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An empire of cloth: the textile industry of the Sokoto empire ca. 1808\-1903\. in An empire of cloth: the textile industry of the Sokoto empire ca. 1808\-1903\. )The Hausaland region of northern Nigeria was home to one of the largest textile industries in pre\-colonial Africa, whose scale and scope were unparalleled throughout most of the continent. As one German explorer who visited the region in 1854 noted, there was ‘something grand’ about this textile industry whose signature robes could be found as far as Tripoli, Alexandria, Mauritania, and the Atlantic coast. Centers of textile production like Kano were home to thousands of tailors and dyers producing an estimated 100,000 dyed\-robes a year in 1854, and more than two million rolls of cloth per year by 1911\. Much of the industry’s growth was associated with the establishment of the empire of Sokoto in the 19th century, which created West Africa’s largest state after the fall of Songhai, and expanded pre\-existing patterns of trade and production that facilitated the emergence of one of the few examples of proto\-industrialization on the continent. This article explores the textile industry of the Sokoto empire during the 19th century, focusing on the production and trade of cotton textiles across the Hauslands and beyond. Map of the Sokoto Caliphate and neighboring states. ca. 1850, by P. Lovejoy. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and to keep this blog free for all: --- A brief background on the history and political economy of the empire of Sokoto. In the early decades of the 19th century, a political\-religious movement led by Sheikh Usman dan Fodio across the Hausaland region subsumed many of the old Hausa states into the Sokoto Caliphate, creating west Africa’s largest empire after the fall of Songhay. Headed by a ‘Sultan’ or ‘Caliph’ who resided in the capital, also named Sokoto, the empire was made up of several emirates, which were quasi\-vassal political units built on top of pre\-existing Hausa institutions, such as the emirates of Kano, Katsina, Zaria, and Adamawa. The vast size of the Caliphate erased pre\-existing political barriers, which created a large internal market and influenced major demographic changes that facilitated the expansion of the region's economy. The rapid growth of textile manufacturing in the empire emerged within this context, bringing together various textile traditions in an efficient distribution network that included a greater share of the ordinary population than was possible in the preceding period. The material basis of Sokoto's economy was provided by the political and ideological control of land through a state dominated by an officeholding class. In a society where the majority of producers maintained possession of land and experienced a low level of economic subsumption, surpluses were primarily accrued through rents. That is ‘a politically based exaction for the right to cultivate… whose level will depend upon the coercive means available through the State’. This resulted in the creation of a ‘mixed economy’ where the State played a central role in economic production and regulating institutions, albeit only as one among many different economic agents. The economic policies adopted by Usman's successors served to consolidate the territories acquired during the movement as well as to restore and integrate their economies. Most of these policies were undertaken by Muhammad Bello who is credited with establishing ribats (garrison towns) in peripheral regions, eg between Kano and Adamawa, that were settled by skilled artisans and merchants who developed local economies, and urbanized the hinterlands. Bello's writings to his emirs include instructions to "foster the artisans, and be concerned with tradesmen who are indispensable to the people, such as farmers and smiths, tailors and dyers, physicians and grocers, butchers and carpenters and all sorts of traders who contribute to \ The urbanisation of rural areas, as well as the improved accessibility, allowed for greater administrative control through the appointment of officials (jakadu) who controled trade and collected taxes (on dye pits, hoes used in farming, and trade cloth). This influenced the activities of long\-distance traders, farmers, and craftsmen, by reinvigorating pre\-existing patterns of trade and population movements that had been initiated by the . The manufacture and trade of textiles in Hausaland predated the industry's expansion in the 19th century. The earliest written accounts describing the Hausaland region in the 14th century mention the presence of , who settled in its cities and wore sewn garments. These Wangara merchants also appear in earlier accounts from the 12th century, when they are described as wearing chemises and mantles. They were thus likely involved in the development of the Hausa textile and leather industry, which would receive further impetus from the westward shift of the Bornu empire in the 15th century, which also possessed a thriving textile industry and used cloth strips as currency. By the 16th century, local textile industries had emerged across Hausaland, especially in the cities of Kano, Zamfara, and Gobir. According to Leo Africanus' account, grain and cotton were cultivated in large quantities in the Kano countryside and Kano's cloth was bought by Tuareg traders from then north. Other contemporary accounts mention the arrival of Kanuri artisans from Bornu, the trade in dyed cloth from Kano, as well as the import of foreign cloth from the Maghreb. After the 17th century, the white gown (riga fari) became popular among the ordinary population, while the elites wore the large gown (babbar riga), which in later periods would be adopted by the former. This pre\-existing textile industry and trade continued to expand over the centuries and would grow exponentially during the 19th century. --- Cotton cultivation in the Sokoto empire. Most of the cloth produced in Hausaland was made from cotton and silk, which was cultivated locally by farmers together with their staple crops. Cotton cultivation, which had been undertaken in the region for centuries, is however, highly sensitive to rainfall, requires significant land and labour, and is subject to price fluctuations caused by taxation and market speculation, all of which could result in hefty economic losses for a farmer if not carefully managed. Initially, the emirates of Zaria and Zamfara specialized in growing cotton while those of Sokoto and Kano specialized in manufacturing textiles. This would gradually change by the late 19th century, as textile manufacturing expanded rapidly across most emirates and the demand for raw cotton was so high that considerable quantities of yarn were even imported from Tripoli. The comparative advantage of Zaria and Zamfara in cotton growing was enabled by its middle\-density population, its clayey soil rich in nitrates, and the relative abundance of land for swidden agriculture. Besides the pre\-existing population of farmers who grew their own cotton on a small scale, large agricultural estates were also established by wealthy elites and were populated with clients and slaves, the latter of whom were war captives or purchased from the peripheral regions. The explorer Hugh Clapperton, who visited Sokoto in 1826 and provides some of the most detailed descriptions of its society, including on slavery, writes: “The domestic slaves are generally well treated. The males who have arrived at the age of eighteen or nineteen are given a wife, and sent to live at their villages and farms in the country, where they build a hut, and until the harvest are fed by their owners. The hours of labour, for his master, are from daylight till mid\-day; the remainder of the day is employed on his own. At the time of harvest, when they cut and tie up the grain, each slave gets a bundle of the different sorts of grain for himself. The grain on his own ground is entirely left for his own use, and he may dispose of it as he thinks proper. At the vacant seasons of the year he must attend to the calls of his master, whether to accompany him on a journey, or go to war, if so ordered.” This was repeated later by Heinrich Barth who visited Sokoto from 1851\-1854, noting that “The quiet course of domestic slavery has very little to offend the mind of the traveller ; the slave is generally well treated , is not over worked , and is very often considered as a member of the family” but he differs slightly from Clapperton with regards to marriages among ‘slaves’, suggesting that they weren’t encouraged to marry, which he surmises was the cause of the institutions’ continuation. Scholarly debates on the nature of slavery in Sokoto, as in most discussions of ‘internal slavery’ in Africa, reveal the limitations of relying on conceptual frameworks derived from the historiography of slavery in the Americas (this includes Clapperton and Barth’s quotes above, who refer to ‘slaves’ on agricultural estates as ‘domestic slaves’). For the sake of brevity, it is instructive to use a comparative approach here to illustrate the differences between the ‘slaves’ in west Africa versus those in the Americas; the most important difference is the lack of a binary of ‘slaves’ and ‘free’ persons, as all social groups occupied a continuum of social relations from elites and kin\-group members, to clients and pawns, to dependants and captives. Aside from the royals/ruling elites, none of these groups occupied a rigid hierarchy but instead derived their status from their relationship with other kin\-groups or patrons, hence why slaves could be found on all levels of society from governors and scribes, to soldiers and merchants, to household concubines and plantation workers. Most ‘slaves’ in Sokoto could work on their own account through the murgu system thus accumulating wealth to establish their own families, gain their own dependants,and in some cases, earn their freedom. Still, their labor, social mobility, and rate of assimilation were negotiated by the needs of political authorities, making slavery in Sokoto a political institution as much as it was a social institution. This created highly heterogenous systems of slavery, with some powerful ‘slave\-officials’ exercising authority over ‘free’ persons and ‘slaves,’ with some client farmers and ‘slaves’ working on the same estates owned by state officials, aristocrats or wealthy merchants, some of whom could also be ‘slaves’. Despite the complexities of ‘slavery’ in Sokoto, the significance of slave use in its textile industry and the economy was inflated in earlier scholarship according to more recent examination. The empire of Sokoto was a pre\-industrial society, largely agrarian and rural. The bulk of economic production was undertaken by individual households on a subsistence basis, with the surplus produce (grain, crafts, labour, etc) being traded for other items in temporary markets, or remitted as tribute/tax to authorities whose capacity for coercion was significantly less than that of modern states, and whose economy was ultimately less influenced by demand from international trade. It’s for this reason that while 'slaves' would have been involved in the cultivation process alongside 'free' workers who constituted the bulk of the empire’s population, ‘slaves’ were less involved in the textile manufacturing process itself which required specialized skills, and was considered respectable for ‘freeborn’ persons including the scholarly elite. The political economic and ideological tendency in the empire was mainly toward the production of peasants who could be taxed, as well as in their participation in the regional economy where more rents could be extracted. Additionally, the textile industry also relied on the mobility of 'free' labour, including not just ordinary subjects, but also skilled craftsmen and traders from among the Tuareg, Kanuri, Fulani, Nupe, and Gobir. These were involved in all stages of cloth production from spinning to dyeing, they became acculturated into the predominantly Hausa society and settled in the major textile centers. --- The textile production process. The manufacture of textiles was not just the prerogative of a few specialized artisans but involved the bulk of the population in both urban and rural areas. While clothing was a symbol of religious and social identity, its manufacture and exchange in Hausaland was the expression of a culture that tended to integrate different strata of the population regardless of social identity. The empire's textile industry underwent significant changes over the course of the 19th century, especially in major centers like Kano where specialization increased as different cities and towns took over specific parts of the production processes, resulting in significant economies of scale. Increased demand and competition led to a rapid improvement in standards of workmanship and the quality of cloth produced. This in turn, created an internal market for highly skilled labour whose training period could last as long as 6 years. Textile workers differed in the kinds and levels of skills attained, the types of products they made, and the stage in the process: the garments changed hands at different stages in the process of spinning, weaving, sewing, beating and dyeing. The empire's diverse textile industry combined two pre\-existing production systems; one north of the Niger\-Benue region where most spinners were women, while men did the weaving, dyeing, and embroidering; and one south of the Niger\-Benue region where both women and men were involved in all processes. Spinning was the slowest and most laborious activity in the process, it was done in domestic settings often by women who were supplied with local cotton and silk as well as imported yarn from the Maghreb. On the other hand, weaving was undertaken by the greater part of the population as a secondary occupation when farming activities were suspended. Weavers, both men, and women, used a transportable horizontal double\-heddle loom as well as a vertical loom to produce narrow strips of cloth which were later sewn together. The two main subgroups of looms used in Hausaland were defined by two ranges of standard cloth width, indicating two types of production in the export sector: cloth consisting of very narrow strips (1\.25–6 cm) was transported in the salt and natron trade to Bornu and Air, whereas wider strips (8–12 cm) were prominent in trade to the western Sudan region. The latter type of loom was likely associated with the rise of the kola trade to Gonja in the late 18th century, but would have existed in the Gonja region centuries earlier. In cities like Kano, local weavers were at times joined by skilled immigrants from the Bornu empire and the Nupe region, with many diverse groups contributing to the production of luxury and ordinary cloth as the garments changed hands multiple times. Craftsmen often had no special workshops but instead worked in or near the markets according to local demand, although specialist quarters like the Soron D’Inki ward of Kano were developed by skilled tailors and dyers. The co\-current expansion of domestic and external demand for dyed textiles stimulated the production of dyed textiles and the construction of dyeing pits. From 1815, outside the city boundaries of Sokoto, around 285 dyeing pits were built, while Kano in 1855 had more than 2,000 dyeing pits, which would increase to between 15,000 to 20,000 by the end of the 19th century with a corresponding number of dyers. Cloth\-dyeing in Kano was a centuries\-old practice that pre\-existed the establishment of Sokoto. Dyers used huge fired\-clay pots (Kwatanniya), that were waterproofed by burying them in beds of dyebath residue (katsi) and then lining them with laso cement (made from burned indo\-dye residue mixed with viscous vegetable matter). By the 19th century, dyers in Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, and Zaria created much larger dyeing vats of laso cement, which reduced the unit cost of finished cloth. Dyers used locally cultivated indigo dye (Indigofera) and utilized specific methods to prepare the indigo dye vat. Like all parts of the textile manufacturing process, cloth dyeing was influenced by the activities of traders who took cloth strips from one textile center to another for stitching, dyeing, and embroidering. In the case of Kano, the town of Kura, about 20 miles to its south, was one of the city's major dyeing centers by the time of Barth's visit in 1851\. In 1909, an estimated 2,000 dyers resided in the town out of a population of 8,000, and it was renowned for producing some of the finest and most expensive indigo\-dyed cloths in Kano. Skillfully tailored and embroidered garments were the most expensive textile products made in the empire, and they were worn and distributed as gifts by the elite. Tailors and embroiderers used small needles to work specialized cloth that was designed particularly for the tailoring process. They were embellished with geometric designs and motifs drawn from a Muslim visual vocabulary that was international in scope and comprehensible to individuals in different strata of society. Cities like Sokoto initially specialized in producing white cloth (riga fari) because it was the religious center of Dan Fodio's movement with strict attitudes against the embellishment of clothes. But in other cities such as Kano, and in most emirates during the later periods, more embellished garments such as the rigan giwan, a robe embroidered with eight\-knife imagery, became very important among the elites and wealthy. --- --- The textile trade in the 19th century Hausalands: proto\-industries, merchants, and the state. The expansion of domestic demand and the emergence of new markets opened new avenues for the accumulation of wealth, especially among traders and artisans from the larger cities who moved to more peripheral regions to compensate for the increasing taxes, or to benefit from colluding with established authorities. During the 19th century, Kano’s textile industry reached extraordinary production levels. In 1851 the city of sixty\-thousand produced an estimated 300 million cowries worth of textiles ( which was £30,000 then or £5,2m today), with atleast 60 million cowries worth of textiles being exported to Timbuktu. At a time when Barth noted that a family in Kano could live off 50\-60,000 cowries a year "with ease, including every expense, even that of their clothing", he also mentions that one of the more popular dyed robes cost 2,500\-3,000 cowries. He notes that Kano cloth was sold “as far as Murzuk, Ghat, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbucktu, but in some degree even as far as the shores of the Atlantic, the very inhabitants of Arguin (in Mauritania) dressing in the cloth woven and dyed in Kano”. Kano’s popularity as a market was due to a series of commercial incentives and the greater regulation of market transactions. As reported by Clapperton, the Kano market was regulated with great fairness; if a garment purchased in Kano was discovered to be of inferior quality it was sent back, and the seller was obliged to refund the purchase money. The demand for Kano textiles throughout this vast region persisted after Barth’s visit. Writing in 1896, Charles Henry Robinson, who visited the city of Kano and estimated that its population had grown to about 100,000, mentions that, “it would be well within the mark to say that Kano clothes more than half the population of the central Sudan, and any European traveler who will take the trouble to ask for it, will find no difficulty in purchasing Kano\-made cloth at towns on the coast as widely separated from one another as Alexandria, Tripoli, Tunis or Lagos.” Similar contemporary accounts stress that consumers made fine distinctions between cloths on the basis of quality which contributed to the tremendous range in price for what appeared to be similar textiles. Local and imported textiles became one of the main items used as a store of wealth in the empire’s public treasury at the city of Sokoto and constituted a considerable part of the annual tribute pouring in from the other emirates to the capital. Kano, for example, sent to Sokoto a tribute of 15,000 garments per year in the second half of the 19th century. Many rich merchants (attajiraj) settled across the empire’s main cities and exported textiles to distant areas where they at times extended credit to smaller traders. Merchant managers were able to achieve economies of scale by storing undyed cloth in bulk and by establishing large indigo dyeing centers, some showing features of a factory system, with itinerant cloth dyers hired to work for wages. The capital for these enterprises came from the high\-profit margins of long\-distance trade, with large land and labor holdings acquired through political and military service. The traders in the finished products and the landlords (fatoma) frequently accommodated visiting buyers and arranged sales. In the second half of the 19th century, these rich merchants began to acquire greater influence in Kano business circles. The power of these merchants was such that when the price of textiles fell, the merchants were able to buy most of them and wait for prices to rise again. Some of the wealthiest merchants created complex manufacturing enterprises dealing with the import and export trade across long distances by controlling a significant proportion of the production process. They acquired large agricultural estates, expanded labour (which included kinsmen, 'free' workers, and clients as well as 'slaves'), and established agents in distant markets abroad. One such trader in the 1850s was Tulu Babba, whose Kano\-based enterprise operated across four emirates. It consisted of; a family estate and 15 private estates worked by kinsmen, clients, and ‘slaves’; several contracted dyers and master tailors in Kano; and a factor agent in Gonja. Medium\-sized enterprises run by wealthy women merchants also utilized the same form or organization, with family estates where the entire household was involved in the manufacturing process, and their labour was supplemented by client relationships formed with 'female\-husbands' whose households were also involved in the spinning and weaving processes. Other merchants oversaw more modest operations that were nevertheless as significant to the textile economy as the larger enterprises, while also involving many other commodities according to circumstance. One such trader was Madugu Mohamman Mai Gashin Baƙi, a carravan leader who was born in Kano in the late 1820s, and undertook his first trip to Ledde in the Nupe kingdom when he was 16, where they “sold horses to the king in exchange for Nupe cloth”, and returned to Kano after six months. The caravan then traveled to Adamawa region, where they purchased ivory on a second trip, while on a third trip, he went to the Bauchi area and then on to Kuka (the capital of Adamawa at that time), where he bought galena (a mineral used for eye makeup), which he took back to Kuka. He then returned to Bauchi with five large oxen that he had purchased and had loaded with natron, which he subsequently sold. This level of trade likely represented the bulk of the textile trade across the empire, with small caravans of Hausa traders traveling in the dry season using donkeys to bring goods from Kano and other cities that they could trade along the way, exchanging cloth for other commodities in places as far as Fumban (capital of Bamum kingdom in Cameroon) and the Asante capital Kumasi in ghana. Wealthy merchants benefited from the city authorities of Kano who facilitated the export of textiles from this city to distant areas like Adamawa. Unlike North African traders who were forced to pay taxes on their commercial transactions, the rich local merchants accumulated enough wealth and influence to monopolize most of the empire's long\-distance trade alongside middlemen located in distant areas like Lagos, who increasingly demanded higher percentages of commercial transactions. The monopoly on trade by these merchants and the increase in taxes on all commerce shows that the Empire's politics became more oligarchic in the late 19th century, with authorities drawing their legitimacy more from the wealthy elites and less from the common population. This collusion between rulers and traders likely contributed to the empire's political fragmentation, among other factors, as each emirate increasingly became autonomous and could thus offer no significant resistance before it fell to the British in 1903\. Despite the disruption of the early colonial period, the textile industry of the Hauslands continued to flourish well into the middle of the 20th century when a combination of competition from cheaper, machine\-made imports, reorganisation of labour, and changes in policies, contributed to its gradual decline. Cloth dyeing and hand\-woven textiles still represent a significant economic activity in the Hausalands in the modern day, with cities like Kano preserving the remnants of this old industry. --- The 19th century world explorer Muhammed Ali ben Said of Bornu, traveled across over twenty countries in the four continents from 1849 to 1860 before serving in the Union Army during the American civil war and settling in the US where he published his travel account. Please subscribe to Patreon to read about Said’s fascinating journey across Europe, western Asia and the Carribean, here; SubscribeBig Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry by Philip J. Shea pg 5\-7\) Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria By Michael J. Watts pg 78\-81\. Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria By Elisha P. Renne pg 30\-32 Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 196\-199, 204\-205\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 188\-191\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 192\-194\) Cotton Growing and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria from Caliphate to Protectorate c. 1804\-1914’: A Preliminary Examination by Marisa Candotti pg 4\) Cotton Growing and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria from Caliphate to Protectorate c. 1804\-1914’: A Preliminary Examination by Marisa Candotti pg 5\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 196\-197\) Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo. By. Clapperton, Hugh Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa Volume 1 By Heinrich Barth Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff pg 77\-78\. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff pg 15\-39, 45\-47\. Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study By Mohammed Bashir Salau pg 47\-90, Jihād in West Africa During the Age of Revolutions by Paul E. Lovejoy. Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria By Michael J. Watts pg 60\-77\. Big Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry by Philip J. Shea pg 13\-14\) Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria By Michael J. Watts pg 77\-78\) Big Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry by Philip J. Shea pg 15\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 187\) Cotton Growing and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria from Caliphate to Protectorate c. 1804\-1914’ by Marisa Candotti pg 6, Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 375\-376\.) Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 368\-372, Cotton Growing and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria from Caliphate to Protectorate c. 1804\-1914’ by Marisa Candotti pg 5 Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 377\-385 Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 195\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 202\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 200, Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 391\) Big Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry by Philip J. Shea pg 7\-9\) Big Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry by Philip J. Shea pg 9\-12, Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 387\-389\) Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 389\-391\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 200\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 205\) Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken Under the Auspices of H. B. M.'s Government, in the Years 1849\-1855, Volume 1 by Heinrich Barth. Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa by D.Denham and H. Clapperton, 653 Hausaland Or Fifteen Hundred Miles Through the Central Soudan by Charles Henry Robinson pg 113 Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 365\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 201\) Nineteenth Century Hausaland Being a Description by Imam Imoru of the Land , Economy , and Society of His People by Douglas Edwin Ferguson, 374–8, Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 391\) Cotton Growing and Textile Production in Northern Nigeria from Caliphate to Protectorate c. 1804\-1914’ by Marisa Candotti pg 6\) Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate by Colleen Kriger pg 392\-396\) Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria By Elisha P. Renne pg 32\-35 African Crossroads: Intersections Between History and Anthropology in Cameroon edited by Ian Fowler, David Zeitlyn pg 176\-178, From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce edited by Robin Law pg 97\-98 Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 204\) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi pg 205\-206\) 28 )

A general history of African explorers of the Old world, and a 19th century Bornu traveller of twenty countries across four continents. in A general history of African explorers of the Old world, and a 19th century Bornu traveller of twenty countries across four continents. 3)This article provides a brief outline of over sixty African explorers who traveled across the ‘Old World’ from the classical period to the turn of the 20th century. The linked articles and the footnotes include sources on individual travelers for further reading. In antiquity, African travelers and diasporic communities began appearing across several societies in the eastern Mediterranean world and beyond. From the 8th century BC, classical accounts from ancient Assyria to ancient Greece mention the presence of Africans referred to as 'Kusaya'/'Aithiopians' who appeared in various capacities, as rulers, diplomats, charioteers, mercenaries, and horse\-trainers, and were often associated with the which had expanded into parts of modern Palestine and Syria. By the 5th century BC, were involved in the Battle of Himera on the Island of Sicily, and would later appear as mahouts in the ancient Punic wars between Carthage and Rome. However, most of these Aithiopians would have come from the Maghreb rather than from Kush or from West Africa. Envoys, priests, and pilgrims from Kush and Aithiopian travelers from other parts of Africa would begin to beginning in the 1st century BC and continuing into the early centuries of the common era. While most of their activities would be concentrated in Roman Egypt, such as the Meroite envoys; Pasan son of Paese, and Abaratoye in 253 CE and 260 CE, a handful of them would travel to the Greek Island of Samos, and the cities of Rome and Constantinople, along with envoys from the neighboring kingdoms of the Blemmyes and the Aksumites. From the 3rd century of the common era, Aksum's armies, merchants, and settlers were active across much of the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea coast. s, appear in multiple places from western India and the island of Sri Lanka, to Yemen and western Arabia, to the Jordanian port city of Aila and the Eastern Roman capital Constantinople. Aksumite envoys would also visit the Chinese capital of Luoyang in the 1st century. By the 6th century, a large Aksumite army conquered the kingdom of Himyar in the western Arabian peninsula, ostensibly to protect the diasporic communities of Aksumite Christians and their allies. Under , the province of Himyar would extend its control over most of western, southern, and central Arabia, although the diasporic communities of Aksumite elites and soldiers would be concentrated in Yemen. Envoys from the kingdom of Aksum and the medieval Nubian kingdom of Makuria appeared in Constantinople in 532, 549 and 572 CE, while , beginning in the 8th century. By the late Middle Ages, royals, scholars, and other pilgrims from the kingdoms of Nubia and the successor states of Aksum would establish diasporic communities in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Cyprus. The itineraries of travelers like the 12th\-century Nubian king Moses George, the Ethiopian scholar Ewostatewos (d. 1352\), and other pilgrims would take them , Constantinople, and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In the centuries following the rise of Islam, west African Muslims from the kingdom of Takrur and the empires of Ghana and Kanem would appear across the Muslim world from Andalusia (Spain) to the Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia) and to Palestine in various capacities. Some were scholars like Ibrahim Al\-Kanemi (d. 1211\) and auxiliaries from Takrur and Ghana who of the Almoravids and Almohads during the 11th to 13th century, , including , and ordinary travelers like the Timbuktu scholar and Medina resident Abu Bakr Aqit (d. 1583\), while others were military leaders like during the 9th century. were also attested across multiple places from the Eastern Mediterranean and western Indian Ocean. The Jabarti and Zaylai scholars from the kingdom of Ifat, Adal, and the city of Zeila formed diasporic communities from Damascus to Egypt, the Hejaz, and Yemen. mention itinerant scholars such as Sharaf al\-din Isma'il al\-Jabarti (d. 1403\) became administrators in Zabid in the Rasulid kingdom of Yemen, others like Ahmad b. 'Umar al\-Zayla'ī established the port town of al\-Luhayya in Yemen in 1304, while ordinary merchants from the city of Zeila sailed to Aden where they joined diasporic communities that included Africans from Mogadishu and the rest of the East African coast. There is archaeological and documentary evidence for the presence of , and China during the late Middle Ages. This is attested in the towns of Sharma (Yemen), al\-Hamr al\-Sharqiya (Oman), and Julfār (U.A.E), and accounts of East African traders and pilgrims from Barawa, Mogadishu, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Pate and Lamu and Comoros in Mecca, al\-Shihr, Mocha, Hormuz, Muscat, Socotra and Sri Lanka. Known travelers from the , especially during the Song and Ming dynasties. They include the who traveled to China twice in 1071 and 1083, the envoy Puluo Shen (Abu\-al\-Hasan) from Yuluhedi (Manda, Kenya) who reached who arrived in Bianliang on December of 1073\. These were later followed by many unnamed envoys from; Mogadishu (1101 CE); 'Gudanu' and 'Yaji' in Ethiopia (1283 CE, 1328 CE); and the envoys sent to meet the 15th\-century Chinese admiral Zheng He, who traveled from the cities of Zhubu, Mogadishu, Barawa in Somalia, and Malindi in Kenya. Other early East African travelers include the 14th\-century Mogadishu scholar Sa'id who visited the Hejaz, India, and China, and the 15th\-century Qadi of Lamu who traveled to Mecca and Egypt where he met the scholar al\-maqrizi. Beginning in the 15th century, several African kingdoms sent embassies to the kingdoms of southern Europe. These include the Ethiopian embassies to Venice (1404\), Rome (1403,1404, 1450, 1481, 1533\), Aragon (1427, 1450\), and Portugal (1452, 1527\), led by , who visited and briefly resided in Lisbon in 1527, and Rome in 1533, where the latter scholar would also be received by an established community of pilgrims led by Tomas Wāldā Samuʾel (1515\-1529\) and Yoѐannǝs of Qänṭorare (1529\- ca. 1550\) and forty\-one other resident scholars that included Täsfa Sәyon (d. 1553\). They were soon joined by African embassies from the kingdoms of the Atlantic Coast to the Portuguese capital Lisbon. These came from the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) in 1486\-87, led by Ohen\-Okun, the Kingdom of Kongo (in Angola) in 1487\-88, led by Kala ka Mfusu, and the Kingdom of Jolof (in Senegal) in 1488, led by Prince Jelen. Over the 16th and 17th centuries, the Christian Kingdom of These included Prince Henrique Ndoadidiki Ne\-Kinu a Mumemba who was a resident of Lisbon and became the first black Catholic Bishop in 1518, king Afonso Nzinga's cousin; Pedro de Sousa, who traveled as an envoy to Lisbon in 1512 where he was knighted in the ‘Order of Saint James of the sword’, the Kongo nobleman Antonio Vieira who was an envoy and resident of Lisbon where he was married in the 1540s; the envoy of the Kongo King Diogo ( r. 1545\-1561\) to Lisbon named Jacome de fonseca; the Ndongo envoy D. Pedro da Silva who traveled to Lisbon in 1579 where he was also knighted in the ‘Order of Saint James of the sword’. Others include; such as; Antonio Vieira (1595\) and António Manuel Nsaku ne Vunda (1604\); and the envoy . African travel across the Old World grew exponentially between the late 16th to mid\-19th centuries, with multiple African explorers from different parts of the continent traveling as far as and , as well as more proximate places like western India and Istanbul. Known travelers from this period include; the Ethiopian traveler Abba Gorgoryos who traveled to Rome in 1649 where he briefly resided before journeying to Nuremberg in Germany around 1652; the Ethiopian prince Zaga Christ, who traveled to Europe in 1634 and documented his journey across Italy and France where he was hosted by various nobles; The ambassador of the kingdom of Allada (in Benin), Don Matteo Lopez, who traveled to Paris in 1670, and the Assine princes Aniaba and Banga from Cote D'ivoire, who traveled to Paris in 1687, the envoy of Annamaboe (in Ghana), Louis Bassi, Prince de Corrantryn who traveled to and briefly resided in Paris during in the 1740s, while his brother William Ansah Sessarakoo also traveled to London in 1749 as an envoy; Philip Kwaku from Cape coast (Ghana) who traveled to England in the late 1750s where he studied and married before returning in 1765\. Later travelers included the 'Ga' Prince Frederick Noi Dowunnah who traveled to Copenhagen (Denmark) from Ghana in the 1820s; the 'Temne' Prince John Frederic who traveled to England in 1729, the two pairs of young Asante princes Owusu Ansa and Owusu Nkwantabisa, and Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boakye, who were sent to England and the Netherlands in 1836 and 1837; and the Xhosa prince Tiyo Songa who traveled from South Africa to Scotland in 1846\. Known during this period include; the Bornu envoy El\-Hajj Yusuf who reached the Ottoman capital in 1574; scholars from the Funj kingdom (Sudan) like, Ahmad Idrìs al\-Sinnàrì (b. 1746\) who traveled from the Funj Kingdom (Sudan) across Yemen, Hejaz, and Istanbul before settling down in Syria; and Ali al\-Qus (b. 1788\) who traveled across Syria, Crete, the Hijaz Yemen and Istanbul, before returning to settle at Dongola; and the scholar Muhammad Salma al\-Zurruq (b. 1845\) from Djenne who traveled across Ottoman territories and Morocco in the 1880s. Known during this period include; Swahili Prince Yusuf ibn al\-Hasan of Mombasa (Kenya) who traveled from Kenya to Goa in 1614 where he briefly resided, the Mombasa envoys Mwinyi Zago and Faki Ali wa Mwinyi Matano who traveled to Goa in 1661 and 1694 respectively; the Swahili merchants; Bwana Dau bin Bwana Shaka of Faza (Kenya) who settled in Goa after 1698; Mwinyi Ahmed Hasani Kipai who traveled to Surat and Goa in 1724 and Bwana Madi bin Mwalimu Bakar from Pate, who regularly traveled to Surat in the 1720s. Others include the Kalanga princes from Mutapa (zimbabwe) who were sent to Goa such as Dom Diogo in 1617, Miguel da Presentacao in 1629 (and Lisbon in 1630\), and the princes Mapeze and Dom Joao who were sent to Goa in 1699\. By the mid\-19th century, African travelers began to document their extensive travels across the Old World. These include; who visited England and Prussia (Germany) in 1856, The Swahili traveler , the Comorian traveler , and , where they encountered a delegation led by King Lewanika of the Lozi kingdom, and another delegation led by Ethiopia's Ras Mokannen, who also produced an account of his travel to England. While the above outline of African travelers is far from exhaustive, as it excludes the numerous scholars from across the continent who traveled to western Arabia and Palestine for pilgrimage and trade, it demonstrates that the history of Africa's exploration of the Old World is sufficiently known, including the individual African travelers and some of their own accounts of the exploratory journeys. My Latest Patreon article unites the history of African exploration of the ‘Old World’ with the ‘New World’ through the travel account of the Bornu explorer Muhammed Ali ben Said who traveled across over twenty countries in the four continents of; Africa, Asia, Europe and America between 1849 and 1860\. After serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Said settled in the state of Alabama and published a fascinating account of his life and travels. Employed as a ‘Valets de chambre’ by two Russian aristocrats and a Dutch abolitionist, Said presents an insider's perspective of the aristocratic families of the Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian empires, a first\-hand account of the politics of the Italian reunification, the customs of Victorian England, the complex history of Haiti, and the racialized society of the southern United States. Please subscribe to read about the remarkable journey of the world explorer Muhammed Ali ben Said here; --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribecheck footnotes of the article on Kush, additional sources include; The Horses of Kush by Lisa A. Heidorn, Cushites in the Hebrew Bible: Negotiating Ethnic Identity in the Past, and by Kevin Burrell Blacks in Antiquity by Frank M. Snowden pg 4, 130\-131, 142 Before Color Prejudice by Frank M. Snowden pg 31\-32 Between two worlds by L. Torok pg 467\-468, 523, Blacks in Antiquity by Frank M. Snowden pg 20, 193\-195, 187\-189, 167 Before Color Prejudice by Frank M. Snowden pg 97\-99, 55, 78 An analysis of Aethiopians in Roman art pg 54 Before Color Prejudice by Frank M. Snowden, images No. 60 and 61 Cultural Flow between china and Outside World Throughout History by Shen Fuwei pg 50 Arabs and Empires Before Islam by Greg Fisher, Soixante dix ans avant l'islam by C. J. Robin, Abraha et la reconquete de l’Arabie d´eserte by C. J. Robin A Note towards Quantifying the Medieval Nubian Diaspora by Adam Simmons, Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095\-1402 by Adam Simmons Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, Volume 4 pg 459\-460, Black women warriors Renaissance Europe by Thomas Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe pg 182\-184, The conquest that never was by David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher pg 31\-32, Black morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam By Chouki El Hamel pg 123\-124, on al\-Kanemi, see; Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of Central Sudanic Africa. Vol. 2 by John Hunwick, pg 17\-18, on Abu Bakr Aqit, see; Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 4: The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa edited by John O. Hunwick, R. Rex S. O'Fahey pg 15, On Swadan, see; The Muslims of medieval Italy By Alex Metcalfe pg 21, L'emirato di Bari By Giosuè Musca When did the Swahili become maritime by J Fleisher pg 106, L’Arabie marchande: État et commerce sous les sultans rasūlides du Yémen (626\-858/1229\-1454\) by Éric Vallet, Chapter9, East African travelers and traders in the Indian ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 182\-183, Julfār, an Arabian Port by John Hansman pg 49\-51 Cultural Flow Between China and Outside World Throughout History by Shen Fuwei pg 278, A History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911 by Anshan Lipg 37\-47\) The travels of Ibn Battuta vol. IV pg 809, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 71\) Encounters Between Ethiopia and Europe, 1400–1660 by Matteo Salvadore, An Ethiopian Scholar in Tridentine Rome by Matteo Salvadore, The Two Yohannәses of Santo Stefano degli Abissini by Samantha Kelly, African cosmopolitanism in the early modern Mediterranean by Matteo Salvadore Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450\-1850 by David Northrup pg 25\-40 Atlantic world and Virginia by Peter C. Mancall pg 202\-206, Representing Africa : Ambassadors and Princes from Christian Africa to Renaissance Italy and Portugal, 1402\-1608 by Kate Lowe pg 107, 112\-114, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe by Thomas Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe pg 294\-296 The Kingdom of Kongo and the thirty years' War by John K. Thornton pg 212\-213 Gorgoryos and Ludolf : The Ethiopian and German Fore\-Fathers of Ethiopian Studies by Wolbert Smidt, The narrative of Zaga Christ by Matteo Salvadore, The Negro in France by Shelby Thomas McCloy pg 16\-18, To be the key for two coffers pg 1\-25, Where the Negroes are masters by Randy J. Sparks pg 35\-51, Africa's discovery of Europe by David Northrup pg 143\-144, 120, 121, 147\-148 West African Travels and Adventures. Two Autobiographical Narratives from Nigeria., by Anthony Kirk\-Greene and Paul Newman Anthologie aus der Suaheli\-Litteratur by Carl Gotthilf Büttner, pg 156\-170 "De la Côte aux confins" by Nathalie Carré, The Voyage of Däbtära Fesseha Giyorgis to Italy at the end of the 19th Century Uganda's Katikiro in England: Being the Offical Account of His Visit to the Coronation of His Majesty King Edward VII by Ham Mukasa. Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901\-1914 By Jeffrey Green, see Chapter on ‘Imperial Visitors’. 20 3)

