page_title: Legends of Africa
section_title: Shaka  Zulu
hierarchical_section_title: Legends of Africa / Shaka  Zulu
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketch of King Shaka (1781 - 1828) from 1824. Attributed to James King, it appeared in Nathanial Isaacs’ "Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa", published in 1836. Українська: Эдине відоме зображення ватажка Шака Зулу (1781 - 1828) зроблене сучасником Джеймсом Кінгом у 1824
context_page_description: The Legends of Africa reflect a wide-ranging series of kings, queens, chiefs and other leaders from across the African continent including Mali, Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
context_section_description: Shaka (sometimes spelled Tshaka, Tchaka or Chaka; c. 1787 – c. 22 September 1828) was a Zulu leader.
  He is widely credited with transforming the Zulu from a small tribe into the beginnings of a nation-state that held sway over the large portion of Southern Africa that stretches between the Phongolo and Mzimkhulu rivers. His military prowess and destructiveness have been widely studied by modern scholarship. One Encyclopædia Britannica article (Macropaedia Article "Shaka" 1974 ed) asserts that he was something of a military genius for his reforms and innovations. Other writers take a more limited view of his achievements. Nevertheless, his statesmanship and vigour in assimilating some neighbours and ruling by proxy marks him as one of the greatest of the Zulu chieftains.
  The Ajuran Empire
  The Ajuran Sultanate (Somali: Dawladdii Ajuuraan, Arabic: الدولة الأجورانيون‎), also spelled Ajuuraan Sultanate, and often simply as Ajuran, was a Somali empire of the medieval and early modern periods that dominated the Indian Ocean trade. It was a Somali Muslim sultanate  that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa from the early 1200s to the late 1600s. Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance toward invaders, the Ajuran Sultanate successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the "Gaal Madow" war and Ajuran-Portuguese war. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished
caption: Only known drawing of Shaka standing with the long throwing assegai and the heavy shield in 1824
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