Place · city

Mwembe

Mwembe was the town of the Yao chiefs called Mataka on the highlands east of Lake Malawi, in what is now Niassa province of northern Mozambique. It grew in the nineteenth century as the centre of a powerful chiefdom that traded slaves and ivory to the coast. The Portuguese Niassa Company captured it in 1912 after two decades of resistance.

Mwembe
Image: Halidtz · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Mentioned in 1 state history

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Mwembe. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mwembe
MLA
“Mwembe.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mwembe. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Mwembe.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mwembe.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Mwembe’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mwembe (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