The ancient city of Meroe: the capital of Kush (ca. 950 BC\-350 CE) in The ancient city of Meroe: the capital of Kush (ca. 950 BC\-350 CE) Journal of African cities: chapter 15 4)Located in the desert sands near the Nile in modern Sudan is the ancient city of Meroe, which ranks among the world's oldest cities and is home to . Established as early as the 10th century BC, Meroe was the political and cultural center of the great African Kingdom of Kush until its collapse in the 4th century of the common era. The powerful rulers who resided at Meroe constructed massive palaces, temples, and monuments, and their subjects transformed the city into a major religious and industrial center, once referred to as the 'Birmingham of Africa'. This article outlines the history and monuments of the ancient city of Meroe, utilizing images from the first excavations which uncovered the buildings more than 1,500 years after the ancient capital was abandoned. Map showing the location of Meroe. --- Sudan’s heritage is currently threatened by the ongoing conflict. Please support Sudanese organizations working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country by Donating to the ‘Khartoum Aid Kitchen’ gofundme page. --- A brief background on the history of Meroe. The city of Meroe first appears in the historical records on the inscription of King Amannote\-erike who ruled Kush during the second half of the 5th century BC in (named after Kush’s old Royal city of Napata). The inscription mentions that Amannote\-erike was “among the royal kinsmen” when his predecessor King Talakhamani died “in his palace of Meroë”. The city later appears in the inscription of his sucessor King Harsiyotef in reference to an Osiris procession, and on the 4th century BC inscription of King Nastasen who writes: “When I was the good youth in Meroë, Amun of Napata, my good father, summoned me, saying, ‘Come!’. I had the royal kinsmen who were throughout Meroë summoned…He will be a king who dwells successfully in Meroë…” Meroe also appears as the capital of the ‘Aithiopians’ in Herodotus' account from the 5th century BC. Based on information he received while in Egypt, Herodotus provides a semi\-legendary account of the city, mentioning the fountain of youth whose “thin” water supposedly enabled the “long\-lived” aithiopians (Meroites of Kush, not to be confused with modern Ethiopia) to live up to 120 years. Herodotus also refers to a prison where the prisoners were bound in fetters of gold because copper was deemed more valuable, and to a building outside the city called “Table of the Sun.” where animal offerings were left. Meroe was later visited by travelers from Ptolemaic Egypt such as Simonides the Younger and Philon who wrote a now\-lost account of the city and the kingdom in the 3rd century BC. These provided some of the information in the later accounts of Alexandrian geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 246\-194 BC) and the ethnographer Agatharchides of Cnidus (b. 200 BC). It’s from the latter that we get a semi\-legendary account of King Ergamenes (Arkamaniqo), who is credited with establishing a new dynasty () after overthrowing the Napatan dynasty by shifting the royal cemetery from Napata to Meroe. The original name of Meroe was likely written as either Bedewi or Medewi, which is preserved in the name of the modern village of Begrawiya located next to the ancient site. In the texts of Kush’s Napatan\-period, the name of Meroe is rendered Brwt, while in the Ptolemaic texts, it is rendered as Mirw3i and in demotic inscriptions as Mrwt. The Greeks rendered the name as Μερόη, which was transliterated as Meroe in Latin and modern languages. --- Description of the monuments of Meroe The ancient city of Meroe is situated on the east bank of the Nile on a slightly elevated ground between two small seasonal rivers which branched out during the rainy season, making Meroe a seasonal island. The ruins of the ancient site cover an area of approximately 10km2, and include; the royal section enclosed by a wall; the north and south mounds which included domestic quarters; the outlying temples of Apedemak, Isis, the ‘Temple of the Sun’; and The site of Meroe was settled as early as the 7th millennium BC as indicated by finds of early pottery belonging to the ‘Khartoum Mesolithic’ tradition. Other materials dated to 1730–1410 BC, 1400–1000 BC, and 1270–940 BC indicate a continued albeit semi\-permanent human activity in the area. The foundation levels of the oldest structures found at the site, such as the palace M 750S and building M 292, provide dates ranging from 1010–800 BC to 961–841 BC. The distance between these structures and their construction in the 10th\-9th century BC, suggests that the early town of Meroe was already occupying a substantial area by then. Meroe came under the political orbit of the Napatan kingdom of Kush early in its history, although the exact nature of Kush's control remains a subject of debate. Excavations at the Palace M 750S revealed an older building with a large quantity of the Early Napatan pottery. The West Cemetery at Meroe contained graves of high officials and relatives of the early Kushite kings from Piankhy to Taharqo, dating to 750–664\. Epigraphic evidence from within the city goes back to the 7th\-century Bc rulers Senkamanisken and Anlamani, whose names were inscribed on objects found near Palace M 294 within the Royal City. The Napatan royals likely resided in Meroe long before the city explicitly appears in the internal documents of the 5th\-century BC mentioned above. This is indicated by the construction of a palace or temple dated to the 7th century BC in what would later become the royal compound; as well as King Aspelta’s construction of temple M 250 in the 6th century BC and the burial of a King’s wife in the Begrawiya South cemetery. The references to Meroe in the stela of Irike\-Amanote, Harsiyotef, and Aspelta in the context of internal strife and war likely indicate that the control of the city (or its hinterland), was likely contested even before King Arkamaniqo ultimately overthrew the Napatan dynasty around 275BC and moved the King’s burial site to the Begrawiya South cemetery. The appearance of the first burial of a King at the South Cemetery of Meroe also coincided with the creation of a separate royal district enclosed within a monumental wall. The masonry wall is about 5m thick, it originally stood several meters high and formed an irregular rectangle of 200x400m. Its construction is dated to between the early to mid 3rd century BC and encloses an area considered to be the “Royal City,” because of the numerous monumental buildings within it. It likely had no defensive function but rather served a monumental function separating the elite section of the city. The wall is pierced by five gates, whose asymmetrical location may reflect the position of the most important structures located in the city prior to its erection, and the course of the Nile channel. The Amun Temple at Meroe, also known as M 260, is the second\-largest Kushite temple after the Napatan temple B 500 at Jebel Barkal. It consists of; a courtyard with 3\.8 m tall pylons (now collapsed) and a Kiosk containing Meroitic inscriptions of King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore; a hypostyle forecourt that had a unique embedded stone basin and many Meroitic inscriptions eg the stela of Amanishaketo; and a Temple core with a series of hypostyle halls and side rooms, some with Meroitic inscriptions such as the stela of Amanikhabale, others with decorated and painted scenes with figures of royals and deities, and one with stone throne base measuring 1\.93 x 1\.8m . The temple was constructed in two main phases, with the first phase completed in the 1st century BC, which is corroborated by the dating of the material found at the site, while the second phase saw the addition of other structures between the 1st and 3rd century CE by various rulers. Among the most unique buildings in the Royal compound is one of the oldest structures in the city called M 292\. This was an important religious building, likely a chapel of a deity, that was continually rebuilt from the 10th century BC to the very end of the kingdom. It consists of two superimposed buildings, the lower one of whose columns (seen below) served as the bases for columns of a secondary structure. Its walls were extensively painted and decorated with victory scenes including Roman captives taken after Queen Amanirenas’ defeat of a Roman invasion, and it was here that the famous head of emperor Augustus was found. There are several monumental structures within the Royal compound identified as palaces, including, M 950, M 990, and M 998, dating to between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century CE. Besides these is an old palace M 750, located outside the Royal city, south\-east of the Amun temple. It consisted of two structures separated by a garden, and its interior contained inscribed and decorated blocks depicting procession scenes, as well as material dated to between the 8th century BC to 3rd century CE. Its construction method was similar to other Meroitic monuments: the stone foundations supported a plastered redbrick building covered with a brick roof resting on wood and palm fronds. Finds of pottery sherds lined on the west side of the palace indicate that some of the streets were paved to form a hard surface. An astronomical observatory, M 964, was found within, and below, Palace M 950\. Its function was determined by the graffiti incised on the wall showing two individuals with a wheeled astronomical instrument observing the sky and making calculations that were then inscribed on the wall in cursive meroitic. Added to this was the square and triangular stone pillars in the entrance, graffiti of instruments on the walls, and the stone basin in the subterranean room 954 for measuring Nile water, all of which were used by local priests to time specific Meroitic festivals. --- « Read more about the Meroe observatory here: --- Another unique structure of the later period is the so\-called Royal Bath complex, M 194\-5 is a 30x70m structure from the 3rd century BC, located on the western edge of the Royal City between the Enclosure Wall and Palace M 295\. Its main feature is a brick\-lined and plaster\-covered pool 7\.25 ×7\.15 m and 2\.50 m deep, surrounded by an ambulatory filled with locally made statuary, and supplied with water which flowed through water inlets cleverly concealed by the painted wall. A pipe fitted into a column stood in the center of the pool so that the water would flow into the basin from the spouts in the south wall and sprinkle fountain\-like in the center. This fountain feature recalls Herodotus’s observation of the “fountain of youth” at Meroe, which secured the longevity of the Meroites, an interpretation that is further complemented by paintings associated with the cults of Dionysus and Apedemak, who are linked with re\-birth, well\-being, and fertility. Most of the buildings excavated in the northeast part of the Royal City seem to be domestic quarters, magazines, and storage houses. East of the main Amun temple M260 were a series of small temples on both sides of a wide, open avenue that formed the processional way. These small, multi\-roomed temples show quite a diversity of layouts: including a simple three\-roomed edifice (M720\), a building erected on a high podium (KC 101\), and a double temple (KC 104\). The formal Processional Way to the Amun Temple separated two domestic areas known as the North Mound and the South Mound. The North mound excavations revealed extensive domestic occupations, iron furnaces along with heaps of iron slag, pottery kilns, and a large temple dedicated to Isis. Excavations in the south Mound revealed other important buildings besides the palace M 750, these included domestic remains such as; M 712, which contained a bakery; and the structure at SM 100 whose material was dated to between the 8th and 4th century BC. To the east of the city is building M 6, identified as the 'Lion Temple' of the Meroitic god Apedemak. It consists of two small rooms within an enclosing stone wall which is decorated with reliefs. It contained statues of lions, an inscribed stela with the name of the Lion\-headed deity Apedemak, and inscriptions belonging to the 3rd century CE Kings; Teqorideamani and Yesebokheamani. Further east of the ‘Lion Temple’ is building M 250, which is often wrongly called ‘Sun Temple’ after Herodotus’ fanciful account (there’s little evidence of sun worship at the temple). It was built in the 1st century BC by Prince Akinidad ontop of the remains of an earlier building erected by the Napatan King Aspelta. The edifice consists of a cella standing on a podium placed in the center of a peristyle court on top of a large artificial terrace approached by a ramp. It features highly decorated walls with relief registers depicting victory scenes. To the north of the city is M 600, identified as the temple of Isis, which was later reused in the medieval period as a church. It consisted of two columned halls leading to a shrine, where the altar stood on a floor of faience tiles. It contains a stela of King Teriteqas, two large columnar statues of the gods Sebiumeker and Arensnuphis protecting its entrance, and two figures of the goddess Isis. --- --- Life in the ancient city of Meroe An estimated 9,000 inhabitants lived in the royal city, including members of the Royal family and ordinary people. The bulk of the latter population lived in the smaller houses of mud\-brick walls found across the archeological site, and were engaged in a variety of crafts industries, from iron working, to gold smelting, textile manufacture, pottery making, the construction of monumental palaces, temples, and tombs found in the city, and the various sculptures and artworks that decorated their interior. According to Strabo’s description of Kush; “They live on millet and barley, from which they also make a beverage. Butter and suet serve as their olive oil. Nor do they have fruit trees except for a few date palms in the royal gardens. . . . They make use of meat, blood, milk, and cheese. . . . Their greatest royal seat is Meroe, the city with the same name as the island”. He adds that the land was populated by nomads, hunters, and farmers and that the Meroites were mining copper, gold, iron, and precious minerals. Discoveries of massive slag heaps, kilns, and forges in the outskirts of Meroe and the neighboring town of Hamadab, along with the remains of iron and copper tools, and gold and bronze jewelry, attest to the city’s importance as an important center of local industries (the iron\-slag mounds in particular earned it its nickname of the ‘Birmingham of Africa’). Commodities such as salt, gold, and other minerals, along with ebony, ivory, and other exotica were major trade items exported from Meroe to the Mediterranean world. Meroe is located within the monsoon rain belt region of Central Sudan in a savannah environment dotted with acacia trees, making it suitable for agro\-pastoralism which was the basis of Kush's economy in antiquity. The cultivation of cereals like sorghum was sustained by seasonal rains and the construction of water storages known as Hafirs. Finds of cattle bones and other animals (sheep, goats, pigs) in archaeological contexts corroborate written accounts about the importance of herding in Meroe. --- The end of Meroe Meroe remained a powerful capital well into the middle of the third century when the kingdom had to face serious political and economic difficulties, including the decline of Roman Egypt, the appearance of nomadic groups called the Blemmyes and the ‘Noba’ in its northern and eastern margins, and the rise of the Aksumite empire in the northern highlands of Ethiopia. The last inscription among the known Meroitic rulers, Talakhideamani, was found within the Amun Temple complex as well as in the Meroitic chamber at Philae (in Roman Egypt) where his envoys also left an inscription that contained the king's name, and at the temple of Musawwarat. His reign in the late 3rd century indicates that the kingdom, its capital and its main temple were still flourishing just decades before the Kush was invaded by the Aksumite kingdom. The royal city was sacked by the Aksumite armies in the early 4th century CE, evidenced by two Greek inscriptions found on the site, belonging to King Ousanas. They bear the typical Aksumite title of; "King of the Aksumites and Himyarites …" and they describe his capture of Kush's royal families, the erection of a throne and bronze statue, and the subjection of tribute on Kush. Ousanas’ campaign was later followed by his successor Ezana in 360 CE, who directed his armies against the Noba that were by then occupying much of Kush’s territory. The very end of habitation at Meroe City is represented by squatter occupation in the abandoned temples and by poor burials cut into the walls of deserted palatial buildings and in the inner rooms of the late Amun temple, as well as the complete disappearance of wheel\-turned pottery. The Meroitic dynasty likely ended with Queen Amanipilade, buried in Beg. N. 25, although the kingdom itself continued in some form until around 420 CE when the royals of established their royal necropolis at Ballana, formally marking the end of ancient Kush and its historic capital. --- Please support Sudanese organizations working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country by Donating to the ‘Khartoum Aid Kitchen’ gofundme page. --- --- --- Centuries before the rise of Aksum, the northern Horn of Africa was home to several complex societies referred to as the 'Pre\-Aksumite' civilization. Please subscribe to read about it here; --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Double Kingdom Under Taharqo: Studies in the History of Kush and Egypt, c. 690 – 664 BC by Jeremy W. Pope pg 12\-13\. Herodotus in Nubia By László Török The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg pg 72\-73, Hellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia 300 B.C. \- AD 250 and Its Egyptian Models: A Study in "Acculturation" by László Török, Laszlo Torok pg 13\-19\. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 545 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 456, 549\. A number of images in this essay were taken from the WildfireGames Forum article by ‘Sundiata’ titled: The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 551\-552 ‘Meroë as a Problem of Twenty\-Fifth Dynasty History’ in The Double Kingdom Under Taharqo: Studies in the History of Kush and Egypt, c. 690 – 664 BC by Jeremy W. Pope. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 551\-552, Meroe, the capital of Kush, old problems and new discoveries, by Krzysztof Grzymski pg 56\-58 The Double Kingdom Under Taharqo: Studies in the History of Kush and Egypt, c. 690 – 664 BC by Jeremy W. Pope pg 31\-33 The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 516\-517\. The Amun Temple at Meroe Revisited by Krzysztof Grzymski pg 142 Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan by P. L. Shinnie pg 78\-79, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 553 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 554\) Meroe, the capital of Kush, old problems and new discoveries, by Krzysztof Grzymski pg 52\-54, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 556\. The Meroitic Palace and Royal City by Marc Maillot The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 554, Hellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia 300 B.C. \- AD 250 and Its Egyptian Models: A Study in "Acculturation" by László Török pg 139\-188\. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 556\) Meroe, the capital of Kush, old problems and new discoveries, by Krzysztof Grzymski pg 47\-51, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 557 Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan by P. L. Shinnie pg 83\-84, The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 477\-479 The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török 367\-270, 458, 520\) Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan by P. L. Shinnie pg 84\. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 547, 557 Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan by P. L. Shinnie pg 160\-165, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 547 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 456, 557\) The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 476\-478\. ‘Appendix: New Light on the Royal Lineage in the Last Decades of the Meroitic Kingdom’ in : The Amun Temple at Meroe Revisited by Krzysztof Grzymski pg 144\-146 Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pg 67\-80, 95\-121, 135\. The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 481\-484 23 4)

Early civilizations of ancient Africa and the pre\-Aksumite civilization of the northern Horn. in Early civilizations of ancient Africa and the pre\-Aksumite civilization of the northern Horn. )In the closing decades of the 20th century, archaeologists working to uncover the foundations of urbanism and complex societies in West Africa discovered a vast cluster of stone ruins in southern Mauritania. Among these ruins was an urban settlement more than 80 ha large, with an elite necropolis at its centre surrounded by over 540 stone\-walled compounds and hundreds of funerary tumuli. The intricate layout of the settlement of Dakhlet el Atrouss I, its monumental tombs, and its estimated population of about 10,000 indicate that it was the capital of the during its 'classic phase' between 1600BC\-1000BC, and is arguably West Africa’s first town. Studies of African civilizations outside the Nile valley often start in the centuries after the common era, creating a false impression that social complexity in Africa only began during the Middle Ages. However, archeological investigations into the foundations of many of these medieval African societies have shown that they represent a culmination of centuries of cultural developments that extend back to antiquity. The Lake Chad basin, for example, has been at the center of many of Africa's largest pre\-colonial states since the Middle Ages including the empire of Kanem\-Bornu, and , which established large cities and towns protected by an extensive system of walls and ditches several meters tall and deep. While the construction of these walled towns was initially thought to have been influenced by exogenous factors, dating back to the early 1st millennium BC has shown that this form of urbanism was an autochthonous invention. Another example is the celebrated art traditions of , Ife, Benin, and other societies in southwestern Nigeria, which are known to have begun in the 9th century of the common era, seemingly without precedent. However, studies of , whose sculptural artworks featured similar motifs, carving styles, and expressions of belief systems, reveal the existence of an ancient precursor that links many of the region's art traditions, albeit indirectly. Ancient Africa therefore contained several complex societies whose cultural developments laid the foundations for the emergence of the better\-known kingdoms of empires during the Middle Ages. This gradual development is best exemplified in the northern Horn of Africa. Centuries before the Aksumite empire became one of "the four great kingdoms of the world", several complex societies emerged in the region between modern Eritrea and Ethiopia's Tigray state. Referred to as the 'Pre\-Aksumite' or 'Ona culture' sites, these settlements of agro\-pastoral communities constructed monumental stone temples and palaces, established towns, and cultivated links with south\-Arabia and the Nubian Nile valley. The history of the Pre\-Aksumite civilization is the subject of my latest Patreon article, please subscribe to read about it here; --- pre\-Aksumite temple at Yeha, Ethiopia. for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe25 )

The complete history of Zeila (Zayla), a medieval city in Somaliland: ca. 800\-1885 CE. in The complete history of Zeila (Zayla), a medieval city in Somaliland: ca. 800\-1885 CE. Journal of African cities: chapter 14 )The Gulf of Aden which links the Red Sea region to the Indian Ocean world was (and remains) one of the busiest maritime passages in the world. Tucked along its southern shores in the modern country of Somaliland was the medieval port city of Zeila which commanded much of the trade between the northern Horn of Africa and the western Indian Ocean. The city of Zeila was the origin of some of the most influential scholarly communities of the Red Sea region that were renowned in Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. Its cosmopolitan society cultivated trade links with societies as far as India, while maintaining its political autonomy against the powerful empires surrounding it. This article explores the history of Zeila, outlining key historical events and figures that shaped the development of the city from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Maps showing the location of Zeila --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The early history of Zeila from the 9th century to the 14th century The northern coastline of Somaliland is dotted with many ancient settlements that flourished in the early centuries of the common era. These settlements included temporary markets and permanent towns, some of which were described in the Periplus, a 1st\-century travel guide\-book, that mentions the enigmatic town of Aualitês, a small locality close to the African side of the narrow strait of Bab al\-Mandab. Some scholars initially identified Aualitês as Zeila, although material culture dating to this period has yet to be identified at the site. Zeila first appears in historical records in the 9th\-century account of the Geographer al\-Yaʿqūbī, who describes it as an independent port from which commodities such as leather, incense, and amber were exported to the Red Sea region. Later accounts from the 10th century by Al\-Iṣṭakḫrī, Al\-Masʽūdī, and Ibn Ḥawqal describe Zeila as a small port linked to the Hejaz and Yemen, although it’s not described as a Muslim town. Zeila remained a relatively modest port between the 10th and 11th centuries on the periphery of the late Aksumite state whose export trade was primarily conducted through . It wasn't until the early 13th century that Zeila reappeared in the accounts of geographers and chroniclers such as Yāqūt, Ibn Saʿīd and Abū l\-Fidā' who describe it as a Muslim city governed by local sheikhs. Zeila was regarded as an important stopping place for Muslim pilgrims en route to the Hejaz, as well as for the circulation of merchants, scholars, pilgrims, and mercenaries between Yemen and the sultanates of the northern Horn of Africa. A 15th\-century Ethiopian chronicle describing the wars of King Amda Seyon in 1332 mentions the presence of a ‘King’ at Zeila (negusä Zélʽa). The famous globe\-trotter Ibn Battuta, who briefly visited the city in 1331, describes it as "the capital of the Berberah \ The Egyptian chronicler Al\-ʿUmarī, writing in the 1330s from information provided by scholars from the region, mentions that the was “reigning over Zaylaʿ, the port where the merchants who go to this kingdom approach … the import is more considerable,” especially with “silk and linen fabrics imported from Egypt, Yemen and Iraq." He notes that external writers refer to the entire region as “the country of Zaylaʿ” which “is however only one of their cities on the sea whose name has extended to the whole." Al\-Umari’s account and contemporary accounts from 14th\-15th century Mamluk Egypt frequently mention the presence of scholars and students coming from the Horn of Africa, who were generally known by the nisba of ‘al\-Zayla'ī’ . They were influential enough to reserve spaces for their community at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus (Syria) and at al\-Azhar in Cairo (Egypt). One of these scholars was al\-ʿUmarī’s informant; the Ḥanafī jurist ʿAbdallāh al\-Zaylaʿī (d. 1360\), who was in Cairo at the head of an embassy from the Ifat kingdom to ask the Mamluk Sultan to intervene with the Ethiopian King on their behalf. Others include the Ḥanafī jurist Uthman al\-Zayla'ī (d. 1342\), who was the teacher of the aforementioned scholar, and a prominent scholar in Egypt. Another family of learned men carrying the nisba al\-Zaylaʿī is well\-known in Yemen: their ancestor Aḥmad b. ʿUmar al\-Zaylaʿī (d. 1304\) is said to have come to Arabia together with his father ʿUmar and his uncle Muḥammad “from al\-Habaša.” The family settled first in Maḥmūl, and Aḥmad ended his days in Luḥayya, a small port town on the coast of the Red Sea. --- « For more on the Zayla'ī scholars in the diaspora and the intellectual history of the northern Horn of Africa; please read this article » --- Corroborating these accounts of medieval Zeila’s intellectual prominence is the account of the 13th\-century Persian writer Ibn al\-Muǧāwir, which described the foreign population of Yemen’s main port, Aden, as principally comprising eight groups, including the Zayāliʿa, Abyssinians, Somalis, Mogadishans, and East Africans, among other groups. Customs collected from the ships of the Zayāliʿa accounted for a significant share of Aden's revenues and Zeila city was an important source of provisions for Aden. Scholars from the northern Horn of Africa who traveled to the Hejaz, Yemen and Egypt brought back their knowledge and books, as described in several local hagiographies. These scholars were instrumental in the establishment and spread of different schools of interpretation and application of Islamic law in the country, such as the Ḥanafī, Šāfiʿī, schools, and the Qadariyya Sufi order. The Qadari order was so popular in the northern Horn of Africa that one of its scholars; Sharaf al\-din Isma'il al\-Jabarti (d. 1403\), became a close confidant of the Rasulid sultan Al Ashraf Ismail (r. 1377\-1401\) and an administrator in the city of Zabid. Rasulid\-Yemen sources from the 14th\-15th century describe Zayla as the largest of the Muslim cities along the coast, its mariners transported provisions (everything from grain to construction material to fresh water) as far as Aden on local ships, and the city’s port handled most of the trade from the mainland. The Rasulid sultan reportedly attempted to take over the city by constructing a mosque and having the Friday prayers said in his name, but the people of Zeila rejected his claims of suzerainty and threw the construction material he brought into the sea, prompting the Rasulids to ban trade between Aden and Zeila for a year. Recent archeological surveys have revealed that the site occupied an estimated 50 hectares during the Middle Ages. At least three old mosques were identified, as well as two old tombs built of coral limestone, including the Masjid al\-Qiblatayn ("two miḥrāb" mosque) next to the tomb of Sheikh Babu Dena, the Shahari mosque with its towering minaret, the Mahmud Asiri \[Casiri] mosque, the mausoleum of Sheikh Eba Abdala and the mausoleum of Sheikh Ibrahim. The material finds included local pottery, fragments of glass paste, as well as imported Islamic and Chinese wares from the 13th\-18th centuries, which were used to date phases of the construction of the "two miḥrāb" mosque (The second mihrab wasn’t found, suggesting that the mosque’s name refers instead to its successive phases of construction which may have involved a remodeling to correct the original orientation). About 8km from the shore is the island of Saad Din, which contains the ruins of several domestic structures made of coral limestone as well as several tombs including one attributed to Sultan Saʽad al\-dīn. --- Zeila during the 15th and 16th centuries: alliances and conflicts with the kingdoms of Ifat, Adal and Christian\-Ethiopia. In the late 14th century, a dynastic split among the Walasma rulers of Ifat resulted in a series of battles between them and their suzerains; the Solomonids of Ethiopia, ending with the defeat of the Walasma sultan Saʿd al\-Dīn near Zeila between 1409\-1415, and the occupation of the Ifat territories by the Solomonid armies. In the decades following Saʿd al\-Dīn’s death, his descendants established a new kingdom known as Barr Saʿd al\-Dīn (or the Sultanate of Adal in Ge’ez texts), and quickly imposed their power over many other formerly independent Islamic territories including Zeila. While there’s no evidence that it came under the direct control of the Solomonids, Zeila remained the terminus of most of the overland trade routes from the mainland, linking the states of Ifat and Ethiopia to the Red Sea region. An early 16th\-century account by the Ethiopian Brother Antonio of Urvuar (Lalibela) describes Zeila as an "excellent port" visited by Moorish fleets from Cambay in India which brought many articles, including cloth of gold and silk. Another early 16th\-century account by the Florentine trader Andrea Corsali reported that it was visited by many ships laden with "much merchandise". The 1516 account of Duarte Barbosa describes Zeila’s “houses of stone and white\-wash, and good streets, the houses are covered with terraces, the dwellers in them are black.” The account by an Italian merchant in 1510 describes Zeila as a “place of immense traffic, especially in gold and elephant’s teeth (Ivory)”. He adds that it was ruled by a Muslim king and justice was “excellently administered”, it had an “abundance of provisions” in grain and livestock as well as oil, honey and wax which were exported. He also notes that many captives who came from the lands of ‘prestor John’ (Christian Ethiopia) went through it, which hints at the wars between Zeila and the Solomonids at the time. Internal accounts from the 16th century mention that governors of Zeila such as Lada'i 'Uthman in the 1470s, and Imam Maḥfūẓ b. Muḥammad (d. 1517\) conducted incursions against Ethiopia sometimes independently of the Adal sultan's wishes. This was likely a consequence of pre\-existing conflicts with the Solomonids of Ethiopia, especially since Zeila was required to send its ‘King’ to the Solomonid court during the 15th century, making it almost equal to the early Adal kingdom at the time which also initially sent a king and several governors to the Solomonids. Zeila’s relative autonomy would continue to be reflected in the later periods as it retained its local rulers well into the 16th and 17th centuries. After Mahfuz’s defeat by the Solomonid monarch Ləbnä Dəngəl around the time the Portuguese were sacking the port of Zeila, his daughter Bati Dəl Wänbära married the famous Adal General Imam Aḥmad Gran, who in the 1520s defeated the Solomonid army and occupied much of Ethiopia, partly aided by firearms purchased at Zeila and obtained by its local governor Warajar Abun, who was his ally. Between 1557 and 1559, the Ottoman pasha Özdemir took control of several port towns in the southern Red Sea like Massawa, Ḥarqiqo, and the Dahlak islands, which became part of their colony; Habesha Eyalet, but Zeila was likely still under local control. According to an internal document from the 16th century, the city was ruled by a gärad (governor) named ǧarād Lādū, who commissioned a wealthy figure named ʿAtiya b. Muhammad al\-Qurashı to construct the city walls between 1572 and 1577 to protect the town against nomads, while the Adal ruler Muhammad b. sultan Nasır was then in al\-Habasha \ --- Zeila from the 17th century to the mid\-19th century: Between the Ottoman pashas and the Qasimi Imams. Zeila likely remained under local control until the second half of the 17th century, when the city came under the control of the Ottoman’s Habesha Eyalet led by pasha Kara Naʾib, by the time it was visited by the Turkish traveler Evliya Celebi in 1672\. Celebi provides a lengthy description of the city, which he describes as a ‘citadel’, with a ‘castle’ that housed a garrison of 700 troops and 70 cannos under the governor Mehemmed Agha who collected customs from the 10\-20 Indian and Portuguese ships that visited the port each year to purchase livestock, oil and honey. He describes its inhabitants as ‘blacks’ who followed the Qadariyyah school and were wealthy merchants who traded extensively with the Banyans of Cambay (India) and with Yemen. He adds that they elect a Sunni representative who shares power with the Ottoman governor, along with "envoys" from Yemen, Portugal, India and England, and that the city was surrounded by 70\-80,000 non\-Muslims whose practices he compares to those of the Banyans. Zeila later came under the control of the Qasimi dynasty of the Yemeni city of Mocha around 1695\. The latter had expelled the Ottoman a few decades earlier and expanded trade with the African coast, encouraging the arrival of many Jalbas (local vessels) to sail from the Somaliland coast to Yemen, often carrying provisions. The city was also used to imprison dissidents from Mocha in the early 18th century. Zeila in the 18th and 19th centuries was governed by an appointed Amir/sheikh, who was supported by a small garrison, but his authority was rather limited outside its walls. Zeila had significantly declined from the great city of the late Middle Ages to a modest town with a minor port. It was still supplied by caravans often coming from Harar whose goods were exchanged with imports bought from Indian and Arab ships. In 1854, it was visited by the British traveler Francis Burton, who described it as such; "Zayla is the normal African port — a strip of sulphur\-yellow sand, with a deep blue dome above, and a foreground of the darkest indigo. The buildings, raised by refraction, rose high, and apparently from the bosom of the deep. After hearing the worst accounts of it, I was pleasantly disappointed by the spectacle of whitewashed houses and minarets, peering above a long, low line of brown wall, flanked with round towers." The town of 3\-4,000 possessed six mosques and its walls were pierced by five gates, it was the main terminus for trade from the mainland, bringing ivory, hides, gum and captives to the 20 dhows in habour, some of which had Indian pilots. \<\< Burton also learned from Zeila's inhabitants that mosquito bites resulted in malaria, but dismissed this theory as superstition \>\> --- Zeila in the late 19th century. At the time of Burton’s visit, the town was ruled by Ali Sharmarkay, a Somali merchant who had been in power since 1848\. He collected customs from caravans and ships, but continued to recognize the ruler of Mocha as his suzerain, especially after the latter city was retaken by the Ottomans a few years prior, using the support of their semi\-autonomous province; the Khedivate of Egypt. The Ottoman pasha of the region, then based at Al\-Hudaydah, confirmed his authority and sent to Zeila a small garrison of about 40 matchlockmen from Yemen. Ali Sharmarkay attempted to redirect and control the interior trade from Harar, as well as the rival coastal towns of Berbera and Tajura, but was ultimately deposed in 1855 by the pasha at Al\-Hudaydah, who then appointed the Afar merchant Abu Bakar in his place. The latter would continue to rule the town after it was occupied by the armies of the Khedive of Egypt, which were on their way to in the 1870s. The town's trade recovered after the route to Harar was restored, and it was visited by General Gordon, who stayed temporarily in one of its largest houses. Abubakar attempted to balance multiple foreign interests of the Khedive government —which was itself coming under the influence of the French and British— by signing treaties with the French. However, after the mass evacuation of the Khedive government from the region in 1884, the British took direct control of Zeila, and briefly detained Abubakar for allying with the French, before releasing him and restoring him but with little authority. The ailing governor of Zeila died in 1885, the same year that the British formally occupied the Somaliland coast as their colonial protectorate. In the early colonial period, the rise of Djibouti and the railway line from Djibouti to Addis Ababa greatly reduced the little trade coming to Zeila from the mainland. The old city was reduced to its current state of a small settlement cluttered with the ruins of its ancient grandeur Please subscribe to Patreon and read about an East African’s description of 19th\-century Europe here: SubscribeMaps by Stephane Pradines and Jorge de Torres An Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Horn: The British\-Somali Expedition, 1975 by Neville Chittick pg 125, Local exchange networks in the Horn of Africa: a view from the Mediterranean world (third century B.C. \-sixth century A.D.) by Pierre Schneider pg 15\. A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 96, Le port de Zeyla et son arrière\-pays au Moyen Âge by François\-Xavier Fauvelle\-Aymar et al. prg 55\-64\) Le port de Zeyla et son arrière\-pays au Moyen Âge by François\-Xavier Fauvelle\-Aymar et al. prg 78\-86\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 97\) Le port de Zeyla et son arrière\-pays au Moyen Âge by François\-Xavier Fauvelle\-Aymar et al. prg 92\-94\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 108, 99\) First Footsteps in East Africa: Or, An Explanation of Harar By Sir Richard Francis Burton with introduction by Henry W. Nevinson, pg 66\. Islam in Ethiopia By J. Spencer Trimingham pg 62\) Islam in Ethiopia By J. Spencer Trimingham pg 72\) ALoA Vol 3, The writings of the Muslim peoples of northeastern Africa by John O. Hunwick, Rex Seán O'Fahey pg 19\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 152\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 442, A Traveller in Thirteenth\-century Arabia: Ibn Al\-Mujāwir's Tārīkh Al\-mustabṣir by Yūsuf ibn Yaʻqūb Ibn al\-Mujāwir pg 151, 123, 138\. A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 152\) Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition by Alexander D. Knysh pg 241\-269\) L’Arabie marchande: État et commerce sous les sultans rasūlides du Yémen by Éric Vallet, Chapter 6, pg 381\-424, prg 44\-49, 78\. Le port de Zeyla et son arrière\-pays au Moyen Âge by François\-Xavier Fauvelle\-Aymar et al. prg 13\-20, Urban Mosques in the Horn of Africa during the Medieval Period pg 51\-52 A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 101\-3\) A Social History of Ethiopia: The Northern and Central Highlands from Early Medieval Times to the Rise of Emperor Téwodros II by Richard Pankhurst pg 55\) A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, Volume 35 by Duarte Barbosa, Fernão de Magalhães, pg 17 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema By Ludovico di Varthema pg 86\-87 Islam in Ethiopia By J. Spencer Trimingham pg 82\-86 Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 27 Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 31\-32 , Ottomans, Yemenis and the “Conquest of Abyssinia” (1531\-1543\) by Amélie Chekroun, The Conquest of Abyssinia: 16th Century by Shihāb al\-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al\-Qādir ʻArabfaqīh, Richard Pankhurst pg 104, 112, 344\. A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 469, Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 37, Entre Arabie et Éthiopie chrétienne Le sultan walasmaʿ Saʿd al\-Dīn et ses fils (début xve siècle) by Amélie Chekroun pg 238 Celebi refers to Zeila’s inhabitants as “the Qadari tribe.. black Zangis.. they have Tatar faces and disheveled locks of hair”. the translator of his text adds that ‘Based on the tribal name, Evliya associates them with the Qadari theological school, believers in free will, which he frequently joins with other heretical groups’. \\ The ethnonym of ‘black Zangis’ is a generic term he frequently uses in describing ‘black’ African groups he encounters. The ‘Tatar faces (Turkish faces) ‘disheveled locks of hair’ indicate that they were native inhabitants, most likely Somali\\. Ottoman Explorations of the Nile: Evliya Çelebi’s Map of the Nile and The Nile Journeys in the Book of Travels (Seyahatname) by Robert Dankoff, pg 324\-328\) Celebi’s comparisons of the non\-Muslim groups in Zayla’s hinterland to the “fire\-worshiping” Banyans were likely influenced by the significant trade it had with India, which could have been the source of some traditions at the time that the city was in ancient times founded by Indians before the Islamic era. The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port by Nancy Um pg 26, 32, 114\-115\. Ethiopia: the Era of the Princes: The Challenge of Islam and Re\-unification of the Christian Empire, 1769\-1855 by Mordechai Abir pg 14\-16, Precis of Papers Regarding Aden, 1838\-1872 by N. Elias. pg 21\-26\) First Footsteps in East Africa: Or, An Explanation of Harar By Sir Richard Francis Burton with introduction by Henry W. Nevinson, pg 27\-33\) Precis of Papers Regarding Aden, 1838\-1872 by N. Elias. pg 22\-23, 26, The First Footsteps in East Africa by Francis Burton pg 28\-39, 63\) Ethiopia: the Era of the Princes by Mordechai Abir pg 19, Sun, Sand and Somals By Henry A. Rayne, pg 16\-17\) Sun, Sand and Somals By Henry A. Rayne, pg 18\-20, Abou\-Bakr Ibrahim. Pacha de Zeyla. Marchand d’esclaves, commerce et diplomatie dans le golfe de Tadjoura 1840\-1885\. review by Alain Gascon. British Somaliland By Ralph Evelyn Drake\-Brockman pg 17 16 )

