on the coast of present-day Mozambique, was a major node in a gold-trading network connecting the Zimbabwe Plateau to the Indian Ocean world long before European contact. Arab and Swahili merchants had operated there for centuries, documented in sources such as al-Masudi's tenth-century writings. When Portugal established a fort there in 1505, they were inserting themselves into an already mature commercial system — not opening one. Subscribe for more history the mainstream skips.

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