Please read linguistic Notes on Black people, Tribe, and Sub-Saharan Africa
This activity will introduce you to three of the great kingdoms of West Africa between the 9th and 16th centuries CE. They are the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. After you have read a short text on each of these kingdoms, there is a fourth text which explains the time when parts of North Africa came to be Islamic. As you read through this activity, you should think about how the events in the four texts are related to one another. Once you have read all four texts, use the information you have learned in them to complete the graphic organizers at the end of the activity. Use the map below as a reference while you are reading the texts. There are various links back to the map throughout the text that you can use to reference the map. The map shows the location of the three kingdoms of West Africa, as well as, many other kingdoms and empires throughout African history.
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| CLICK THE MAP TO JUMP TO AN EMPIRE: This map is not accurate in scale as Aksum is much larger, and extended into Arabia. Sokoto is also not included. |
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Kemet
Despite the new wave of myths regarding Nubia and Kemet (Ancient Egypt) It is clear that Kemet and Nubia were neighbouring African Civilizations just as Aksum and Nubia. Difference doesn’t mean Nubia was a ‘black race’ and Kemet wasn’t. Both groups were ethnic groups of indigenous African origin. The ethnic differences were no more significant than Ethiopians verses Kenyans.
When Wellesley College, Boston, Mass, U.S.A., Professor, Mary Lefkowitz published in her book, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History, (1996), she received tremendous accolades and widespread newsprint from mainstream America. The notion that was bandied about was that finally a renowned experienced Eurocentric scholar has quieted the proponents of Afrocentrism; Dr. Mary Lefkowitz has destroyed the Afrocentrists’ claim to the multifaceted originality of ancient Kemet (Egypt) and its impact on Greece and Rome. However, a much deeper, closer and sober look and analysis of this hysteria reveals a different historical reality.
The salient reality is that no one can deny the historical truism that the Greeks (the world’s first Europeans) went to ancient Kemet to study at the Temple of Waset (later called Thebes by the Greeks and Luxor by the Arabs).
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In his magnum opus, A Lost Tradition: African Philosophy in World History, (1995) Dr. Theophile Obenga quotes Aristotle ranking Egypt as “the most ancient archeological reserve in the world” and “that is how the Egyptians, whom we (Greeks) considered as the most ancient of the human race” (p. 45).
According to Dr. Obenga: “the ancient Greeks traced all human inventions to the Egyptians, from Calculus, Geometry, Astronomy and Dice Games to Writing...Since the time of Homer, Egyptian antiquity functioned strictly as a highly memorialized component of Greek history. Herodotus said it, Plato confirmed it, and Aristotle never denied it.” (p. 47). Indeed, in their book, A History of the Modern World (1984), R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, corroborate this historical truism by contending that:
Europeans were by no means the pioneer of human civilization. Half of man’s recorded history had passed before anyone in Europe could read or write. The priests of Egypt began to keep written records between 4000 and 3000 B.C., but more than two thousand years later, the poems of Homer were still being circulated in the Greek city-states by word of mouth. Shortly after 3000 B.C., while the pharaohs were building the first pyramids, Europeans were creating nothing more distinguished than huge garbage heaps.
Furthermore, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) himself, writing in Metaphysics, not only refutes Dr. Lefkowitz’s ahistorical and false assertions but also confesses in Greek Hellenic language that: “Thus the mathematical sciences first (proton) originated in Egypt.” Egypt is “the cradle of mathematics-that is, the country of origin for Greek mathematics”. So, according to Aristotle, “the mathematical arts had never before been formed, constituted or elaborated anywhere else originating in Egypt only” (Obenga, p. 47-48). Aristotle acknowledges the originality of the ancient Egyptians in his own words.
In addition, in Prologue to Prodlus’s Commentaries on Euclid’s Elements, a disciple of Aristotle named Eudemus, who lived in the forth century B.C., confirms: “we shall say, following the general tradition, that the Egyptians were the first to have invented Geometry, (that) Thales, the first Greek to have been in Egypt, brought this theory thereof to Greece” (Obenga, p. 48).
The fact of the matter is that the famous, well known Greeks (Europeans) whom we study and revere in school curricula today all studied at the feet of the ancient Egyptians–Afrikans in the Nile Valley, Kemet. For example, Plato studied at the Temple of Waset for 11 years; Aristotle was there for 11-13 years; Socrates 15 years Euclid stayed for 10-11 years; Pythegoras for 22 yeasrs; Hypocrates studies for 20 years; and the other Greeks who matriculated at Waset included Diodorus, Solon, Thales, Archimides, and Euripides. Indeed, the Greek, St. Clement of Alexanddria, once said that if you were to write a book of 1,000 pages, you would not be able to put down the names of all the Greeks who went to Kemet to be educated and even those who did not surreptitiously claim they went because it was prestigious. “ Herodotus said it, Plato confirmed it and Aristotle never denied it”.
The fact of the matter is that it took 40 years to graduate/matriculate from Waset; this then means that none of the Greeks graduated.
Dr. Obenga points out this significant Kemet-Greece linkage:
I Thales (624-547 B.C.) was the first (protos) Greek student to receive his training from Egyptian priests in the Nile Valley.
II Plato (428-347 B.C.) records that Thales was educated in Egypt under the priests.
III Proclus (Neoplationist, 420-485 A.D.) Reports that Thales introduced science, philosophy and mathematics/geometry to Greece.
IV Greek intellectual life started with the Egyptian-trained student, Thales. He was the founder of the first Greek school of philosophy and science.
V Thales strongly recommended that Pythagoras travel to Egypt to receive his basic education and to converse as often as possible with the priests of Memphis and Thekes.
VI In the fall of 332 B.C. when Alexander invaded Egypt, Aristotle accompanied him
VII Aristotle ranked the country of the Pharaohs (Egypt) the most ancient archaeological reserve in the world. He wrote “That is how the Egyptians whom we considered as the most ancient of the human race”. (Obenga, pp. 28-45).
The Temple of Waset, the world’s first university, and known as “the septer” was built during the reign of Amenhotep III in the XVIII Dynasty, ca 1391 B.C. At its zenith, it educated 80,000 students.
Many people today believe that the words “man know thyself” (in Greek, qnothi seauton) were originally written and spoken by the Greek philosopher, Socrates. The ancient Egyptians wrote these words on the outside of their Temples in the Nile Valley and addressed these words to the neophytes - one of whom was the student Socrates himself. In a companion scenario, the originality of the words “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die,” has been assigned to the Greek philosopher Socrates, whereas history proves that the inventor who coined these words is Imhotep, the Afrikan deity and “the world’s first recorded multi-genius.” He built the world’s first stone building–the Step pyramid at Saqqara circa 2630 B.C.
