Lat: -17.880128001339000, Long: 36.884166998259000

Quelimane

Zambézia, Mozambique

Historical Background and Urbanism

Quelimane became known by the Portuguese by the time of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. Following two ships with palm sails, the Portuguese sailed up the inlet of sea that, from the Tangalane bar, took them to the village, 12 miles into the interior; therefore, it was called the Rio dos Bons Sinais (river of good signs). The signs were given to the Portuguese by fulos, who looked like a mixture of Black and Moorish people; some of them knew a few words from the arávigo (Arabic) language (Barros, Décadas, vol. I, p. 22, 1982). These were the Arabic merchants that traded there, that are still there, and who spoke the Swahili language. In Quelimane, they have their monumental mosque, peripheral mosques and Koranic schools, in addition to commercial establishments. But the village would have been insignificant in that epoch: it was a simple entrepot that received gold and ivory from the interior travelling down the Zambezi until reaching the place that was later named the Boca do Rio (Mouth of the River), on the left bank. This was the starting point of a channel that established a connection to Quelimane, benefitting from the floods of the Zambezi which received several names, the most common being Cuácua River. When, shortly afterwards, the Portuguese conquered Sofala, a port which was the centre of the gold outflow, the Arabic traders deviated their trade further north, to Quelimane and Angoche. Drawn by the interior trade, especially of gold and the potential of silver, the major route for the access to the fairs was the Zambezi, to which one arrived via Quelimane or through the labyrinthine delta, also known as Luabo River. These fluvial routes and their region were also named Rivers of Cuama. Friar João dos Santos left us descriptions of his journeys through Quelimane and the Rios in the last two decades of the 16th century. In the second half of the 17th century, royal dominions along the Zambezi, to which one could get access via Quelimane, had already been identified. Quelimane was a small village with some poor Portuguese and some mocoques (Goans); these Goans and the muanamuzungos (sons of Portuguese and African women) composed the achicundas (armed slaves, militias of the masters). The village would be, at the time, a simple chuambo (also aringa), that is, a cluster of houses surrounded by a palisade of tree branches, within which the Portuguese and other inhabitants entrenched themselves. In 1727 only three very poor reinóis (Portuguese from Iberian Portugal living abroad) lived there. An account from the mid-eighteenth century elucidates how the traders of this strategic entrepot, throughout the year went up the Zambezi en route to Tete, or down the Zambezi until reaching Quelimane, in coaches made of a single piece of wood, able to carry six or seven tons, and in smaller ones. The traders from the interior and those from the Island of Mozambique who had gone there in June, for business purposes, headed to the mines at the end of July; later on, they went down to Quelimane, on their return to the Island of Mozambique. In 1761, Quelimane was elevated to town status. The regularity of trade must have been one of the reasons behind the fact that, from 1765 onwards, the place started to have a “commander”, who also performed the duties of an administrator. The term alluded at the time to the authority of minor towns, often chosen and appointed by residents. Therefore, we can infer that the urban dimensions of the town didn’t justify the presence of a governor. On the other hand, in the first half of the century, the ship of the Junta do Comércio (Commercial Office) which went from Goa to the Island of Mozambique, also landed in Quelimane. This exclusive landing at a secondary port indicates that the captaincy of Rios de Sena was already the major consumer of the supplies from India, second only to the trading post of the Island of Mozambique. It also shows that the town was increasing in importance so much that it became the second town, and certainly the second port, of the whole province, as attested to by the quality and cost of the construction of the Church of Our Lady of Liberation, built in 1776. Starting in 1781, the slave trade would gain notoriety in the Port of Quelimane. Trade had already been considered but difficulties in the approach to the port had not enabled the establishment of a regular trade, that is, no more then around 300 slaves supplied each year to the Island of Mozambique via Rios de Sena. It must have been via the local “Ilha de França” that the systematic trading of slaves reached the ports of southeast Africa; it was also the starting point for a first approach to Quelimane for that purpose. In the following decade it was already one of the ports