Africa and Europe during the age of mutual exploration: a Swahili traveler's description of 19th century Germany. in Africa and Europe during the age of mutual exploration: a Swahili traveler's description of 19th century Germany. )The late modern period that began in the early 19th century was the height of mutual exploration on a global scale in which African travelers were active agents. In the preceding period, Africans had been traveling and occasionally settling across much of the old world since antiquity; from and to , , from and , to and the , and from to . Their activities contributed to the patterns of global integration that eventually led to the production of travel literature during the late modern period. The travel literature produced by these intrepid African explorers provides a rich medium to study different perceptions of foreign cultures and exotic lands. The African authors consistently compare the unfamiliar landscapes, people and fauna they encountered to those in their own societies. They describe foreign curiosities, eccentricities, and beliefs that inspire personal reflections on humanity and religion, using the language of wonder to express the strangeness of foreign customs. for example, contains many comparisons between the culture, places, and rituals of the people of England and Germany, with those of his own community near the city of Zinder in modern Niger. Dorugu included many interesting anecdotes about his hosts such as the Germans' penchant for smoking, and the curious dining traditions of the English, whose meals he considered as good as Hausa cuisine. --- --- provides an even more detailed account of the many different places and cultures he encountered. Selim meticulously reproduces his observations of the unfamiliar landscapes, peoples and fauna for which he struggled to find equivalents in the Swahili language. He was pleasantly surprised upon meeting "white Muslims" in such a 'remote' region and was fascinated by the nomadic practices of the Kalmyks whom he compares to the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania. provides what is arguably the most detailed account of foreign lands written by an African traveler from this period. Like the other travelers, Mukasa relied on a familiar vocabulary and set of concepts from his own society of Buganda, in Uganda, as a transcendental point of reference to describe the unfamiliar landscapes and objects of England, as well as in the way he characterized the different groups he met along the way; such as the Germans, Jews and Italians. Many of these travelogues were written on the eve of colonialism and can thus be read as inverse ethnographies, utilising a form of narrative inversion in which the African travellers reframe and subvert the dominant political order. They travel along well\-known routes, rely on local guides and interpreters, and comment on cultural differences using their own conceptual vocabularies. An excellent example of this is a little known travel document written by an East African traveller Amur al\-Omeri who visited Germany in 1891\. Written in Swahili, the document relates his puzzlement about the unfamiliar landscape and curiosities he witnessed that he consistently compares with his home city of Zanzibar; from the strange circuses and beerhalls of Berlin, to the museums with captured artefacts, to the licentious inhabitants of Amsterdam. The 19th century travelogue of Amur al\-Omeri is the subject of my latest Patreon article, please subscribe to read about it here; for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe35 )

a complete history of Mombasa ca. 600\-1895\. in a complete history of Mombasa ca. 600\-1895\. Journal of African cities: chapter 13 5)The island of Mombasa is home to one of the oldest cities on the East African coast and is today the largest seaport in the region. Mombasa’s strategic position on the Swahili Coast and its excellent harbours were key factors in its emergence as a prosperous city\-state linking the East African mainland to the Indian Ocean world. Its cosmopolitan community of interrelated social groups played a significant role in the region's history from the classical period of Swahili history to the era of the Portuguese and Oman suzerainty, contributing to the intellectual and cultural heritage of the East African coast. This article outlines the history of Mombasa, exploring the main historical events and social groups that shaped its history. Map of Mombasa and the Swahili coast. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The early history of Mombasa: 6th\-16th century. The island of Mombasa was home to one of the oldest Swahili settlements on the East African coast. Excavations on Mombasa Island reveal that it was settled as early as the 6th\-9th century by ironworking groups who used ‘TT’/’TIW’ ceramics characteristic of other Swahili settlements. An extensive settlement dating from 1000CE to the early 16th century was uncovered at Ras Kiberamni and the Hospital site to its south, with the latter site containing more imported pottery and the earliest coral\-stone constructions dated to the early 13th century. The first documentary reference to Mombasa comes from the 12th\-century geographer Al\-Idrisi, who notes that it was located two days sailing from Malindi, and adds that “It is a small town of the Zanj and its inhabitants are engaged in the extraction of iron from their mines… in this town is the residence of the king of the Zanj.” The globe\-trotter Ibn Battuta, who visited Mombasa in 1332, described it as a large island inhabited by Muslim Zanj, among whom were pious Sunni Muslims who built well\-constructed mosques, and that it obtained much of its grain from the mainland. The 19th\-century chronicle of Mombasa and other contemporary accounts divide its early history into two periods associated with two dynasties and old towns. It notes that the original site known as Kongowea was a pre\-Islamic town ruled by Queen Mwana Mkisi. She/her dynasty was succeeded by Shehe Mvita, a Muslim ‘shirazi’ at the town of Mvita which overlapped with Kongowea and was more engaged in the Indian Ocean trade. Such traditions compress a complex history of political evolution, alliances, and conflicts between the various social groups of Mombasa which mirrors similar accounts of the . Like most Swahili cities, Mombasa was governed like a "republic" led by a tamim (erroneously translated as King or Sultan) chosen by a council of sheikhs and elders (wazee). Between the 15th and 17th century, Mombasa’s residents gradually began forming into two confederations (Miji), consisting of twelve clans/tribes (Taifa) that included pre\-existing social groups and others from the Swahili coast and mainland. One of the confederations that came to be known as Tissia Taifa (nine clans) occupied the site of Mvita, and were affiliated with groups from The second confederation had three clans, Thelatha Taifa, and is associated with the sites of Kilindini and Tuaca. Archeological surveys at the site of Tuaca revealed remains of coral walls with two phases of construction, as well as local pottery and imported wares from the Islamic world and China. A gravestone possibly associated with a ruined mosque in the town bore the inscription ‘1462’. Other features of Tuaca include a demolished ruin of the Kilindini mosque, also known as Mskiti wa Thelatha Taita (Mosque of the Three Tribes); the remains of the town wall and a concentration of baobab trees. Later accounts and maps from the 17th century identify ‘Tuaca’ as a large forested settlement with a harbor known as ‘Barra de Tuaca’, next to a pillar locally known as Mbaraki. Excavations at the mosque next to the Mbaraki pillar indicate that the mosque was built in the 15th century before it was turned into a site for veneration in the 16th century, with the pillar being constructed by 1700\. A much older pillar which is noted in the earliest Portuguese account of Mombasa may have been the minaret of the Basheikh mosque. --- --- Mombasa during the 16th century: Conflict with Portugal and the ascendancy of Malindi. In April 1498 Vasco da Gama arrived at Mombasa but the encounter quickly turned violent once Mombasa’s rulers became aware of his actions on Mozambique island, so his crew were forced to sail to Malindi. This encounter soured relations between Mombasa and the Portuguese, and the latter’s alliance with Malindi would result in three major invasions of the city in 1505, 1526, 1589, and define much of the early . At the time of the Portuguese encounter, Mombasa was described as the biggest of the three main Swahili city\-states; the other two being Kilwa and Malindi. It had an estimated population of 10,000 who lived in stone houses some up to three stories high with balconies and flat roofs, interspaced between these were houses of wood and narrow streets with stone seats (baraza). Mombasa was considered to be the finest Swahili town, importing silk and gold from Cambay and Sofala. According to Duarte Barbosa the king of Mombasa was "the richest and most powerful" of the entire coast, with rights over the coastal towns between Kilifi and Mutondwe. A later account from the 1580s notes that the chief of Kilifi was a "relative" of the king of Mombasa. Barbosa also mentions that "Mombasa is a place of great traffic and a good harbour where small crafts and great ships were moored, bound to Sofala, Cambay, Malindi and other ports." An account from 1507 notes the presence of merchants from Mombasa as far south as the Kerimba archipelago off the coast of Mozambique. They formed a large community that was supported by the local population and even had a kind of factory where ivory was stored. Another account from 1515 mentions Mombasa among the list of Swahili cities whose ships were sighted in the Malaysian port city of Malacca, along with ships from Mogadishu, Malindi, and Kilwa. The rulers of Mombasa and maintained links through intermarriage and the former may have been recognized as the suzerain of Zanzibar (stone\-town). The power of Mombasa and the city\-state's conflict with Malindi over the region of Kilifi compelled the Malindi sultan to ally with the Portuguese and break the power of Mombasa and its southern allies. Malindi thus contributed forces to the sack of Mombasa in 1505, and again in 1528\-1529 when a coalition of forces that included Pemba and Zanzibar attacked Mombasa and its allies in the Kerimba islands. Despite the extent of the damage suffered during the two assaults, the city retained its power as most of its population often retreated during the invasions. It was rebuilt in a few years and even further fortified enough to withstand a failed attack in 1541\. Tensions between Mombasa and the Portuguese subsided as the latter became commercial allies, but the appearance of Ottomans in the southern read sea during this period provided the Swahili a powerful ally against the Portuguese. Around 1585, the Ottoman captain Ali Bey sailed down the coast from Aden and managed to obtain an alliance with many Swahili cities, with Mombasa and Kilifi sending their envoys in 1586 just before he went back to Aden. Informed by Malindi on the actions of Ali Bey, the Portuguese retaliated by attacking Mombasa in 1587 and forcing its ruler to submit. When Ali Bey's second fleet returned in 1589, it occupied Mombasa and fortified it. Shortly after Ali Bey's occupation of Mombasa, the Zimba, an enigmatic group from the mainland that had fought the Portuguese at Tete in Mozambique, arrived at Mombasa and besieged the city. In the ensuing chaos, the Zimba killed the Mombasa sultan and Ottomans surrendered to the Portuguese, before the Zimba proceeded to attack Malindi but were repelled by the Segeju, a mainland group allied to Malindi. In 1589 the Segeju attacked both Kilifi and Mombasa, and handed over the latter to the Sultan Mohammed of Malindi. The Portuguese then made Mombasa the seat of the East African possessions in 1593, completed Fort Jesus in 1597, and granted the Malindi sultan 1/3rd of its customs. --- Mombasa during the Portuguese period: 1593\-1698\. The Portuguese established a settler colony populated with about 100 Portuguese adults and their families at the site known as Gavana. These colonists included a few officers, priests who ran mission churches, soldiers garrisoned in the fort, and casados (men with families). The Swahili and Portuguese of Mombasa were engaged in ivory and rice trade with the mainland communities of the Mijikenda (who appear in Portuguese documents as the "Nyika" or as the "mozungulos"), which they exchanged for textiles with Indian merchants from Gujarat and Goa, with some wealthy Swahili from Mombasa such as Mwinyi Zago even visiting Goa in 1661\. Relations between the Malindi sultans and the Portuguese became strained in the early 17th century due to succession disputes and regulation of trade and taxes, in a complex pattern of events that involved the Mijikenda who acted as military allies of some factions and the primary supplier of ivory from the mainland. This state of affairs culminated in the rebellion of Prince Yusuf Hasan (formerly Dom Jeronimo Chingulia) who assassinated the captain of Mombasa and decimated the entire colony by 1631\. His reign was shortlived, as the Portuguese returned to the city by 1632, forcing Yusuf to flee to the red sea region, marking the end of the Malindi dynasty at Mombasa. Near the close of the 17th century however, the Portuguese mismanagement of the ivory trade from the mainland forced a section of the Swahili of Mombasa to request military aid from Oman. Contemporary accounts identify a wealthy Swahili merchant named Bwana Gogo of the Tisa Taifa faction associated with Lamu, and his Mijikenda suppliers led by 'king' Mwana Dzombo, as the leaders of the uprising, while most of the Thelatha Taifa and other groups from Faza and Zanzibar allied with the Portuguese. A coalition of Swahili and Omani forces who'd been attacking Portuguese stations along the coast eventually besieged Mombasa in 1696\. After 33 months, the Fort was breached and the Portuguese were expelled. The Omani sultans placed garrisons in Mombasa, appointing the Mazrui as local administrators. --- Subscribe --- --- Mombasa during the Mazrui era (1735\-1837\) Conflicts between the Swahili and Omanis in Pate and Mombasa eventually compelled the former to request Portuguese aid in 1727 to expel the Omanis. By March of 1729, the Portuguese had reoccupied Fort Jesus with support from Mwinyi Ahmed of Mombasa and the Mijikenda. However, the Portuguese clashed with their erstwhile allies over the ivory and textile trade, prompting Mwinyi Ahmed and the Mijikenda to expel them by November 1729\. He then sent a delegation to Muscat with the Mijikenda leader Mwana Jombo to invite the Yarubi sultan of Oman back to Mombasa. The Yarubi Omanis thereafter appointed Mohammed bin Othman al\-Mazrui as governor (liwali) in 1730, but a civil war in Oman brought the Busaidi into power and the Mazrui refused to recognize their new suzerains and continued to rule Mombasa autonomously. During the Mazrui period, most of the population was concentrated at Mvita and Kilindini while Gavana and Tuaca were largely abandoned. The Mazrui family integrated into Swahili society but, aside from arbitrating disputes, their power was quite limited and they governed with the consent of the main Swahili lineages. For example in 1745 after the Busaidi and their allies among the Tisa Taifa assassinated and replaced the Mazrui governor of Mombasa, sections of the Thelatha Taifa and a section of the Mijikenda executed the briefly\-installed Busaidi governor and restored the Mazrui. Persistent rivalries between the governing Mazrui and the Tisa Taifa forced the Mazrui to get into alot of debt to honour the multiple gifts required by their status. Some of the Mazrui governors competed with the sultans of Pate, who thus allied with the Tisa Taifa against the Thelatha Taifa. Both sides installed and deposed favorable rulers in Mombasa and Pate, fought for control over the island of Pemba, and leveraged alliances with the diverse communities of the Mijikenda. Mombasa continued to expand its links with the Mijikenda, who provided grain to the city in exchange for textiles and an annual custom/tribute that in the 1630s constituted a third of the revenue from the customs of Fort Jesus. The Mijikenda also provided the bulk of Mombasa's army, and the city's rulers were often heavily dependent on them, allowing the Mijikenda to exert significant influence over Mombasa's politics and social life, especially during the 18th century when they played kingmaker between rival governors and also haboured belligerents. Some of them, eg the Duruma, settled in Pemba where they acted as clients of the Mazrui. Some of the earliest Swahili\-origin traditions were recorded in Mombasa in 1847 and 1848, they refer to the migration of the Swahili from the city/region of Shungwaya (which appears in 16th\-17th century Portuguese accounts and corresponds to the site of Bur Gao on the Kenya/Somalia border) after it was overrun by Oromo\-speaking herders allied with Pate. These Swahili then moved to Malindi, Kilifi, and finally to Mombasa, revealing the extent of interactions between the mainland and the island and the fluidity of Mombasa’s social groups. At least four of the clans of Mombasa, especially among the Thelatha Taifa claim to have been settled on the Kenyan mainland before moving to the island. Mombasa under the Mazrui expanded its control from Tanga to the Bajun islands and increased its agricultural tribute from Pemba, which in the 16th\-17th century period amounted to over 600 makanda of rice, among other items, (compared to just 20 makanda from the Mijikenda). This led to a period of economic prosperity that was expressed in contemporary works by Mombasa’s scholars. Internal trade utilized silver coins (thalers) as well as bronze coins that were minted during the governorship of Salim ibn Ahmad al\-Mazrui (1826–1835\). In the late 18th century, Mombasa's external trade continued to be dominated by ivory and other commodities like rice, that were exported to south Arabian ports. However, Mombasa's outbound trade was less than that carried out by Kilwa, Pemba, and Zanzibar, whose trade was directed to the Omans of Muscat, who were hostile to the Mazrui. Mombasa also prohibited trade with the French who wanted captives for their colony in the Mascarenes, as they were allied with the Portuguese, leaving only the English who purchased most of Mombasa's ivory for their possessions in India. The city was part of the intellectual currents and wealth of the 18th century and early 19th century, which contributed to a with scholars from Pate and Mombasa such as Seyyid Ali bin Nassir (1720–1820\), Mwana Kupona (d. 1865\) and Muyaka bin Haji (1776–1840\), some of whose writings preserve elements of Mombasa’s early history --- Mombasa in the 19th century: from Mazrui to the Busaid era (1837\-1895\) At the start of the 19th century, internal and regional rivalries between the elites of Mombasa, Pate, and Lamu, supported by various groups on the mainland culminated in a series of battles between 1807 and 1813, in which Lamu emerged as the victor, and invited the Busaidi sultan of Oman, Seyyid Said as their protector, who later moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar. Internecine conflicts among the Mazrui resulted in a breakup of their alliance with the Thelatha Taifa, some of whom shifted their alliance to the Zanzibar sultan Sayyid Said, culminating in the latter’s invasion of Mombasa in 1837, and the burning of Kilindini town. The Thelatha Taifa then established their own area in Mvita known as Kibokoni, adjacent to the Mjua Kale of the Tissa Taifa to form what is now the ‘Old Town’ section of the city. Under the rule of the Zanzibar sultans, the Swahili of Mombasa retained most of their political autonomy. They elected their own leaders, had their own courts that settled most disputes within the section, and they only paid some of the port taxes and tariffs to Zanzibar. By the late 19th century, the expansion of British colonialism on the East African coast eroded the Zanzibar sultan’s authority, with Mombasa eventually becoming part of the British protectorate in 1895\. Economic and political changes as well as the arrival of new groups from India, Yemen, and the Kenyan mainland during the colonial period would profoundly alter the social mosaic of the cosmopolitan city, transforming it into modern Kenya’s second\-largest city. Mombasa derived part of its wealth from re\-exporting the gold of Sofala, which was ultimately obtained from Great Zimbabwe and the other stone\-walled capitals of Southeast Africa Please subscribe to read about the history of the Gold trade of Sofala and the internal dynamics of gold demand within Southeast Africa and the Swahili coast here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 621, Excavations at the Site of Early Mombasa by Hamo Sassoon. Excavations at the Site of Early Mombasa by Hamo Sassoon pg 3\-5 Oral Historiography and the Shirazi of the East African Coast by Randall L. Pouwels pg 252\-253, The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 52\) These are the; Mvita, Jomvu, Kilifi, Mtwapa, Pate, Shaka, Paza, Bajun, and Katwa. These are the Kilindini, Changamwe, and Tangana. The Way the World Is: Cultural Processes and Social Relations Among the Mombasa Swahili by Marc J. Swartz pg 30\-33, The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 621, 76\) The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 621\-622\) The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 622, Mbaraki Pillar \& Related Ruins of Mombasa Island by Hamo Sassoon Excavations at the Site of Early Mombasa by Hamo Sassoon pg 7 Mombasa Island: A Maritime Perspective by Rosemary McConkey and Thomas McErlean pg 109 Excavations at the Site of Early Mombasa by Hamo Sassoon pg 7 Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 60\-61, 331, The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 620\) Mnarani of Kilifi: The Mosques and Tombs by James Kirkman East Africa and the Indian Ocean by Edward A. Alpers pg 9, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamuby Thomas Vernet pg 75, 83\) The Medieval Foundations of East African Islam by Randall L. Pouwels pg 404\-406, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 64\-65, 83\-84\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 85\-86, 89, 97\) Global politics of the 1580s by G Casale pg 269\-273, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 100\-108\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 109\- 125\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 127\-140, 150, 152, 225\-227, Mombasa Island: A Maritime Perspective by Rosemary McConkey and Thomas McErlean pg 111\-113\. Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 414\-416\) Empires of the Monsoon by Richard Seymour Hall pg 266\-274\. Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 365\-373\) The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 522\-523\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 434\-460\) Mombasa, the Swahili, and the making of the Mijikenda by Justin Willis pg 59\-60, The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg pg 50\-52 Oral Historiography and the Shirazi of the East African Coast by Randall L. Pouwels pg 253, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 266, 469\-472, The Way the World Is: Cultural Processes and Social Relations Among the Mombasa Swahili by Marc J. Swartz pg 34\. by the 20th century, the Mijikenda were divided into nine groups; Giriama, Digo, Rabai, Chonyi, Jibana, Ribe, Kambe, Kauma and Duruma, some of whom, such as the Duruma and Rabai appear in much earlier sources. Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 261\-264, 413\-415, 528\-529\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 229\-231, 231\-235, 315\-316, The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg pg 46\-49\. The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg pg 49 Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 336\-338\) The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 454\-455, The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg 52 Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810 by Thomas Vernet pg 476\-481, The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 386\) The Swahili World, edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria LaViolette pg 524\) The battle of Shela by RL Pouwels The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg pg 52\-53, The Way the World Is: Cultural Processes and Social Relations Among the Mombasa Swahili by Marc J. Swartz pg 35\. The Swahili community of Mombasa by J. Berg pg 53\-55 The Way the World Is: Cultural Processes and Social Relations Among the Mombasa Swahili by Marc J. Swartz pg 36\-40\. 29 5)

A brief history of Gold in Africa and the emporium of Sofala. in A brief history of Gold in Africa and the emporium of Sofala. 3)It was copper, not Gold, that was considered the most important metal in most African societies, according to an authoritative study by Eugenia Herbert. Employing archaeological evidence as well as historical documentation, Herbert concluded that copper had more intrinsic value than Gold and that the few exceptions reflected a borrowed system of values from the Muslim or Christian worlds. However, more recent historical investigations into the relative values of Gold and Copper across different African societies undermine this broad generalization. While there's plenty of evidence that Copper and its alloys were indeed the most valued metal in many African societies, there has also been increasing evidence for the importance of Gold in several societies across the continent that cannot solely be attributed to external influence. In ancient Nubia where some of the continent's oldest gold mines are found, Gold objects appear extensively in the archaeological record of the kingdoms of Kerma and Kush. Remains of workshops of goldsmiths at the capital of classic Kerma and Meroe, ruins of architectural features and statues covered in gold leaf, inscriptions about social ceremonies involving the use of gold dust and objects, as well as finds of gold jewelry across multiple sites along the Middle Nile, provide evidence that ancient Nubia wasn't just an exporter of Gold, but also a major consumer of the precious metal. In the Senegambia region of west Africa, where societies of , a trove of gold objects was included in the array of finery deposited to accompany their owners into the afterlife. The resplendent gold pectoral of Rao, dated to the 8th century CE is only the best known among the collection of gold objects from the Senegambia region that include gold chains and gold beads from the Wanar and Kael Tumulus, dated to the 6th century CE, which predate the Islamic period. Equally significant is the better\-known region of the Gold Coast in modern Ghana, where many societies, especially among the Akan\-speaking groups, were renowned for gold mining and smithing. The rulers of the earliest states which emerged around the 13th century at Bono\-Manso and later at Denkyira and Asante in the 17th and 18th centuries, placed significant value on gold, which was extracted from deep ancient mines, worked into their royal regalia, stored in the form of gold dust, and sold to the . While Africa's gold exports increased during the Islamic era and the early modern period, the significance of these external contacts to Africa's internal demand for gold was limited to regions where there was pre\-existing local demand. For example, despite the numerous accounts of the golden caravans from Medieval Mali such as the over 12 tonnes of gold carried by Mansa Musa in 1324, no significant collection of gold objects has been recovered from the region (compared to the many bronze objects found across Mali’s old cities and towns). A rare exception is the 19th\-century treasure of Umar Tal that was stolen by the French from Segou, which included 75kg of gold and over 160 tons of silver. Compare this to the Gold Coast which exported about 1 tonne of gold annually, and where hundreds of gold objects were stolen by the British from the Asante capital Kumasi, during the campaigns of 1826, 1874, and 1896, with at least 239 items housed at the British Museum, not counting the dozens of other institutions and the rest of the objects which were either melted or surrendered as part of the indemnity worth 1\.4 tonnes of gold. Just one of these objects, eg the gold head at London’s Wallace collection, weighs 1\.36 kg. Domestic demand for gold in Africa was thus largely influenced by local value systems, with external trade being grafted onto older networks and patterns of exchange. Examples of these patterns of internal gold trade and consumption abound from Medieval Nubia to the Fulbe and Wolof kingdoms of the Senegambia, to the northern Horn of Africa. This interplay between internal and external demand for gold is well attested in the region of south\-east Africa where pre\-existing demand for gold —evidenced by the various collections of gold objects from the many stone ruins scattered across the region— received further impetus from the Swahili city\-states of the East African coast through the port town of Sofala in modern Mozambique. At its height in the 15th century, an estimated 8\.5 tonnes of gold went through Sofala each year, making it one of the world's biggest gold exporters of the precious metal. The history of the Gold trade of Sofala and the internal dynamics of gold demand within Southeast Africa and the Swahili coast is the subject of my latest Patreon article, Please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeRed Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture by Eugenia W. Herbert Black Kingdom of the Nile by Charles Bonnet pg 29, 49, 62, 65, 169\-173, The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art By László Török pg 82,85, 315, 472\-473, The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 112\-121, 457, 460, 528\) Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara By Alisa LaGamma pg 51\-54, Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa by Kathleen Bickford Berzock pg 181\. The State of the Akan and the Akan States by I. Wilks pg 240\-246, The Archaeology of Islam in Sub\-Saharan Africa By Timothy Insoll pg 340\-342, emphasis on ‘stolen’ here is to highlight how colonial warfare and looting may be responsible for the lack of significant archeological finds of gold objects from this region, considering how the majority of gold would have been kept in treasuries rather than buried. Excavations in Ghana for example have yet to recover any significant gold objects, despite the well\-known collections of such objects in many Western institutions. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa by Kathleen Bickford Berzock pg 179\-180\. From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth\-Century West Africa by Robin Law pg 97 the 1826 loot included £2m worth of gold and a nugget weighing 20,000 ounces, the 1874 loot included dozens of gold objects including several masks, with one weighing 41 ounces, part of the 1874 indemnity of 50,000 ounces was paid in gold objects shortly after, and again in 1896\. see; The Fall of the Asante Empire by Robert B. Edgerton, Asante in the Nineteenth Century By Ivor Wilks 31 3)

