Kingdom of Luba
The Kingdom of the Luba was a kingdom in central Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries and was located on what is now the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo .
history
It was founded before the 16th century in the north-east of today's Zambia or in the south-east of today's Congo and traces itself back to the mythical founder Kongolo, who conquered several chieftain's places with loyal followers and united them to form a growing empire. The Luba empire emerged from the tradition of cultures in the Upemba Depression around Lake Upemba and, unlike the surrounding chiefs' societies, was organized centrally. The Luba kingship was powerful as an office, but not dynastically anchored, so there were repeated battles for the throne, which weakened the empire and contributed to its later collapse.
The founding father Kongolo was killed by Ilunga Mbidi at the end of the 16th century, and the empire became restless and unstable. Three dynasties ruled for the next hundred years or so, evidence of the weakness of the monarchy. Nevertheless, the Luba empire reached its greatest extent at the end of the 17th century under Kumwimbu Ngombé, up to the shores of Lake Tanganyika .
One of the sons of the Congolese left the kingdom in the early 17th century and became the founder of the Lunda Empire .
In the middle of the 19th century the kingdom ruled the south of Katanga into what is now Zimbabwe , after which the empire gradually began to disintegrate due to the constant civil wars over the ruler's seat. In 1889 the royal line split and the kingdom disintegrated in the battle against the Chokwe .
literature
- Roland Oliver, Brian M. Fagan: Africa in the Iron Age: C. 500 BC to AD 1400. Cambridge 1975, ISBN 0-521-09900-5 .
- Graham Connah: African Civilizations - An Archaeological Perspective. 2nd edition, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-59690-4 .
- Peter N. Stearns (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. Boston 2001 ( [1] and [2] ; accessed November 12, 2004). (For the Bantu expansion and the Upemba cultures)
- Kanundowi Kabongo, Mubabinge Bilolo: Conception Bantu de l'Autorité. Suivie de Baluba: Bumfumu ne Bulongolodi. Publications Universitaires Africaines, Munich / Kinshasa 1994. (On the history and conception of power)
- Pierre de Maret: The power of symbols and the symbols of power through time: probing the Luba past. In: Susan Keech McIntosh (Ed.): Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathway to complexity in Africa. Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-63074-6 .