included in the group that sustained this trade. The ship-owners of the Island of Mozambique had already started to frequent it before; they later settle there. In the first half of the 19th century, Quelimane surpassed the other secondary ports in the amount of goods sent via Mozambique. It soon became a major slave-exporting port. The local governor, Manuel Joaquim Mendes de Vasconcelos e Cirne, contributed decisively to that growth. Being deported on his way to India, a shipwreck forced him to stay in Mozambique, where he enlisted in the army. Despite his troubled career, he was appointed as the first governor of Quelimane on the 13th May 1813. He obtained free access (exempted from a prior presentation in the Island of Mozambique) to the slave ships in the Port of Quelimane and promoted local construction of five ships for slave transport – a novelty on the African coast. In 1817, he established the customs house with judge and administrator. Most of the big fortunes made there thanks to the slave trade were transferred to Brazil, without contributing significantly to the prosperity of the town. In 1824, among the 160 free residents, only 12 were European. In 1850, 109 voters were registered for the election of the Town Hall: 53 from Goa, Daman and Diu, 19 from Portugal and 37 born in Mozambique.
Referring now to the architecture of the 19th century in urban space, the town did not truly become urban until the second half of the century. The commander of the military colony in Tete who arrived at Quelimane on the 16th September 1860 said that the state of the town was deplorable: it was traversed by trenches that channelled rainwater into the river, hard to cross by foot, overrun with tall reeds and other vegetation; there were no streets, but rather narrow paths amongst bullrushes of four to six palms of height; woods here and there; swamps and rice fields. Every night one could hear shouting in various areas on the appearance of tigers or hyenas; the following day, people counted their kill, of people and animals, and mentioned details that surprised outsiders. Houses, set apart from one another by 20 to 100 metres, were made of unfired bricks, and some fired bricks, held with clay, whitewashed inside and out, with mortared pavements and fine doors and windows, fine woodwork and teak roofs, all made by black workers. There was no stone; the lime was brought from the Island of Mozambique at a high cost. Only one house had two floors; the others had one and were set on a base or platform of four to six palms height, with a balcony and porch on four or six columns near the main door, where people talk day and night; the back area opened onto a large courtyard with warehouses. The church was in a poor state of preservation. The governor of the district lived in a leased house and the town hall did not have a place of its own. The town had 18 attractive, spacious houses, 38 residents “who wore cravats” including 10 Europeans, 12 Asians and 16 Africans; 15 ladies, 3 from Europe and 12 from Africa; 18 Baneanes (Hindu traders) and Parsis. The feudal system of the crown prazos implemented for centuries in the Zambezi valley was used by masters to carry out the jungle trade, including the slave trade, rather than to cultivate land. Moreover, it was thanks to the prazos and through their lease by the State that the major companies of organic and plantation capital were able to reach Quelimane and Zambezia. The period that followed the slave trade was a new trading era clearly centred on Quelimane. It began with the arrival, in 1855, of two French ships from Marseilles. The goods that previously had only been sent to Lisbon in small quantities were now loaded on a regular basis. The company Augustin, Fabre et Fils established in the town in 1868, giving a significant boost to the oil products trade. The Rotterdam-based Oaste Africanisch, the Companhia Africana de Lisboa and others also settled there. The Companhia de Minas da Zambezia was founded in the 7th January 1873. It was probably the first incorporated company with restricted liability (S.A.R.L.) in Mozambique. Subscribed by traders living in the city, it was supported by José de Paiva Raposo who, despite the problems went on to create in 1874 the Companhia da Cultura e Comércio do Ópio (Company of Culture and Opium Trade), the first of the major plantation companies to be established in the province. These pioneering companies fell by the wayside; but the success of those established in the Zambezi Valley, from 1892 onwards (concentrated in Quelimane), owed much to these experiments. It also benefitted from the new perspective of the colonial policy promoted by Andrade Corvo (minister, 1824-1890), with effects on the town when the Missão das Obras Públicas (Public Works Mission) arrived in 1877. Besides minor works, the expedition was concerned with communications, although, according