Sofala, historic seaport situated at the mouth of the Sofala River on the coast of what was Portuguese East Africa, now Mozambique. Once the first town of the Portuguese possessions of eastern Africa, Sofala declined rapidly in importance after 1890, when Beira was established about 20 miles (30 km) north. Sofala’s harbor, once capable of holding a hundred large ships, silted up and came to be obstructed by a bar.
Sofala’s harbor was the oldest harbor in Southern Africa. It was visited by Arabs beginning in 915 in order to trade the gold from the hinterland. Persian Muslims settled there in 1020, and during the 14th and 15th centuries Sofala was an important southern outpost of the Islamic sultanate of Kilwa. During this time the Arabs maintained trade relations with the Karanga state, which centered on the Zimbabwe monuments in the southeastern region of what is now the modern state of Zimbabwe. In 1480 Sofala was visited by the Portuguese explorer Pêro da Covilhã, seeking gold, and in 1505 the Portuguese explorer Pedro (or Pêro) de Anaia occupied Sofala and built a fort and factory in the hope of capturing the gold trade held by the Arabs. The conquest of the town followed, the first governors of the Portuguese East African possessions being entitled captains general of Sofala. The Dominican friars established themselves in 1586 and directed from there their Roman Catholic missionary activities into the interior.
Tomé (or Thomé) Lopes, who accompanied Vasco da Gama to India in 1502 and left a narrative of the voyage, sought to identify Sofala with Solomon’s Ophir and stated that it was the home of the queen of Sheba. The identification of Sofala with Ophir, to which the English poet John Milton alluded in Paradise Lost (11:399–401), is erroneous.