Moreover, contrary to public information, the first Olympics that was held in Olympia, Greece, in776 B.C., was not held to reward sportsmanship, physical brawn or brinkmanship but instead as a public ceremonial worship by the Greeks of the Afrikan deity Amon, the “ruler of the Gods.” In fact, history proves quite convincingly that the Gods and Goddesses of Europeans were of Afrikan origin but given European names. For example, the Afrikan God, Amun, was renamed Zeus by the Greeks and Jupiter by the Romans; the Afrikan God, Heru (the son of God and associated with light and sun) was called Apollo by both the Greeks and the Romans; the Afrikan God Imhotep (the God of Healing and medicine) was renamed Asclepius by the Greeks and Aesclapius by the Romans; the Afrikan God Djhuti/Thoth (God of Science, Writing and Knowledge) was called Hermes by the Greeks and Mercury by the Romans; the Afrikan God, Pluto, was called Pluto by both the Greeks and Romans; the Afrikan God, Ausar, (the God of resurrection) was renamed Osiris by the Greeks; whereas the Afrikan Goddess Hathor (the Goddess of love and beauty) was called Aphrodite by the Greeks and Venus by the Romans; and the Afrikan Goddess Ist (Aset), (Goddess of maternity), was renamed Isis and was worshiped as the “Black Madonna.” This Afrikan Goddess has had such an impact on Europe that if we were to decipher Paris, the capital city of France, we get Per Isis: Per means Temple, while Isis means “House of Isis”; so the capital of a major European country is named in honor and eternal worship of an Afrikan Deity/Goddess. (See Figure I.)
One of the greatest contributions of the Nile Valley civilization in Egypt to the world was its educational system. The ultimate aim of education in ancient Kemet was for a person to become “one with God,” to “become like God” or “to become godlike through the revision of one’s own ‘Neter’ of how god is revealed in the person.” “Education in ancient Egypt was religious at its base.” At age seven, the brightest boys in Egypt were selected for training in the priesthood. This was the highest honor that could be possibly bestowed on a family-the selection of a son for admission into a caste of brilliant thinkers, the “guardians of the state” whom Plato so greatly admired and wrote about. When the boys (Neophytes) entered the Temple/schools (or Grand Lodge) they had to study for 40 years - subjects as Grammar, Arithmetic, Rhetoric and Dialectic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Architecture, Masonry, Carpentry, Engineering, Sculpture, Metallurgy, Agriculture, Mining, Forestry, Art and Magic.
The Neophyte was vigorously trained in how to:
1. Control his thoughts
2. Control his actions
3. Have devotion of purpose
4. Have faith in the ability of his master to teach him the truth
5. Have faith in himself to assimilate the truth
6. Have faith in himself to wield the truth
7. Be free from resentment under the experience of persecution
8. Be free from resentment under experience of wrong
9. Cultivate the ability to distinguish between the real and the unreal (i.e., he must have a sense of values)
10. Cultivate the ability to distinguish between right and wrong
Plato, who greatly admired the Egyptian education system and actually recommended that it be introduced into Greece, copied/imitated/derived his three “cardinal virtues” from these ten goals the neophyte had to attain in the Nile Valley. “Control of thoughts and action,” Plato called the “virtue of wisdom;” “freedom of resentment under persecution” Plato called the “virtue of fortitude;” “the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and between the real and unreal,” Plato called the “virtues of justice and temperance.”
In the area of medicine, the literature says that Hypocrates (born 460 B.C.) is the “father of medicine,” but again history proves that the Afrikan deity, Imhotep, (born 2700 B.C.) was worshiped by the Greeks as the “God of Medicine” 2,000 years before the birth of Hypocrates. Nevertheless, Hypocrates is portrayed as supreme in the area of medicine as reflected in the “Hippocratic Oath” that graduates from medical schools must recite.
The “Oath” reads as follows:
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I fulfil according to my ability and judgement this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art-if they desire to learn it-without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning of my sons and to the sons of him who instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to medical law, but to no one else.
Now, as was mentioned earlier, Apollo is the Greek and Roman derivative of the Afrikan deity, Heru and Asclepius is the Greek derivative of the Afrikan deity, Imhotep. However, in this European medical “Oath,” no mention is made of the truism that the revered Greek and Roman deities, Apollo and Asclepius, are duplicates of the original Afrikan deities, Heru and Imhotep. Furthermore, the “Oath” also callously omits evidence of “the Kemetic roots and the personalities associated” with this ahistorical, Eurocentric medical Oath. Instead of reciting the “Hippocratic Oath,” medical school graduates should now recite the real, historical “Imhotep Oath.”
Egypt is indeed the light of the world. In the words of Cheikh Anta Diop: “Universal knowledge runs from the Nile Valley toward the rest of the world, in particular, Greece, which served as an intermediary. As a result, no thought, no ideology is foreign to Africa which was the land of their birth.” And no amount of Eurocentric research can ever efface this Egyptian, historical, contributive reality.
References
Lefkowitz, M. (1996). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach My as History, New York: Basic
Obenga, T. (1995). A Lost Tradition: African Philosophy in World History, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Source Editions.
Palmer, R.R. and Colton, J. (1984). A History of the Modern World, New York: Knopf, Ltd.
Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").
Dr. Nantambu is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University, U.S.A.
Nubia
The African Kingdoms of Nubia
Despite the new wave of myths regarding Nubia and Kemet (Ancient Egypt) It is clear that Kemet and Nubia were neighbouring African Civilizations just as Aksum and Nubia. Difference doesn’t mean Nubia was a ‘black race’ and Kemet wasn’t. Both groups were ethnic groups of indigenous African origin. The ethnic differences were no more significant than Ethiopians verses Kenyans.
The land of Nubia was located in what is now Sudan and lower Egypt. Home to what is considered to be the earliest black culture, Nubia waves of Central African inhabitants managed to transform a land notorious for its high temperatures and infrequent rainfall into a series of kingdoms that influenced, occasionally conquered and inevitably outlasted their more famous Egyptian neighbours. Nubian achievements include the worlds first Archaeoastronomy devices, conceived approximately a millennium before Stonehenge.
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I
Below are excerpts from various historical and archeological sources that describe the progression of the Nubians from the initial organization of the settlers to the end of Christian domination around 1400AD. The reader is encouraged to follow the embedded links to find more information.
A-Group
A-Group is the designation for a distinct culture that arose between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile in Nubia between the Egyptian 1st dynasty and the 3rd millennium BC. The A-Group settled on very poor land with scarce natural resources, yet they became the first Nubians to develop agriculture. This culture was one of the two important “kingdoms” in Lower Nubia. Artifacts from this culture were discovered in 1907 by Egyptologist George A. Reisner.
A-Group royal tombs were found to be two centuries older than those of the Egyptians. It is believed that the Egyptians developed their grave site customs for honoring pharaohs from Central Africa. The A-Group had strong beliefs in the afterlife. A great deal of time was put into their cemeteries and funerals.
C-Group
The so-called C-Group appeared in Lower Nubia about 400 years later and persisted from about 2500 to 1500BC. They likely like their cultural origins in Upper Nubia, and many of the artifacts that they left are quite different from those of their A-Group predecessors in the area. The C-Groupers traded with the Egyptians, but the Egyptians themselves wanted to exert more control over their southern neighbours. During the Middle Kingdon, they built forts near the second cataract of the Nile. During Dynasty 13, Egypt lost control of Nubia, and Nubians occupied the Egyptian formts. And toward the end of Dynasty 17, the rulers of Nubia and Hyksos rulers were treating each other as equals.
Kerma Culture
The Kerma culture, called Kush or Kushite by the Egyptians, was the first Nubian state, situated between the fourth and fifth cataracts of the Nile River in what is now the Sudan, between 2500 and 1500 BC. Early Kerma society was agricultural in nature and had round hut dwellings with distinctive circular tombs; later Kerma developed into a foreign trade-based society with mud-brick architecture, dealing in ivory, diorate, and gold.
