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Great Zimbabwe's Mambo Mudzinga: The Reformer King
This episode zooms in on one of Great Zimbabwe's most enigmatic rulers: Mambo Mudzinga, who reigned around 1450 C.E. Unlike his predecessors, Mudzinga inherited a city in crisis—the gold trade had slowed, and rival elites challenged his authority. Drawing on newly uncovered oral traditions and archaeological clues, we piece together his reforms: he centralized taxation by replacing regional chiefs with royal muraya (tax collectors), restricted the use of the poison oracle to cases of treason, and launched a massive rebuilding of the Great Enclosure's outer wall, using dolerite…
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