The stone ruins of South Africa: a history of Mapungubwe, Thulamela and Dzata. ca. 1000\-1750CE. in The stone ruins of South Africa: a history of Mapungubwe, Thulamela and Dzata. ca. 1000\-1750CE. 4)The dzimbabwe ruins of south\-eastern Africa are often described as the largest collection of stone monuments in Africa south of Nubia. While the vast majority of the stone ruins are concentrated in the modern countries of Zimbabwe and Botswana, a significant number of them are found in South Africa, especially in its northernmost province of Limpopo. Ruined towns such as Mapungubwe, Thulamela, and Dzata have attracted significant scholarly attention as the centers of complex societies that were engaged in long\-distance trade in gold and ivory with the East African coast. Recent research has shed more light on the history of these towns and their links to the better\-known kingdoms of the region, enabling us to situate them in the broader history of South Africa. This article outlines the history of the stone ruins of South Africa and their relationship to similar monuments across the region. Map of south\-eastern Africa highlighting the ruined towns mentioned below. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- State formation and the ruined towns of Limpopo: a history of Mapungubwe. During the late 1st millennium of the common era, the iron\-age societies of southern Africa mostly consisted of dispersed settlements of agro\-pastoralists that were minimally engaged in long\-distance trade and were associated with a widely distributed type of pottery known as the Zhizho wares. The central sections of these Zhizo settlements, such as at the site of Shroda (dated 890\-970 CE) encompassed cattle byres, grain storages, smithing areas, an assembly area, and a royal court/elite residence, in a unique spatial layout commonly referred to as the 'Central Cattle Pattern'. By 1000 CE, Shroda and similar sites were abandoned, and the Zhizo ceramic style largely disappeared from southwest Zimbabwe and northern South Africa. Around the same time, a new capital was established at the site known as ‘K2’, whose pottery tradition was known as the 'Leopard’s Kopje' style, and is attested at several contemporaneous sites. The size of the K2 settlement and changes in its spatial organization with an expanded court area indicate that it was the center of a rank\-based society. Around 1220CE, the settlement at K2 was abandoned and a new capital was established around and on top of the Mapungubwe hill, less than a kilometer away. The settlement at Mapungubwe contains several spatial components, the most prominent being the sandstone hill itself, with a flat summit 30m high and 300 m long, with vertical cliffs that can only be accessed through specific routes. The hill is surrounded by a flat valley that includes discrete spatial areas, a few of which are enclosed with low stone walling. Mapungubwe's spatial organization continued to evolve into a new elite pattern that included a stonewalled enclosure which provided ritual seclusion for the king. Other stonewalling demarcated entrances to elite areas, noble housing, and boundaries of the town centre. The hilltop became a restricted elite area with lower\-status followers occupying the surrounding valley and neighboring settlements, thus emphasizing the spatial and ritual seclusion of the leader and signifying their sacred leadership. Mapungubwe had grown to a large capital of about 10 ha, inhabited by a population of around 2\-5000 people, sustained by floodplain agriculture of mixed cereals (millet and sorghum) and pastoralism. Comparing its settlement size and hierarchy to the capitals of historically known kingdoms, such as the Zulu, suggests that Mapungubwe probably controlled about 30,000 km2 of territory, about the same as the Zulu kingdom in the early 19th century. There are a number of outlying settlements with Mapungubwe pottery in the Limpopo area which however lack prestige walling and instead occupy open situations. Those that have been investigated, such as Mutamba, Vhunyela, Skutwater and Princes Hill were organized according to the Central Cattle Pattern, indicating that they were mostly inhabited by commoners. However, the recovery of over 187 spindle whorls from Mutamba, about 80 km southeast of Mapungubwe, indicates that textile manufacture and trade weren’t restricted to elite settlements. --- Gold mining and trade before and during the age of Mapungubwe. Wealth from local tributes and long\-distance trade likely contributed to the increase in political power of the Mapungubwe rulers. The material culture recovered from the capital and other outlying settlements, which includes Chinese celadon shards, dozens of spindle\-whorls for spinning cotton textiles, and thousands of glass beads, point to the integration of Mapungubwe into the wider trade network of the Indian Ocean world via East Africa's Swahili coast. Prior to the rise of Mapungubwe, the 9th\-10th century site of Schroda was the first settlement in the interior to yield a large number of ivory objects and exotic glass beads, indicating a marked increase in long\-distance trade from the Swahili coast, whose traders had established a coastal entrepot at Sofala to export gold from the region. These patterns of external trade continued during the K2 period when local craftsmen produced their own glass beads by reworking imported ones and then selling their local beads to other regional capitals. It is the surplus wealth from this trade, and its associated multicultural interaction, that presented new opportunities to people in the Mapungubwe landscape. A marked increase in international demand contributed to an upsurge in gold production that began in the 13th century and is paralleled by an economic boom at on the East African coast. The distribution of Mapungubwe pottery in ancient workings and mines such as at Aboyne (1170 CE ± 95\) and Geelong (1230CE ± 80\) in southern Zimbabwe, indicates that the Mapungubwe kingdom may have expanded north to control some of the gold fields. A large cache of gold artifacts was found in the royal cemetery of Mapungubwe, dated to the second half of the 13th century. The grave goods included a golden rhino, bowl, scepter, a gold headdress, gold anklets and bracelets, 100 gold anklets and 12,000 gold beads, and 26,000 glass beads. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the gold objects were all made in the early 13th century, at the height of the town’s occupation. Analysis of the gold objects suggests that they were manufactured locally. Metal was beaten into sheets of the required thickness and then cut into narrow strips, or the strips were made from wire that was hammered and smoothed using an abrasive technique. The strips were then wound around plant fibers to form either beads or helical structures for anklets and bracelets, or around a wooden core for the rhino and bovine figurines. --- Subscribe --- Its however important to emphasize that long\-distance trade in gold from Mapungubwe and similar ‘Zimbabwe culture’ sites (the collective name for the stone ruins of southern Africa) was only the culmination of processes generated within traditional economies and internal political structures that were able to exploit external trade as one component of emergent hierarchical formations already supervising regional resources on a large scale. The trade of gold in particular appears to have also been driven by internal demand for ornamentation by elites, alongside other valued items like cattle, copper and iron objects, glass beads, and the countless ostrich eggshell beads found at Mapungubwe and similar sites that appear to have been exclusively acquired through trade with neighboring settlements. Gold has been recovered from numerous 'Zimbabwe culture' sites, but few of these have been excavated professionally by archaeologists and subjected to scientific analysis, with the exception of Mapungubwe and the site of Thulamela (explored below). Incidentally, Gold fingerprinting analysis shows that the Thulamela gold and part of the Mapungubwe collection came from the same source, indicating that miners from Mapungubwe exploited it before miners from Thulamela took it over. Around 1300 CE, the valley and hilltop of Mapungubwe were abandoned, and the kingdom vanished after a relatively brief period of 80 years. The reasons for its decline remain unclear but are likely an interplay of socio\-political and environmental factors. In most of the ‘Zimbabwe culture’ societies, sacred leadership was linked to agricultural productivity, rainmaking, ancestral belief systems, and a ‘high God’, all of which served to confirm the legitimacy of a King/royal lineage. Climatic changes and the resulting agricultural failure would have undermined the legitimacy of the rulers and their diviners while emboldening rival claimants to accumulate more followers and shift the capital of the kingdom. It’s likely that the sections of Mapungubwe’s population shifted to other settlements that dotted the region, since Mapungubwe\-derived ceramics have been found in association with a stonewalled palace in the saddle of Lose Hill of Botswana. Others may have moved east towards the town of Thulamela whose earliest occupation dates to the period of Mapungubwe’s ascendancy, and whose elites derived their gold from the same mines as the rulers of Mapungubwe. --- The ruined town of Thulamela from the 13th to the 17th century. Thulamela is a 9\-hectare site about 200km east of Mapungubwe. It consists of several stone\-walled complexes and enclosures on the hilltop overlooking the Luvuvhu River which forms a branch of the Limpopo River. The stone\-walled enclosures cluster according to rank in size and position, with the majority being grouped around a central court area situated at the highest and most isolated part of the site. The status of the inhabitants is reflected in the volume of stone used, all of which are inturn surrounded by non\-walled areas of habitation in the adjacent valley. Archeological evidence from the site indicates that a stratified community lived at Thulamela, with elites likely residing on the top of the hill while the rest of the populace occupied the adjacent areas below. A main access route intersects the central area of the hill complex leading to an assembly area, which in turn leads to a private access staircase to the court area. construction features including stone monoliths, small platforms, and intricate wall designs are similar to those found in other ‘Zimbabwe culture’ sites likely denoting specific spaces for titled figures or activities. The site has seen three distinct periods of occupation, with phase I beginning in the 13th century, Phase II lasting from the 14th to mid\-15th century, and Phase III lasting upto the 17th century. The earliest settlements had no stone walling but there were finds of ostrich eggshell beads similar to those from Mapungubwe. Stone\-walled construction appeared in the second phase, as well as long\-distance trade goods such as glass beads, ivory, and gold. Occupation of the site peaked in the last phase, with extensive evidence of metal smithing of iron, copper, and gold, Khami\-type pottery (), and a double\-gong associated with royal lineages. Other finds included Chinese porcelain from the late 17th/early 18th century associated with the , spindle\-whorls for spinning cotton, ivory bangles, and iron slag from metal production. Two graves were discovered at the site, with one dated to 1497, containing a woman buried with a gold bracelet and 290 gold beads, while the other was a male with gold bracelets, gold beads, and iron bracelets with gold staple, dated to 1434\. The location of the graves and the grave goods they contained indicate that the individuals buried were elites of high rank at Thulamela, and further emphasize the site's similarity with other ‘Zimbabwe culture’ sites like Mapungubwe. The recovery of other gold beads, nodules, wire, and fragments of helically wound wire bangles, along with several fragments of local pottery with adhering lumps of glassy slag with entrapped droplets of gold, provided direct evidence of gold working in the hilltop settlement. The fabrication technology employed in Thulamela's metalworking was similar to that found at Mapungubwe. --- --- --- Thulamela and the kingdoms of Khami and Rozvi during the 15th to 17th century. The presence of gold and iron grave goods, along with Chinese porcelain and glass from the Indian Ocean world indicates that trade and metallurgy were salient factors in urbanization, social structuring, and state formation across the region. The site of Thulamela was the largest in a cluster of three settlements near the Luvuvhu River, the other two being Makahane and Matjigwili. The three sites exhibit similar features including extensive stone walling and stone\-built enclosures, and the division of the settlement into residential areas. Archeological surveys identified the central court area of Makahane on the hilltop, enclosed in a U\-shaped wall, with the slopes being occupied by commoners. A gold globule found at Makahane indicates that it was also a gold smelting site. The site is traditionally thought to have been occupied in the 17th\-18th centuries according to accounts by the adjacent communities of the Lembethu, a Venda\-speaking group who still visited the site in the mid\-20th century to offer sacrifices and pray at the graves of the kings buried there. The sites of Thulamela and Makahane occupy an important historical period in south\-eastern Africa marked by the expansion of the kingdoms of Torwa at Khami and the Rozvi state at DhloDhlo in Zimbabwe, whose material culture and historical traditions intersect with those of the sites. It’s likely that the two sites represent the southernmost extension of the Torwa and Rozvi traditions (similar to ), without necessarily implying direct political control. The Rozvi kingdom is said to have split near the close of the 17th century after the death of its founder Changamire Dombo who had after a series of battles. According to Rozvi traditions, some of the rival claimants to Changamire’s throne chose to migrate with their followers into outlying regions, with one moving the the Hwange region of Zimbabwe, while another moved south and crossed the Limpopo river to establish the kingdom of Thovhela among the Venda\-speakers with its capital at Dzata, which appears in external accounts from 1730\. Besides Thulamela and Makahane, there are similar ruins in the Limpopo region with material culture associated with both the Torwa and Rozvi periods. The largest of these is the site of Machemma, which is located a few dozen kilometers south of Mapungubwe. It was a large stone\-walled site with highly decorated walls, whose court area yielded Khami band\-and\-panel ware, ivory, gold ornaments, and imported 15th\-century Chinese blue\-on\-white porcelain. --- A brief social history of south\-east Africa and the transition from Thulamela to Dzata. The fact that both Thulamela and Makahane were well known in local tradition indicates their relatively recent occupation compared to Mapungubwe and other early ‘Zimbabwe culture’ sites which were abandoned many centuries prior. The construction of the ‘Zimbabwe culture’ sites is attributed to the Shona\-speaking groups of south\-eastern Africa. The site of Makahane is however associated with the Nyai branch of the Lembethu, a Venda\-speaking group. Venda is a language isolate that shows lexical similarities with the Shona language, which linguists and historians mostly attribute to the southern expansion of an elite lineage group known as the Singo from Zimbabwe during the 18th century. Although it should be noted that the Singo would have encountered pre\-existing groups that likely included other Venda speakers indicating that the Shona elements in the Venda language were acquired much earlier than this. Venda traditions on the southern migration of the Singo describe the latter’s conquest of pre\-existing societies to establish a vast state centered at the site of Dzata, which later collapsed in the mid\-18th century. They identify the first Singo rulers as Ndyambeu and Mambo, who are both associated with the Rozvi kingdom (Mambo is itself a Rozvi aristocratic title). It’s likely that the traditions of the Singo’s southern migration and conquest of pre\-existing clans refer to this expansion associated with the split between Changamire's sons after his demise. The same traditions mention that when the Singo emigrated from south\-central Zimbabwe, they first settled in the Nzhelele Valley and established themselves at Dzata. The latter was a stone\-walled settlement that was initially equal in size to the pre\-existing capitals of the Lembethu at Makahane Ruin, and the Mbedzi at the Tshaluvhimbi Ruin, before the Singo rulers expanded their kingdom and attracted a larger following by the turn of the 18th century. --- The Singo kingdom of Dzata in the 18th century. Dzata is a 50\-hectare settlement located on the northern side of the Nzhelele River, a branch of the Limpopo River. The core of the settled area is a cluster of neatly coursed low\-lying stone walls, with a court area about 4,500 sqm large, surrounded by a huge ring of surface scatters with some rough terraced walling. Dzata is the only level\-5 ‘Zimbabwe culture’ site south of the Limpopo River, indicating it was the center of a large kingdom with a population equal to that found at Khami and Great Zimbabwe. A Dutch account obtained from a Tsonga traveler Mahumane, who was visiting the Delagoa Bay in 1730, mentions the dark blue stone walls of Dzata, in the kingdom, called ‘Thovhela’ (possibly a title or name of a king), where he had been a few years earlier. The account identifies the capital as ‘Insatti’ (a translation of Dzata) which was "wholly built with dark blue stones —the residences as well as a kind of wall which encloses the whole", adding that "The place where the chief sits is raised and also \ Ethnohistoric Information from other Venda sites indicates that the central cluster of stone walls at Dzata demarcated the royal area, whereas the big surrounding ring housed the commoners. According to some traditions, Dzata experienced more than one construction phase, associated with two kings. The town grew during the reign of Dimbanyika, the fourth king at Dzata, after he had finished consolidating his authority over the Venda. It was later expanded by King Masindi after the death of King Dimbanyika. Changes in the styles of walling and other features likely reflected political shifts at Dzata. The settlement was intersected by a central road through the commoner area to the stone walled royal section, which was separated by cattle byres. On the opposite side of the byres was the assembly area with a small circular platform and stone monoliths. Excavations of this area yielded four radiocarbon dates, all calibrated to around 1700 CE, while other sites near and around Dzata provided multiple dates ranging from the 16th century to the early 19th century. The material culture recovered from Dzata includes iron weapons and tools, coiled copper wire interlaced with small copper beads, spindle whorls, ivory fragments, bone pendants, and blue glass beads. The numerous remains of iron furnaces and copper mines in its hinterland corroborate 18th\-century accounts of intensive metal working and trading from the region, which was controlled by the ruler of Dzata. Gold, copper, and ivory from Dzata were exported to the East African coast through Delagoa Bay, where a lucrative trade was conducted with the hinterland societies. Trade between Dzata and the coast declined drastically around 1750, around the time when the Singo Venda abandoned Dzata. Following the collapse of the Singo kingdom, other stone\-walled sites were built across the region, with interlocking enclosures separating elite and commoner areas. Limited trade between the coast and the Limpopo region continued, as indicated by an account from 1836, mentioning trade routes and mining activities in the region, as well as competition between Venda rulers for access to trade goods. By the mid\-19th century, however, the construction of stone\-walled towns had ceased, after social and political changes associated with the kingdoms of the so\-called . The old ruins of Thulamela, Makahane, and Dzata nevertheless retained their significance in local histories as important sites of veneration, or in the case of Dzata, as the capital of a once great kingdom that is still visited for annual dedication ceremonies called Thevhula (thanksgiving). --- Traditional African religions often co\-existed with “foreign” religions for much of African history, including in places such as the kingdom of Kongo, which was considered a Christian state in the 16th century but was also home to a powerful traditional religious society known as Kimpasi. Please subscribe to read about the history of the Kimpasi religious society of Kongo on our Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Shadreck Chirikure et al, from “No Big Brother Here: Heterarchy, Shona Political Succession and the Relationship between Great Zimbabwe and Khami, Southern Africa.” Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 15\-17\) Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman pg 42\) Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman Shell disc beads and the development of class‑based society at the K2‑Mapungubwe settlement complex (South Africa) by Michelle Mouton pg 3\-4\) Shell disc beads and the development of class‑based society at the K2‑Mapungubwe settlement complex (South Africa) by Michelle Mouton pg 5\) The lottering connection: revisiting the 'discovery' of Mapungubwe. by by Justine Wintjes and Sian Tiley\-Nel. Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 25\-26, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman pg 44, ) Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 22, Fiber Spinning During the Mapungubwe Period of Southern Africa: Regional Specialism in the Hinterland by Alexander Antonite pg 106\) Fiber Spinning During the Mapungubwe Period of Southern Africa: Regional Specialism in the Hinterland by Alexander Antonites Fiber Spinning During the Mapungubwe Period of Southern Africa: Regional Specialism in the Hinterland by Alexander Antonite pg 110\-115, Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 21 Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 19\-20\) Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman pg 50, Ungendering Civilization edited by K. Anne Pyburn pg 63\. Dating the Mapungubwe Hill Gold by Stephan Woodborne Dating the Mapungubwe Hill Gold by Stephan Woodborne et al. The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States by Innocent Pikirayi pg 21\) Shell disc beads and the development of class‑based society at the K2‑Mapungubwe settlement complex (South Africa) by Michelle Mouton pg 16\-17 Trace\-element study of gold from southern African archaeological sites by D. Miller et al. Mapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. Huffman pg 15, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman pg 51\) Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. Huffman pg 51\) Late Iron Age Gold Burials from Thulamela (Pafuri Region, Kruger National Park by Maryna Steyn pg 74\) A preliminary report on settlement layout and gold melting at Thula Mela by M.M Kusel pg 58\-60\) Late Iron Age Gold Burials from Thulamela (Pafuri Region, Kruger National Park by Maryna Steyn pg 75\-76, A preliminary report on settlement layout and gold melting at Thula Mela by M.M Kusel pg 60\-61\) Late Iron Age Gold Burials from Thulamela (Pafuri Region, Kruger National Park by Maryna Steyn pg 76\-84\) Trace\-element study of gold from southern African archaeological sites by D. Miller et al. pg 298, The fabrication technology of southern African archeological gold by Duncan Miller and Nirdev Desai Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman, pg 16\-17, A preliminary report on settlement layout and gold melting at Thula Mela by M.M Kusel pg 56, 63\) A preliminary report on settlement layout and gold melting at Thula Mela by M.M Kusel pg 63 The Zimbabwe Culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 215 Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 14\-15\) Snakes \& Crocodiles : Power and Symbolism in Ancient Zimbabwe by Thomas N. Huffman pg 1\-5, The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States by Innocent Pikirayi pg 15\-18 Language in South Africa edited by Rajend Mesthrie pg 71\-72, Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics edited by Rajend Mesthrie pg 45\-46\) Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 23, The Ethnoarchaeology of Venda\-speakers in Southern Africa by J. H.N Loubser pg 398\-399\. Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 21\-22, The Ethnoarchaeology of Venda\-speakers in Southern Africa by J. H.N Loubser pg 391 Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 19\) The Ethnoarchaeology of Venda\-speakers in Southern Africa by J. H.N Loubser pg 293, Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 21\. Settlement hierarchies Northern Transvaal by T. Huffman pg 19\) The model of Dzata at the National Museum by J. H.N Loubser pg 24 The Ethnoarchaeology of Venda\-speakers in Southern Africa by J. H.N Loubser pg 290, 307\-308\. The model of Dzata at the National Museum by J. H.N Loubser pg 25 The Archaeology of Southern Africa By Peter Mitchell pg 340 The model of Dzata at the National Museum by J. H.N Loubser pg 25 The Archaeology of Southern Africa By Peter Mitchell pg 340\-341\. 26 4)

a brief note on the history of indigenous and foreign religions in African history, and the Kimpasi society of Kongo in a brief note on the history of indigenous and foreign religions in African history, and the Kimpasi society of Kongo 8)The majority of Africans today primarily identify as Christians and Muslims of various denominations, with a relatively small fraction adhering to other belief systems often referred to as 'indigenous' or 'traditional' religions. The history of religion in Africa is as old and invariably complex as the history of its societies, of which religion was an integral component. It was determined by multiple internal developments in Africa’s belief systems and social institutions, and the continent’s interaction with the rest of the Old World. As African societies increasingly interacted with each other and the rest of the old world, they created, adopted, and syncretized different belief systems in a process familiar to scholars of religion from across the world. For this reason, so\-called "indigenous" and "foreign" religions have co\-existed and influenced each other across the history of many different societies, so much as to render both terms superfluous. The , for example, included a rich pantheon of deities, religious practices, and myths that were derived from the diverse populations of the different kingdoms that dominated the region. From the solar deities and ram cults of ancient Kerma to the shared deities in the temple towns of New\-Kingdom Egypt and Nubia, to the southern deities introduced by the Meroitic dynasty, the religion of ancient Kush was a product of centuries of syncretism/hybridism and plurality, influenced by political and social changes across its long history. Similar developments occurred in West Africa, such as in the kingdom of Dahomey, where the promotion of religious plurality led to the creation and adoption of multiple belief systems, religious practices, and deities from across the region. Dahomey's "traditional" belief systems and practices, called Vodun, were syncretized with "foreign" belief systems, especially , which contained numerous temples dedicated to local and foreign deities. The people of Dahomey adopted deities from its vassal kingdom of Ouidah (eg the python god Dangbe), as well as other deities and practices from its suzerain —the empire of , where the Ifa religion was dominant, and from where the Vodun/Orisha of Gu/Ogun originated. In the Hausalands of northern Nigeria, the adherents of "traditional" belief systems recognized and adopted different kinds of deities that evolved along with the "foreign" belief systems of their Muslim peers. In the kingdom of Kano, internal accounts by local Muslim scholars document the —the last of which is only the latest iteration in the polytheistic religion of the Maguzawa Hausa, whose deities also included ‘Mallams’ (ie: Muslim clerics). These traditionalists are presented as active agents in Kano's history whose status was analogous to the dhimmis (protected groups) in the Muslim heartlands such as Christians and Jews. This brief outline demonstrates that the terms 'traditional' and 'foreign' are mostly anachronisms that modern writers extrapolate backward to a period when such binary concepts would have been unfamiliar to the actual people living at the time. Religions could emerge, spread, decline, and evolve in different societies in a process that was influenced by multiple factors. Since 'religions' weren't separate institutions but were considered an integral part of many societies' social and political structures, the history of Religion in Africa was inextricably tied to broader changes and developments in Africa's societies. The Kingdom of Kongo presents one of the best case studies for the evolution of 'traditional' religions in Africa. While much of the kingdom adopted Christianity on its own terms at the end of the 15th century, the kingdom’s eastern provinces were home to a powerful polytheistic religious society known as the Kimpasi whose members played an influential role in Kongo's politics during the 17th and 18th centuries. The kimpasi society co\-existed with the rest of Kongo's Christian society well into the 20th century and was considered by the latter as a lawful institution, despite being denounced by visiting priests. The history of the Kimpasi religious society and the 'traditional' religions of Kongo is the subject of my latest Patreon Article. Please subscribe to read about it here: --- Top: "Spirits of the Great Mallams". (ie: Muslim teachers) Bottom: "Uwal Yara, or Magajiya, the spirit which gives croup and other ailments to children." for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeReligious Studies: A Global View by Gregory D. Alles, Syncretism in Religion: A Reader edited by Anita Maria Leopold, Jeppe Sinding Jensen Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey by Edna G. Bay pg 60\-63, 189, 255\-257\. 35 8)

A General History of Iron Technology in Africa ca. 2000BC\-1900AD. in A General History of Iron Technology in Africa ca. 2000BC\-1900AD. 6)The smelting and working of iron is arguably the best known among the pre\-colonial technologies of Africa, and the continent is home to some of the world's oldest sites of ironworking. Iron metallurgy was an integral component of socioeconomic life across the continent, and has played a significant role in the sociocultural, economic, and environmental spheres of many African societies, past and present, not only for utilitarian items, but also in the creation of symbolic, artistic, and ornamental objects. The production, control, and distribution of Iron was pivotal in the rise and fall of African kingdoms and empires, the expansion of trade and cultural exchange, and the growth of military systems which ensured Africa’s autonomy until the close of the 19th century. This article outlines the General History of Iron technologies in Africa, from the construction of the continent's oldest furnaces in antiquity to the 19th century, exploring the role of Iron in African trade, agriculture, warfare, politics, and Art traditions. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- On the invention of Iron technology in Africa. Most studies of the history of Ironworking begin with the evolution of metallurgy in the Near Eastern societies and the transition from copper, to bronze and finally to iron. The use and spread of these metals across the eastern Mediterranean was a complex and protracted process, that was politically and culturally mediated rather than being solely determined by the physical properties of the metals. Since the transition from copper to iron across most of the societies in the Near East was broadly similar, and the region was initially thought to be home to the oldest known iron\-working sites, researchers surmised that iron technology had a single origin from which it subsequently spread across the old world from Asia to Europe, to Africa. In North Africa, ironworking was only known from historical documents, it was only recently that archeological investigations have provided firmer evidence for early iron smelting in the region. This includes sites such as Bir Massouda at Carthage in Tunisia between 760\-480 BCE, at Naucratis and Hamama in Egypt between 580\-30BCE, at Meroe and Hamadab in Sudan around 514 BCE and in the Fezzan region of Libya around 500BCE. However, as it will become evident in the following paragraphs, the development of iron technology in the rest of Africa was independent of North African ironworking and is likely to have been a much older phenomenon. In contrast to the Maghreb, metallurgy in the rest of Africa kick\-started with the simultaneous working of iron and copper between the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BC, to be later followed by bronze, gold and other metals. A number of radiocarbon dates within the range of 2200 to 800 BCE have since been accumulated across multiple sites. This includes sites such as; Oboui and Gbatoro in Cameroon and Central Africa, where iron furnaces, bloom fragments, slag pieces, and at least 174 iron tools were found dated to c. 2200–1965 BCE; at Ngayene in the Senegambian megaliths, where iron tools were found dated to 1362–1195 BCE; and at Gbabiri (north of Oboui) where similar iron objects and forges were found dated to 900–750 BCE. More extensive evidence for iron working in West Africa is dated to the period between 800\-400 BCE, where the combined evidence for iron tools, furnaces, slag, and tuyeres was found at various places. These include the sites of Taruga and Baidesuru in the Nok culture of central Nigeria, In the northern Mandara region of Cameroon, at Dhar Nema in the Tichitt Neolithic culture of southern Mauritania, at Dia In the Inland Niger delta of Mali, at Walalde in Senegal, at Dekpassanware, in Togo at the Nsukka sites of Nigeria, and at Tora Sira Tomo in Burkina Faso, among other sites. The subsequent spread of ironworking technology to central, East and South Africa was linked to the expansion of Bantu\-speaking groups, a few centuries after they had settled in the region. For the period between 800\-400BC Iron working sites, are found at Otoumbi and Moanda in Gabon, at the Urewe sites of; Mutwarubona in Rwanda, Mirama III in Burundi, at Katuruka in Tanzania. By the turn of the common era, Ironworking had spread to the southeastern tip of the continent, with sites such as Matola in Mozambique and ‘Silver Leaves’ in South Africa being dated to between the 1st\-2nd century CE. While few studies have been conducted in the northern Horn of Africa, there’s evidence for extensive use of iron tools at Bieta Giyorgis and Aksum in Ethiopia, between the late 1st millennium BC and the early centuries of the common era. While proponents of an independent origin of iron technology in Africa rely on archeological evidence, the diffusionist camp is driven by the hypothesis that ironworking required pre\-existing knowledge of copper smelting, they therefore surmise that it originated from Carthage or Meroe. However, there's still no material evidence for any transmission of ironworking technology based on the furnace types from either region, and the recently confirmed dates from Cameroon, Central Africa, and Senegal significantly predate those from Meroe, the Fezzan, and Carthage. Furthermore, there was no contact between the earliest West African Iron Age sites of the Nok Culture with North Africa; nor was there contact between Nok and its northern neighbor; the Gajiganna culture of Lake Chad (1800\-400BCE) which had no iron at its main proto\-urban capital of Zilum; nor were there during this period. Even links between more proximate regions like the Fezzan in Libya (which had Iron by 500 BCE) and the Lake Chad basin before the common era remain unproven. The site of Oboui in the Central African republic has been the subject of intense interest by archeometallurgists since it provides the earliest known iron\-working facility anywhere in the world. So while it may "never be possible to write a history of African metallurgy that truly satisfies the historian's inordinate greed for both generalization and specificity," the most recent research weighs heavily in favor of an independent origin of Ironworking in Africa. --- The process of Smelting and Smithing Iron in African furnaces. The process of ironworking starts with the search and acquisition of iron ores through mining and collecting, followed by the preparation of raw materials including charcoal, followed by the building of the smelting installations, furnaces, tuyeres and crucibles, followed by the smelting itself which reduces the ores to metal, followed by bloom cleaning, smithing, and the forging of the finished product. This was extremely labour\-intensive and time\-consuming, especially collecting the ore and fuel, which could at times last several weeks or months. In nature, iron may be found in five different compounds: oxide, hydroxide, carbide, sulfide, and silicate, of which there are many different types of iron ores in Africa (lateritic, oolitic, magnetite\-ilmenite, etc) which invariably influenced the smelting technology used. Ancient African bloomery furnaces exhibit remarkable diversity, suggesting constant improvisation and innovations. As one metallurgist observed, "every conceivable method of iron production seems to have been employed in Africa, some of it quite unbelievable." African ironworkers adapted bloomery furnaces to an extraordinary range of iron ores, some of which cannot be used by modern blast furnaces and weren’t found anywhere else in the Old World. African iron\-smelting processes are all variants of the bloomery process, in which the air blast must be stopped periodically to remove the masses of metal (blooms), while the waste product (slag) may be tapped from the furnaces as a liquid, or may solidify within it. Most of the oldest African furnaces were shaft furnaces that ranged from small pit furnaces to massive Natural\-draft smelting furnaces with tall shafts upto 7 meters high. Bloomery smelting operates around 1200°C; ie at a temperature below the melting point of iron (1540°C), which is high enough only to melt the gangue minerals in the ore and separate them from the unmolten iron oxides. Air is introduced to the furnace either through forced draft using bellows and tuyères (ceramic pipes), or by natural draft taking advantage of prevailing winds or utilizing the chimney effect. This enables the fuel (usually charcoal) to burn, producing carbon monoxide, which reacts with the iron oxide, ultimately reducing it to form metallic iron. These furnaces could produce cast iron and wrought iron, as well as steel, the latter of which there is sufficient evidence in several societies, most notably in the 18th\-century kingdom of Yatenga between Mali and Burkina Faso, where blacksmiths built massive furnaces upto 8m high to produce steel bars and composite tools with steel\-cutting edges. Steel is iron alloyed with between 0\.2% and 2% carbon, and it has been found in archaeometallurgical studies of furnaces and slag from Buhaya in northern Tanzania, and in northern Mandara region of Cameroon among other sites. Most high\-carbon steel could be produced directly in the bloomery furnace by increasing the carbon content of the bloom, rather than by subsequent smithing as in most parts of the Old World. Once smelting was complete, the bloom settled to the bottom of the furnace and was removed for further refinement through repeated heating and hammering into bars using large hammerstones. After which, the iron bars produced from this process were forged at high temperatures, and the blacksmith will use various hammers, tongs, quenching bowls, and anvils to work the iron into a desired shape. In a few cases, methods like lost wax casting and the use of molds which were common in the working of gold and copper alloys were also used for iron to produce different objects, ornaments, and ingots. Like all forms of technology, the working of Iron in Africa was socially mediated. The role of blacksmiths was considered important but their social position was rather ambiguous and varied. Depending on the society and era, they were both respected or feared, powerful or marginalized, because they wielded social power derived from access to knowledge of metallurgy, divination, peacemaking, and other salient social practices. The smith’s craft extended from the production of the most basic of domestic tools to the creation of a corpus of inventive, diverse, and technically sophisticated vehicles of social and spiritual power The various taboos and rituals associated with the craft were a technology of practice that enabled smelters to take control of the process through learned behavior. One key feature of African metallurgy is that it resists homogenization, yet anthropologists who study the subject are more inclined to homogenize than to seek variations. In contrast to the making of pottery and sculptures, the apprenticeship of iron smelting has not been the focus of ethnological studies. While such studies can only provide us with information from the 20th century, the persistence of pre\-industrial methods of iron production in some parts of the continent suggests that some of this information can be extrapolated back to earlier periods. A number of researchers have left ethnographic descriptions of smelting sessions that they attended, observing that there is a head smelter or an elder’s council, as well as young people or apprentices. Under the leadership of a master, the metallurgists seem to take part collectively in the smelting, and the associated rituals involved in the process. Each member of a smelting session detects the physical and chemical changes of the material being processed inside the furnace. Ethnographic descriptions show the major importance of smith castes and ritual practice, as well as political control over resources like iron ore, wood, land, and labour. In many parts of the continent, there's extensive evidence that iron smelting was considered ritually akin to the act of procreation and therefore was carried out away from or in seclusion from women and domestic contexts. Yet there were numerous exceptions in southern and East Africa where women were allowed in the smelting area, procuring iron ores, and constructing furnaces. Evidently, all available labour was utilized for iron working when necessary, depending on the cultural practices of a given society. --- The role of Iron in early African Agriculture and Trade. Ironworking played a pivotal role in the advent and evolution of agriculture and long\-distance trade across the African continent, as the widespread use of iron tools helped to increase food production and the exchanges of surpluses between different groups. In many societies, the various types of iron tools (such as plows and hoes) the design of furnaces, and the organization of labor, influenced and were influenced by developments in agriculture, trade, and cultural exchanges. For example, the use of natural draught furnaces and the creation of a caste of blacksmiths frees up labour for working the raw iron to make iron objects and develop long\-distance trade and exchange. Such high\- fuel low\-labour furnaces were particularly common in the West African Sudanic woodland zone from Senegal to Nigeria and in the miombo woodlands of Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique, where labour requirements for swidden agriculture may have reduced available labour for smithing. In other regions, the demand for Iron objects beyond the immediate society in which specialist smiths lived facilitated the production of large quantities of Iron for export. For example, at least 15 sites used by Dogon smiths in south\-central Mali produced a about 400,000 tonnes of slag – or 40,000 tonnes of iron objects over a period of 1,400 years, which is about 26 tones of iron objects per year; while the site of Korsimoro (Burkina Faso) yielded 200,000 tonnes of slag \- or 20,000 tonnes of iron objects between 1000\-1500 CE, which is about 32 tonnes of iron per year. This scale of production doubtlessly suggests that the iron was intended for export to neighboring societies, albeit not at a scale associated with large states. For example, the dramatic rise in iron production from a small site of Bandjeli in Togo, from less than a tonne in the 18th century to over 14 tones per year by 1900 may have been associated with demand from sections of the kingdoms of Dagomba, Gonja, Mamprusi, although it was far from the only site. It therefore appears that in most parts of Africa, specialization was based on pooling together surplus from various relatively small\-scale industries which cumulatively produced bigger output, and may not have been concentrated even in the case of large states. Several types of iron objects served as convenient stores of wealth and were at times used as secondary currencies in some contexts, primarily because of the ever\-present demand for domestic and agricultural iron implements like hoes, knives, machetes, harpoons, as well as the general use of metals for tribute, social ceremonies, and trade. In West Africa, iron blooms were traded and kept as heirlooms, while knives and iron hoes were both a trade item and a medium of exchange in parts of Southern Africa and west\-central Africa. In East Africa, where long\-distance traders like the 19th century were required by local rulers to give iron hoes as a form of tax on their return journeys from the interior as a substitute for cowries and cloth. Similary In Ethiopia, iron plowshares were valued items of trade. --- Iron in the History of Warfare and Politics in Pre\-colonial Africa. Given its centrality in agriculture and trade, the spread of iron working in Africa was closely associated with the emergence and growth of complex societies across the continent. The rise of African states resulted in an increased demand for symbols of prestige and power, among which iron, copper, and gold were prominent. Increase in metal production and changes in furnace construction in the Great Lakes region for example, were associated with the emergence of the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Buganda, and Nyiginya (Rwanda), and similar developments in southern Africa and the East African coast were associated with the rise of the kingdoms at Great Zimbabwe and Kilwa. A significant number of iron tools found at the oldest sites of ironworking across the continent included knives and arrowheads. Additionally, a number of historical traditions of societies in central Africa like the kingdom of Ndongo and Luba, either attribute or closely associate the founding of kingdoms to iron\-wielding warrior\-kings and blacksmiths. Iron was often conceptually integrated within the organizing structures of these states, with iron symbolism frequently incorporated within iconography, mythology, and systems of tribute payment, all of which underscores the importance of iron weapons to the emergence and expansion of African kingdoms and empires, especially in warfare. [![Number 307:1983 ]( "Number 307:1983 ")]( made by a Ngala smith from Congo, Copper alloy handle with iron struts attached to iron blade, Late 19th century, Saint Louis art museum --- --- and is too diverse to summarise here, but it suffices to say that the majority of weapons were made locally and most of them were made of Iron. The provision of weapons and the distribution of power were often strongly correlated, especially in larger complex societies where rulers retained large arsenals of weapons to distribute to their armies during times of war, and maintained a workforce of blacksmiths to provide these weapons. In most parts of the continent, blacksmiths were numerous and usually worked in closely organized kin guilds associated with centers of political power, where rulers acted as their patrons, receiving protection and supplies in exchange for providing armies with swords, lance heads, chainmail, helmets, arrow points and throwing knives. In some exceptional cases, a few of these items were imported by wealthy rulers and subsequently reworked by local smiths to be kept as prestige items. Among the most common iron objects in African ethnographic collections are the two\-edged straight or gently tapering sword, which was common in West Africa, as well as in most parts of central Africa, North\-East Africa and the East African coast. Other collections include curved blades and throwing weapons with multiple ends, as well as axes, arrowheads, and javelin points. By the 18th century, swords and lances had largely fallen out of use in the regions close to the Atlantic coast and were replaced by muskets. The repair of guns and cannons, as well as the manufacture of iron bullets was also undertaken across many societies, from and , to and . The casting of brass and iron cannons, in particular, was attested in many parts of West Africa, most notably in the 16th\-century kingdoms of Benin and Bornu, , as well as in the 19th\-century . Benin in particular is known to have made a number of firearms, some of which appear in western museum collections. The complete manufacture of firearms was accomplished in some societies during the 19th century such as the , the and the Ethiopian Empire under Tewodros. In the 1880s Samori concentrated 300\-400 ironworkers in the village of Tete where they succeeded in manufacturing flintlocks at a cost lower than the price paid for those bought from Freetown. Tete was evacuated in 1892 and its armament workers were reassembled at Dabakol under the direction of an artificer who had spent several months in a French arsenal. They succeeded in making effective copies of Kropatschek repeating rifles at a rate of two of these guns per day. --- Iron in the making of African Art and Culture. According to Cyril Stanley Smith, a founding father of archaeometallurgy, "aesthetic curiosity" was the original driving force of technological development everywhere, and the human desire for pretty things like jewelry and sculpture, rather than for "useful" objects such as tools and weapons, first led enterprising individuals to discover new materials, processes, and structures. While many of the oldest iron tools found in the ancient metallurgical centers of Africa were agricultural implements and weapons, a number of them also included small caches of jewelry in the form of bracelets and anklets. Later sites include Iron ornaments such as earrings, earplugs, and nose rings. African jewelry made from metal primarily consisted of gold, copper alloys, and silver, with iron being relatively uncommon. However, there are a few notable exceptions such as the kingdom of Dahomey, where skilled blacksmiths produced a remarkable corpus of sculptural artworks made of Iron called asen. Historically, asen were also closely identified with the belief systems of the Vodun religion and practices. Following the rise of the Dahomey kingdom, their function shifted toward a more specifically royal memorial use as each king was identified with a distinct asen. These royal asen were brought out during annual “custom” rites, placed near the djeho (spirit house of the king), and given libations while fixed in the ground using long iron stems. The asens feature figurative scenes depicting processions of titled persons in excellent detail, at the end of which are placed togbe pendants around the edge of the platform. Iron sculptures and other artifacts made of composite materials that include iron are attested across multiple African art traditions, from West African figures made by the Yoruba of south\-western Nigeria, as well as the Dogon and Mande of Mali, to the composite wood\-and\-iron sculptures of West central Africa, to the musical instruments of central and southern Africa, such as thumb pianos and rattles of the Chokwe artists of Angola and D.R.Congo. The smelting of Iron in Africa gradually declined in the 20th century as local demand was increasingly met by industrial iron and steel, but smithing continues across most parts of the continent. This shift from smelting to smithing began in some coastal regions significantly earlier than on the African mainland, where smelting persisted well into the post\-colonial era. In response to shifts in local economies during the colonial and post\-colonial era, African blacksmiths began incorporating salvaged materials into their work through creative recycling. Blacksmiths continue to serve as technology brokers who transform one object into another— truck wheels become bells and gongs; leaf springs from cars become axes and asen in Benin; and bicycle spokes become thumb pianos in western Zambia. Today, smiths forge work to accommodate new contexts and purposes. For example in southern Nigeria, where the Yorùbá deity of iron, Ògún, has become the patron of automobiles, laptops, and cell phones. Iron continues to play a central role in the development of African societies, a product of centuries of innovations and developments in one of the continent’s oldest technologies. --- Recent archeological research has uncovered a series of stone complexes in the Mandara mountains of Cameroon which historical documents from the region associate with the expansion of complex societies and empires at the end of the Middle Ages. Please subscribe to read about the DGB ruins and the Mandara kingdom here: SubscribeMetals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 20\-23\) Ferrous metallurgy from the Bir Massouda metallurgical precinct at Phoenician and Punic Carthage and the beginning of the North African Iron Age by Brett Kaufman et al. Ancient Mining and Smelting Activities in the Wadi Abu Gerida Area, Central Eastern Desert, Egypt: Preliminary Results by Mai Rifai, Yasser Abd El\-Rahman, Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 71, Investigating the ironworking remains in the Royal City of Meroe , Sudan by Chris Carey, The ancient iron mines of Meroe by Jane Humphris et al., A New Radiocarbon Chronology for Ancient Iron Production in the Meroe Region of Sudan by Jane Humphris, Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 72 Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly pg 239\) Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa by F Bandama pg 6, The Origins of African Metallurgies by A.F.C. Holl pg 7\-8, 12\-13, 21\-31\) Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly pg 238\) Excavations at Walalde: New Light on the Settlement of the Middle Senegal Valley by Iron\-Using People by A Deme The Early Iron Metallurgy of Bassar, Togo: furnaces, metallurgical remains and iron objects by PL de Barros Lejja archaeological site, Southeastern Nigeria and its potential for archaeological science research by Pamela Ifeoma Eze\-Uzomaka et. al. Iron metallurgy in West Africa: An Early Iron smelting site in the Mouhoun Bend, Burkina Faso by Augustin Ferdinand Charles Holl Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture by S. Terry Childs pg 321\-322 The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns edited by Bassey Andah, Alex Okpoko, Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair pg 302\-306, Our Iron Smelting 14C Dates from Central Africa: From a Plain Appointment to a Full Blown Relationship" by Bernard Clist, A critical reappraisal of the chronological framework of the early Urewe Iron Age industry by Bernard Clist. Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 22\. Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. Philipson pg 142, 166\-167\. Book review essay: What do we know about African iron working? by D. Killick pg 107 The Origins of African Metallurgies by A.F.C. Holl pg 4, Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 25 Zilum: a mid\-first millennium BC fortified settlement by C Magnavita pg 166\-167 Urbanisation and State Formation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond by Martin Sterry, ‎David J. Mattingly pg 516, Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias pg 25\-32\) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns pg 333\-334 The Social Context of Iron Forging on the Kenya Coast by Chapurukha M. Kusimba pg 401\-402\) Did They or Didn't They Invent It? Iron in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Stanley B. Alpern pg 85, Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly pg 292\-294\) Invention and Innovation in African Iron\-smelting Technologies by David J Killick pg 312\-313\) African Iron Production and Iron\-Working Technologies pg 2\-3 Book review essay: What do we know about African iron working? by D. Killick pg 108 Cairo to Cape: The Spread of Metallurgy Through Eastern and Southern Africa by D. Killick pg 408 Metals in Mandara Mountains Society and Culture edited by Nicholas David pg 12\-13, 174\. Did They or Didn't They Invent It? Iron in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Stanley B. Alpern pg 87, Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa by F Bandama pg 11\) Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa by F Bandama pg 12, African Iron Production and Iron\-Working Technologies pg 4\-5\. The Social Context of Iron Forging on the Kenya Coast by Chapurukha M. Kusimba, 386, Style, Technology, and Iron Smelting Furnaces in Bantu\-Speaking Africa by S. Terry Childs pg 343\-345 Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African Metallurgy By Shadreck Chirikure pg 10, Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture by S. Terry Childs pg 325\-326, Warfare in Pre\-Colonial Africa by C. G. Chidume et al pg 75\-76 Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly 303\-304, The Social Context of Iron Forging on the Kenya Coast by Chapurukha M. Kusimba, pg 390\-393\) Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly pg 295\-302\) Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture by S. Terry Childs pg 327\-328 Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa by F Bandama pg 13\-14, When the smith is a woman: innovation, improvisation and ambiguity in the organisation of African iron metallurgy by Ezekiel Mtetwa et. al. How Societies Are Born by Jan Vansina pg 65\-66, 79\-81\. Invention and Innovation in African Iron\-smelting Technologies by David J Killick pg 314\-316\) Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly pg 302, 305\) A Comparison of Early and Later Iron Age Societies in the Bassar Region of Togo Philip de Barros pg 10\-11 A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa by Eric Ndivhuwo Mathoho pg 18, Early metallurgy and surplus without states in Africa south of the Sahara by Shadreck Chirikure Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture by S. Terry Childs pg 332\-333 Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa Foreman Bandama pg 12, How Societies Are Born by Jan Vansina pg 126\-127, 154\-155 People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800–1990 By James McCann pg 130 Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture by S. Terry Childs pg 330\-331, Pre\-colonial iron production in Great Lakes Africa by Louise Iles pg 60\-63 Innovation, Tradition and Metals at Kilwa Kisiwani by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones Blacksmiths of Ilamba: A Social History of Labor at the Nova Oeiras Iron Foundry (Angola, 18th Century) by Crislayne Alfagali Pre\-colonial iron production in Great Lakes Africa by Louise Iles pg 58\-60, Paths in the rainforests by Jan Vansina pg 60\-61, Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 92, 101, Warfare in Pre\-Colonial Africa by C. G. Chidume et al pg 78\-79\. Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 90\-91, 103\-105\) Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 93\-94\) Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 107\-108\) Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 116\) Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 by Gwyn Campbell pg 202\-208 Warfare \& Diplomacy in Pre\-colonial West Africa by Robert Sidney Smith pg 116 Did They or Didn't They Invent It? Iron in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Stanley B. Alpern pg 87\) Asen: Dahomey history, and Forged memories of Iron by S. Blier, Asen: Identifying Form, Style and Artists by S. Blier. The Social Context of Iron Forging on the Kenya Coast by Chapurukha M. Kusimba pg 400\-401 Striking Iron The Art of African Blacksmiths by Allen F. Roberts and Marla C. Berns 35 6)