Known as the “Land of the Yam†to the Egyptians, Kerma lay in a well-watered basin where Ethiopian nutrients deposited by the Nile supported the agricultural resources of the kingdom. They were rich in cattle for domestic use, sacrifice, and exported large numbers to Egypt. Prosperous and powerful, the kings of Kerma built a sprawling city with a white temple (deffufa) fortified by mud-brick walls and rectangular towers astride the ancient routes of trade from south to north and east to west. Their craftsmen produced exquisite black-topped pottery. The indigenous burials of their kings pre-date any Egyptian influence and were accompanied by ritual human and animal sacrifice. One Kerma royal turmulus records the slaughter of 4,00 cattle for the deceased.
At one point, Kerma came very close to conquering Egypt, with Egypt suffering a “humiliating defeat” by the hands of the Kushites. According to [the] head of the joint British Museum and Egyptian archaeological team, the attack was so devastating that, had the Kerma forces chosen to stay and occupy Egypt, they might have eliminated it for good and brought the great nation to extinction.
Egyptian Domination
Egypt dominated parts of Nubia from about 1950 to 1000 BC. Forts, trading posts and Egyptian style temples were built in Kush, and the Nubian elite adopted the worship of Egyptian gods and even the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system. The gold, ebony and ivory of Nubia contributed to the material wealth of Egypt, and many of the famed treasures of the Egyptian kings were made of products from Nubia.
The one factor that chiefly characterized Egypt’s relationship with Nubia through most of their history was exploitation. Nubia’s most important resource for Egypt was precious metal, including gold and electrum.
Nubia was also an important source of manpower and labor for the Egyptians. The Palermo Stone records that early in the 4th Dynasty, King Snefru led a military campaign into Nubia reputedly to crush a “revolt” there (the Egyptians considered all enemies, whether foreign or domestic, as “rebels” against the natural order). According to that text, he captured 200,000 head of cattle and 7,000 prisoners, all of whom were deported to Egypt as laborers on royal building projects.
Napatan, Meroitic and Ballana Periods
The Napatan Period (about 700 - 300 BC) is named after the town Napata, where an Amun temple was built and where the kings were buried in small pyramids (the cemeteries are located not far at Nuri and el Kurru). Napata was the religious centre of the country.
In the visible record Napatan culture seems heavily influenced by the Egyptians. The kings were buried in small pyramids, with an Egyptian style funerary equipment (shabtis, sarcophagi with religious texts, canopic jars, funerary stelae). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was used. The exact order of most kings of the Napatan period is still under discussion. There is a group of well attested rulers dating shortly after the the end of Napatan control of Egypt (for example: Senkamanisken and Aspelta). Some kings dating to about the 4th century BC are again well-known from long monumental inscriptions (Arikamaninote, Harsiotef).
By 200 BC the capital had shifted yet farther south to Meroe, where the kings continued to be buried in pyramid tombs and to build temples to Nubian and Egyptian gods in a hybrid Egyptian Roman-African style. Roman historians record the skirmishes and treaties which marked the relation ship of Roman Egypt and Nubia.
By AD 250 the culture of Nubia changed radically, perhaps due to the immigration of new peoples into the Nile Valley. Pyramid tombs were replaced by the great tumulus burials of the kings of Ballana.
Christian Period
Nubian Christianity developed in great isolation. Between 639 and 641, the Arabs conquered Egypt, and, from then on, Coptic Christians there were a diminishing minority in a country under Muslim rule. Despite this isolation, Nubian Christianity was to survive and, indeed, flourish for centuries.
Culturally, its Christianity was greatly influenced by Byzantium. The Nubians used the liturgy of St. Mark, and decorated the walls of their churches with murals that showed their royals dressed in Byzantine style. In 1961, Polish archaeologists excavated what appeared to be a mound of sand, and, within it, found Faras Cathedral, its walls decorated with 169 magnificent paintings of dark-skinned Nubian kings, queens and bishops, and biblical figures and saints.
The decline of Christianity in Nubia seems to have been mainly cased by a gradual process of Muslim immigration. As time went on, the Nubian population became increasingly dominated by Islam or Islamic Nubians. In 1315, the Muslim government of Egypt imposed a Nubian Muslim as the king of Makouria, and, in 1317, Dongola Cathedral officially became a mosque. However, the tiny Christian splinter kingdom of Dotawo survived in lower Nubia until the late 15th century.
The Kingdom of Ghana
Wagadou Empire ("Land of Herds". existed c. 750-1200) The Kingdom of Ghana is generally given the dates 9th to the 13th century CE by historians. It marks the beginning of a series of empires in West Africa that were involved in extensive commercial trade. The introduction of the camel, which preceded Muslims and Islam by several centuries, brought about a gradual revolution in trade, and for the first time, the extensive gold, ivory, and salt resources of the region could be sent north and east to population centers in North Africa, the West Asia (Middle East) and Europe in exchange for manufactured goods. This all proves trade in this region was ancient. You should note by looking at the map above that the area of the Kingdom of Ghana during this time period is farther north than the present day country of Ghana, which Kwame Nkrumah names after Ancient Ghana.
Some have called the Kingdom of Ghana the "land of gold, " an excellent description since it was abounding in gold. The gold trade was largely responsible for the development of Ghana into a powerful, centralized kingdom. The peoples of West Africa had independently developed their own gold mining techniques and began trading with people of other regions of Africa and later Europe as well. At the time of the Kingdom of Ghana, gold was traded for salt that came down from the Sahara desert.
In addition to the gold trade, historians have pointed to a second important factor in the development of these West African Kingdoms. This was the use of iron. The use of iron to make tools and weapons helped some people to expand their control over neighboring people. These changes called for new forms of social organization, contributing to the development of centralized, powerful empires. Historians also say that the use of the horse and camel, along with iron, were important factors in how rulers were able to incorporate small farmers and herders into their empires.
Rulers of Awkar
- King Kaya Maja : circa 350 AD
- 21 Kings, names unknown: circa 350 AD- 622 AD
- 21 Kings, names unknown: circa 622 AD- 750 AD
Soninke Rulers "Ghanas" of Wagadou Empire
- Majan Dyabe Cisse: circa 750s
- More GhanasRuler, names unknown: circa 750s- 1040
- Bassi: 1040- 1062
- Tunka Manin: 1062- 1076
Almoravid Occupation
- General Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar: 1076- 1087
Ghanas of Wagadou Kingdom
- Kambine Diaresso: 1087- 1090s
- Suleiman: 1090s- 1100s
- Bannu Bubu: 1100s- 1120s
- Majan Wagadou: 1120s- 1130s
- Musa: 1140s- 1160s
Rulers during Kaniaga Occupation
- Diara Kante: 1180-1202
- Soumaba Cisse as vassal of Soumaoro: 1203-1235
Ghanas of Wagadou Tributary
- Soumaba Cisse as ally of Sundjata Keita: 1235-1240
The Ghanaian kings controlled the gold that was mined in their kingdom and implemented a system of taxation for their people. Around 1054, the Almoravid rulers came south to conquer the Kingdom of Ghana and convert the people to Islam. The authority of the king eventually diminished, which opened the way for the Kingdom of Mali to begin to gain power. The trade that had begun, however, continued to prosper.
Two important sources that have told historians about the history of the Kingdom of Ghana are the writings of a Spanish Muslim named Al-Bakri and archaeological finds. Archaeologists have worked at excavating a site that many believe to be one of the king's cities of the Kingdom of Ghana, Kumbi Saleh.
