ABSTRACT
Couto's account of the Zimba raids along the East African coast apes the style of the classical historians, citing long speeches and attributing high moral sentiments to the actors in the drama. This drama becomes all the more intense when the arrival of the Zimba coincides with the raids of the Turkish corsair Mir Ali Bey, and the two scourges of God and the Portuguese destroy each other. The reference to the Mosseguejos and their cooperation with the Portuguese in defeating the Zimba is a rare example in the Portuguese documents of any reference to the African peoples of the northern part of the east coast mainland. The Portuguese successfully stopped the Zimba crossing the Zambesi by raising a local army of Tonga. In so doing they saved the Karanga chieftaincies from being devastated in the way that the land north of the Zambesi had been.