a brief note on new discoveries in African archeology and the stone ruins of Cameroon. in a brief note on new discoveries in African archeology and the stone ruins of Cameroon. 3)Among the first ancient Egyptian accounts on its southern neighbors is an old kingdom inscription that describes a trading expedition to an unspecified region called . Egyptologists had long debated about the location of this mysterious territory before recent archeological discoveries at Mahal Teglinos in eastern Sudan and the Red Sea port of Mersa eventually solved the riddle of Punt’s precise location. Archeology plays a central role in reconstructing Africa's history, despite the rather complicated relationship between the two disciplines. On a continent where the limitations of written and oral histories have been acknowledged, archeologists and historians often work together to develop an interdisciplinary study of Africa's past. Most of the latest research into the history of different African societies has been the product of interdisciplinary cooperation between archaeologists and historians. The locations of many African historical sites that were amply described by historians have since been identified and rediscovered by archeologists, helping to expand our understanding of Africa's past. For example in northern Ethiopia, where there are several historical accounts describing the highly urbanized , recent archeological excavations have uncovered many ruined cities and towns which include the kingdom’s capital, whose cemetery contained inscribed tombs of the kingdom's rulers. In northern Ghana, there are multiple internal and external accounts describing the which was founded by migrant elites from the Mali empire. Recent archeological work has identified the old capital of the kingdom as well as several complex structures whose construction resembles the architectural style of medieval Mali. In South Africa, oral and written accounts about heterogeneous groups of Sotho\-Tswana and Nguni\-speakers referred to as "Koni" have helped historians and archeologists to identify the builders of , a widely distributed complex of terraced stone\-walled sites in the escarpments of the Mpumalanga province. Similar discoveries abound across most of the continent, from the , to the painted churches of , all of which demonstrate the usefulness of interdisciplinary studies. Recent archeological work in the mountains of northern Cameroon has uncovered more than sixteen complexes of stone ruins whose construction between the 14th and 17th centuries coincided with the expansion of the Bornu empire and the lesser\-known kingdom of Mandara, during an era when the region’s history was well documented. My latest Patreon article explores the history of the stone ruins of Cameroon within the context of the documented history of the Mandara kingdom during the 16th century. Please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeTrouble with Siblings: Archaeological and Historical Interpretation of the West African Past, By Christopher DeCorse and Gerard Chouin, The intersection of archaeology, oral tradition and history in the South African interior by Jan CA Boeyens. 28 3)

The empire of Kong (ca. 1710\-1915\): a cultural legacy of medieval Mali. in The empire of Kong (ca. 1710\-1915\): a cultural legacy of medieval Mali. 4)At the close of the 18th century, the West African hosts of the Scottish traveler Mungo Park informed him of a range of mountains situated in "a large and powerful kingdom called Kong". These legendary mountains of Kong subsequently appeared on maps of Africa and became the subject of all kinds of fanciful stories that wouldn't be disproved until a century later when another traveler reached Kong, only to find bustling cities instead of snow\-covered ranges. The mythical land of Kong would later be relocated to Indonesia for the setting of the story of the famous fictional character King Kong. The history of the real kingdom of Kong is no less fascinating than the story of its legendary mountains. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, the city of Kong was the capital of a vast inland empire populated by the cultural heirs of medieval Mali, who introduced a unique architectural and scholarly tradition in the regions between modern Cote D'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. This article explores the history of the Kong empire, focusing on the social groups that contributed to its distinctive cultural heritage. approximate extent of the ‘Kong empire’ in 1740\. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The early history of Kong and Dyula expansion from medieval Mali. The region around Kong was at the crossroads of long\-distance routes established by the Dyula/Juula traders who were part of the during the late Middle Ages. These trade routes, which connected the and Begho to later cities like Kong, Bobo\-Dioulasso, and Bonduku, were conduits for lucrative commerce in gold, textiles, salt, and kola for societies between the river basins of the Niger and the Volta (see map above). The hinterland of Kong was predominantly settled by speakers of the Senufu languages who likely established a small kingdom centered on what would later become the town of Kong. According to later accounts, there were several small Senufu polities in the region extending from Kong to Korhogo in the west, and northward to Bobo\-Dioulasso, between the Bandama and Volta rivers. These polities interacted closely, and some, such as the chiefdom of Korohogo, would continue to flourish despite the profound cultural changes of the later periods. These non\-Muslim agriculturalists welcomed the Mande\-speaking Dyula traders primarily because of the latter's access to external trade items like textiles (mostly used as burial shrouds) and acculturated the Dyula as ritual specialists (Muslim teachers) who made protective amulets. It was in this context that the city of Kong emerged as a large cosmopolitan center attracting warrior groups such as the Mande\-speaking Sonongui, and diverse groups of craftsmen including the Hausa, who joined the pre\-existing Senufu and Dyula population. Throughout the 16th century, the growing influence of external trade and internal competition between different social groups among the warrior classes greatly shaped political developments in Kong. By 1710, a wealthy Sonongui merchant named Seku Umar who bore the Mande patronymic of "Watara" took power in Kong with support from the Dyula, and would reign until 1744\. Seku Umar Watara’s new state came to be known as Kpon or K'pon in internal accounts, which would later be rendered as “Kong” in Western literature. After pacifying the hinterland of Kong, Seku's forces campaigned along the route to Bobo\-Dioulassao, whose local Dyula merchants welcomed his rule. --- The states of Kong during the 18th century and the houses of Watara. Seku Watara expanded his power rapidly across the region, thanks to his powerful army made up of local allies serving under Sonongui officers. Seku Watara and his commanders, such as his brother Famagan, his son Kere\-Moi, and his general Bamba, conquered the regions between the Bandama and Volta rivers (northern Cote d’Ivoire) in the south, to Minyaka and Macina (southern Mali) in the north. They even got as far as the hinterland of Jenne in November 1739 according to a local chronicle. Sections of the army under Seku Umar and Kere Moi then campaigned west to the Bambara capital of Segu and the region of Sikasso (also in southern Mali), before retiring to Kong while Famagan settled near Bobo. The expansion of the Kong empire was partly driven by the need to protect trade routes, but no centralized administration was installed in conquered territories despite Famagan and Kere Moi recognizing Seku Umar as the head of the state. After the deaths of Seku (1744\) and Famagan (1749\) the breach between the two collateral branches issuing from each royal house grew deeper, resulting in the formation of semi\-autonomous kingdoms primarily at Kong and Bobo\-Dioulasso (originally known as Sya), but also in many smaller towns like Nzan, all of which had rulers with the title of Fagama. The empire of Kong, which is more accurately referred to as “the states of Kong”, consisted of a collection of polities centered in walled capitals that were ruled by dynastic ‘war houses’ which had overlapping zones of influence. These houses consisted of their Fagama's kin and dependents, who controlled a labyrinthine patchwork of allied settlements and towns from whom they received tribute and men for their armies. The heads of different houses at times recognized a paramount ruler, but remained mostly independent, each conducting their campaigns and preserving their own dynastic histories. In this complex social mosaic, many elites adopted the Watara patronymic through descent, alliance, or dependency, and there were thus numerous “Watara houses” scattered across the entire region between the northern Ivory Coast, southern Mali, and western Burkina Faso. At least four houses in the core regions of Kong claimed descent from Seku Umar; there were several houses in the Mouhoun plateau (western Burkina Faso) that claimed descent from both Famagan and Kere Moi. Other houses were located in the region of Bobo\-Dioulasso, in Tiefo near the North\-western border of Ghana, and as far east as the old town of Loropeni in southern Burkina Faso. --- --- The influence of Dyula on architecture and scholarship in the states of Kong. The dispersed Watara houses often competed for political and commercial influence, relying on external mediators such as the Dyula traders to negotiate alliances. Although nominally Muslim, the Watara elites stood in contrast to the Dyula, as the former were known to have retained many pre\-Islamic practices. They nevertheless acknowledged the importance of Dyula clerics as providers of protective amulets, integrated them into the kingdom's administration, and invited them to construct mosques and schools. The cities of Kong and Bobo became major centers of scholarship whose influence extended as far as the upper Volta to the Mande heartlands in the upper Niger region. The movement of students and teachers between towns created a scholarship 'network' that corresponded in large part to their trading network. Influential Dyula lineages such as the Saganogo (or Saganugu) acquired a far\-ranging reputation for scholarship by the late 18th century. They introduced the distinctive style of architecture found in the region, and are credited with constructing the main mosque at Kong in 1785, as well as in cities not under direct Watara control such as at Buna in 1795, at Bonduku in 1797, and at Wa in 1801\. Their members were imams of Kong, Bobo\-Dioulasso, and many surrounding towns. The Dyula shunned warfare and lived in urban settlements away from the warrior elite’s capitals, but provided horses, textiles, and amulets to the latter in exchange for protecting trade routes. The Saganogo scholars of Kong (also known as karamokos : men of knowledge) are among the most renowned figures in the region’s intellectual history, being part of a chain of learning that extends back to the famous 15th\-century scholar al\-Hajj Salim Suware of medieval Mali. The most prominent of these was Mustafa Saganogo (d. 1776\) and his son Abbas b. Muhammad al\-Mustafa (d. 1801\), who appear in the autobiographies of virtually all the region’s scholars. The former promoted historical writing, and, in 1765, built a mosque bearing his name, which attracted many students. His son became the imam of Kong and, according to later accounts, "brought his brothers to stay there, and then the 'ulama gathered around him to learn from him, and the news spread to other places, and the people of Bonduku and Wala came to him, and the people of the land of Ghayagha and also Banda came to study with him." Descendants of Mustafa Saganogo, who included Seydou and Ibrahim Saganogo, were invited to Bobo\-Dioulasso by its Watara rulers to serve as advisors. They arrived in 1764 and established themselves in the oldest quarters of the city where they constructed mosques, of which they were the first imams. Around 1840, a section of scholars from Bobo\-Dioulasso led by Bassaraba Saganogo, the grandson of the abovementioned brothers, established another town 15 km south at Darsalamy (Dār as\-Salām). The Saganogo teachers were also associated with several well\-connected merchant\-scholars with the patronymic of Watara who gained prominence across the region, between the cities of Kong, Bonduku, and Buna. Among these were the gold\-trading family of five brothers, including; Karamo Sa Watara, who was the eldest of the brothers and did business in the Hausaland and Bornu; Abd aI\-Rahman, who was married to the daughter of Soma Ali Watara of Nzan; Idris, who lived at Ja in Massina; Mahmud who lived in Buna and was married to a local ruler. Karamo's son, Abu Bakr al\-Siddiq, who provided a record of his family’s activities, later became a prominent scholar in Buna where he studied with his cousin Kotoko Watara who later became ruler of Nzan. The head of the Buna school was Abdallah b. al\-Hajj Muhammad Watara, himself a student of Mustafa Saganogo. Buna was a renowned center of learning attracting students from as far as Futa Jallon (in modern Guinea), and the explorer Heinrich Barth heard of it as "a place of great celebrity for its learning and its schools." --- The states of Kong during the 19th century In the later period, the Dyula scholars would come to play an even more central political role in both Kong and Bobo, at the expense of the warrior elites. When the traveler Louis Binger visited Kong in 1888, he noted that the ‘king’ of the city was Soukoulou Mori, but that real power lay with Karamoko Oule, a prominent merchant\-scholar, as well as the imam Mustafa Saganogo, who he likened to a minister of public education because he managed many schools. He estimated the city’s population at around 15,000, and referred to its inhabitants’ religious tolerance —characteristic of the Dyula— especially highlighting their "instinctive horror of war, which they consider dishonorable unless in defense of their territorial integrity." He described how merchant scholars proselytized by forming alliances with local rulers after which they'd open schools and invite students to study. The main Watara houses largely kept to themselves, but would occasionally form alliances which later broke up during periods of extended conflict. The most dramatic instance of the shattering of old alliances occurred in the last decade of the 19th century when coincided with the advance of the French colonial forces. Samori Ture reached this region in 1885 and was initially welcomed by the Dyula of Kong who also sent letters to their peers in Buna and Bonduku, informing them that Samori didn't wish to attack them. However, relations between the Dyula and Samori later deteriorated and he sacked Buna in late 1896\. In May of 1897, the armies of Samori marched against Kong, which he suspected of entering into collusion with his enemy; Babemba of Sikasso, by supplying the latter with horses and trade goods. Samori sacked Kong and pursued its rulers upto Bobo, with many of Kong's inhabitants fleeing to the town of Kotedugu whose Watara ruler was Pentyeba. Hoping to stall Samori's advance, Pentyeba allied with the French, who then seized Bobo from one of Samori's garrisons. They later occupied Kong in 1898, and after briefly restoring the Watara rulers, they ultimately abolished the kingdom by 1915, marking the end of its history. The historical legacy of Kong is preserved in the distinctive architectural style and intellectual traditions of modern Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire, whose diverse communities of Watara elites and Dyula merchants represent the southernmost cultural expansion of Medieval Mali. --- --- The kingdom of Bamum created West Africa’s largest corpus of Graphics Art during the early 20th century, which included detailed maps of the kingdom and capital, drawings of historical events and fables, images of the kingdom's architecture, and illustrations depicting artisans, royals, and daily life in the kingdom. Please subscribe to read about the Art of Bamum in this article where I explore more than 30 drawings preserved in various museums and private collections. --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe'From the Best Authorities': The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa by Thomas J. Bassett, Philip W. Porter The character's creator read many European travel accounts of Africa, traveled to the region around Gabon, was fascinated with African wildlife, and drew on 19th\-century Western images of Africa and colonial\-era films set in Belgian Congo to create the character. Biographers suggest that the name 'Kong' may have been derived from the kingdom of Kongo, although it is more likely that the legendary mountains of Kong which were arguably better known, and were said to have snow\-covered peaks, forested slopes, and gold\-rich valleys, provide a better allegory for King Kong's 'skull island' than the low lying coastal kingdom of Kongo. Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa by Nehemia Levtzion, ‎Humphrey J. Fisher pg 98\-99, Islam on both Sides: Religion and Locality in Western Burkina Faso by Katja Werthmann pg 129\) Les états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire) By Louis Tauxier, Edmond Bernus pg 23\-27\) Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa by Nehemia Levtzion, ‎Humphrey J. Fisher pg 104\-106, The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 545\) Les états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire) By Louis Tauxier, Edmond Bernus pg22, 39\-41\) Unesco general history of Africa vol 5 pg 358, The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 549\-551\) The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 550\-551 The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 557\-561, 566\) Les états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire) By Louis Tauxier, Edmond Bernus pg 64\-69\) The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 562\-564\) The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 565\) Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa by Nehemia Levtzion, ‎Humphrey J. Fisher pg 106\-8\) Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Volume 4; by John O.. Hunwick pg 539\-541 Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa: Lessons from Larabanga By Michelle Apotsos pg 75\-78 Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa by Nehemia Levtzion, ‎Humphrey J. Fisher pg 109\-115, The History of Islam in Africa edited by Nehemia Levtzion, Randall L. Pouwels pg 101\) Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Volume 4; by John O.. Hunwick pg 550\-551\. Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana by Ivor Wilks pg 97\-100\. The History of Islam in Africa edited by Nehemia Levtzion, Randall L. Pouwels pg 102\) Islam on both Sides: Religion and Locality in Western Burkina Faso by Katja Werthmann pg 128\-136 Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Volume 4; by John O.. Hunwick pg 570\-571 The History of Islam in Africa edited by Nehemia Levtzion, Randall L. Pouwels pg 103\-104\) Literacy in Traditional Societies edited by Jack Goody pg 190\-193, The History of Islam in Africa edited by Nehemia Levtzion, Randall L. Pouwels pg 107\) The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 564\) The History of Islam in Africa edited by Nehemia Levtzion, Randall L. Pouwels pg 107\-108, Les états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire) By Louis Tauxier, Edmond Bernus pg 73\-74\) Les états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire) By Louis Tauxier, Edmond Bernus pg 75\-83, The War Houses of the Watara in West Africa by Mahir Şaul pg 569\-570\) 29 4)

a brief note on themes in African art. \- by isaac Samuel in a brief note on themes in African art. Cartography, Culture and History in the artwork of the Bamum kingdom. 3)Sometime in the early 14th century, a skilled smith in the West African kingdom of Ife sculpted an image of a King's face into a mask of pure copper. With its idealized features and naturalistic proportions, the copper mask of King Obalufon of Ife is considered one of the finest pieces of African art and is today one of many examples of African self\-representation that informs our image of the continent's past. The rich heritage of African art represents a comprehensive visual document of the history of its many societies, each with its unique aesthetics and deep\-rooted symbolism. The various art traditions that emerged across the continent —such as the famous , the , and the — include specific themes that expressed African concepts of power and religion, as well as depicting daily life in African societies. While sculptural art features prominently in most African art traditions, several societies also produced painted artworks and drawings on different mediums including on walls, cloth, paper, wood, and pottery. primarily consist of mural paintings in buildings and tombs, paintings on canvas and panels, as well as illuminated manuscripts decorated with miniature illustrations and intricate designs. Many of the oldest forms of African paintings and drawings come from the regions of and Ethiopia, which produced a vast corpus of murals, canvas and panel paintings, and miniature artwork in manuscripts. However, the production of illuminated manuscripts was more widespread with several examples from East Africa's Swahili coast and most parts of West Africa. In the West African kingdom of Bamum, the reign of its progressive king Njoya (1887\-1933\) was the height of the kingdom’s artistic production and innovation that resulted in the creation of some of Africa's most celebrated artworks. The highly skilled artists of Bamum produced maps of their kingdom and capital, drawings of historical events and fables, images of the kingdom's architecture, and illustrations depicting artisans, royals, and daily life in the kingdom. The artworks of the kingdom of Bamum are the subject of my latest Patreon article, Please subscribe to read about them in this article where I explore more than 30 drawings preserved in various museums and private collections. --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe·January 16, 2022 3)

A complete history of the old city of Gao ca. 700\-1898\. in A complete history of the old city of Gao ca. 700\-1898\. Journal of African cities: chapter 12 )Located in northeastern Mali along the bend of the Niger River, the old city of Gao was the first urban settlement in West Africa to appear in external accounts as the capital of a large kingdom which rivaled the Ghana empire. For many centuries, the city of Gao commanded a strategic position within the complex political and cultural landscape of West Africa, as a cosmopolitan center populated by a diverse collection of merchants, scholars, and warrior\-elites from across the region. The city served as the capital of the medieval kingdom of Gao from the 9th to the 13th century and re\-emerged as the imperial capital of Songhay during the 16th century, before its later decline. This article explores the history of Gao from the 8th to the 19th century, focusing on the political history of the ancient West african capital. Map of west Africa’s empires showing the location of Gao --- The early history of Gao and its kingdom: 8th century to 13th century. The eastern arc of the Niger River in modern Mali, which extends from Timbuktu to Gao to Bentiya (see map above), has been home to many sedentary iron age communities since the start of the Common Era. The material culture of the early settlements found at Tombouze near Timbuktu and Koima near Gao indicate that the region was settled by small communities of agro\-pastoralists between 100\-650CE, while surveys at the sites around Bentiya have revealed a similar settlement sequence. Settlements at Gao appear in the documentary and archeological record about the same time in the 8th century. The first external writer to provide some information on Gao was the Abbasid geographer Al\-Yaqubi in 872, who described the kingdom of Gao as the "greatest of the reals of the Sudan \ About a century later, Gao appears in the work of the Fatimid Geographer Al\-Muhallabi (d. 990\) who writes: “KawKaw is the name of a people and country in the Sudan … their king pretends before his subjects to be a Muslim and most of them pretend to be Muslims too." He adds that the King's royal town was located on the western bank of the river, while the merchant town called Sarnāh was on the eastern bank. He also mentions that the King's subjects were Muslims, had horses and their wealth included livestock and salt. Excavations undertaken within and near the modern city of Gao by the archeologists Timothy Insoll and Mamadou Cissé at the sites of Gao Ancien and Gao Saney during the 1990s and early 2000s uncovered the remains of many structures including two large buildings and several residential structures at both sites built with brick and stone, as well as elite cemeteries containing over a hundred inscribed stele dating from the late 11th to the mid\-14th century. Additionally, a substantial quantity of materials including pottery, and iron, objects of copper and gold with their associated crucibles, and a cache of ivory. The bulk of the pottery recovered from excavations at Gao is part of a broader stylistic tradition called the Niger Bend Eastern Polychrome zone, which extends from Timbuktu to Gao to Bentiya, and is associated with Songhay speakers. Radiocarbon dates obtained from Gao\-Saney and Gao Ancien indicate that the sites were occupied between 700\-1100 CE with the largest building complexes being constructed between the 9th and 10th centuries, especially the ‘pillar house’ Gao\-Ancien that is dated to between 900\-1000 CE. The relative abundance of imported items at Gao (mostly glass beads, a few earthen lamps, fragments of glass vessels, and window\-glass) as well as export items like gold and ivory, indicates that the city had established long\-distance trade contacts with the Saharan town of Essouk\-Tadmekka in the north, which was itself connected to the city of Tahert in Algeria which was dominated by Ibadi merchants. Many inscribed stele were also discovered at Gao Saney and Gao Ancien, most of which are dated to between the late 11th and mid\-14th century and mention the names of several Kings and Queen\-regnants who ruled the kingdom. --- --- Before the recent archeological digs provided accurate radiocarbon dates for the establishment of Gao Saney and Ancien, earlier estimates were derived from the inscribed stele of both sites. Based on these, the historians Dierk Lange and John Hunwick proposed two separate origins for the rulers of Gao, by matching the names appearing on the stele with the kinglist of the enigmatic 'Za'/'Zuwa' dynasty that appears in the 17th century Timbuktu chronicles. Lange argued Gao’s rulers were Mande\-speakers before they were displaced by the Songhay in the 15th century, while Hunwick argued that they were predominantly Songhay\-speakers from the Bentiya\-Kukiya region who founded Gao to control trade with the north and, save for a brief irruption of Ibadi\-berbers allied with the Almoravids at Gao\-Saney in the late 11th century, continued to rule until the end of the Songhai empire. However, most of these claims are largely conjectural and have since been contradicted by recent research. The names of the rulers (titled: Muluk for Kings or Malika for Queens) inscribed on the stele don't include easily recognizable ethnonyms (such as nisbas) that can be ascribed to particular groups, and their continued production across four centuries across multiple sites (Gao\-Saney from 1042 to 1299; Gao Ancien from 1130 to 1364; Bentiya from 1182 to 1489) suggests that such attributions may be simplistic. The historian Moraes Farias, who has analyzed all of the stele of the Gao and the Niger Bend region in greater detail, argues the rulers of the kingdom inaugurated a new system of government where kingship was circulated among several powerful groups in the area, and that the capital of Gao may have shifted multiple times. Furthermore, the archeological record from Gao\-Saney in particular contradicts the claim of a Berber irruption during the late 11th century, as the site significantly predates the Almoravid period (ca. 1062–1150\), having flourished in the 9th\-10th century. Additionally, the pottery found at Gao Saney was different from the Berber site of Essouk\-Tadmekka and North African sites, (and also the Mande site of Jenne\-Jeno) but was similar to that found in the predominantly Songhay regions of the Niger Bend from Bentiya to Timbuktu, and is stylistically homogenous throughout the entire occupation period of both Gao Saney and Gao Ancien, thus providing strong evidence that the city's inhabitants were mostly local in origin. While the archeological record at the twin settlements of Gao ends at the turn of the 11th century, the city of Gao and its surrounding kingdom continue to appear in the historical record, perhaps indicating that there are other sites yet to be discovered within its vicinity (as suggested by many archeologists). The Andalusian geographer Al\-Bakri, writing in 1068, describes Gao as consisting of two towns ruled by a Muslim king whose subjects weren't Muslim. He adds that "the people of the region of Kawkaw trade with Salt which serves as their currency" which he mentions is obtained from Tadmekka. A later account by al\-Zuhri (d. 1154\) indicates that the Ghana empire had extended as far as Tadmekka, in an apparent alliance with the Almoravids, but he says little about Gao. The account of al\-Idrisi from 1154 notes that the "town of Kawkaw is large and is widely famed in the land of the Sudan". Adding that its king is "an independent ruler, who has the sermon at the Friday communal prayers delivered in his own name. He has many servants and a large retinue, captains, soldiers, excellent apparel and beautiful ornaments." His warriors ride horses and camels; they are brave and superior in might to all the nations who are their neighbours around their land. --- Gao under the Mali empire: 14th to 15th century During the mid\-13th century, the kingdoms of Gao (as well as Ghana and Tadmekka) were gradually subsumed under the Mali empire. According to Ibn Khaldun, Mansa Sakura (who went on pilgrimage between 1299\-1309\) "conquered the land of Kawkaw and brought it within the rule of the people of Mali." This process likely involved the retention of local rulers under a Mali governor, as was the case for most provinces across the empire. According to the Timbuktu chronicles, the rulers of Gao revolted under the leadership of Ali Kulun around the 14th century. Ali Kulun is credited in some accounts with founding the Sunni dynasty of Songhay, while others indicate that the Sunni dynasty were deputies of Mali at Bentiya. Interestingly, the title of Askiya appeared at Gao as early as 1234 CE, instead of the title of Sunni, showing that some information about early Gao wasn’t readily available to the chroniclers of the Tarikhs. However, the hegemony of the empire of Mali in the Gao Region would continue well into the 1430s, as indicated by Mansa Musa's sojourning in the city upon his return from his famous pilgrimage of 1324\. The Tarikh al\-Sudan adds that Mansa Musa built a mosque in Gao, "which is still there to this day" \ When the globetrotter Ibn Batuta visited Gao in 1353, he mentioned that it was "one of the most beautiful, biggest and richest towns of Sudan, and the best supplied with provisions. Its inhabitants transact business, buying and selling, with cowries, as do the people of Mali" He adds that Mali’s hegemony extended a certain distance downstream from Gao, to a place called Mūlī, which may have been the name for Bentiya and a diasporic settlement of Mande elites and merchants. --- Gao as the imperial capital of Songhai from the 15th\-16th century Mali withdrew from the Niger Bend around 1434, and by the mid\-15th century, the Suuni dynasty under Sulaymān Dāma had established its independence, his armies occupied Gao and campaigned as far as the Mali heartland of Mema by 1464\. His successor, Sunni Ali Ber (r. 1464\-1492\) established Gao as the capital of his new empire of Songhai but maintained palaces across the region. Sunni Ali was succeeded by Askiya Muhammad, who founded the Askiya dynasty of Songhay and retained the city of Gao as his capital and the location of the most important palace. The city’s population grew as a consequence of its importance to the Askiyas, and it became one of the most important commercial, administrative, and scholarly capitals of 16th\-century West Africa. The 1526 account of the maghrebian traveler Leo Africanus, who visited Gao during Askiya Muhammad’s reign noted that it was a “very large town" and "very civilized compared to Timbuktu", and that the houses of the king and his courtiers were of "very fine appearance" in contrast to the rest. He mentions that "The king has a special palace” and “a sizeable guard of horsemen and foot soldiers”, adding that "between the public and private gates of his palace there is a large courtyard surrounded by a wall. On each side of this courtyard a loggia serves as an audience chamber. Although the king personally handles all his affairs, he is assisted by numerous functionaries, such as secretaries, counsellors, captains, and stewards.” The various Songhay officers at Gao mentioned by Leo Africanus also appear extensively in the Tarikh al\-Sudan, which also mentions that the Askiyas established "special quarters" in the city for specialist craftsmen of Mossi and Fulbe origin, that supplied the palace. According to the Tarikh al\-Fattash, a ‘census’ of the compound houses in Gao during the reign of Askiya al\-Hajj revealed a total of 7,626 such structures and numerous smaller houses. Given that each of these compound houses had about five to ten people, the population of the city's core was between 38,000 and 76,000, not including those living on the outskirts and the itinerant population of merchants, canoemen, soldiers, and other visitors. The city's large population was supplied by an elaborate system of royal estates established by the Askiyas along the Niger River from Dendi (in northern Benin) to Lake Debo (near Timbuktu). The rice and other grains that were cultivated on these estates were transported on large river barges along the Niger to Gao. The Timbuktu chronicles note that as many as 4,000 sunnu (600\-750 tons) of grain were sent annually during the 16th century, carried by barges with a capacity of 20 tonnes. --- --- Gao after the collapse of Songhay: 17th\-19th century. After the Moroccan invasion of 1591, many of the residents of Gao fled the city by river, taking the over 2,000 barges docked at its river port of Goima to move south to the region of Dendi. "none of its \ Unable to defeat the Askiyas of Dendi as well as the Bambara and Fulbe rulers in the hinterlands of Djenne, the remaining Moroccan soldiers, who were known as the Arma, garrisoned themselves in Djenne, Timbuktu, and Gao and appointed their own Pashas. According to multiple internal accounts, the cities of Timbuktu and Gao went into steep decline during the late 17th to mid\-18th century, largely due to the continued attacks by the Tuareg confederations of Tadmekkat and Iwillimidden in the hinterlands of the cities, which drove away merchant traffic and scholars. After several raids, Gao was occupied by the Iwillimidden in 1770, who later occupied Timbuktu in 1787, deposed the Arma, and abolished the Pashalik. Multiple accounts from the early 19th century indicate that Timbuktu and its surrounding hinterland were conquered by the Bambara empire of Segu around 1800, before the power was passed on to the Massina empire of Hamdullahi. However, few of the accounts describe the situation in Gao, which seems to have been largely neglected and doesn’t appear in internal accounts of the period. It wasn't until the visit of the explorer Heinrich Barth in 1853 that Gao reappeared in historical records. However, the city was by then only a "desolate abode" with a small population, a situation which he often contrasted to its much grander status as the “ancient capital of Songhay”. Barth makes note of the mosque and mausoleum of the Askiya, where he set up his camp next to some tent houses, he also describes Gao's old ruins and estimates that the old city had a circumference of 6 miles but its section was by then largely overgrown save for the homes of the estimated 7,000 inhabitants including the tent\-houses of the Tuareg. Barth notes that the Songhay residents of Gao and its hinterlands comprised a “district” (ie: small kingdom) called “Abuba”, that had "lost almost all their national independence, and are constantly exposed to all sorts of contributions". According to local traditions collected a century later, the reigning arma of Gao (title: Gao Alkaydo) at the time was Abuba son of Alkaydo Amatu, who gave the kingdom its name. This indicates that Gao was still under the rule of the local Arma, who were independent of the then\-defunct pashalik of Timbuktu, and were culturally indistinguishable from their subjects after centuries of intermarriage. These few Arma elites continued to collect taxes from the Songhay and itinerant merchants throughout the late 19th century, despite the presence of the more numerous Iwellemmedan\-Tuareg on the city's outskirts. Gao was later occupied by the French in 1898, marking the start of its modern history, and it is today one of Mali’s largest cities. --- --- Beginning in the 12th century, diplomatic links established between the kingdoms of West Africa and the Maghreb created a shared cultural space that facilitated the travel of West African envoys, merchants, and scholars to the cities of the Maghreb Marrakesh to Tripoli. READ more about West Africa's links with the Maghreb on the AfricanHistoryExtra Patreon account: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeTaken from Alisa LaGamma "Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara Excavations at Gao Saney: New Evidence for Settlement Growth, Trade, and Interaction on the Niger Bend in the First Millennium CE by Mamadou Cissé, Susan Keech McIntosh pg 31, Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 43\-44, Bentyia (Kukyia): a Songhay–Mande meeting point, and a “missing link” in the archaeology of the West African diasporas of traders, warriors, praise\-singers, and clerics by Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias prg 32\-34 Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 2\) Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 8\) Islam, Archaeology and History: Gao Region (Mali) ca. AD 900 \- 1250 by Timothy Insoll Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 47\-57, 108, 120\-138, 268\-269\) Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 63\-265\-267\) Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 140, 270\-271, Discovery of the earliest royal palace in Gao and its implications for the history of West Africa by Shoichiro Takezawa pg 10\-11, 15\-16\) Essouk \- Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans\-Saharan Market Town pg 273\-280 Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 22, 276\-277\) Exposition al\-Sahili by Musée National du Mali, 15\-20 th March 2023\. Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara by Alisa. LaGamma pg 122 Urbanism, Archaeology and Trade: Further Observations on the Gao Region (Mali), the 1996 Fieldseason Results by Timothy Insoll, Dorian Q. Fuller pg 156\-159\) Excavations at Gao Saney: New Evidence for Settlement Growth, Trade, and Interaction on the Niger Bend in the First Millennium CE by Mamadou Cissé, Susan Keech McIntosh pg 12, Essouk \- Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans\-Saharan Market Town pg 42, n.2 Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicles and Songhay\-Tuareg History by P. F. de Moraes Farias Excavations at Gao Saney: New Evidence for Settlement Growth, Trade, and Interaction on the Niger Bend in the First Millennium CE by Mamadou Cissé, Susan Keech McIntosh pg 12\) Archaeological Investigations of Early Trade and Urbanism at Gao Saney by M. Cisse pg 31, 41, 265, Islam, Archaeology and History: Gao Region (Mali) ca. AD 900 \- 1250 by Timothy Insoll pg 46\-47, Excavations at Gao Saney: New Evidence for Settlement Growth, Trade, and Interaction on the Niger Bend in the First Millennium CE by Mamadou Cissé, Susan Keech McIntosh pg 19\-24, 30\-32, for pottery from Essuk, see: Essouk \- Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans\-Saharan Market Town pg 144\-148 Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 22\) Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 25\-26 Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 35\) Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 94\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg xxxvii, Bentyia (Kukyia): a Songhay–Mande meeting point, and a “missing link” in the archaeology of the West African diasporas of traders, warriors, praise\-singers, and clerics by Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias prg 84\-87 The Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie,pg 101\-102 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg 10\) The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354: Volume IV by H.A.R. Gibb, C.F. Beckingham pg 971, Bentyia (Kukyia): a Songhay–Mande meeting point, and a “missing link” in the archaeology of the West African diasporas of traders, warriors, praise\-singers, and clerics by Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias prg 69\-70 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg xxxviii Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg 283 ) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg 147\-148\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg xlix) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg pg l\-li) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al\-Saʿdi's Taʾrīkh Al\-Sūdān Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents by John O. Hunwick pg 190\-191, 202\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 4 pg 168\-170\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 4 pg 178\) Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa By Heinrich Barth, Vol. 5, London: 1858, pg 215\-223\) Les Touaregs Iwellemmedan, 1647\-1896 : un ensemble politique de la boucle du Niger · C. Grémont pg 337\-346\) Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa edited by James McDougall, Judith Scheele pg 137 21 )

a brief note on the long history of African diplomacy. in a brief note on the long history of African diplomacy. historical links between west africa and the Maghreb. 4)In 1415, an embassy from the Swahili city of Malindi on the coast of Kenya carried with them a giraffe as a present to the Chinese emperor Yongle. The majestic creature, which was transported along with the Malindi envoys on the ships of admiral Zheng He, caused a sensation at the imperial capital Nanjing where it was thought to be a unicorn. About a decade prior in 1402, an Ethiopian embassy arrived at the floating city of Venice after a lengthy journey overland through Egypt and across the Mediterranean. Dressed in monastic attire and accompanied by live leopards, the small party gracefully cruised the city's canals as onlookers wondered whether they had come from the land of the semi\-legendary king Prester John. The history of Africa's engagement with the rest of the world is often framed in the context of imperial expansion and warfare, rather than the much older and more long\-standing tradition of international diplomacy. While the practice of bringing exotic animals on diplomatic tours was quite rare, the dispatch of envoys by African states was a fairly common practice across the continent’s long history. Many of my previous articles on Africa's historical links to the rest of the old world often include the activities of African envoys in distant lands. Such as the embassies from ancient , the during the late Middle Ages, and the during the early modern period. The institution of diplomacy in Africa was a product of centuries of internal developments in its kingdoms and other complex societies. shows how its rulers' extensive foreign interests were incorporated into the complex bureaucracy of the kingdom with official diplomats, messengers, and non\-official envoys. Asante’s ambassadors were provided with official attire and insignia, and were often accompanied by a large retinue whose gifts and expenses were paid for by the state. The frequency of Africa's diplomatic activities reveals the antiquity and scale of the development of the continent's institutions, which enabled many of its societies to establish and maintain peaceful relations in order to facilitate the movement of ideas, goods, and travelers in various capacities. This is most evident in the historical links between the kingdoms of West Africa and the Maghreb (north Africa), whose capitals were frequented by West African envoys since the 13th century. The intra\-African diplomatic activities of these envoys provide further proof against the colonial myth of the separation of "sub\-Saharan" Africa, by situating the political history of West Africa and the Maghreb within the same geographic and cultural space. The history of West Africa's links with the Maghreb is the subject of my latest Patreon article, please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeA History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911 by Anshan Li pg 43\-46, China and East Africa by Chapurukha M. Kusimba pg 53\-54\. The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian\-European Relations, 1402\-1555 by Matteo Salvadore pg 24\-33\. 39 4)