The Kingdom of Mali
The Mali Empire was the 2nd largest empire in Africa at 1.1 million KM, 2nd to Songhay. Take another look at the map above showing Africa's kingdoms and empires. Notice the relationship between Ghana and Mali. What do you see? The Kingdom of Mali includes all of Ghana plus a lot more territory! During its time, Mali was the second largest empire in the world only after the Mongolian empire in Asia. The dates that historians have designated for the Kingdom of Mali are from the 13th to 15th centuries CE.
The Kingdom of Mali came to control the gold trade that the Kingdom of Ghana had controlled before it, but it also expanded its trading in many ways. The Kingdom of Mali controlled the salt trade in the north and many caravan trade routes. Additionally, it traded extensively with Egypt and the copper mine areas to the east.
The founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Mali was Sundiata Keita. We know about him through the writings of a 14th century North African historian named Ibn Khaldun. Sundiata expanded the kingdom to include the Kingdom of Ghana and West African gold fields.
The most celebrated king of Mali was Mansa Musa. He greatly extended Mali's territory and power during his reign. He made a name for himself in distant regions throughout the Muslim world through his pilgrimage to Mecca, which is in present-day Saudi Arabia. Sixty thousand people and eighty camels carrying 300 lbs. of gold each accompanied him to Mecca.
Several great centers of Islamic learning were also established during the Kingdom of Mali. Among them were the legendary Timbuktu, Djenne, and Gao. Scholars came from all over the Muslim world to study at these places, which have a long and rich history of learning in religion, mathematics, music, law, and literature. Although many people in Mali maintained their indigenous religions during this time, Islam was becoming well established throughout the kingdom.
The fourteenth-century traveler Ibn Battuta visited ancient Mali a few decades after Musa's death and was much impressed by the peace and lawfulness he found strictly enforced there. The Mali empire extended over an area larger than western Europe and consisted of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces. Following Mansa Musa's death, Mali went into a long decline, shrinking to the size of its original territory by 1645.
The Kingdom of Songhay
The Songhay empire was the largest empire in Africa at a peak of 1.4 million km. Now take a look back again at the map of Africa's empires and kingdoms. Click here to return to the map again. You will see that the Kingdom of Songhay encompassed part of the Kingdom of Mali, as well as land beyond to the east and north. The dates for the Kingdom of Songhay partly overlap those of Mali, although the information that follows will reveal at what point Songhay gained control over certain portions of the old Kingdom of Mali. The dates for the Kingdom of Songhay are between 1350 and 1600 CE.
The exact origins of the Kingdom of Songhay are not clear to historians, although there are records of the King Kossoi accepting Islam around 1009 CE. This began an integration of commerce and religion to gain and maintain power that would continue throughout the history of the Kingdom of Songhay. Islam became a unifying force for the people and an important factor for maintaining state power.
The first of two great rulers in the Kingdom of Songhay was Sonni Ali. He came to power in 1464 CE and made the Songhay perhaps the most powerful state in western/central Africa at the time. He seized Timbuktu and Djenne, which had been parts of the Kingdom of Mali. These, as well as the capital city of Gao, continued to be important centers of learning and commerce. Sonni Ali was not a devout Muslim himself, but was sympathetic to indigenous religious practices. Most of all, he was concerned about his own ambitions to build a great empire.
His successor was Mohammed Askia, who came to power in 1493 CE. He expanded the kingdom even further and set up an even more advanced and strongly centralized government. He developed a new system of laws, expanded the military, and encouraged scholarship and learning. Unlike Sonni Ali, he was a devout Muslim, who used the combination of Islam and commerce to build his kingdom. He brought peace and stability to the kingdom during his reign.
The Kingdom of Songhay came to an end when the Moroccans invaded and conquered them. By 1600 CE, the days of the great kingdoms of West Africa were over.
The Songhai Rebellion and Mali's Decline
Mali reached its peak in fame and fortune in the 1300s. Then weak and incompetent kings inherited power. Late in the 1300s the old problem of dynastic succession brought quarrels that weakened the Mali kingship and gave others opportunity.
The others in this instance were the Songhai people, who lived along the middle of the Niger River and monopolized fishing and canoe transport there. Trade at Gao had brought Islam to the Songhai. Some Songhai royalty had converted to Islam, as had an high percentage of Songhai commoners. Mali control over the Songhai capital, Gao , had always been tentative, and the spirit of independence had not died among Songhai kings. A Songhai king led his people in rebellion. The rebellion disrupted Mali's trade on the Niger River. Mali's empire suffered as the Songhai sacked and occupied Timbuktu in 1433-34. In 1464 a Songhai king, Sonni 'Ali took power, and again Timbuktu was attacked, Sonni 'Ali capturing the city after a great loss of life. Five years later, Sonni 'Ali conquered the town of Jenne which had been thought impregnable. In his twenty-eight years of military campaigning, the victorious Songhai king won the title of King of Kings. He dominated trade routes and the great grain producing region of the Niger river delta. Sonni 'Ali's competitor, the Mali empire, was deteriorating, and the Mali empire was to die in the 1600s.
The Coming of Islam to the Maghrib
Now we are going to go back in time again to the beginnings of and just prior to the Kingdom of Ghana, but this time we will be looking at a region called the Maghrib.
The region known as the Maghrib lies in North Africa, in what are now the countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Note on the map below where the Maghrib lies in relation to the three West African kingdoms we have discussed. (Click here if you need to go back and look at the map of Africa's Kingdoms and Empires again.) Think about what relationship might have existed between these two regions as you read through the text below.
The Maghrib underwent significant changes beginning in the 7th century CE that led to a shift in its dominant religion to Islam. Before this time, the population consisted of a mix of Christians, Jews, and people practicing indigenous religions. Yet this began to change as Arabs gained more and more power in the region. The people living in the Maghrib at the time were called Berbers. Today their descendents still live in this region of Africa, and the majority of them follow Islam. During the period between the 7th century and 10th century CE (overlapping with the early days of the Kingdom of Ghana), Islam became accepted throughout this region. It remains the dominant religion there up to this day. How did this significant change occur?
Historians have explained that the Arabs brought Islam to the Maghrib as they moved into the area. The Arabs were a powerful political and military force in the region. At first, there was pressure for Berbers to join the Arab military and adopt Islam for reasons of political/economic advantage. However by the 8th century, Berbers were ready to adopt Islam as well as Arabic culture. They converted to Islam on a massive scale, but also continued to resent Arab domination in this region.
The Berbers developed their own unique expression of Islam in a doctrine called Kharidjism. This doctrine emphasized equality amongst Muslims and criticized the ruling authority of the Arabs. It became the Berber's ideology of struggle against Arab domination. Their resistance was aimed not at Muslim Arabs, but specifically targeted towards the ruling class.
Beginning in the late 8th century CE, the Idrisid dynasty strengthened the presence of Islam in the region through measures to convert the remainder of the non-Islamic population to Islam. By the 10th century, virtually the whole region known as the Maghrib had become Islamic.
During this time of the Arab conquest of the Maghrib in the 7th and 8th centuries, there was an influx of Muslim merchants who became involved in the trans-Saharan gold trade with the Great Kingdoms of West Africa that were just forming around this time. Africans who came across from Arabia and Africans Muslim who traded across the desert spread Islam across West Africa. The Fulani people are noted for this activity.