to its leader, the district, with its many rivers and canals did not need much. Therefore, he only proposed the clearing of the Cuácua River and the excavation of a canal between the Licuare and Muanangue rivers, as well as sanitation works in the town. In effect, besides the Cuácua, canals were abundant. Later on, well into the 20th century, river connections still assured commercial transport in the Quelimane district. As the 19th century came to an end, traces of an urban core in a western model in Quelimane were emerging. In 1881, in publicising in Lisbon the development of Zambezia, the O Occidente magazine published an engraving of the trading post of the Regis Ainé House; five years later, it showed an image of a magnificent residence in Concelho Square, opposite the Town Hall. With the arrival of Jesuit priests, in 1890, was created the Bom Jesus School, and the Coalane Mission in the Anquaze Prazo, some kilometres away from the town. At the turn of the 19th century, it is the fiction books by Emílio de San Bruno (a Portuguese colonial writer of the 1920s) which best depicts Quelimane in physical and social terms. It includes historical characters such as João de Azevedo Coutinho, the earl of Vila Verde, Pedro de Almeida e Noronha (the Gonçalo Mendes Ramires of Eça de Queirós), or the Stucky de Quay. Pedro de Campos Valdez, besides being a leading figure in the military campaigns led by Azevedo Coutinho, was the man to whom was awarded, in 1892, the lease of prazos in Quelimane, on behalf of a Lisbon-based financial union, thus implementing the Boror Company, which would become the first major plantation company based in Quelimane. That same year the Zambezia Company was created. These and other major companies, such as the Madal Company (of the Prince of Monaco), surrounded the town with vast palm groves and transformed the landscape. The new activity established in the district influence the urban conditions of the place. Whereas, until the late 19th century, the Church of Our Lady of Liberation remained the single monument related to the consolidation of the presence of Portuguese and Goans worthy of note, by the end of the century, several two-storey buildings of considerable scale were built. Their design suggests an inspiration from 18th century architecture. Some mansions, still standing in the late 20th century along the leafy avenue beside the river, evoked a parallel with other tropical places, visited and marked by the Portuguese. Images from the early years of the 20th century show an incipient urbanism, with the streets with Decauville lines for transport of the muzungos in a wagon pulled by a menial. The government, the town hall, the post office and Telegraphs, the Public Works and the Nautical Alliance had suitable buildings. On the occasion of the visit of Prince Luís Filipe to Quelimane in 1907, he landed at the so-called Rampa da Capitania or of Alfândega. In fact, the construction of the bridge/pier only began in July 1950, being inaugurated on the 3rd November 1953. In 1914, the railway connection of Nhamacurra to Mocuba was established. Interrupted due to the outbreak of the First World War, the connection to Mocuba, along a stretch of 145 km, was concluded in 1922. In the second decade, the town had two avenues, 13 streets, five alleys, four small squares and two larger ones. The public buildings, such as the town hall, the finance office and the governor’s Residence, were improved. The city was provided with a municipal market. On the 21st August 1942, Quelimane was elevated to city status. Separated from the diocese of Beira the diocese was created in 1954, resulting on the construction of the Episcopal Palace along modern lines. It probably was one of the first signs of architectural modernity in Quelimane. On the 6th August 1960, the Direção dos Serviços das Obras Públicas (Public Works Department) signed a contract with architect João José Malato for the elaboration of the Urbanization Plan for the city. In 1950, with 64,000 inhabitants, Quelimane was the second Mozambican city. It is worth mentioning the Plano de Urbanização de Quelimane (Urbanization Plan for Quelimane), by the Gabinete de Urbanização do Ultramar (Overseas Urbanization Office). The Planta Topográfica da Cidade de Quelimane (Topographical Map of the City of Quelimane), at a scale of 1:10,000, from 1945, clearly depicts the quarters that made up the city. There is a Plano de Urbanização (Urbanization Plan) from 1950, and another from 1966. In the 1970s, the structure of the city resembled that of the 1950s: four axis in the south/north direction (streets of João Belo, Combatentes, Luís Filipe and António Enes) and two in the east/west direction (routes of Vasco da Gama and of Carmona, the latter being the coastal route).

Religious Architecture

Equipment and Infrastructures

Housing

Episcopal Palace and Chapel