The heroic age in Darfur: a history of the pre\-colonial kingdom of Darfur ca. 1500\-1916\. in The heroic age in Darfur: a history of the pre\-colonial kingdom of Darfur ca. 1500\-1916\. 4)The political marginalization of the Darfur region since the creation of colonial Sudan has resulted in one of the continent's longest\-standing conflicts, which threatens to destroy the country's social fabric and its historical heritage. Just as the plight of modern Darfur continues to receive little attention, its historical significance in shaping the political landscape of pre\-colonial Sudan is equally overlooked. The modern region of Darfur derives its name from the pre\-colonial kingdom/sultanate of Darfur, a vast multi\-ethic state nearly twice the size of France that flourished for over four centuries between the end of medieval Nubia and the establishment of modern Sudan. As a central authority in the region since the end of the Middle Ages, the kingdom had a direct influence on all facets of life in Darfur's diverse society through the establishment of governance tools and structures, administrative institutions, customs, and traditions that sustained the region's autonomy for centuries. This article explores the history of the Darfur kingdom, its institutions, and its society before its marginalization during the colonial and post\-colonial era. Map of Sudan during the 16th and 18th centuries, showing the kingdom of Darfur. --- Support Sudanese organizations working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country by donating to the community kitchen in Omdurman here: or reach out to , and follow for updates. --- Background to the rise of Darfur: the kingdoms of Daju and Tunjur Between the 10th and 15th centuries, new political formations emerged among the various Nubian\-speaking groups in the semi\-arid regions to the west of the Christian\-Nubian kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia, which preceded the formation of the kingdoms of Daju and Tunjur. The rulers of the Daju were credited with establishing the first dynasty in the region that later became Darfur, according to most traditional accounts transcribed in later periods. Historians suggest that the Daju are likely to be the 'Tajuwa' in the 12th\-century account of al\-Idrisi, who located their capital of 'Tajawa' between the kingdoms of Nubia and Kanem. Later accounts from the 13th and 15th centuries by Ibn Sai’d and Al\-Maqrizi mention that the ‘Tajuwa/Taju were absorbed by the Kanem empire, and identify them as part of the Zaghawa of Kanem ‘who work with stone’. There are a number of ruined sites with stone structures, palaces, and graves eg Dar Wona and Jebel Kilwa, which are attributed to the Daju, but remain undated. At the end of the Middle Ages, societies in the region of modern Darfur became part of a broader cultural and political renaissance under Islamic auspices that extended from the Nile valley to the eastern shores of Lake Chad. Much of the available documentary and archeological record of this period comes from the Nubian Nile valley which was controlled by the Funj kingdom after the fall of Christian Nubia. a few fragmentary accounts and traditions relate to the Tunjur kingdom that succeeded the Daju, and laid the foundation for the emergence of the early Darfur state. A religious endowment in Medina by the Tunjur monarchs that's dated to 1576 indicates that the Tunjur rulers were Muslims. However, the institution of Islam coexisted with other pre\-existing religious traditions, often associated with sacred hilltop sites and agricultural rites. The history of the Tunjur is mostly known from traditions and written accounts about its collapse and the formation of the new kingdoms of the 17th century that replaced it, especially Darfur and Wadai, which claim that the Tunjur reportedly forced their subjects to remove the tops of mountains so that their castles could be constructed there. While this likely exaggerates the Tunjur's coercive power, archeological surveys at the ruined sites of Uri , ‘Ayn Farāh and Dowda have uncovered the remains of these impressive red\-brick structures, including palaces, paved roads, cemeteries, and two buildings that could be mosques, that were architecturally similar to elite residences in the Bornu empire, and in the Nile valley. The material culture recovered from these sites was predominantly local in origin, indicating that they were constructed by autochthons, but some of it shares some similarities with that found in the Nubian Nile valley, suggesting contacts between these regions during this period. The 1582 account of the geographer Lorenzo d’Anania indicates that Tunjur was a large state, noting that "Uri, a very important city, whose prince is called Nina, or emperor, and who is obeyed by neighbouring countries, namely the kingdom of Aule, Zurla, Sagava \ --- --- The kingdom of Darfur from the 17th to 18th century. The era of the Tunjur was shortlived, as traditions recorded in the 19th century describe a shift in power from the Tunjur royals to the Keira royals of the Fur\-speaking groups through intermarriage that produced the first Darfur king Daali and involved the activities of a fuqara (holy\-man/scholar) from the Nubian Nile valley. This description of the change of power from the Tunjur to the Keira condenses a complex history that indicates the existence of a Keira kingdom in Darfur contemporary with the Tunjur between the semi\-legendary king Daali and the first historical Darfur sultan Sulayman. The Keira royal lineage originated from the Kunjara section of the Fur people, who controlled a kingdom in the Jabal Marra that recognized the suzerainty of the Tunjur monarchs and was likely linked to it through intermarriage. There are several ruins at the site of Turra, associated by local tradition with a long line of Keira rulers from Daali upto the sultan Muḥammad Tayrāb (d. 1785\), including palaces, tombs and mosques. A dynastic split forced some of the Keira royals eastwards to the region of Kordofan where they formed the kingdom of Musabba‘āt. Others fled to the southern kingdom of Masālīt, before one of them, Sulaymān returned to Jabal Marra. Sultan Sulaymān is remembered in the traditions as a warrior and conqueror; in one version he is said to have led thirty\-three campaigns, subsuming various neighboring kingdoms including the Masālīt, Oro and Marārīt to the west, the Zaghāwa to the north and the Birged, Beigo and Tunjur to the south and east. While most of the campaigns attributed to him were undertaken by his later successors, there is some documentary evidence for an expansionist Darfur in the late 17th century, particularly in the Kordofan region between Darfur and Funj, where a section of the army was reportedly captured by followers of a faqīh Ḥammad b. Umm Maryūm (1646\-1729\) before he sent them back as missionaries. Sulayman and his successors reinvigorated the external trade developed by the Tunjur as well as the Islamization of the kingdom's institutions by constructing mosques and inviting scholary families from the Nubian Nile valley and west Africa that were given grants of land and exempted from paying tribute. It’s during this period that Darfur appears in external accounts from 1668 and 1689, with the former account describing 'the land of the Fohr' (Fur), as the terminus of an important trade route to Egypt, from where ivory, tamarind, captives, and ostrich feathers were obtained. These commodities would continue to feature in the kingdom’s external trade, although they represented a minor fraction of the domestic trade in agro\-pastoral economy. Firmer documentary evidence for the kingdom's expansion comes from the reign of Aḥmad Bukr (r. 1682\-1722\), who, according to accounts transcribed in the 19th century, moved his capital (fashir) as he campaigned outside Jabal Marra. Aḥmad Bukr conquered the kingdom of Dār Qimr, and formed marital alliances with the various Zaghāwa polities between Darfur and Wadai. This invited retaliation from Sultan Ya‘qūb of Wadai, who invaded Darfur but was later driven back by Aḥmad Bukr's army, which then turned east to campaign in Kordofan where he would later die. By the time of Bukr’s death about 1730, the Darfur kingdom extended over 360,000 sqkm, bringing its borders closer to equally powerful kingdoms of Funj and Wadai, whose competition with Darfur would dominate the region's political landscape for the next two centuries. Internal and regional contests for power characterized the reign of Ahmad Bukr’s successors, especially Umar Lel (r. 1732\-1739\), whose authority was challenged by disgruntled keira royals like his uncle Sulaymān alAbyad. The latter had fled to Kordofan which prompted an attack by Umar Lel, who forced Sulaymān to form an alliance with a group of herders on the Darfur frontier known as the Rizayqāt, who promptly invaded Darfur but were defeated. Umar Lel then attacked Wadai, whose king supported Sulaymān, but the sultan was defeated and imprisoned at the Wadai capital. He was succeeded by Abu’l\-Qāsim (r. 1739\-1752\) who continued the war with Wadai but was abandoned by the nobles and deposed in favor of Muḥammad Tayrāb (r. 1752\-1785\) who established a fixed capital at El\-Fashir, concluded a peace treaty with Wadai and delineated a border between the two kingdoms marked by stone cairns and walls, known as the tirja (barrier). --- The administrative structure of Darfur: Politics, Land tenure, Military and Society. The political organization of the sultanate evolved as it expanded and as the different sultans and the royal lineage gradually centralized their power at the expense of pre\-existing title\-holders and lineage heads. At the head of the kingdom's administration was the Sultan (aba kuuri) who only came from the Keira royal lineage, and whose installation was often confirmed by the most powerful nobles/titleholders at the capital. Besides the numerous titleholders, the Sultan was also assisted by other royals, most importantly the royal women such as the Queen (iiya kuuri), the king's sister (iiya baasi) and traditional religious heads, as well as the chosen heir (khalifa), that were later joined by non\-royal dependants who populated the king’s capital at El\-Fashir. The sultans were surrounded by a complex and elaborate hierarchy of title\-holders numbering several hundred, some of whom were appointed, some hereditary, some territorial, and others were religious figures. These offices, whose titles often included the term ‘abbo’ or ‘aba’, (eg the ába ǎw mang and ába dima’ng) are too many to list here, but some of the most important among the appointed offices included the wazīr, the maqdūms (commissioners), the jabbayīn (tribute collectors), the takanyāwī (the provincial governor in the north), etc. The basis of administration was the quadrant division into provinces (dar al\-takanawi in the north, dar dali in the east, dar urno in the south, and dar diima in the southwest), each under a provincial governor (aba diimaŋ), sub\-governors (shartay), local chiefs (dimlijs), and village heads (eliŋ wakīl), the first three of whom had their own administrative systems, raised armies for the sultan and sent taxes and tribute at the annual jalūd al\-naḥās festival, According to one 19th century visitor, Gustav Nachitgal, records of taxes and tributes were kept at the Sultan’s palace, along with other government records, and books of laws containing the basic principles of administration. The maghrebian traveler Al\-Tūnisī, who lived in Darfur from 1804\-1814, and whose account provides much of the documentary record about the kingdom until that date, mentions various small kingdoms on Darfur's frontier, including Mīdawb, Bartī, Birqid, Barqū, Tunjūr, and Mīmah, noting that “Each of these kingdoms had a ruler called a sultan appointed by the Fur sultan". He also describes how the title\-holders were granted, in lieu of salary, estates, out of whose revenues they maintained their soldiers and followers. These estates (ḥākūra) developed out of local systems of land tenure, and would later be expressed in the terminology used in the Islamic heartlands when land charters began to be issued by the Darfur sultans in the 17th century. The control of Land and regulation of its transfer and sale was central to the administration of the kingdom, the rewarding of loyal titleholders, and the integration of foreign scholars. \] The ḥākūra system became essential to the maintenance of a privileged class of title\-holders, especially at the capital, and the land charters it produced provided the bulk of the surviving documents from pre\-colonial Darfur which contain precious information on the kingdom’s official chancery, its legal system and its land tenure. --- --- The basis of Darfur's military strength were the levies (jureŋa) mobilized by the provincial governors and local chiefs, each under a war leader (ɔrnaŋ), who provided soldiers with fighting equipment. However, as the kingdom expanded, the Sultans also raised personal armies to reduce their dependence on the title holders, they thus equipped small units of horsemen and infantrymen with imported arms and armor. An account from 1862, reported that the kingdom’s army consisted of about 3,000 cavalry, of whom 600 to 1,000 were heavily armed, and some 70,000 infantry armed with swords, laces and javelins. Besides the many sedentary groups that recognized the sultan's authority, the kingdom was surrounded from the east and south by many groups of mobile herders, including the Fulbe, and the Arab\-speaking Messiriya and Rizaigat groups, who were tributaries of the Sultan but not subjects of the kingdom, and often fled south to avoid the armies of Darfur. Tayrāb registered better success in the east, where he defeated the Musabba‘āt king Hashim and brought much of Kordofan under Darfur's control, campaigning as far as Ormdurman. The kingdom reached its apogee during the reign of Abd Abd al\-Raḥmān (r1785\-1801\) and his son, Muḥammad al\-Faḍl (r. 1801\-1838\). These kings ruled over a vast state which now covered approximately 860,000 sqkm, they consolidated their predecessor's gains, and appointed qadis (judges) and scholars (Fuqara) as advisors. The kingdom’s domestic economy was largely based on exchanges of agro\-pastoral products, textiles, and other crafts between regional markets, as well as larger towns and cities like el\-Fashir and Nyala, while its relatively small external trade remained mostly the same as it had been described in the account of 1668 mentioned above. The kingdom hosted many scholarly families from the Funj region and west Africa and became an important stop point along the pilgrimage route from the west African kingdoms of Bornu and Birgimi. As an inducement to settle, the sultans could offer the fuqara land through the ḥākūra system or tax exemptions, and some of them, eg Alī al\-Fūtūwī eventually became involved in the political contents at the capital. While Darfur is a predominantly Muslim society, the adoption of Islam was gradual and varied, as practitioners of the religion continued to co\-exist with other traditional belief systems and practices. In his description of Darfur’s society, Al\-tunsi often contrasted it with his home country, especially regarding the role of women, noting that “the men of Darfur undertake no business without the participation of the women,” and that “In all other matters \ The kingdom's external contacts increased, likely as a consequence of its geographic importance in the pilgrimage route from West Africa and the growth of its local scholarly communities that were linked with Egypt. In 1792, the Darfur Sultan ‘Abd al\-Raḥmān sent an embassy to the Ottoman sultan, who replied by awarding him the honorific title al\-rashīd (‘the just’) which duly appeared on his royal seals. Abd al\-Raḥmān also corresponded with the French general Napoleon during the latter’s brief occupation of Egypt. --- Darfur in the 19th century During the later half of Muḥammad al\-Faḍl's reign, the kingdom lost the province of Kordofan in 1821 to the armies of Muḥammad ‘Alī, the Ottoman governor of Egypt who also invaded the Funj kingdom but failed to expand to Darfur. To the west of the Kingdom, Muḥammad al\-Faḍl took advantage of the succession crisis in Wadai by installing one of the rival claimants, Muḥammad al\-Sharīf, to claim the throne in exchange for recognizing the suzerainty of Darfur, which was later repudiated. Campaigns against the mobile herders in the north such as the Arab\-speaking Maḥāmīd, Mahrīya, ‘Irayqāt, and Zayādīya brought the region under Darfur's control, but campaigns against the herder groups in the south saw limited success. During the second half of the 19th century, the extension of direct trade routes between the Nile valley and the southern frontier of Darfur during the reign of Muhammad al\-Husayn (r. 1838–1873\), as well as the restriction of firearm sales from Egypt, gradually undercut some of the sources of the long\-distance trade to the kingdom, and forced the sultans to raise taxes on their subjects, which proved unpopular. In the 1860s, militant traders like al\-Zubayr Raḥma carved out their own empires in the region by building local alliances and raising armies, often acting independently of their overlords in Egypt. The reigning sultan Muḥammad al\-Ḥusayn (d. 1873\) tried to weaken al\-Zubayr's confederation by breaking up some of his alliances, prompting a diplomatic conflict with the latter that devolved into war. After the installation of Sultan al\-Husayn's son Ibrāhīm, the armies of al\-Zubayr advanced into Darfur and fought several battles with the Sultan's armies between November 1873 and October 1874, before the latter capitulated. Al\-Zubayr then entered the capital, where he was joined a few days afterward by Ismā‘īl Pasha, who formally incorporated Darfur into the Khedive empire against al\-Zubayr's wishes. Al\-Zubayr went to Cairo to protest but was detained by the Khedive’s officers, while the deposed sultans of Darfur retreated into Jabal Marra, where they sought to maintain the Kingdom, with some degree of success. The Ottoman\-Egyptians were later expelled by the Mahdist movement in 1881 whose rulers took over much of the Khedive’s territories in modern Sudan, but the Keira sultan ‘Alī Dīnār b. Zakarīya, a son of Sultan Muḥammad al\-Faḍl supported the anti\-Mahdist forces before he surrendered in 1891 and spent 7 years detained at the court of the Mahdist rulers. After the British invasion of the Mahdist state in September 1898, ‘Alī Dīnār returned to el\-Fashir with a group of Fur and other chiefs to Dār Fūr and declared himself sultan. The newly established colonial government in Sudan had no immediate wish to annex Dār Fūr, and from 1898 to 1916 ‘Alī Dīnār ruled the sultanate, reviving the old administrative system, constructed a palace, regranted the old titles and ḥākūras, and drove back the Arab nomads who had encroached on the settled land during the chaos of the preceding period. Ali Dinar’s relations with the colonial government deteriorated, mainly over the threat of the French colonial expansion from modern Chad, and in 1916, influenced by the Pan\-Islamic propaganda of the Turks and the Sanūsīya in Libya, he declared war on the British. Dār Fūr was invaded by the colonial armies which defeated ‘Ali Dīnār’s army at Birinjīya near al\-Fāshir and formally incorporated the kingdom into colonial Sudan. Darfur was largely neglected during the colonial period unlike the riverine regions of Sudan where many of the people of Darfur were compelled to travel for employment and education. This continued into the post\-colonial period when the riverine elites inherited the colonial administration and the region’s neglect led to the rise of armed rebellions in the early 2000s. The government responded to these rebellions by arming local militias (janjaweed) drawn from the Arab\-speaking nomads, marking the start of a gruesome war that eventually led to the current conflict. \<\< as of writing this article, the old city of , despite the brutal siege by the Janjaweed\-RSF militia, its defenders consider it too strategically significant to abandon \>\> --- Support Sudanese organizations working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country by donating to the community kitchen in Omdurman here: or reach out to , and follow for updates. --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by /u/Redeyedtreefrog2 The archaeology of Central Darfur (Sudan) in the 1st millennium A.D by Ibrahim Musa Mohammed pg 3\-6, The Stone Monuments and Antiquities of the Jebel Marra Region, Darfur, Sudan by Andrew James McGregor pg 34\-57 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia By Geoff Emberling, Bruce Williams pg 900\-901\) The Stone Monuments and Antiquities of the Jebel Marra Region, Darfur, Sudan by Andrew James McGregor pg 67\-71, 85\-87 The Stone Monuments and Antiquities of the Jebel Marra Region, Darfur, Sudan by Andrew James McGregor pg 95\-121, The archaeology of Central Darfur (Sudan) in the 1st millennium A.D by Ibrahim Musa Mohammed pg 199\-202 The Stone Monuments and Antiquities of the Jebel Marra Region, Darfur, Sudan by Andrew James McGregor pg 101 Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 275\-277, Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg \100\-104 \[\ these are not the exact page numbers] Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 105\-107, In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 73\-74 Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 110\) Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 109\) Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 280\-282 Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 113\-115\) Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 116\-120, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 283\-289 The archaeology of Central Darfur (Sudan) in the 1st millennium A.D by Ibrahim Musa Mohammed pg 218 Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 117, 121, 125\-127, 133\-134, In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 151, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 328\-329\. In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 143\-145 Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 135\-137, 140\-141, In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 120\-121, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 324\-345\. Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 272\-273 In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 118 Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 138\-139\) Land in Dar Fur Charters and related documents from the Dar Fur Sultanate, Translated with an introduction by R. S. O'Fahey, Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 139\-140, Land documents in Dār Fūr sultanate (Sudan, 1785–1875\): Between memory and archives Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 115\-117, 158\) The ethnonym of ‘Arabs’ in Sudan (and indeed most of Africa below the Sahara) shouldn’t be confused with our modern/western concept of race. for example, Al\-Tunisi mentions the people of Darfur “had never seen an Arab before” him, they were curious at his “ruddy” skin color, and thought he was “unripe”, similar to how their neighbors in the kingdom of . see pg 126, In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī. In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 118\-119, Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 121\-122\) In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg xix\-xx, 100\-101, 108, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 290\-304\. Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 148\-151\) The archaeology of Central Darfur (Sudan) in the 1st millennium A.D by Ibrahim Musa Mohammed pg 227\-228, In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg 167\-172 An Embassy from the Sultan of Darfur to the Sublime Porte in 1791 by A.C.S. Peacock, Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 153\-157\) Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 158\-159, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 306\-318\. Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 160\-161, Sahara and Sudan. Volume Four: Wadai and Darfur Volume: 4 by Gustav Nachtigal; Allan G. B. Fisher, Humphrey J. Fisher, Rex S. O'Fahey pg 321\-323\. In Darfur: An Account of the Sultanate and Its People by Muḥammad al\-Tūnisī; R.S. O'Fahey; Humphrey Davies; Kwame Anthony Appiah pg xxii Kingdoms of the Sudan by R. S. O'Fahey, J. L. Spaulding pg 164\) Darfur: Struggle of Power and Resources, 1650\-2002, An Institutional Perspective by Yousif Suliman Saeed Takana 26 4)

Voices of Africa's past: a brief note on the autobiographies of itinerant scholars. in Voices of Africa's past: a brief note on the autobiographies of itinerant scholars. an african description of turn\-of\-the\-century Europe. )Among the most significant works of African literature produced during the pre\-colonial era were the autobiographies of itinerant scholars which included descriptions of important social institutions and recorded key events in the continent’s history. The autobiography of the Hausa ethnographer during the 19th century. al\-Kanawi’s detailed account includes the amount of tuition paid to teachers, the length of time spent at each level of learning, as well as the core curriculum and textbooks used by students across the region. The autobiography of the provides a first\-hand account of the social upheaval in the kingdom brought about by the presence of Portuguese priests and their Catholic converts at the capital. Zara Yacob describes the ideological conflicts between the various political and religious factions, which influenced his radical philosophy that rejected received wisdom in favor of rational proofs. The autobiography of includes important information on the scholars who taught him in West Africa before his career as a teacher at the Egyptian College of al\-Azhar. The Mathematician lists at least five of his West African teachers whose level of scholarship and intellectual influence contradicts . The careers of many African scholars often involved traveling between different cities and regions in their capacity as teachers, merchants, or diplomatic liaisons. Umaru al\-Kanawi's account documents the conduct of trade along the complex commercial networks that linked the Asante kingdom (in modern Ghana) to the Sokoto empire (in northern Nigeria). Zara Yacob’s description of his flight from Aksum through various localities until the town of Emfraz is a precious first\-hand account of asceticism in Gondarine Ethiopia. The travelogue of Muhammad al\-Kashnāwī provides one of the earliest internal accounts documenting the journey of West African pilgrims to the cities of the Hejaz. The autobiographies of Africa's itinerant scholars therefore constitute important sources of Africa's past. In the second half of the 19th century, the emergence of scholarly communities in the East African kingdom of Buganda led to the production of some of the most remarkable accounts documenting the voices of Africa's past. In the late 19th century, one of the kingdom's most prolific scholars, Ham Mukasa, wrote an autobiography that documents many key events in the kingdom's history. He also wrote a lengthy travelogue of his journey to England in 1902, describing the various societies and peoples he met along the way in meticulous detail: from the Somali boatmen of Yemen, to the mistreatment of Jewish traders, to the "shameful" dances of the Europeans, to the coronation of king Edward, to medieval torture devices. He met with the Ethiopian envoy Ras Mokonnen, the Chinese prince Chun Zaifeng, the Lozi king Lewanika from Zambia, and Prince Ali of Zanzibar. The autobiography of Ham Mukasa and his travelogue describing turn\-of\-the\-century Europe are the subject of my latest Patreon article. please subscribe to read about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe30 )

A muslim kingdom in the Ethiopian highlands: the history of Ifat and Adal ca. 1285\-1520\. in A muslim kingdom in the Ethiopian highlands: the history of Ifat and Adal ca. 1285\-1520\. )During the late Middle Ages, the northern Horn of Africa was home to some of the continent's most powerful dynasties, whose history significantly shaped the region's social landscape. The history of one of these dynasties, often referred to as the Solomonids, has been sufficiently explored in many works of African history. However, the history of their biggest political rivals, known as the Walasma dynasty of Ifat, has received less scholarly and public attention, despite their contribution to the region’s cultural heritage. This article outlines the history of the Walasma kingdoms of Ifat and Adal, which influenced the emergence and growth of many Muslim societies in the northern Horn of Africa. Map of the northern Horn of Africa during the early 16th century. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Background to the Ifat kingdom: the enigmatic polity of Šawah. Near the end of the 13th century, an anonymous scholar in the northern Horn of Africa composed a short chronicle titled Ḏikr at\-tawārīḫ (ie: “the Annals”), that primarily dealt with the rise and demise of a polity called ‘Šawah’ which flourished from 1063 to 1290 CE. The text describes the sultanate of Šawah as comprised of several urban settlements, with the capital at Walalah, and outlying towns like Kālḥwr, and Ḥādbayah, that were controlled by semi\-autonomous rulers of a dynasty called the Maḫzūmī. The author of the Ḏikr at\-tawārīḫ's notes the presence of a scholarly elite in Šawah, was aware of the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the ‘Tatars’ (Mongols) , and mentions that the state’s judicial system was headed by a ‘qāḍī al\-quḍā’ (ie: “cadi of the cadis”). The text also mentions a few neighboring Muslim societies like Mūrah, ʿAdal, and Hūbat. The information provided in the chronicle is corroborated by a Mumluk\-Egyptian text describing an Ethiopian embassy in 1292, which notes that “Among the kings of Abyssinia is Yūsuf b. Arsmāya, master of the territory of Ḥadāya, Šawā, Kalǧur, and their districts, which are dominated by Muslim kings.” The composition of the chronicle of Šawah represents an important period in the emergence of Muslim societies in north\-eastern regions of modern Ethiopia, which also appears extensively across the region’s archeological record, where many inscribed tombs, mosques, and imported goods were found dated between the 11th and 15th century, particularly . While the towns of Šawah are yet to be found, the remains of contemporaneous Muslim societies were generally urbanized and were associated with long\-distance trade that terminated at the coastal city of Zayla. It’s in this context that the kingdom of Ifāt (ኢፋት) emerged under its founder Wālī ʾAsmaʿ (1285–1289\), whose state eclipsed and subsumed most of the Muslim polities across the region including Šawā. --- The Walasma kingdom of Ifat during the 14th century. In the late 13th century, Wālī Asma established an alliance with Yǝkunno Amlak —founder of the Solomonic dynasty of the medieval Christian kingdom of Ethiopia— acknowledging the suzerainty of the latter in exchange for military support. Wālī ʾAsma’s growing power threatened the last ruler of Šawah; Sultan Dilmārrah, who attempted to appease the former through a marital alliance in 1271\. Ultimately, the armies of Wālī Asma attacked Šawah in 1277, deposed its Maḫzūmī rulers, and imposed their power on the whole region, including the polities at Mūrah, ʿAdal, and Hūbat, which were conquered by 1288\. The establishment of the Ifat kingdom coincided with the expansion of the power of the Solomonids, who subsumed many neighboring states including Christian kingdoms like Zagwe, as well as Muslim and 'pagan' kingdoms. By the 14th century, the balance of power between the Solomonids and the Walasma favored the former. The rulers of Ifat were listed among the several tributaries mentioned in the chronicle of the ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon (r. 1314\-1344\), whose armies greatly expanded the Solomonid state. The Walasma sultan then sent an embassy to Mamluk Egypt’s sultan al\-Nasir in 1322 to intercede with Amdä Ṣǝyon on behalf of the Muslims. It’s during this period that detailed descriptions of Ifat appear in external texts, primarily written by the Mamluks, such as the accounts of Abū al\-Fidā' (1273\-1331\) and later al\-Umari in the 1330s. According to al\-Fidā' the capital of Ifat was "one of the largest cities in the Ḥabašā \ The Sultanate of Ifat is the best documented among the Muslim societies of the northern Horn during the Middle Ages, and its archeological sites are the best studied. The account of the 14th\-century account of al\-Umari and the 15th\-century chronicle of Amdä Ṣeyon (r. 1314\-1344\) both describe several cities in the territory of Ifat that refer to the provincial capitals of the kingdom. These textural accounts are corroborated by the archeological record, with at least five ruined cities —Asbari, Masal, Rassa Guba, Nora, and Beri\-Ifat— having been identified in its former territory and firmly dated to the 14th century. The largest archeological sites at Nora, Beri\-Ifat, and Asbari had city walls, remains of residential buildings preserved to a height of over 2\-3 meters, and an urban layout with streets and cemeteries, set within a terraced landscape. The material culture of the sites includes some imported wares from the Islamic world, but was predominantly local, and included iron rods that were used as currency. Each of the cities and towns possessed a main mosque in addition to neighborhood mosques (or oratories) in larger cities like Nora, built in a distinctive architectural style that characterized most of the settlements in Ifat. The above archeological discoveries corroborate al\-ʿUmarī’s account, which notes that “there are, in these seven kingdoms, cathedral mosques, ordinary mosques and oratories.”, and the city layout of Beri\-Ifat is similar to the account provided by al\-Fidā', who notes that the capital’s buildings were scattered. The discovery of inscribed tombs of a “sheikh of the Walasmaʿ” of Šāfiʿite school who died in 1364, also corroborates al\-Umari's accounts of this school's importance in Ifat, as well as the providing evidence for the origin of the . --- Trade, warfare, and the decline of Ifat. According to Al\-ʿUmarī, the kingdom of Ifat dominated trade because of its geographical position near the coast and its control of Zayla, from where imports of “silk and linen fabrics" were obtained. Later accounts describe trading cities like “Manadeley” where one could "find every kind of merchandise that there is in the world, and merchants of all nations, also all the languages of the Moors, from Giada, from Morocco, Fez, Bugia, Tunis, Turks, Roumes from Greece, Moors of India, Ormuz and Cairo". Another important trading city of Ifat was Gendevelu, which appears in internal accounts as Gendabelo since the 14th century and likely corresponds to the archeological site of Asbari. External descriptions of the city mention "caravans of camels unload their merchandise" and "the currency is Hungarian and Venetian ducats, and the silver coins of the Moors." While the rulers of Ifat didn’t mint their own coins, most sources note the use of imported silver coins, as well as commodity currencies like cloth and iron rods. Much of the political history of Ifat was provided in an internal chronicle titled 'Taʾrīḫ al\-Walasmaʿ written in the 16th century, as well as an external account by the Mamluk historian al\-Maqrīzī in 1438\. Both texts describe a major dynastic split in the Walasma family of Ifat that occurred in the late 14th century, between those who wanted to continue recognizing the suzerainty of the Solomonids, and those who rejected it. According to al\-Maqrizi, the Solomonids could install and depose the Walasma rulers at will, retain some of the Ifat royals at their court, and often provided military aid to those allied with them. In the 1370s, sultan Ali of Ifat was aided by the armies of the Ethiopian emperor in fighting a rebellion led by Ali's rival Ḥaqq al\-Dīn (r. 1376–1386\), who established a separate kingdom away from the capital. After the destruction of the Ifat capital during the dynastic conflict, and the death of Ḥaqq al\-Dīn in a war with the Solomonids, his brother Saʿd al\-Dīn continued the rebellion but was defeated near Zayla around 1409. In response to the continuous conflict, the Solomonids formerly incorporated the territories of Ifat, appointed Christian governors who adopted the name Walasmaʿ (in Gǝʿǝz, wäläšma), deployed garrisons of their own soldiers, and established royal capitals in Ifat territory. --- The re\-establishment of Walasma power in the 15th century until their demise in 1520\. After the death of Saʿd al\-Dīn, his family took refuge in Yemen, at the court of the Rasūlid sultan Aḥmad b. al\-Ašraf Ismāʿil (r. 1400–1424\). Saʿd al\-Dīn's oldest son, Ṣabr al\-Dīn (r. 1415–1422\), later came back to Ethiopia, to a place called al\-Sayāra, in the eastern frontier of the province of Ifat, where the soldiers who had served under his father joined him. They established a new sultanate, called Barr Saʿd al\-Dīn (“Land of Saʿd al\-Dīn”) which appears as Adal in the chronicles of the Solomonid rulers, who were by then in control of the territory of Ifat. Beginning in 1433, the Walasma rulers of Barr Saʿd al\-Dīn established their capital at Dakar, which likely corresponds to the ruined sites of Derbiga and Nur Abdoche located near the old city of Harar. They imposed their power over many pre\-existing Muslim polities including Hūbat, the city of Zaylaʿ, the Ḥārla region surrounding Harar, and parts of northern Somalia. An emir was appointed by the sultan to head each territory, with the prerogative of levying taxes (ḫarāǧ and zakāt) on the population. The Walasma rulers at Dakar reportedly maintained fairly cordial relations with the Solomonids in order to facilitate trade, but wars between their two states continued especially during the reigns of the sultans Ṣabr al\-Dīn (r. 1415–1422\), Manṣūr (r. 1422–1424\), Ǧamāl al\-Dīn (r. 1424–1433\) and Badlāy (r. 1433–1445\). Repeated incursions into 'Adal' by the armies of the Solomonid monarchs compelled some of the former's dependents to pay tribute to the latter, and in 1480, Dakar itself was sacked by the armies of Eskender (r. 1478\-1494\). However, by the early 16th century, the armies of the Walasma begun conducting their own incursions into the Solomonid state. The sultan Muḥammad b. Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn, who had the longest reign from 1488 to around 1517, is known to have undertaken annual expeditions against the territories controlled by the Solomonids. After the death of Sultan Muḥammad, the kingdom experienced a period of instability during which several illegitimate rulers followed each other in close succession and a figure named Imām Aḥmad rose to prominence. The tumultuous politics of this period are described in detail by two internal chronicles written during this period. The first one, titled Taʾrıkh al\-Walasmaʿ, was in favor of Sultan Muḥammad’s only legitimate successor, Sultan Abū Bakr (r. 1518\-1526\), while the other chronicle, Taʾrıkh al\-muluk, favored Imām Aḥmad’s camp. Both agree on the shift of the sultanate’s capital from Dakar to the city of Harar in July 1520, but the former text ends with this event while the latter begins with it. This shift marked the decline of Sultan Abū Bakr’s power and was followed by his death at the hands of Imām Aḥmad who effectively became the real authority in the sultanate, while the Walasma lost their authority. Imām Aḥmad would then undertake a series of campaigns that eventually brought most of the territory controlled by the Solomonids under his control, briefly creating one of Africa’s largest empires at the time, and beginning a new era in the region’s history. --- The ancient coast of East Africa was part of an old trading system linking the Roman world to the Indian Ocean world, with the metropolis of Rhapta in Tanzania being one of the major African cities known to classical geographers. Read more about the ancient East African coast and its links to the Roman world here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Matteo Salvadore Le Dikr at\-tawārīḫ (dite Chronique du Šawā) : nouvelle édition et traduction du Vatican arabe 1792, f. 12v\-13r by Damien Labadie, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 93\-94\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 94\-95\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 95\-96\) Map by Taddesse Tamrat A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 94, 99\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim European Rivalry in the Region by Mordechai Abir pg 22\-24, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 99\-100\) Le sultanat de l’Awfāt, sa capitale et la nécropole des Walasma by François\-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand Hirsch et Amélie Chekroun, prg 6, 61\-62\) A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 106, Le sultanat de l’Awfāt, sa capitale et la nécropole des Walasma by François\-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand Hirsch et Amélie Chekroun prg 26\-28\) this and all other photos (except where stated) are from the French Archaeological Mission, 2008, 2009, 2010 led by François\-Xavier Fauvelle Le sultanat de l’Awfāt, sa capitale et la nécropole des Walasma by François\-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand Hirsch et Amélie Chekroun prg 29\-40, 55\-59\) Le sultanat de l’Awfāt, sa capitale et la nécropole des Walasma by François\-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand Hirsch et Amélie Chekroun prg 63, 77, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 106\-107\. A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 108\-109, 110\-111\) In Search of Gendabelo, the Ethiopian “Market of the World” of the 15th and 16th Centuries by Amélie Chekroun, Ahmed Hassen Omer and Bertrand Hirsch photo from the Nora/Gendebelo Program 2009 A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 100\) Entre Arabie et Éthiopie chrétienne : le sultan walasma‘ Sa‘d al\-Dīn et ses fils by Amélie Chekroun Le sultanat de l’Awfāt, sa capitale et la nécropole des Walasma by François\-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand Hirsch et Amélie Chekroun prg 66\-73, Ethiopia and the Red Sea The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim European Rivalry in the Region by Mordechai Abir pg 26\-27\. Notes on the survey of Islamic Archaeological sites in South\-Eastern Wallo (Ethiopia) by Deresse Ayenachew and Assrat Assefa A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 102 Dakar, capitale du sultanat éthiopien du Barr Sa‘d addīn by Amélie Chekroun, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly 108, Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 27\-28 photo by Azaïs \& Chambard 1931 Ethiopia and the Red Sea The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim European Rivalry in the Region by Mordechai Abir pg 31\-32, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, edited by Samantha Kelly pg 104, Dakar, capitale du sultanat éthiopien du Barr Sa‘d addīn by Amélie Chekroun prg 8\) Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 32\-33 Harar as the capital city of the Barr Saʿd ad\-Dıˉn by Amélie Chekroun pg 34\-34, Dakar, capitale du sultanat éthiopien du Barr Sa‘d addīn by Amélie Chekroun 22 )