Mutapa Empire: Great Zimbabwe
The word Zimbabwe literally means "stone dwelling" in the Shona language. Thus, Great Zimbabwe is appropriately named because it is indeed a great stone dwelling! The pictures below show parts of the ruins of Great Zimbabwe as they can be seen today by people who visit the country of Zimbabwe.
Aerial view of Zimbabwe ruins
Possible site of training of young people for adulthood at Great Zimbabwe ruins
What or who created these stone ruins? What is the story of the people who once lived there? These are questions that historians have been trying to answer. By examining the ruins and dating the materials found within them, historians have been able to piece together the lives of people who built and dwelled in Great Zimbabwe.
Great Zimbabwe existed between approximately the 12th and 15th centuries CE, and it is the largest of about 150 ruins found in the land around the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. This area is filled with granite that was used as building material. Examine the map below to find the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. The yellow point between the two marks the location of Great Zimbabwe. Its kingdom, however, was much larger, stretching into much of present day Zimbabwe and central Mozambique. The greater area of the kingdom is also indicated on the map.
The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are remains of what was once a great trading civilization, which sprang up in the interior of southern Africa. Although the civilization had some contact with outside groups, modern historians have agreed that Great Zimbabwe was built and managed by Africans living in the interior. It was a center of gold and ivory trade. Towards the latter part of the history of Great Zimbabwe, evidence suggests that the people living there were trading with regions as far as China, Persia, and Syria.
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People living at Great Zimbabwe also practiced agriculture and cattle herding, although historians believe that this became a problem after awhile. |
Too many people living and farming one small area led to environmental degradation. Eventually the land was no longer able to sustain such a large number of people.
The Mwenes or Monomatapas of the first Mutapa state:
- Nyatsimba Mutota (c. 1430–c. 1450)
- Matope Nyanhehwe Nebedza (c. 1450–c. 1480)
- Mavura Maobwe (1480)
- Mukombero Nyahuma (1480–c. 1490)
- Changamire (1490–1494)
- Kakuyo Komunyaka (1494–c. 1530)
- Neshangwe Munembire (c. 1530–c. 1550)
- Chivere Nyasoro (c. 1550–1560)
- Chisamharu Negomo Mupuzangutu (1560–1589)
- Gatsi Rusere (1589–1623)
- Nyambo Kapararidze (1623–1629)
- Chimbganda matombo (1634-1698)
The Mwenes or Monomatapas of the second Mutapa state:
- Cangara II (1803 - 1804)
- Mutiwapangome (1804 - 1806)
- Mutiwaora (1806)
- Cipfumba (1806 - 1807)
- Nyasoro (1807 - 1828)
- Cimininyambo or Kandeya II (1828 - 1830)
- Dzeka (1830 - 1849)
- Kataruza (1849 - 1868)
- Kandeya III (1868-1870)
- Dzuda (1870-1887)
- Cioko Dambamupute (1887-1902)
Great Zimbabwe was an early example of a state in this region of southern Africa with much political, economic, and military power. With its formation, social and political organization became more hierarchical. This involved a move from village level organization to a larger, broader social and political organization resulting in the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe. What might be some advantages and disadvantages of being part of a large, powerful kingdom, rather than a village that is governed locally? Think about this question as you continue reading the following sections on people living in the interior of East and Central Africa around the time of the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.
Backcountry of the Congo Forest
Constructing history in the Congo Forest between the 12th to 15th centuries CE is a challenge. Historians rely on archaeology, linguistics, oral histories, and later writing to learn about this time period because this is a region without written records. Look at the map below to see where the Congo Forest is located.
The Axsum or Aksum empire was the 3rd largest African empire at 1.25 million sq km. In the sixth century, the kingdom of Aksum (Axum) was doing what many elsewhere had been doing: pursuing trade and empire. Despite the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the 400s and the decline in world trade, Aksum's trade increased during that century. Its exports of ivory, glass crystal, brass and copper items, and perhaps slaves, among other things, had brought prosperity to the kingdom. Some people had become wealthy and cosmopolitan. Aksum's port city on the Red Sea, Adulis , bustled with activity. Its agriculture and cattle breeding flourished, and Aksum extended its rule to Nubia , across the Red Sea to Yemen , and it had extended its rule to the northern Ethiopian Highlands and along the coast to Cape Guardafui .
From Aksum's beginnings in the third century, Christianity there had spread. But at the peak of Christianity's success, Aksum began its decline. In the late 600s, Aksum's trade was diminished by the clash between Constantinople and the Sassanid Empire. The Sassanid Empire clashed with Constantinople over trade on the Red Sea and expanded into Yemen, driving Aksum out of Arabia. Then Islam united Arabia and began expanding. In the 700s, Muslims occupied the Dahlak Islands just off the coast of Adulis, which had been ruled by Aksum. The Muslims moved into the port city of Adulis, and Aksum's trade by sea ended.
Aksum was now cut off from much of the world. Greek- the language of trade - declined there. Minted coins became rare. Paganism revived and mixed with Christianity. And it has been surmised that the productivity of soil in the area was being diminished by over-exploitation and the cutting down of trees. Taking advantage of Aksum's weakness, the Bedja people, who had been living just north of Aksum, moved in. The people of Aksum, in turn, migrated into the Ethiopian Highlands, where they overran small farmers and settled at Amhara , among other nearby places. And with this migration a new Ethiopian civilization began.
West Africa
In West Africa, trade was giving rise to towns. There, on the fringes of the Sahara, arose a kingdom and empire that its rulers called Wagadu. The people of this kingdom were the Soninke - African people who spoke the language of Mande. Their king was called Ghana, and Ghana became the name by which this kingdom and empire became known - ancient Ghana rather than the modern state also called Ghana.
The kings of ancient Ghana were authoritarian. They inherited rule through their mother's side of the family - matrilineal rather than patrilineal as with kings in Europe at the time - and they claimed descent from an original ancestor whom they believed had first settled the land. Ghana's king was the leader of a religious cult that was served by devoted priests, and the king's subjects were obliged to view him as divine and as too exalted to communicate directly with them.
Ghana's kings had enhanced their power and enriched themselves by exploiting the trade passing through their territory. From the perspective of merchants they were not unlike highway bandits, forcing from tradesmen a tax on the gold they carried. But the tax was shrewder than robbery. Continuing robbery at will would have ended the arrival of gold on their territory.
As Ghana's kings grew richer they conquered, forcing obedience from the kings of other tribes, from whom they exacted tribute. They extended their rule to the gold producing regions to their south, and they imposed a tax on gold production.
Ghana's major competitor was the Berber dominated city of Awdaghost to the northwest - a city with an ample supply of water, surrounded by herds of cattle and where millet, wheat, grapes, dates and figs were grown. The Berbers who dominated that city had wanted to make it the major point of passage for caravan trading across the western Sahara. But in 990 Ghana conquered the city, putting Ghana at the peak of its power.
Muslim Incursions
During Ghana's days of glory, Muslim tradesmen were coming south in caravans from places like Sijilmasa , Tunis and Tripoli . From Sijilmasa the caravans had been going through Taghaza to Awdaghost. From Tunis and Tripoli they had been going to Hausaland and the Lake Chad region. They had been bringing salt southward, and they also carried cloth, copper, steel, cowry shells, glass beads, dates and figs. And they brought slaves for sale.
The Muslims were literate while the Soninke and their kings were not. The Soninke left no record of the doings of their kings. It was through Muslim writers that modern historians would gather what information they could about Ghana.
