Kingdom of Karagwe
historical kingdom in Tanzania
The Kingdom of Karagwe (Ufalme wa Karagwe, in Swahili) was a historical Bantu state in present-day Karagwe District of the Kagera Region in northwestern Tanzania, between Rwanda and Lake Victoria. East Africa's influential Karagwe Kingdom was ruled by a hereditary monarchs who were reputed to be Bachwezi descendants. By the end of the 20th century, it had thriving trade with traders from all parts of East Africa, especially slave-trading Arabs. Bweranyange served as the Karagwe kingdom's capital.
Origins
The Karagwe kingdom was part of the many Great Lakes Kingdoms in East Africa. The kingdom reached its apex during the 19th century. The growth occurred during the early part of the 1800s with King Ndagara who came to power around 1820 and ruled until 1853 at which time he was replaced by King Rumanika.
However, the ruler of the most northern Haya Kingdom, Kiziba, belonged to a rival clan, the Bito, which also ruled Bunyoro to the north. Their legends claimed that a hero by the name of Ruhinda had created a single kingdom in the area and that his descendants, the Hinda clan, ruled the successor chiefdoms. The pastoralists, known as Hima, had a distinct social supremacy in these kingdoms, particularly in Karagwe.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kingdom of Karagwe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.