a brief note on contacts between ancient African kingdoms and Rome. in a brief note on contacts between ancient African kingdoms and Rome. finding the lost city of Rhapta on the east African coast. 5)Few classical civilizations were as impactful to the foreign contacts of ancient African states and societies like the Roman Empire. Shortly after Augustus became emperor of Rome, his armies undertook a series of campaigns into the African mainland south of the Mediterranean coast. The first of the Roman campaigns was directed into Nubia around 25BC, . While the Roman defeat in Nubia permanently ended its ambitions in this region and was concluded with a treaty between Kush's envoys and the emperor on the Greek island Samos in 21BC, Roman campaigns into central Libya beginning in 20BC were relatively successful and the region was gradually incorporated into the empire. The succeeding era, which is often referred to as 'Pax Romana', was a dynamic period of trade and cultural exchanges between Rome and the rest of the world, including north\-eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean world. The increase in commercial and diplomatic exchanges between Kush and Roman Egypt contributed to the expansion of the economy of Meroitic Kush, which was one of the sources of gold and ivory exported to Meditteranean markets. By the 1st century CE, Meroe had entered a period of prosperity, with monumental building activity across the cities of the kingdom, as well as a high level of intellectual and artistic production. demonstrates the close relationship between the two state’s diplomatic and economic interests. It was constructed by the Meroitic co\-rulers Natakamani and Amanitore and served as a ‘transitory’ shrine in front of the larger temple of the Nubian god Apedemak (seen in the background). Its nickname is derived from its mix of Meroitic architecture (like the style used for the Apedemak temple) with Classical elements (like the decoration of the shrine’s columns and arched windows). The Meroitic inscriptions found on the walls of the shrine indicate that it was built by local masons who were likely familiar with aspects of the construction styles of Roman\-Egypt or assisted by a few masons from the latter. --- --- The patterns of exchange and trade that characterized Pax Romana would also contribute to the expansion of Aksumite commercial and political activities in the Red Sea region, which was a conduit for the lucrative trade in silk and spices from the Indian Ocean world as well as ivory from the Aksumite hinterland. At the close of the 2nd century, the armies of Aksum were campaigning on the Arabian peninsula and the kingdom’s port city of Adulis had become an important anchorage for merchant ships traveling from Roman\-Egypt to the Indian Ocean littoral. These activities would lay the foundation for the success of . This large, multi\-story complex was one of several structures that dominated the Aksumite capital and regional towns across the kingdom, and its architectural style was a product of centuries of local developments. The material culture of these elite houses indicates that their occupants had access to luxury goods imported from Rome, including glassware, amphorae, and Roman coins. The significance of the relationship between Rome and the kingdoms of Kush and Aksum can be gleaned from Roman accounts of world geography in which the cities of Meroe and Aksum are each considered to be a 'Metropolis' —a term reserved for large political and commercial capitals. This term had been used for Meroe since the 5th century BC and Aksum since the 1st century CE, since they were the largest African cities known to the classical writers. However, by the time Ptolemy composed his monumental work on world geography in 150 CE, another African city had been elevated to the status of a Metropolis. This new African metropolis was the city of Rhapta, located on the coast of East Africa known as ‘Azania’, and it was the southernmost center of trade in a chain of port towns that stretched from the eastern coast of Somalia to the northern coast of Mozambique. The history of the ancient East African coast and its links to the Roman world are the subject of my latest Patreon article. Please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan\-Meroitic Civilization pg 461\-465, 398\), The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art pg 466\-467 Hellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia 300 BC–AD 250 and its Egyptian Models: A Study in “Acculturation” by László Török pg 301\-308 Foundations of an African Civilization: Aksum \& the Northern Horn By D. W. Phillipson pg 121\-125, 197\-200 Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa By George Hatke pg 29, Foundations of an African Civilization: Aksum \& the Northern Horn By D. W. Phillipson pg 121 25 5)

The forgotten ruins of Botswana: stone towns at the desert's edge. in The forgotten ruins of Botswana: stone towns at the desert's edge. 4)At its height in the 17th century, the stone towns of the ‘zimbabwe culture’ encompassed an area the size of France. The hundreds of ruins spread across three countries in south\-eastern Africa are among the continent’s best\-preserved historical monuments and have been the subject of great scholarly and public interest. While the ruins in Zimbabwe and South Africa have been extensively studied and partially restored, similar ruins in the north\-eastern region of Botswana haven’t attracted much interest despite their importance in elucidating the history of the zimbabwe culture, especially concerning the enigmatic gold\-trading kingdom of Butua, and why the towns were later abandoned. This article explores the history of the stone ruins in northeastern Botswana, their relationship to similar monuments across south\-eastern Africa, and why they later faded into obscurity. Map of south\-eastern Africa showing some of the largest known monuments of the ‘zimbabwe culture’ --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The emergence of complex societies in north\-eastern Botswana and the kingdom of Butua. Among the first complex societies to emerge in south\-eastern Africa was a polity centered at the archeological site of Bosutswe at the edge of the Kalahari desert in north\-eastern Botswana. The ‘cultural sequence’ at Bosutswe spans the period from 700\-1700CE, and the settlement was one of several archeological sites in the region that flourished during the late 1st to early 2nd millennium CE. These sites, which include Toutswe (in Botswana), Mapela Hill (in Zimbabwe), ‘K2’, and Mapungubwe (in South Africa), among several others, are collectively associated with the incipient states/chiefdoms of Toutswe in Botswana and Leopard's Kopje in Zimbabwe\&Botswana, named after their ceramic traditions and largest settlements. These early settlements often consisted of central cattle kraals surrounded by houses and grain storages and their material culture is associated with Shona\-speaking groups, especially the Kalanga. The emergence of states in this region is thus associated with the growth of the internal agro\-pastoral economy as well as regional and external trade in gold, and ivory, the latter of which is represented by a 10th\-century ivory cache found at the site of Mosu in northern Botswana. By the early second millennium, several states had emerged in southeast Africa, . While the walled tradition of Great Zimbabwe is often thought to have begun at Mapungubwe and Mapela Hill, recent archeological studies have found equally suitable precursors in north\-eastern Botswana, where several older sites with both free\-standing walls and terraced platforms were discovered in the gold\-producing\-Tati river basin. These include the sites of Tholo, Dinonkwe, and Mupanini, which are dated to the late 12th and early 13th century. Many of the above settlements were gradually abandoned during the 14th century, coinciding with the decline of the polities of Mapungubwe and Toutswe during a period marked by a drier climate between 1290 and 1475\. It is likely that part of the population moved to the wetter Zimbabwe plateau and contributed to the rise of Great Zimbabwe, as well as the Butua kingdom centered at Khami and the kingdom of Mutapa to the north, with the Butua kingdom having a significant influence on societies in north\-eastern Botswana. Unlike the extensive documentation of the Mutapa state, there were relatively few contemporary records of the to its south. An account from 1512 by the Portuguese merchant Antonio Fernandez who had traveled extensively on the mainland to Mutapa mentions that: "between the country of Monomotapa and Sofala, all the kings obey Monomotapa, but further to the interior was another king, who had rebelled and with whom he was at war, the king of Butua. The latter was as powerful as the Monomotapa, and his country contained much gold." However, since the , there were only a few references to Butua society between the 1512 account above, and the sack of the kingdom’s capital in 1644, in which one of the rival claimants to the throne utilized the services of a Portuguese mercenary named Sisnando Dias Bayao. On the other hand, there’s extensive archeological evidence for the construction of Khami\-style ruins dated to the ‘Butua period’ in the 15th\-17th century with over 80 known sites in Zimbabwe and over 40 in Botswana. As well as secondary evidence for gold trade from Butua that was exported to the Swahili coastal town of Angoche, which was described in 16th\-century documents as bypassing the Portuguese\-controlled Sofala. --- The Butua period in north\-eastern Botswana: 15th\-17th century. The largest of these Butua\-period sites in Botswana that have been studied include the ruins of; Sampowane, Vukwe, Domboshaba, Motloutse, Sojwane, Thune, Shape, and Majande, Lotsane whose free\-standing walls are still preserved to the height of at least two meters. The walled settlements of the Butua period were built to be monumental rather than defensive, often in places with granite outcrops from which the stone blocks used in construction were obtained. The interior of the stone settlements often contained elevated platforms and terraces, both natural and artificial, that exposed rather than concealed the leader, in contrast to the screening walls of the Great Zimbabwe sites. And like many stone settlements in southeast Africa, the different settlement sizes often corresponded to different levels in the state hierarchy, and the amount of walling was often a reflection of the number of vassals who provided labor for their construction. Archeologists identified four size categories for the Butua period settlements, representing a five\-tiered settlement hierarchy. level 1, consists of unwalled commoner sites, level 2 sites consist of a stone wall with a platform for at least one elite house, level 3 sites (like Vukwe) have longer larger platforms for several elite houses as well as multiple tiers and entrances, level 4 sites (like Motloutse, Majande, Domboshaba, etc) have large platforms and long walling, this is where the highest of the Botswana sites fall. Levels 5 and 6, have all of these features on a monumental scale and are found in Zimbabwe (eg Khami and Zinjanja). Starting from the north, the largest among the best\-preserved ruins is at Domboshaba, which consists of two complexes, with an almost fully enclosed hilltop ruin, and a lower section that is partially walled. Both complexes enclose platforms for elite houses, and their walls have rounded entrances and check designs in the upper courses. The site was radio\-carbon dated to between the 15th\-18th century making it contemporaneous with the Butua capital of Khami, with which it shares some architectural similarities, as well as a material culture like coiled gold wire and the bronze wire worn by the elites. To its south was the ruin of Vukwe which comprised a series of walled platforms, enclosing an elite complex in which iron tools and bronze jewelry were found. South of the Domboshaba and Vukwe cluster are the ruins at Shape, which consist of several terrace platforms as well as a free\-standing wall that bears a broken monolith and blocked doorway. Near these are the ruins of Majande which comprise two settlements known as Upper and Lower Majande. The two ruins have profusely decorated front walls with stone monoliths and raised platforms for elite houses. A short distance northwest of Majande is the Sampowane ruin, which comprises a complex of platforms and free\-standing walls profusely decorated with herringbone, cord and check designs, and is likely contemporaneous with Majande. To the south of these is the ruin of Motloutse, which consist of a double\-tiered platform complex with walls of check decoration built on and around a small granite kopje, which overlooks a walled enclosure that lies below the hill. Near this is the ruin of Sojwane, which consists of free\-standing walls erected between the natural boulders of the granite batholith. Its small size and lack of occupation indicate that it was likely a burial place of the senior leaders in the Motloutse valley. South of these settlements is the ruin of Thune, which consists of a double enclosure with several terraced platforms surrounding the summit, and a curved wall about 14 m long. Much further south are the ruins of Lotsane, which were one of the earliest dzimbabwes to be described. They comprise two sets of settlement complexes, both of which have a long curved wall with rounded ends and doorways. --- The transition period between the Butua and Rozvi kingdoms in North\-eastern Botswana: late 17th\-early 18th century. The use of check designs, and the presence of retaining walls that formed house platforms similar to the Khami\-style sites of Danangombe and Naletale, indicates that Majande, Lotsane and Sampowane were occupied during the later Khami period. This is further confirmed by radiocarbon dates from Majande that estimate its occupation period to be between 1644 and 1681, making it a much later site than Domboshaba. The significance of the architectural similarities with other Khami settlements is connected with political developments associated with the fall of the Butua kingdom. After the sack of the Butua capital of Khami during the dynastic conflict of 1644, the victor likely moved his capital to Zinjanja, where a large settlement was built with walls covered in elaborate designs expressing various aspects of sacred leadership. Archeological evidence indicates that settlement at Zinjanja was shortlived, as the ascendancy of the Rozvi state (1680\-1840\) with its capital at Danangombe and Naletale eclipsed the former's power by the turn of the 17th century. Several of the ruins in N.E Botswana were built during this Interregnum Phase (AD 1650–1680\) between the fall of Butua and the rise of the Rozvi, a period marked by dynastic competition, unchecked by the relatively weak rulers at Zinjanja. The striking wall decorations at Sampowane and Majande ruins are similar to those used by the rulers of Zinjanja, rather than the Butua rulers of Khami. They predominantly feature herring board and cord designs, rather than the profuse check designs seen at Khami and later at Danangombe. --- Origins of the golden trade of the Butua kingdom The majority of the ruined settlements in north\-eastern Botswana were established near gold and copper mines. There are over 45 goldmines in north\-eastern Botswana between the Vumba and Tati Greenstone Belts, each consisting of a number of prehistoric and historic mine shafts and trenches, flanked by milling sites containing cup\-shaped depressions where the gold was extracted from the ore. Evidence for Copper mining and smithing is even more abundant, including mines, smelting furnaces, crucibles, tuyeres, and slag, that were found near several ruined towns including Vukwe, Matsitama, Majande, Shape. While most gold mines were found near level 1 (commoner) sites, some of the larger ruins such as Vukwe, Domboshaba, and Nyangani were all located near the edge of the gold belt. In this predominantly agro\-pastoral economy, mining would have been carried out on a seasonal basis, just as it was documented in Mutapa. Ivory and Ironworking, as well as the manufacture of cotton textiles, are all attested at several sites based on the presence of ivory artifacts, numerous iron furnaces and material, spindle whirls used in weaving cotton, and documentation of the use and trade of ivory, iron and local cloth, exchanged for imported glass and cloth. The lack of elite control over these specialist activities like ironworking and prestige/trading items like copper, gold, and ivory, suggests that power was obtained through a combination of religious authority, accumulating wealth and followers, as well as the construction of monumental palaces. The political structure of societies in north\-eastern Botswana thus resembled that in the Butua kingdom of Khami, which combined interpolity heterarchies and intra\-polity hierarchies. Additionally, the organization of trade, whether in domestic markets for agro\-pastoral products or to external markets for commodities like gold and copper, would not have been centrally controlled but undertaken by independent traders, like those documented in 17th century Mutapa. --- Collapse of the stone towns of north\-eastern Botswana. By the early 19th century, profoundly altered the cultural landscape of north\-eastern Botswana. Rozvi traditions describe the decline of the Changamire state due to dynastic conflicts, which exacerbated its collapse after it was overrun by several groups including the Tswana\-speaking Ngwato, and several Nguni\-speaking groups like the Ndebele and Ngoni, all of whom subsumed the Kalanga\-speaking societies. The period of Ndebele ascendancy in North\-Eastern Botswana in the mid\-19th century was especially disruptive to the local polities. As recounted in Ndebele traditions and contemporary documents, some of the defeated Kalanga leaders often fled with their followers to hilltop fortresses, or outside the reach of the Ndebele to regions controlled by the Ngwato, while some were retained as vassals. The region remained a disputed frontier zone caught between two powerful states, many of the old towns were abandoned, and the authority of those who remained was greatly diminished. There's documentary and archeological evidence for the rapid abandonment of these ruins, and the later re\-occupation of a few of them. An account from 1870 mentions the abandonment of the Vukwe ruin by its Kalanga ruler following a Ndebele campaign into the region, and there’s archeological evidence for the partial re\-settlement of Domboshaba during the mid\-19th century, with the new settlement being established in a more elevated and defensible region of the hill, where further walling was added. Additionally, many of the ruined settlements have blocked doorways that were sealed with stone monoliths, especially at Majande and Shape, which was a common practice attested at many dzimbabwes across the region (eg at Matendere in Zimbabwe). These blocked doorways denied access to sacred spaces, especially when rulers moved their capital upon their installation, marking the end of the enclosed palace’s administrative use, and the abandonment of part or all of the site. It is important to note that the construction of stone settlements in the region had mostly ended by the early 18th century, since no new settlements post\-date this period, representing a cultural shift that was likely caused by internal processes. Nevertheless, the connection between the stone towns and their former occupants was largely severed. With the exception of Domboshaba, few of the Kalanga traditions collected in the 20th century could directly link the sites to specific lineages and rulers, as most of their counts were instead focused on the upheavals of the 19th century. Unlike the monumental capitals in Zimbabwe where such traditions were preserved, memories of the stone towns of north\-eastern Botswana were forgotten, as their ruins were gradually engulfed by the surrounding desert\-shrub. --- While there are few written accounts for pre\-colonial south\-east Africa, the expansion of trade contacts between south\-central Africa and the Swahili coast led to the production of detailed documentation of the region's societies by other Africans. subscribe to Patreon to read about the account of one of these visitors who traveled to Congo and Zambia in 1891: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribetaken from the introduction of “Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements” by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main Map by Shadreck Chirikure et al, from “No Big Brother Here: Heterarchy, Shona Political Succession and the Relationship between Great Zimbabwe and Khami, Southern Africa.” Archaeological excavations at Bosutswe, Botswana: cultural chronology, paleo\-ecology and economy by James Denbow et al., The Iron Age sequence around a Limpopo River floodplain on Basinghall Farm, Tuli Block, Botswana, during the second millennium AD by Biemond Wim Moritz pg 6\-7, 65, 234\) The Iron Age sequence around a Limpopo River floodplain by Biemond Wim Moritz pg 66, 125, 152, 162, Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 25\-27 Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 32\-33, An ivory cache from Botswana by Andrew Reid and Alinah K Segobye The Origin of the Zimbabwe Tradition walling by Catrien Van Waarden pg 59\-69\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 50, 356 Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 49\) An archaeological study of the zimbabwe culture capital of khami by T. Mukwende pg 15 Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 79\-81\) A History of Mozambique By M. D. D. Newitt pg 10\-12, 22 An archaeological study of the zimbabwe culture capital of khami by T. Mukwende pg 38 Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 82, 179\-180\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 84\) Recent Research at Domboshaba Ruin, North East District, Botswana by Nick Walker, Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 91, 231\) Facebook photo Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 372, Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 90\) Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 373\-4\) Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 373, Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 89 The Archaeology of the Metolong Dam, Lesotho, by Peter Mitchell, pg 15\-18, Settlement Hierarchies in the Northern Transvaal : Zimbabwe Ruins and Venda History by T. Huffman pg 8\-10 Reddit photo by /u/Hannor7 and Facebook photo by Mike Techet Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 371\-372, 376\) Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 379\-384, Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 252\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 230\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 234\-235 No Big Brother Here: Heterarchy, Shona Political Succession and the Relationship between Great Zimbabwe and Khami, Southern Africa by Shadreck Chirikure et. al. Maps by Catrien van Waarden, and Shadreck Chirikure Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 243\-245, 353\-354\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 251\-267\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 267, 277\-281, 334\-335, 341\) Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements by Thomas N. Huffman \& Mike Main pg 376\-377\) Butua and the End of an Era: The Effect of the Collapse of the Kalanga State on Ordinary Citizens by Catrien Van Waarden pg 354, 357 ‘Ruins at junction of Lotsina with Crocodile River’ by William Ellerton Fry, reproduced by Rob S Burrett and Mark Berry 22 4)

a brief note on African travel literature in history in a brief note on African travel literature in history a Swahili document on south\-central Africa. )Travel writing constitutes a major primary source for reconstructing African history, and is especially important in supplementing internal accounts. While much of the African travel literature that historians have access to was written by external visitors, a significant volume of travel literature was composed by African themselves, who were discovering and documenting different parts of their vast continent. In 1338, in Sudan with his followers, where they assisted the Nubian king Siti in defeating a rival king. This account of the political rivalries in Nubia which is included in Ēwosṭātēwos' hagiography, matches with internal Nubian records from the same decade, which mention a pretender at its capital of Old Dongola named Kanz al\-Dawla and another rebel named Anenaka, both of whom challenged King Siti's authority. In 1432, a family of against the wishes of its emperor and reached the Hausa city of Kano in the late 15th century. The arrival of the Wangara in Kano and their influence on the city's scholarly community was documented by one of their descendants in the Wangara Chronicle written in 1650\. The chronicle mentions that the Wangara were given patronage by the Kano king Muhammad Rumfa (r. 1463\-1499\), and that Jakhite won an intellectual duel with a visiting Egyptian scholar. In 1806, in order to establish a direct route to the Indian Ocean coast at Mozambique. Like many of their neighbors in the kingdom of Kongo, Ndongo, and , these traders were literate, and they left a detailed description of their journey to the court of the Lunda King Yavu (r. 1800\-1820\), and his subordinate king of Kazembe in modern Zambia. The above examples come from African regions which had a long history of large centralized states, well\-established travel routes, and an old tradition of writing. These three factors were central to the emergence of travel writing in Africa since antiquity, and provide crucial evidence for how Africans explored their continent. In the 19th century, the emergence of large states, trade routes, and literate travelers across south\-central Africa led to the production of detailed documentation of the region's societies by other African visitors. The description of south\-central Africa written by a traveler from the Swahili coast is the subject of my latest Patreon article, please subscribe to read about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe27 )

Kingdoms at the forest's edge: a history of Mangbetu (ca. 1750\-1895\) in Kingdoms at the forest's edge: a history of Mangbetu (ca. 1750\-1895\) 2)The northern region of central Africa between the modern countries of D.R.Congo and South Sudan has a long and complex history shaped by its internal cultural developments and its unique ecology between the savannah and the forest. Among the most remarkable states that emerged in this region was the kingdom of Mangbetu, whose distinctive architectural and art traditions captured the imagination of many visitors to the region, and continue to influence our modern perceptions of the region's societies and cultures. This article explores the history of the Mangbetu kingdom and its cultural development from the 18th to the early 20th century. Map of D.R. Congo showing the Mangbetu homeland. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The early history of Mangbetu: social complexity in the Uele river basin The heartland of the Mangbetu kingdom is dominated by the Uele and Nepoko rivers, which cut across the northern region of the D.R.Congo. In this intermediate region between the savannah and the rainforest, diverse communities of farmers belonging to three of Africa's main language families settled and forged a new cultural tradition that coalesced into several polities. Linguistic evidence indicates that the region was gradually populated by heterogeneous groups of iron\-age societies whose populations belonged to the language families of Ubangi, western Bantu, and southern\-central Sudanic. Each of these groups came to be acculturated by their neighbors, developing decentralized yet large\-scale social economies and institutions that differed from their neighbors in the Great Lakes region and west\-central Africa. Among the groups associated with speakers of the southern\-central Sudanic languages were the Mangbetu. The population drift of their ancestral groups southwards of the upper Uele basin began in the early 2nd millennium, and their communities were significantly influenced by their western Bantu\-speaking neighbors such as the Mabodo and Buan. By the middle of the 18th century, incipient state institutions and military systems had developed among the Mangbetu and their neighbors as organizations structured around lineages became chiefdoms and kingdoms. --- The Mangbetu Kingdom under King Nabiembali (r. 1800\-1859\) and King Tuba (r. 1859\-1867\) Traditions and later written accounts associate the founding of the early Mangbetu polity with King Manziga, who is credited with overrunning several small polities along the Nepoko River during the late 18th century. His son and successor Nabiembali, undertook further conquests after 1800, expanding the kingdom northwards until the Uele River where he defeated the rival kingdom of Azande. Nabiembali's campaigns also extended east and west of the Magbentu heartlands, incorporating people from many different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds into the new state. However, Nabiembali's rapidly expanded kingdom retained many of its early institutions of the pre\-existing lineage groups. Royal ideology and legitimacy were highly personalized and were largely dependent on the success of the individual ruler in balancing military force with diplomacy rather than making dynastic claims or divine right. Political relationships continued to be defined in terms of kinship with the ruler's lineage (known as the ‘mabiti’) as well as his clients, forming the core of the court, and alliances were maintained through intermarriages between the leaders of subject groups. The core of Nabiembali's military was the royal bodyguard comprising professional mercenaries, kinsmen, and dependents of the king, and it was sustained by revenues from the produce of its immediate clients and dependents. Lacking a centralized political system to maintain the loyalty of his newly conquered subjects, Nabiembali was overthrown by his sons in 1859, who established semi\-independent Mangbetu kingdoms, the most powerful of which was led by Tuba who controlled the core regions of the kingdom. As king of the Mangbetu heartland, Tuba was forced to fight the rebellious princes around him, who were inturn compelled to forge alliances with the neighboring Azande kingdom. A series of battles between Tuba and his rivals —who included Nabiembali's military commander Dakpala— culminated with his death in 1867, and he was succeeded by his son Mbunza. The latter was able to hold off his rivals, succeeded in defeating and killing Dakpala, and briefly forged commercial ties with ivory traders from the Sudanese Nile valley. --- Mangbetu kingdom under King Mbunza (r. 1867\-1873\): external contacts and descriptions of Mangbetu society. King Mbunza established his capital at Nangazizi, where he resided in a large palace built entirely out of wood, an architectural tradition common in the region, whose royal/public halls rivaled some of the world's largest wooden structures. In 1870, the Swiss traveler Georg Schweinfurth was briefly hosted in Mbunza's palace, whose grandeur and elegance captured the visitor's imagination. Schweinfurth's description of the Mangbetu politics, culture, and artworks would inform the writings of most of his successors. The capital was bisected by a broad central plaza surrounded by the houses of the queens and courtiers, two large public halls, with the bigger one measuring 150ftx50ft and 50 feet high, and a large royal enclosure where the king had storehouses of ivory and weapons. The arches of the public halls' vaulted roofs were supported by five and three "long rows of pillars formed from perfectly straight tree\-stems," its rafters and roofing were made from leafstalks of the palm\-tree, its floor was plastered with red clay "as smooth as asphalt," and its sides were "enclosed by a low breastwork" that allowed light to enter the building. The kingdom's craft industries were highly productive, and its artists were renowned for their sophisticated forging technology, particularly the making of ornaments and weapons in copper, iron, ivory, and wood. The manufacture of the weapons in particular was described glowingly by Schweinfurth, especially the scimitars (carved blades) of various types, as well as daggers, knives, and steel chains, which he calls "masterpieces" and claims that Mangbetu's smiths "surpass even the Mohammedans of Northern Africa." and rivals "the productions of our European craftsmen." The Mangbetu king and his courtiers developed symbols of royal insignia, including ornaments made of copper and ivory, as well as ceremonial weapons and vessels, musical instruments (trumpets, bells, timbrels, gongs, kettle\-drums, and five\-stringed 'mandolins'/harps). These items, which are mentioned in several 19th century accounts and appear in many museums today, were part of the primary figurative tradition of the various societies of the Uele basin and were not confined to the royalty nor even to the Mangbetu. Schweinfurth regarded Mbunza as a powerful absolute monarch, whose statecraft was influenced by the . He claims that the king ruled by divine kingship, commanded hundreds of courtiers and subordinate governors, required regular tribute, and imposed commercial monopolies on long\-distance trade in ivory and copper. Historians regard most of Schweinfurth's interpretations and descriptions of Mangbetu politics and kingship as embellished, being influenced as much by his preconceptions and personal motivations as by the observations he was able to make during his very brief 13\-day stay at the capital where he hardly had any interpreters. However, with the exception of the usual myths and stereotypes about central Africa found in European travelogues of the time, most of his accounts and illustrations of Mangbetu society were relatively accurate and conformed to similar descriptions from later traveler accounts and in traditional histories documented in the early 20th century. --- --- Mangbetu under King Yangala (r. 1873\-1895\): decline and fall. King Mbunza's rivals and their Azande allies continued to pose a threat in the northern frontier of the kingdom. By the early 1870s, these rivals —who included Dakpala's son; Yangala— allied with the Azande and a group of Nile traders whom Mbunza had expelled to form a coalition that defeated Mbunza in 1873\. Yangala was installed as the king at Nangazizi but retained all of his predecessor's institutions in order to portray himself as a legitimate heir. He also married Mbunza's sister Nenzima, who acted as the 'prime minister' during his reign and his successor’s reigns. Yangala largely succeeded in protecting Mangbetu from the brief but intense period of turmoil in which the societies of the Uele basin were embroiled in the expansionism of the Khedivate of Egypt and the Nile traders. Yangala's kingdom was now only one of several Mangbetu states, some of which were ruled by Mbunza's kinsmen like Mangbanga and Azanga who were equally successful in fending off external threats. All hosted later visitors like Wilhelm Junker and Gaetano Casiti who were also received in the large public hall described by Schweinfurth, and were equally enamored with Mangbetu art. After the collapse of the Khedivate in Sudan, the Mangbetu king Yangala would only enjoy a decade of respite before a large military column of King Leopold's Congo State arrived at his capital in 1892\. The internecine rivalries between the Mangbetu rulers and lineages compelled Yangala to submit to the Belgians inorder to retain some limited authority. But after his death in 1895, his successors such as king Mambanga (r. 1895\-1902\) and Okondo (r. 1902\-1915\) were chosen by the Belgians who transformed the role of the rulers in relation to their subjects and effectively ended the kingdom’s autonomy. Around 1910, Mangentu’s artists produced more than 4,000 artworks which were among the 49 tons of cultural material collected by the American Museum of Natural History in northern D.R. Congo, whose curators had been drawn to Mangebtu’s art tradition, thanks to the artworks collected during the 19th century. These artworks and the evolution of their interpretation continue to influence how the history of Mangbetu and the northern D.R.C is reconstructed. --- The history of central African societies and kingdoms has been profoundly influenced by the evolution of social divisions such as the Tutsi and Hutu. Read about the dynamic history of this Tutsi / Hutu dichotomy in the kingdoms of Rwanda and Nkore here: Subscribemap by the ‘joshua project’ Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa by Jan M. Vansina pg 169\) Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa by Jan M. Vansina pg 5\-6, 171\-172\) Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa by Jan M. Vansina pg 173\-175, UNESCO history of Africa vol 5 pg 520\-523\) Map by Jan M. Vansina Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa by Jan M. Vansina pg 176, Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha, Volume 1 By Gaetano Casati pg 115\-117\) Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa by Jan M. Vansina pg 176\-177, Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 5\) Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 5\) Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 6\-8\) Precolonial African Material Culture. By V. Tarikhu Farrar, pg 219\-222\., junker’s account also mentions ‘assembly halls’ among the Zande as well; Travels in Africa during the years 1875\[\-1886] by Junker, Wilhelm, Vol. 3, pg 7, 18, 26, 47, 88\. The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout, pg 137\-147\) The Heart of Africa: Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa from 1868 to 1871, Volume 2 by Georg August Schweinfurth pg 37\-43, 65, 76\-77, 97\-99\) The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout, pg 111\-112, The Heart of Africa by Georg August Schweinfurth pg 107\-110\) Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds edited by Ruth B. Phillips, Christopher B. Steiner pg 197, 202\-203\. The Heart of Africa by Georg August Schweinfurth pg 41, 75, 117\) Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha, Volume 1 By Gaetano Casati pg pg 188, 194\-195, 244 The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout pg 109\-111, 121\-124, Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds edited by Ruth B. Phillips, Christopher B. Steiner pg 200\-203 The Heart of Africa by Georg August Schweinfurth pg 95\-96, 99\) The historian Curtis keim calls the discursive tradition pioneered by Schweinfurth the "Mangbetu myth"; which consists of a set of stereotypical elements such as the nobility of the royals and the splendor of courtly life that is then juxtaposed with erroneous references to their 'savagery' and 'cannibalism'. The latter of which ironically was an accusation the Mangbetu also leveled against Schweinfurth who was, after all, accumulating a vast collection of human skulls from across the world for his pseudoscientific studies of eugenics, and thus compelled the Mangbetu to sell him human skulls, something the Africans found bizarre, and insisted was proof of Schweinfurth's insatiable cannibalism, an accusation he ironically dismissed as stupid. see: The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout, Curtis A. Keim pg 137, The Heart of Africa by Georg August Schweinfurth pg 54\-55, Mistaking Africa: Misconceptions and Inventions By Curtis Keim pg 107\-111\. Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 2\-3, The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout, pg 136\-138\) Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 9\-10, 12, Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha, Volume 1 By Gaetano Casati pg 118, 146\-147 The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout pg 125\) Long\-Distance Trade and the Mangbetu by Curtis A. Keim pg 12\-13, 17\-21, Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha, Volume 1 By Gaetano Casati pg 82, The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout pg 116 (an aspect of the Mangebtu response to the Belgian atrocities can be glimpsed in the satirical figure of a saluting Belgian soldier on the third harp \-shown above\- who is naked all but his cap) see: Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African Art: Primitive to Metamodern edited by Moyo Okediji pg 83\-85, Mangbetu Tales of Leopard and Azapane: Trickster as Resistance Hero by Robert Mckee The Scramble for Art in Central Africa edited by Enid Schildkrout pg 119, 125, Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds edited by Ruth B. Phillips, Christopher B. Steiner pg 199\-204\. 24 2)

a brief note on Ethnicity and the State in Africa in a brief note on Ethnicity and the State in Africa the evolution of the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy in the precolonial Great Lakes. )Africa is often considered the most culturally diverse continent, a fact that is thought to significantly influence state development. However, the identification and study of cultures and social complexity in pre\-colonial African societies has hardly been known for its conceptual clarity and scientific rigour. In the early 20th century, colonial authorities confronted with the diversity of their subject population set about the task of classifying them inorder to determine the 'true rulers' of the past so they could add the legitimacy of tradition to the colony's 'Native Authority.' Urged on by the colonial authorities, early anthropologists and linguists described cultures, languages, and ethnicities as discrete, bounded groups, whose distribution could be captured on an 'ethnic map' such as George Murdock's now infamous 1959 map of African "tribes". Similarly, early historians of Africa were preoccupied with finding the 'true origins' of these groups, their migration to their present territories, and the innovations they supposedly carried with them. The disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, and history in Africa have since come a long way from their problematic foundations. Cultures and ethnicities are now understood to be more fluid and variable social constructs that shape and are shaped by historical processes of social change and evolution. This new approach to Africa's social history has also revealed that languages are not the sole indicators of culture, since linguistic differences alone can’t determine social interactions. Most African states and societies were recognizably heterogeneous —from small to — and interactions between different social groups could occur across multiple cultural zones. The existence of 'diasporic communities' across a vast region such as the and the in West Africa, and the in East Africa, also indicates that cultural convergence between different African societies wasn't infrequent, and could be facilitated by trade, religion and the state. As one historian succinctly puts it; "Political and ethnic boundaries rarely coincided in pre\-colonial Africa. Human ambitions were too pressing to allow people to remain static over long periods. States expanded when they were sufficiently powerful to do so. Communities competed with one another to attract settlers and thereby gain supporters." Ethnicities and cultures are therefore historical and not primordial phenomena. One of the most profound examples of the historical evolution of social identities in Africa comes from the Great Lakes region of East Africa, where the social divisions of Tutsi/Hima and Hutu/Iru have been particularly significant in shaping the history of states and societies from the colonial period to the present day, especially in the kingdoms of Rwanda and Nkore. The history of the Tutsi/Hima and Hutu/Iru dichotomy is the subject of my latest Patreon article. please subscribe to read about it here: --- The city’s population was linguistically diverse, including speakers of the languages of Songhay, Fula, and Tamashek. --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe Ethnic Groups and the State edited by Paul R. Brass pg 65\-83 Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History edited by Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, Catherine Lee pg 68\-78, What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?: Thoughts on Boundaries and Related Matters In Precolonial Africa by DR Wright pg 419\-426, The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns edited by Bassey Andah, Alex Okpoko, Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair pg 1\-10\. at its most basic definition; ethnicity is a social group, culture is a way of life, and states/kingdoms/empires are a form of organized society. These concepts can overlap or diverge depending on the context. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400\-1800 By John Kelly Thornton pg 184\-189 Maps by Nehemiah Levtzion and Jan Vansina Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics By Martha Wilfahrt pg 50 27 )