The Muslims were offended to find people worshiping their king as a divinity rather than worshipping Allah. The Muslims complained of people believing their kings to be the source of life, sickness, health and death. The Muslim writer al-Bakre described a Ghana king as having an army of 200,000 men, 40,000 of whom were archers. And he described the presence in Ghana of small horses.
Among the Soninke, the town of Kumbi had become a commercial center alongside a town of round mud-brick huts. Muslim tradesmen living there built stone houses and a number of mosques. Some Muslims there served as ministers at the king's palace, and the town of Kumbi became an intellectual center for western Africa.
Muslim writers described one king of Ghana as renowned for his great wealth and the splendor of his court. The king held audience wearing fine fabrics and gold ornaments and bedecked his animals and retainers in gold. People in the north of Africa spoke of the king of Ghana as the richest monarch in the world.
But the power of the kings of Ghana was destined to end. Muslims in western Africa united behind the Almoravids - a Muslim dynasty that ruled in Morocco and Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. A religious movement among the Muslims known as the Sanhaja inspired the Almoravids and others to a jihad (holy war), and Muslim Berbers in the Sahara joined an effort toward conversions and war against Ghana. The leader of the Sanhaja movement and army in the Sahara area, Abu Bakr, captured Awdaghost in 1054. And in 1076, after many battles, he captured the city of Kumbi.
Almoravid domination of Ghana lasted only a few years, but the Almoravids held onto control of the desert trade that had been dominated by Ghana. Without control of the gold trade, the power of Ghana's kings declined further. They had, meanwhile, converted to Islam - while holding onto the religious rituals and myths that justified their rule to their subjects. Ghana's kings allowed Berber herdsmen to move into Soninke homelands, and these herdsmen began overgrazing Ghana's lands. Ghana's agricultural land became worn and less able to support as many people as before. Subject kings and tribes broke away from Ghana's rule. The king of the Sosso people, in neighboring Kaniaga , turned the tables on Ghana, and in 1203 the Sosso overran Ghana's capital city, Kumbi.
The Mandingo Empire
After their victory over Ghana, the Sosso expanded against the Mandingo (or Mande) - a people who spoke Mande and lived on fertile farmland around Wangara . The Sosso king, Sumaguru Kante, put to death all of the sons of the Mandingo ruler but one, Sundjata, who appeared to be an insignificant cripple. But Sundjata rallied the Mandingo. A guerrilla army built by Sundjata overwhelmed the Sosso and in 1235 killed their king, Sumaguru Kante. Sundjata annexed Ghana in 1240, and he took control of the gold trade routes. Merchants moved out of Kumbi to another commercial city farther north: Walata . And in small groups the Soninke people began emigrating from what had been their homeland.
The empire that the Sosso built, called Mali, gained control over the salt trade from Taghaza and the copper trade of the Sahara. The gold trade was a source of wealth for Mali, and so too was trade in food: sorghum, millet and rice. And regarding trade, Mali dominated the town of Timbuktu, nine miles north of the Niger River , which had risen a century or two before as a point of trade for desert caravans.
After Sundjata's death in 1255 more conquests were made by his successors - Mansa Uli and then Sakura. Sakura had been a freed slave serving in the royal household and had seized power after the ruling family had become weakened by quarreling among themselves. It is surmised that Sakura was responsible for Mali's expansion to Tekrur in the west and to Gao in the east.
By the 1300s, Mali's kings had converted to Islam, which gave them advantages of good will in diplomacy and in commerce. But, again, the pagan rituals and artifacts that were a part of the ideology and justification of rule were maintained. And the king's loyal subjects continued their traditional prostrations and covering themselves with dust to display their humility.
By the 1300s, Muslim Mandingo merchants were trading as far east as the city-states in Hausaland and beyond to Lake Chad. Islam was spreading with the trade of its merchants, and it appears that in the 1300s or 1400s the kings of Hausaland converted to Islam. But when a Mali king tried to pressure people in the gold mining region around Wangara to convert, a disruption in the production of gold was threatened, and the pressure to convert was withdrawn.
One well known Mali emperor who was Muslim was Mansa Musa, who ruled from 1312-1337. On record is Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca , his entourage described as including 500 slaves with gold staffs and 100 camels each with 300 pounds of gold. Mansa Mura is described as spending lavishly in the bazaars of Cairo and his spending is said to have increased the supply of gold to an extent that its price depreciated on the Cairo exchange. And, as usual, scholars were not immune from being influenced by wealth, Mansa Musa bringing a collection of them back with him from Mecca. Mali was literate, but only insofar as it employed Muslim scribes at the court of its kings. As in Europe, the common people of Mali were not yet expected to read and write.
Benin Exports Slaves
Benin was a city that dated back to the eleventh century - and no relation to the West African nation of Benin of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Benin was a large city for its time - a walled city several kilometers wide in a forested region inland from where the Niger River emptied into the Atlantic. In the mid-1400s the ruler of Benin, Ewuare, built up his military and began expanding. Captives taken in battle he traded to the Portuguese. Benin's empire reached about 190 miles (300 kilometers) in width by the early 1500s. Then it stopped expanding, and with this it had no more captives to sell as slaves, while selling slaves to the Portuguese was being taken up by others.
South Central Africa
Some scholars theorize that Bantu speaking people had moved south from around the Benue River in western Africa into south-central Africa. By the 900s, the pastoral and Hamitic speaking Tutsi were migrating southward, into east-central Africa, to Rwanda , near Ukerewe , in centuries to come to be known as Lake Victoria. There, it is said, the Tutsi introduced cattle raising, iron-working, new crops, kingship and caste divisions. The people whom the Tutsi overran were Bantu speakers - the Hutu - and the Tutsi made vassals of some of the Hutu, giving them cattle in exchange for services and loyalty.
Before the 1100s agriculture was practiced in much of south-central Africa, except in the interior of southern Angola , close to the Kalahari Desert . In south-central Africa, bananas were grown. This was tropical woodland and savana, where yams and sugar cane were grown. Beans, groundnuts, sorghum and other millets were cultivated in areas of savanna. And people augmented their food production by hunting, fishing, gathering grubs and by raising chickens, pigs and, in a few places, cattle. There was also pottery making, wickerwork and salt production. At Munza were iron mines. People in this region of Africa preferred using salt and metal, including copper, as currency for trading. By the 1300s, communities in Katanga were uniting into a kingdom of farmers, fishermen and crafts people, and they were trading in dry fish and products made of metal.
In some of the more remote parts of south-central Africa were villages that were still egalitarian, but in the more densely populated areas monarchs had arisen. These monarchs associated their rule with spirits, and their rule was supported by rituals and priests not totally removed from sorcery, divination, healing and fertility rites. And those supporting monarchical rule believed in the sacredness of lineage and royal blood of their monarchs. A monarch had underlings who advised him and went with him in his visits to the villages where he claimed rule. He had the keepers of emblems, a military chief and warriors to support his rule. He had slaves. And from his subjects the monarch received taxes with which to maintain his operation and to buy what he needed to maintain what he considered an appropriate lifestyle.
By the 1400s small empires thrived in south-central Africa. One was centered at Luba . Another was centered at Lunda - where, it appears, people learned metal working from Luba. A third empire was centered in the kingdom of the Kongo , which dominated areas such as Loango , Kakong , Ngoi and Kisama .
Eastern Africa
Those who remained in Nubia after conquests by the Soba and by the Aksumites lived for long periods in peace and cooperation with Egypt, including returning to Egypt runaway slaves. They traded with Egypt, and some genetic diffusion with the Egyptians occurred. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, Nubia became more Arabic and more Muslim. And Africans from Nubia filled the ranks of Egypt's military.
Egypt went through rule by the Fatimids, followed by the turmoil of the Christian crusades and rule by Saladin and his Ayubbid dynasty. In 1172 Christian Nubia joined Europe's Crusaders by attacking the Ayubbids, and an Ayubbid army successfully counterattacked. In 1250 the Mamelukes replaced the Ayubbids, and the more aggressive Mamelukes warred frequently, their armies diminishing Nubian populations and taking many slaves from Nubia. Nubia split into two kingdoms, Makouria and Alwa . In the 1300s Makouria collapsed. Then in the 1400s, pastoralists from Egypt overran Alwa, and this was followed by civil war there. The Muslim invasions were accompanied by anti-Christian violence, and by 1500 little Christianity was left in what had been Nubia.
Christianity and Islam in Ethiopia
Since the 900s, people in and around the Ethiopian highlands had been benefiting from trade with port cities such as Adulis on the Red Sea, Zeila and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, and Mogadishu , Merca and Brava on the shore of the Indian Ocean. These were towns populated by Muslims, and inland were Muslim and Christian communities, often neighboring each other. The Muslims had a strong sense of community and generally participated more in trade than the Christians - trade being largely in Muslim hands. The Christians were under various chiefdoms, many were farmers, and a few of them were prosperous and had slaves.
In the area was also a Jewish community, the Falashas, who spoke Ge'ez and knew no Hebrew. They were unfamiliar with the Talmuds that had been produced in West Asia, but they claimed to be descended from the ten tribes banished from Israel.
Around the year 1270, at Amhara , in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, a new Christian dynasty, the Solomonids, was founded by Yikunno-Amlak, a conqueror who was described as a king of kings. His dynasty was believed to be a continuation of the Christian kingdom that had been in Aksum centuries before. Yikunno-Amlak was to be described as descended from Solomon's son, Manelik and the Queen of Sheba. His Christian subjects believed that they were God's chosen people, that they were maintaining purity in Christian belief, and that they were members of a second Israel.
The Solomonids addressed the problem of monarchical succession by putting Yikunno-Amlak's male descendants in a mountain retreat guarded by several hundred warriors. There Yikunno-Amlak's descendants remained in isolation, studied their faith, wrote poetry and composed sacred music as they awaited selection as heir to the throne.
It was under Yikunno-Amlak's grandson, Amda Seyon (1314-44), that the Solomonids gained military dominance in Ethiopia - Solomonid rule stretching from Adulis in the north to Bali in the south. The success of Christians against Muslims in Ethiopia did not sit well with the Muslims of Egypt. In Ethiopia, Amda-Seyon became concerned about retributions against his fellow Christians in Egypt. He demanded freedom of worship and other civil rights for Christians in Egypt, and he was prepared to fight Egypt and to ally himself with Christian Europe to end Muslim supremacy in West Asia, but no such war took place. The Mamelukes of Egypt remained interested primarily in events in the eastern Mediterranean. Christians in Egypt were becoming more outnumbered by Muslims, and this would continue into the 1400s, with the Muslim majority increasingly blaming Christians and other minorities for their troubles.
In the 1400s the power of the Solomonids in Ethiopia declined as various Muslim communities rebelled against it. Under the king Beide-Maryan (1468-78), the Solomonids suffered their first serious military defeat. And after 1478 the Solomonids were weakened by a conflict over succession - their attempt to solve the problem of succession apparently having failed. War between two Solomonid princes continued for several years. Muslims took advantage of Solomonid weakness, declared a holy war, and the Solomonid Empire collapsed. But a Solomonid king remained, a local king rather than a king of kings, the Solomonids would rise again, the last of them to be Haile Selassie in the 20th century.
Farther South
In the 700s and 800s, Arab traders looking for opportunity were moving southward into coastal towns such as Mogadishu, Merca and Brava. They participated in the trade that traversed the Indian Ocean. As in Nubia, intermarriages with local Africans occurred. Arab tradesmen made themselves dominant in the region, and a few Arabs migrated farther south along the coast, the island of Pemba, for example, becoming part Muslim by the 900s.
Along the coast below Mogadishu, Merca and Brava, Africa remained predominately African. There were hunters, fishermen, growers of sorghum, millet, rice, cucumbers, coconuts, sugar and bananas, and some were raising cattle. Some hunter-gatherers integrated with the cattle herders and agriculturists around them - societies ruled by kings who believed that they were divine but vulnerable to assassination if they were oppressive.
Inland, about 180 miles from the eastern coast, on a plateau sparse in trees, was Zimbabwe, where Bantu speakers were living sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries - the Bantu speaking people having replaced the Sa (Bushmen) whom they had driven into the desert. The Bantu speakers had come in two waves, the last wave being a pastoral and agricultural people who built the stone structures that were to be known in the 20th century as the ruins of Zimbabwe, of an architecture unknown to any people elsewhere in the world - the oldest of which dated from the 700s.
Gold that was mined near Zimbabwe was taken to trading towns along the coast. So too were leopard skins, rhinoceros horn, ambergris, slaves and ivory - the ivory of the African elephant more in demand than the harder ivory of the Indian elephant. Joining this trade was iron taken from deposits around the towns of Mombasa and Malindi. Traders on the eastern coast of Africa, many of them Africans, profited from a rise in trade with Asia, and from India the Africans imported silks, cottons and glassware.
From the 1100s, Arabs began arriving in greater number in this coastal area. In the 1200s Mombasa became staunchly Muslim, and a Muslim dynasty was established at Kilwa. By the mid-1200s, Kilwa controlled the trade from Sofala to its south, Sofala being a point of departure for gold from inland.
Meanwhile, economic activity in Zimbabwe was predominantly cattle raising, while the wealth of its king grew from trade in gold. With his wealth the king was able to maintain a powerful army and to extend his authority across a variety of principalities - a hundred miles to the west and to the Indian Ocean in the east. During the 1300s and into the 1400s Zimbabwe was the richest state on Africa's eastern coast, but it was also declining: Zimbabwe was losing its timber. Its lands were overgrazed and farmlands were eroding. Zimbabwe declined as a power, and it was abandoned around 1450. Successor states arose: Torwa to its west, Changamire just to its north, and Mutapa on the Zambezi River. Mutapa's economy was also based on cattle and wealth from the gold trade, and Mutapa expanded locally by military conquest.
Toward the end of the 1400s, Kilwa's preeminence on the east coast was fading as dynastic struggles sapped its strength. Kilwa was losing the trade in gold from Sofala to Mutaba. And Mutaba's gold trading attracted the Portuguese, who had begun sailing along Africa's eastern coast. Trade between Africans and the Europeans was on the rise, in slaves as well as gold.
LATER EMPIRES (SOKOTO)
Sokoto Caliphate (Empire, Dynasty, Kingdom) and Usman dan Fodio
By the late eighteenth century, many Muslim scholars and teachers had become disenchanted with the insecurity that characterized the Hausa states and Borno. Some clerics (mallams) continued to reside at the courts of the Hausa states and Borno, but others, who joined the Qadiriyah brotherhood, began to think about a revolution that would overthrow existing authorities. Prominent among these radical mallams was Usman dan Fodio, who with his brother and son, attracted a following among the clerical class. Many of his supporters were Fulani, and because of his ethnicity he was able to appeal to all Fulani, particularly the clan leaders and wealthy cattle owners whose clients and dependents provided most of the troops in the jihad that began in Gobir in 1804. Not all mallams were Fulani, however. The cleric whose actions actually started the jihad, Abd as Salam, was Hausa; Jibril, one of Usman dan Fodio's teachers and the first cleric to issue a call for jihad two decades earlier, was Tuareg. Nonetheless, by the time the Hausa states were overthrown in 1808, the prominent leaders were all Fulani.
Simultaneous uprisings confirmed the existence of a vast underground of Muslim revolutionaries throughout the Hausa states and Borno. By 1808 the Hausa states had been conquered, although the ruling dynasties retreated to the frontiers and built walled cities that remained independent. The more important of these independent cities included Abuja, where the ousted Zaria Dynasty fled; Argungu in the north, the new home of the Kebbi rulers; and Maradi in present-day Niger, the retreat of the Katsina Dynasty. Although the Borno mai was overthrown and Birni Gazargamu destroyed, Borno did not succumb. The reason, primarily, was that another cleric, Al Kanemi, fashioned a strong resistance that eventually forced those Fulani in Borno to retreat west and south. In the end, Al Kanemi overthrew the centuries-old Sayfawa Dynasty of Borno and established his own lineage as the new ruling house.
The new state that arose during Usman dan Fodio's jihad came to be known as the Sokoto Caliphate, named after his capital at Sokoto, founded in 1809. The caliphate was a loose confederation of emirates that recognized the suzerainty of the commander of the faithful, the sultan. When Usman dan Fodio died in 1817, he was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Bello. A dispute between Bello and his uncle, Abdullahi, resulted in a nominal division of the caliphate into eastern and western divisions, although the supreme authority of Bello as caliph was upheld. The division was institutionalized through the creation of a twin capital at Gwandu, which was responsible for the western emirates as far as modern Burkina Faso--formerly Upper Volta--and initially as far west as Massina in modern Mali. As events turned out, the eastern emirates were more numerous and larger than the western ones, which reinforced the primacy of the caliph at Sokoto.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were thirty emirates and the capital district of Sokoto, which itself was a large and populous territory although not technically an emirate. All the important Hausa emirates, including Kano, the wealthiest and most populous, were directly under Sokoto. Adamawa, which was established by Fulani forced to evacuate Borno, was geographically the biggest, stretching far to the south and east of its capital at Yola into modern Cameroon. Ilorin, which became part of the caliphate in the 1830s, was initially the headquarters of the Oyo cavalry that had provided the backbone of the king's power. An attempted coup d'état by the general of the cavalry in 1817 backfired when the cavalry itself revolted and pledged its allegiance to the Sokoto Caliphate. The cavalry was largely composed of Muslim slaves from farther north, and they saw in the jihad a justification for rebellion. In the 1820s, Oyo had been torn asunder, and the defeated king and the warlords of the Oyo Mesi retreated south to form new cities, including Ibadan, where they carried on their resistance to the caliphate and fought among themselves as well.
Usman dan Fodio's jihad created the largest empire in Africa since the fall of Songhai in 1591. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Sokoto Caliphate was at its greatest extent, it stretched 1,500 kilometers from Dori in modern Burkina Faso to southern Adamawa in Cameroon and included Nupe lands, Ilorin in northern Yorubaland, and much of the Benue River valley. In addition, Usman dan Fodio's jihad provided the inspiration for a series of related holy wars in other parts of the savanna and Sahel far beyond Nigeria's borders that led to the foundation of Islamic states in Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, and Sudan. An analogy has been drawn between Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the French Revolution in terms of its widespread impact. Just as the French Revolution affected the course of European history in the nineteenth century, the Sokoto jihad affected the course of history throughout the savanna from Senegal to the Red Sea.
ANCIENT RWANDA
| Generally, historians are divided on the origins of Rwanda ’s three ethnic groups, Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa. Rwanda was highly organized and had a centralized system of administration. The kingdom was presided over by Umwami (King) from, mainly the Nyiginya clan of the Tutsi sub-group. |
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King Musinga’s Royal Court |
| The Umwami nearly had absolute powers but was assisted by three main chiefs: a military chief, who was like the modern day army commander/or Joint Chief of General Staff. This chief was responsible for the army, ensuring territorial integrity and expansion. The second chief was cattle chief who over saw all matters pertaining to cattle keeping, grazing and settling related disputes. The third chief was the land chief who was responsible for agricultural land, produce and related affairs.
The chiefs were mainly Tutsi, but most often, the chief of land was Hutu. Behind the scenes, the queen mother also played a significant role in the administration of the kingdom.
The relationship between the king and the rest of the population was, as elsewhere, unequal; sustained by the highly organized system of “ubuhake”; a clientilist kind of relationship between the landed gentry and the less landed and the ordinary subjects. Unlike what some scholars have written, Ubuhake was mainly an economic system which enabled a symbiosis kind of relationship between the wealth and privileged and the less privileged. It was a system in which ordinary Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa participated and mutually benefited.
Ubuhake was voluntarily subscribed to and was entered into for many reasons; including protection and anticipation and getting favours from the most affluent and powerful. With the exception of wars of conquest and expansion, pre-colonial Rwandan was largely peaceful. For over a period of 400 years, peaceful co-existence marked the Ubuhake relationship; although for about 20 generations, one Tutsi clan ‘the Nyiginya’ dominated the political scene.
Ancient Rwanda ’s main economic activities were cattle keeping and farming. It’s on the basis of these economic activities that determined one’s status or family’s status in society. Because cows were considered very important in the pre-colonial economy, Rwandans with more cows were considered more affluent than farmers. Actually, and unlike colonial anthropological theorizing on the origins of the Rwandan people, Rwandans are agreed that the term Tutsi was used in pre-colonial Rwanda to mean a cattle keeper-and therefore affluent and Hutu to mean a farmer and therefore less affluent.
The other economic activity was hunting and gathering. This was mainly done by the less privileged members of the Banyarwanda community known as Abatwa.
Abatwa were marginalized and often discriminated against by both the Hutus and Tutsis. Hutu and Tutsi were less sharply distinct, and individuals could and did move from one category to the other on the basis of accumulated wealth.
A range of institutions mediated social relations, notably the clan system, which spanned the entire Rwandan society.
The institution of Ubuhake is credited for harmonizing and ensuring a strong interdependency between and among Rwanda ’s pre-colonial society-the personalized relationship between two individuals of unequal status. The patron was mostly Tutsi, but clients could be a Hutu of inferior social status or Tutsi. One person could be a client as well as a patron, even Tutsi patrons of Hutu could be a client yet of another Tutsi; only Umwami is the one who could not be a client. One could be a patron or a client depending on how many cows you have.
In all, there were nineteen clans shared among all the members of the three ethnic groups. Some argue that up to about the middle of the 19th century, clan identities mattered more than Tutsi - Hutu and Twa categorization.
However, the description of Rwandan by ethnic groups- partly based on indigenous people on one hand, inferior and superior race anthropological theorization on the other, is believed to be a colonial concoction which gained currency in the later part of the 20th century. |
History is a light that illuminates the past, and a key that unlocks the door to the future.