Life and works of Africa's most famous Woman scholar: Nana Asmau (1793\-1864\) in Life and works of Africa's most famous Woman scholar: Nana Asmau (1793\-1864\) On the contribution of Muslim women in African history. 3)Throughout its history, Africa has produced many notable women scholars who contributed greatly to its intellectual heritage. But few are as prominent as the 19th\-century scholar Nana Asmau from the Sokoto empire in what is today northern Nigeria. Nana Asmau was one of Africa's most prolific writers, with over eighty extant works to her name and many still being discovered. She was a popular teacher, a multilingual author, and an eloquent ideologue, able to speak informedly on a wide range of topics including religion, medicine, politics, history, and issues of social concern. Her legacy as a community leader for the women of Sokoto survives in the institutions created out of her social activism, and the voluminous works of poetry still circulated by students. This article explores the life and works of Nana Asmau, highlighting some of her most important written works in the context of the political and social history of west Africa. Map of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1850, by Paul Lovejoy --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early life of Nana Asmau and the foundation of the Sokoto state. Born Nana Asma'u bint Usman 'dan Fodio in 1793 into a family of scholars in the town of Degel within the Hausa city\-state of Gobir, she composed the first of her approximately eighty known works in 1820\. Many of these works have been translated and studied in the recent publications of Jean Boyd and other historians. The fact that Nana Asmau needed no male pseudonym, unlike most of her Western peers, says a lot about the intellectual and social milieu in which she operated. While Asmau was extraordinary in her prolific poetic output and activism, she was not an exception but was instead one in a long line of women scholars that came before and continued after her. Asmau was typical of her time and place with regard to the degree to which women pursued knowledge, and could trace eight generations of female scholars both before and after her lifetime. At least twenty of these women scholars can be identified from her family alone between the 18th and 19th centuries based on works written during this period, seven of whom were mentioned in Asmau’s compilation of women scholars, and at least four of whose works survive. These women were often related to men who were also accomplished scholars, the most prominent of whom was Asmau's father Uthman dan Fodio who founded the Sokoto state. One of the major preoccupations of Uthman and his successors was the abolition of "innovation" and a return to Islamic "orthodoxy". Among the main criticisms that he leveled against the established rulers (and his own community) was their marginalization of women in Education. Disregarding centuries of hadiths and scholarly commentaries on the message of the Prophet, the shaykh emphasized the need to recognize the fact that Islam, in its pristine form, didn’t tolerate for any minimalization of women’s civic rights. He writes that “Most of our educated men leave their wives, their daughters and their female relatives ... to vegetate, like beasts, without teaching them what Allah prescribes they should be taught and without instructing them in the articles of Law that concern them. This is a loathsome crime. How can they allow their wives, daughters, and female dependents to remain prisoners of ignorance, while they share their knowledge with students every day? In truth, they are acting out of self\-interest”. He adds; “One of the root causes of the misfortunes of this country is the attitude taken by Malams who neglect the welfare of the women. they \ And in another text critical of some of the 'pagan' practices he saw among some of his own community, he writes that "They do not teach their wives nor do they allow them to be educated, All these things stem from ignorance. They are not the Way of the Prophet". Asmau’s creative talents were cultivated in the , in which learning was individualized under a specific teacher for an individual subject, relying on reference material from their vast personal libraries. Asmau was taught by multiple teachers throughout her life even as she taught other students, and was especially fortunate as her own family included highly accomplished scholars who were teachers in Degel. These teachers included her sister, Khadija, her father, Shaykh Uthman, and her half\-brother, Muhammad Bello, all of whom wrote several hundred works combined, many of which survived to the present day. Nana Asma'u mastered the key Islamic sciences, acquired fluency in writing the languages of Hausa, Arabic, and Tamasheq, in addition to her native language Fulfulde, and became well\-versed in legal matters, fiqh (which regulates religious conduct), and tawhid(dogma). Following in the footsteps of her father, she became deeply immersed in the dominant Qadriyya order of Sufi mysticism. The first ten years of her life were devoted to scholarly study, before the beginning of Uthman’s movement to establish the Sokoto state. There followed a decade of itinerancy and warfare, through which Asma’u continued her studies, married, and wrote poetic works. Around 1807, Asmau married Gidado dan Laima (1776\-1850 ), a friend of Muhammad Bello who later served as wazir (‘prime minister’) of Sokoto during the latter's reign. Gidado encouraged Asmau’s intellectual endeavors and, as Bello’s closest companion, was able to foster the convergence of his wife’s interests with her brother’s. In Asmaus elegy for Gidado titled; Sonnore Gid'ad'o (1848\), she lists his personal qualities and duties to the state, mentioning that he "protected the rights of everyone regardless of their rank or status… stopped corruption and wrongdoing in the city and … honoured the Shehu's womenfolk." --- Asmau’s role in documenting the history and personalities of Sokoto Asmau was a major historian of Sokoto, and an important witness of many of the accounts she described, some of which she may have participated in as she is known to have ridden her horse publically while traveling between the cities of Sokoto, Kano, and Wurno. Asmau wrote many historical works about the early years of Uthman Fodio's movement and battles, the various campaigns of Muhammad Bello (r. 1817\-1837\) eg his defeat of the Tuaregs at Gawakuke in 1836, and the campaigns of Aliyu (r. 1842\-1859\) eg his defeat of the combined forces of Gobir and Kebbi. She also wrote about the reign and character of Muhammad Bello, and composed various elegies for many of her peers, including at least four women scholars; Fadima (d. 1838\), Halima (d. 1844\), Zaharatu (d. 1857\), Fadima (d. 1863\) and Hawa’u (1858\) —the last of whom was one of her appointed women leaders. All of these were of significant historical value for reconstructing not just the political and military history of Sokoto, but also its society, especially on the role of women in shaping its religious and social institutions. One notable battle described by Asmau was the fall of the Gobir capital Alƙalawa in 1808, which was arguably the most decisive event in the foundation of Sokoto. Folklore attributes to Asmau a leading role in the taking of the capital. She is said to have thrown a burning brand to Bello who used the torch to set fire to the capital, and this became the most famous story about her. However, this wasn’t included in her own account, and the only likely mention of her participation in the early wars comes from the Battle of Alwasa in 1805 when the armies of Uthman defeated the forces of the Tuareg chief Chief of Adar, Tambari Agunbulu, "And the women added to it by stoning \ After the first campaigns, the newly established state still faced major threats, not just from the deposed rulers who had fled north but also from the latter's Tuareg allies. One of the first works written by Asmau was an acrostic poem titled, Fa'inna ma'a al\-'usrin yusra (1822\), which she composed in response to a similar poem written by Bello who was faced with an invasion by the combined forces of the Tuareg Chief Ibrahim of Adar, and the Gobir sultan Ali. This work was the first in the literary collaboration between Asma'u and Muhammad Bello, highlighting their equal status as intellectual peers. The Scottish traveler Hugh Clapperton, who visited Sokoto in 1827, noted that women were “allowed more liberty than the generality of Muslim women”. The above observation doubtlessly reveals itself in the collaborative work of Asmau and Bello titled; Kitab al\-Nasihah (book of women) written in 1835 and translated to Fulfulde and Hausa by Asmau 1836\. It lists thirty seven sufi women from across the Muslim world until the 13th century, as well as seven from Sokoto who were eminent scholars. Asmau provided brief descriptions of the Sokoto women she listed, who included; Joda Kowuuri, "a Qur'anic scholar who used her scholarship everywhere," Habiba, the most revered "teacher of women," Yahinde Limam, who was "diligent at solving disputes", and others including Inna Garka, Aisha, lyya Garka and Aminatu bint Ade, in addition to "as many as a hundred" who she did not list for the sake of brevity. The poem on Sufi Women emphasizes that pious women are to be seen in the mainstream of Islam, and could be memorized by teachers for instructional purposes. --- --- Asmau’s role in women’s education and social activism. The above work on sufi women wasn’t intended to be read as a mere work of literature, but as a mnemonic device, a formula to help her students remember these important names. It was meant to be interpreted by a teacher (jaji) who would have received her instructions from Asmau directly. Asmau devoted herself to extensive work with the teachers, as it was their job to learn from Asma'u what was necessary to teach to other teachers of women, whose work involved the interpretations of very difficult and lengthy material about Islamic theology and practices. Asma'u was particularly distinguished as the mentor and tutor of a community of jajis through whom the key tenets of Sufi teachings about spirituality, ethics, and morality in the handling of social responsibilities spread across all sections of the society. The importance of providing the appropriate Islamic education for both elite and non\-elite women and girls was reinforced by the growing popularity , which competed for their allegiance. One of Asmau’s writings addressed to her coreligionists who were appealing to Bori diviners during a period of drought, reveals the extent of this ideological competition. Groups of women, who became known as the ‘Yan Taru (the Associates) began to visit Asma’u under the leadership of representatives appointed by her. The Yan Taru became the most important instrument for the social mobilization, these "bands of women students" were given a large malfa hat that's usually worn by men and the Inna (chief of women in Gobir) who led the bori religion in Gobir. By giving each jaji such a hat, Asmau transformed it into an emblem of Islamic learning, and a symbol of the wearer’s authority. Asmau’s aim in creating the ‘Yan Taru was to educate and socialize women. Asmau's writings also encouraged women's free movement in public, and were addressed to both her students and their male relatives, writing that: "In Islam, it is a religious duty to seek knowledge Women may leave their homes freely for this." The education network of the ‘Yan Taru was already widespread as early as the 1840s, as evidenced in some of her writings such as the elegy for one of her students, Hauwa which read; "\ Many of Asmau's writings appear to have been intended for her students, with many being written in Fulfulde and Hausa specifically for the majority of Sokoto’s population that was unfamiliar with Arabic. These include her trilingual work titled ‘Sunago’, which was a nmemonic device used for teaching beginners the names of the suras of the Qur'an. Other works such as the Tabshir al\-Ikhwan (1839\) was meant to be read and acted upon by the malarns who specialized in the ‘medicine of the prophet’, while the Hausa poem Dalilin Samuwar Allah (1861\) is another work intended for use as a teaching device. Asmau also wrote over eighteen elegies, at least six of which were about important women in Sokoto. Each is praised in remembrance of the positive contributions she made to the community, with emphasis on how her actions defined the depth of her character. These elegies reveal the qualities that were valued among both elite and non\-elite women in Sokoto. In the elegy for her sister Fadima (1838\), Asmau writes; “Relatives and strangers alike, she showed no discrimination. she gave generously; she urged people to study. She produced provisions when an expedition was mounted, she had many responsibilities. She sorted conflicts, urged people to live peacefully, and forbade squabbling. She had studied a great deal and had deep understanding of what she had read.” Asma’u did not just confine her praise to women such as Fadima who performed prodigious tasks, but, also those who did more ordinary tasks. In her elegy for Zaharatu (d. 1857\), Asmau writes: “She gave religious instruction to the ignorant and helped everyone in their daily affairs. Whenever called upon to help, she came, responding to layout the dead without hesitation. With the same willingness she attended women in childbirth. All kinds of good works were performed by Zaharatu. She was pious and most persevering: she delighted in giving and was patient and forbearing.” A list of her students in specific localities, which was likely written not long after her death, mentions nearly a hundred homes. --- Subscribe --- Asmau’s role in the political and intellectual exchanges of West Africa. After the death of Muhammad Bello, Asmau’s husband Gidado met with the senior councilors of Sokoto in his capacity as the wazir, and they elected Atiku to the office of Caliph. Gidado then relinquished the office of Wazir but stayed in the capital. Asmau and her husband then begun to write historical accounts of the lives of the Shehu and Bello for posterity, including the places they had lived in, their relatives and dependants, the judges they had appointed, the principal imams of the mosques, the scholars who had supported them, and the various offices they created. Besides writing extensively about the history of Sokoto's foundation, the reign of Bello, and 'text\-books' for her students, Asmau was from time to time invited to advise some emirs and sultans on emergent matters of state and rules of conduct. One of her works titled 'Tabbat Hakiya' (1831\), is a text about politics, informs people at all levels of government about their duties and responsibilities. She writes that; "Rulers must persevere to improve affairs, Do you hear? And you who are ruled, do not stray: Do not be too anxious to get what you want. Those who oppress the people in the name of authority Will be crushed in their graves… Instruct your people to seek redress in the law, Whether you are a minor official or the Imam himself. Even if you are learned, do not stop them." Asmau, like many West African scholars who could voice their criticism of politicians, also authored critiques of corrupt leaders. An example of this was the regional governor called ɗan Yalli, who was dismissed from office for misconduct, and about whom she wrote; "Thanks be to God who empowered us to overthrow ɗan Yalli. Who has caused so much trouble. He behaved unlawfully, he did wanton harm.. We can ourselves testify to the Robberies and extortion in the markets, on the Highways and at the city gateways". As an established scholar, Asmau corresponded widely with her peers across West Africa. She had built up a reputation as an intellectual leader in Sokoto and was recognized as such by many of her peers such as the Sokoto scholar Sheikh Sa'ad who wrote this of her; "Greetings to you, O woman of excellence and fine traits! In every century there appears one who excels. The proof of her merit has become well known, east and west, near and far. She is marked by wisdom and kind deeds; her knowledge is like the wide sea." Asmau’s fame extended beyond Sokoto, for example, the scholar Ali Ibrahim from Masina (in modern Mali) wrote: "She \ She also exchanged letters with a scholar from named Alhaji Ahmad bin Muhammad al\-Shinqiti, and welcomed him to Sokoto during his pilgrimage to Mecca, writing: "Honour to the erudite scholar who has left his home To journey to Medina. Our noble, handsome brother, the hem of whose scholarship others cannot hope to touch. He came bearing evidence of his learning, and the universality of his knowledge." Asm’u died in 1864­ at the age of 73, and was laid to rest next to the tomb of the Shehu. Her brother and students composed elegies for her, one of which read that "At the end of the year 1280 Nana left us, Having received the call of the Lord of Truth. When I went to the open space in front of Giɗaɗo’s house I found it too crowded to pass through Men were crying, everyone without exception Even animals uttered cries of grief they say. Let us fling aside the useless deceptive world, We will not abide in it forever; we must die. The benevolent one, Nana was a peacemaker. She healed almost all hurt." After Nana Asma’u’s death, her student and sister Maryam Uwar Deji succeeded her as the leader of the ‘Yan Taru, and became an important figure in the politics of Kano, an emirate in Sokoto. Asmau’s students, followers, and descendants carried on her education work among the women of Sokoto which continued into the colonial and post\-colonial era of northern Nigeria. --- Conclusion: Asmau’s career and Muslim women in African history. Nana Asmau was a highly versatile and polymathic writer who played a salient role in the history of West Africa. She actively shaped the political structures and intellectual communities across Sokoto and was accepted into positions of power in both the secular and religious contexts by many of her peers without attention to her gender. The career of Asmau and her peers challenge Western preconceptions about Muslim women in Africa (such as those held by Hugh Clapperton and later colonialists) that presume them to be less active in society and more cloistered than non\-Muslim women. The corpus of Asmau provides firsthand testimony to the active participation of women in Sokoto's society that wasn't dissimilar to the . Asmau's life and works are yet another example of the complexity of African history, and how it was constantly reshaped by its agents \-\-both men and women. --- To the south of Sokoto was the old kingdom of Benin, which had for centuries been in close contact with European traders from the coast. These foreigners were carefully and accurately represented in Benin’s art across five centuries as their relationship with Benin evolved. read more about the evolution of Europeans in Benin’s art here: --- Thank you for reading African History Extra. This post is public so feel free to share it. ·June 19, 2022 Feminist or Simply Feminine ? Reflection on the Works of Nana Asma'u by Chukwuma Azuonye pg 67, Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 29\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 29\-30 The Fulani Women Poets by Jean Boyd pg 128\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 31\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 26\-27\) One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 7\-10, 12\-13\. Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 198\-202, Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 34\-35\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 85, 87\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 18\-20 One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 63\-75 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 147, n. 344, Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 46\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 28\-31\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd 69\-70\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 81\-84, Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 68\-72\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 81\-82, One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 48\-49 One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 83\-85\-88 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 70\) One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 76\-79 Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 94\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 246, One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 40\-43 Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 90\-100, One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 36\-37, 89 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg pg 245\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 101\) One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 79\-83 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 38, One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe By Beverly B. Mack, Jean Boyd pg 23\-25 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 97\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 264\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 95\-96 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 250 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 375\-377\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 88\-95\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 43, 49\-50\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd 107\-108, 123, 130\-131, Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 276\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 285 Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 289\) Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo pg 283 Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 137\-138\) Educating Muslim Women: The West African Legacy of Nana Asma u 1793\-1864 By Beverley Mack, Jean Boyd pg 148\) Listed at the SOAS with the title but is more likely to be the poem titled ‘Begore’ in Hunwick’s ALOA Vol.2, that opens with the line ‘Fa mu gode jalla da yayyi annur na Ahmada.’ The second poem is one of the recent discoveries by the Feminist or Simply Feminine ? Reflection on the Works of Nana Asma'u by Chukwuma Azuonye pg 72\-73 23 3)

a brief note on African agency in its historical contacts with the rest of the world. in a brief note on African agency in its historical contacts with the rest of the world. the indigenous and the foreign in Benin art )Contacts between people of different societies and cultures are one the most important subjects of research undertaken by historians and anthropologists. But in African historiography, most studies of cultural contacts and discovery used to be concerned with the study of foreign perceptions of Africa and Africans, with relatively few studies being devoted to the African view of non\-African people and societies, and how they evolved over time, especially during the era of mutual discovery beginning in the late 15th century. This asymmetrical focus on the perspectives of non\-Africans has created a false division between active and passive participants in cultural contacts, not just in research about the individual figures who participated in these exchanges, but also in the analysis of the "hybridized" objects, structures, and styles produced as a result of the contacts between African and non\-Africans. Fortunately, the recent shift to studying the perspectives of Africans in their cultural contacts with the rest of the world has revised previous ideas about Africa's role in the era of mutual discovery. As more research re\-evaluates the impact of Africa's international relations on global history in general and African history in particular, a more coherent perspective on the initiative of Africans and their artistic creativity has emerged. Recent publications such as David Northrup's 'Africa's Discovery of Europe’ and Michał Tymowski's 'Europeans and Africans' have positioned Africans as fully articulated historical agents in the era of mutual discovery. While studies focused on the material impact of such interactions like Verena Krebs' ‘Medieval Ethiopian Kingship’ and Manuel Joao Ramos' ‘The Indigenous and the Foreign in Christian Ethiopian Art' have reframed previous ideas about African agency in the creation of the 'hybridized' artwork and architecture of the period. My articles about the African diaspora in , , , , , , the , and , have continued this theme of highlighting African agency in its contacts with the rest of the world. Similar articles such as the , the West Africans in and , and the , explore the contribution of these diasporic Africans to the diverse cultural and intellectual traditions of their host societies. The impact of Africa's contacts with the rest of the world and the African perception of non\-Africans appear in the art traditions of the kingdoms of , as well as in the artworks of the , all of which demonstrate the evolution in the image of the European in African art. Among these four African societies, the kingdom of Benin provides the most comprehensive visual document representing foreign objects and peoples in African art across five centuries of contact. The nature of cultural exchanges between the indigenous and the foreign in Benin’s art is the subject of my latest Patreon article. Please subscribe to read about it here: --- the were erroneously thought to be the product of an ancient society influenced by Greco\-Roman tradition, but besides the similarity in sophistication, the kingdom of Ife had no contact with the ancient Mediterranean. Thank you for reading African History Extra. This post is public so feel free to share it. for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe29 )

The radical philosophy of the Hatata: a 17th century treatise by the Ethiopian thinker Zara Yacob in The radical philosophy of the Hatata: a 17th century treatise by the Ethiopian thinker Zara Yacob the historical context of the Hatata in African philosophy. 4)The 'Hatata' treatise of the 17th\-century Ethiopian scholar Zärä Yaqob and his student Wäldä Heywät is one of the best\-known and most celebrated works of African philosophy. The radical ideas espoused by its authors have been especially useful in the study of pre\-colonial African philosophy, and are often favorably compared to contemporary Enlightenment thinkers in the Western world like René Descartes and Jean\-Jacques Rousseau. However, the lively debate sparked by such comparisons has inadvertently obscured the historical context in which the Hatata was written, and the significance of its contribution to Africa's epistemic traditions. This article explores the Hatata in its historic context as a product of its authors' intellectual background and the competitive cultural landscape of Ethiopia during the 'Gondarine period', and its similarities with other works of African philosophy. Map of Ethiopia a century before the time of Zara Yacob --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The Historical Context of the Hatata. Zara Yacob was an Ethiopian scribe born in August 1600 near the ancient city of Aksum where he lived and studied for most of his early life and where he taught for at least four years. He fled from Aksum when Emperor Susenyos (r. 1607\-1632\) made Catholicism the state religion in 1626 and persecuted those still loyal to the Ethiopian church, before returning later to live in the town of Enfranz when the emperor abdicated in 1632\. In the same year, he gained a patron named Lord Habtu who was the father to Walda Gabryel and Walda Heywat, the latter of whom became his student. In 1668, Zara Yacob completed his Hatata ('inquiry'), at the request of his student Walda Heywat. Sometime after 1693, Walda Heywat wrote his own Hatata, exploring the same themes as his teacher but in greater detail. He later wrote an epilogue to Zara Yacob's Hatata during the early 1700s, and copies of both manuscripts were obtained in 1854 by an Italian visitor to Ethiopia and sent to his patron, who then passed them on to the ‘Bibliothèque Nationale de France’ where they’d be later translated. The Hatata explores multiple interwoven themes using a method of philosophical inquiry that were deeply rooted in the Ethiopian cultural context of their authors. Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat lived during the a dynamic era in Ethiopian history marked by; the restoration of the state and church after its near annihilation; the ideological conflicts between the Ethiopian clergy and the Susenyos’ Portuguese (Jesuit) allies; and the civil war between Susenyos' supporters and those loyal to the Ethiopian church, which ended when his son Fasilidas become emperor in 1632 and expelled the Jesuits. Many of these events are mentioned in Zara Yacob’s biography. --- --- Like all Ethiopian scribes, Zara Yacob received his education from the traditional schools of Ethiopia, with all its major stages of study, as well as the more advanced levels like the Nebab Bet, (house of reading), the Zema Bet (house of music), the Qeddase Bet, (house of liturgy), the Qene Bet (house of poetry). The various subjects taught in these stages, which include theology, law, poetry, grammar, history, and philosophy, and the extensive works memorized by the students; which include ‘the gospels’, commentaries, psalters, law, history, and other subjects, are all reflected in the Hatata which explicitly references some of them. Influences from the broader corpus of Ethiopian literature are reflected in the Hatata, not just the more familiar works listed above on which students are trained in school, but also works circulating among the different monasteries. These include the Mäşhafä fälasfa (The Book of the Wise Philosophers) a collection of classical philosophical texts translated into Ge’ez in the 16th century, the Fisalgos, which is a much older work of classical philosophy translated into Ge’ez in the 6th\-7th century, and the ‘Life and Maxims of Skəndəs’, a lesser known work translated to Ge’ez around the 15th century. Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat also comment on the ideological conflicts of the era between the different political and religious factions, including the Ethiopian\-Christians, the Catholics (Portuguese), the Muslims (both Ethiopian and non\-Ethiopian), the Betä Ǝsraʾel (Ethiopian Jews), and even the Indians (craftsmen and artisans who accompanied the Portuguese) and the ancient religion of the ‘Sabaeans and Homerites’ (an anachronistic reference to the Aksumite vassals in Arabia). They also comment on the pre\-existing social hierarchy and tensions between this diverse and cosmopolitan society of 17th\-century Ethiopia. So while Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat were radicals and free\-thinkers whose writings were skeptical of established theology and philosophy in Ethiopia and beyond, they drew from a conceptual vocabulary and critical approach steeped in Ethiopian tradition. The philosophy of Zara Yacob has been described by many scholars as ‘rational,’ ‘humanist,’ and ‘liberal,’ inviting comparisons (and contrasts) with Descartes and Rousseu, as well as arguments that Zara Yacob in some ways pre\-empted Enlightenment thought on the existence of God, rationalism, and natural rights. While there are certainly many passages in the Hatata that warrant such comparisons, attempts to fit the treatise into Western philosophical categories risk obscuring the cultural and historical context in which its authors were writing, and may invite (uninformed) criticism from detractors, all of which ultimately overlook the remarkably radical contribution of Zara Yacob to Ethiopian and African thought. Zara Yaqob's Hatata argues for putting one’s own rational thoughts and investigations at the center of one’s life and actions rather than uncritically following established wisdom, while the Hatata of Walda Heywat is a more didactic text on how we should live. For the sake of brevity, I will quote two chapters from the Hatata of Zara Yacob and the Hatata of Walda Heywat which I think stand out the most: --- Zara Yacob's Hatata; Chapter 7: "My Inquiry Regarding the Truth of Different Religions" > And later, I thought, ‘Is all that is written in the sacred books true?’ I thought a lot, but \[in spite of this thinking,] I didn’t understand anything. > > So, I said \[to myself], ‘I will go, and I will ask learned people and those who question deeply, and they will tell me the truth’. > > And after this, I thought, ‘What answer will people give me except that which is already present in their hearts?’ > > In fact, everyone says, ‘My religion is correct, and those who believe in another religion believe in something false, and they are enemies of God’. > > Now, the färänǧ \[ European Catholics ] say to us, ‘Our creed is good, and your creed is evil’. But we \[Ethiopians] answer them, ‘It is not evil; rather your creed is evil and our creed is good’. > > Now, suppose we asked Muslims and Jews \[about their belief]? They would say the same thing to us. > > Also, if they argued the case in this debate, who would be the judge? No human being \[could judge] because all human beings have become judgemental, and they condemn each other. > > First, I asked a färänǧ scholar about many things concerning our \[Ethiopian] creed and he decided everything \[was right or wrong] according to his own creed. > > Afterwards, I asked a great Ethiopian teacher, and he \[likewise] decided everything according to his creed. > > If we asked Muslims and Jews about the same things, they would also decide according to their own religion. > > Where will I find someone who will decide \[on the religions and creeds] truthfully? Because \[just as] my religion seems true to me, so does another’s religion seem true to them. But, there is only one truth. > > As I turned these things over in my mind, I thought, ‘O wisest and most righteous Creator, who created me with the faculty of reason, give me understanding’. > > For wisdom and truth are not found among human beings, but as David said \[in Psalms], ‘‘indeed, everyone is a liar’ > > I thought and said \[to myself], ‘Why do human beings lie about these vital matters \[of religion], such that they destroy themselves?’ > > It seemed to me that they lie because they know nothing at all, although they think they are knowledgeable. Therefore, because they think they are knowledgeable, they don’t search to find out the truth”... Walda Heywat's Hatata, Chapter 5: "My Inquiry regarding Religious Faith" > Concerning what remains—human teachings and books—we should not believe them hastily, without inquiry. Rather we should \[only] accept these teachings intentionally, after extensive investigation, as long as we see them as being in harmony with our intelligence. That is to say, our intelligence will be the measure of whether we should believe in them, and what our intelligence affirms as untrue we should not believe. Neither should we hastily say, ‘It’s a lie!’—for we don’t know whether it’s true or false. Instead, because of this \[ignorance] let’s say, ‘We won’t believe it because we don’t understand it’. > > If people say to me, ‘Why don’t you believe everything that is written in books, as those before us did?’ > > I would reply to them, ‘Because books are written by human beings who are capable of writing lies’. > > If people further say to me, ‘Why don’t you believe?’ I would reply to them, ‘Tell me why you believe? After all, no reason is needed for not believing, but it is needed for believing. What reason do you have to believe in everything that is written? You have no reason except this alone: that you have heard from human mouths that what’s written is true. But don’t you understand? \[Just] because they tell you, “What’s written is true”, doesn’t mean they \[actually] know whether it’s true or false. Rather, just as you heard this from them, they too heard it from those before them. In the same way, all those ancestors believed in human words, even though they might have been lies, and not in God’s words. \[And regarding that speech,] God does not speak to you except through the voice of your intelligence’. > > If people say to me, ‘It’s not like that! Rather, God has spoken to human beings and revealed his truth to them!’ > > I would reply to them, ‘How do you know that God has spoken with human beings and revealed his truth to them? Isn’t it rather that you heard it from human mouths, who testified that they heard it from \[other] human mouths? Must you always believe human words, even though they could be lies? Whether it’s true or false, you believe \[it] unthinkingly’. > > So, inquire! Don’t say in your hearts, ‘We are steadfast in our religion, which cannot be false!’ Pay attention! For human beings lie about religious matters, because religions are utterly inconsistent. Human beings don’t give reasonable explanations about what’s right for us to believe. So, they put an inquiring heart into a total quandary. > > Look, one tells us, ‘Believe in the religion of Alexandria!’ > > Another tells us, ‘Believe in the religion of Rome!’ > > And a third tells us, ‘Believe in the religion of Moses!’ > > And a fourth tells us, ‘Believe in Mohammed’s religion, Islam!’ > > Further, Indians have a different religion! > > So do Himyarites and Sabeans, and \[many] other peoples. > > They all say, ‘Our religion is from God!’ > > But how can God, who is righteous in all his actions, reveal one religion to one group, and another to another group? And how can all these different religions be from God? Which of them is true, requiring us to believe in it? > > Tell me, if you know, because I don’t know! I will only believe what God has revealed to me \[if it comes] through the light of my intelligence. That way I won’t be misled in my religious faith. > > If someone should say to me, ‘Unless you believe, God’s judgement will fall on you!’ > > I will say to them, ‘God can’t order me to believe in lies. And he can’t judge me for a religious faith that I have rejected because it doesn’t seem true to me. For he gave me the light of my intelligence to distinguish good from evil, and truth from lies. This intelligent light reveals absolutely nothing as to whether all human religions are true, but it does clarify for me that all religions arise from human error and not from God. Thus, for this reason I have rejected them \’ --- --- The philosophy of the Hatata Zara Yacob's chapter (and most of his Hatata) is presented in an autobiographical style of a writer recording the meaningful events of his life and the result of his meditations. Zara Yacob’s method can be called a discursive subjugation of faith to intelligence or natural reason. The Hatata was a product of Zara Yacob's personal reflection upon events that affected his life, with each introspective moment being a ‘penetrating intuition into the sense of history as it conditions his life’. On the other hand, Walda Heywat's chapter (and his Hatata) follows a dialectical 'box' pattern in which he develops a thesis; on how we ought to follow only what agrees with our reason, which he then follows up with a question\-and\-answer pattern; arguing that all faiths proceed from man's error, and he thus concludes by affirming his original thesis that he only believes what God demonstrated to him by the light of reason. While there are parallels between the writing of Walda Heywat and his tutor, the former was more influenced by the pedagogical method of traditional Ethiopian teaching, as well as wisdom literature such as the Mashafa falsafa, from which he borrowed at least five short stories that are included in other chapters of his treatise. He reproduces the traditional oral style of a sage instructing his pupils, or a parent with their child, addressing his readers like they were his disciples without assuming a superior attitude. I believe that these two chapters, out of a combined fifty\-seven chapters of both Hatatas, provide the best summary of the philosophical arguments presented in the treatise, and inform us about the authors' perspectives on the themes they explore. For example; Zara Yacob describes his personal interpretation of religion as such: "As for me, I lived with human beings, seeming like a Christian to them. But, in my heart, I did not believe—except in God the creator of everything and the protector of everything, as he had given me to know", adding that "I lived with people as if I was like them, and I dwelled with God in the way that he had given me to know”. He later argues that although religious laws contain "lies mingled together with truth" and "detestable wisdoms", the basic commandments (nine in the Old Testament and six in the New Testament) agree with the intelligence/reasoning of every human being. He therefore argues that religion "is desirable because it gets good things done, for it terrifies the wicked into not doing evil things and it consoles the good for their patient endurance". According to Zara Yacob, religion is a bilateral rapport between the individual and God, without any ecclesiastical restrictions in between or, in his words, without the “pointless” commandments that man has added. It’s in this context that Zara Yacob constructs his critique of all forms of religious laws by differentiating between what he considers 'God's law' and 'Man's law', with the latter being of limited use, while the former is ‘original’ and ‘illuminated by a total intelligence’. He criticizes ascetic Christian monks who shun marriage, writing that "the Christians’ law says, ‘the ascetic monastic life is better than marriage’, it’s telling a lie and it’s not from God. For, how can the Christian law that violates the Creator’s law be better than his wisdom?". He then turns to criticize Islamic law on polygamy, arguing that since there are equal numbers of men and women, marrying many women violates God's law. He also criticizes the law of Moses on menstruation being impure, arguing that "This ‘law of Moses’ makes marriage and a woman’s entire life difficult because it annuls \ Zara Yacob's pattern of inquiry and criticism of established wisdom is followed in most chapters of his Hatata. It is also reflected in his personal philosophy regarding; the equality of men and women in marriage; the internecine and retributive violence between rival factions during Fasilidas' reign; and his role as the tutor of Walda Heywat for whom he wrote the Hatata. In his Hatata, Walda Heywat faithfully follows Zara Yacob's teachings: "I don’t write what I have heard others say. Indeed, I have never accepted others’ teaching without inquiring into it and understanding whether it is good. I only write what appears true to me after inquiring into it and understanding it … never believe what is written in books except that content which you have scrutinized and found to be truthful." This is similar to Zara Yacob's criticism of those who follow established wisdom and religious law, to whom he addresses that: "They don’t believe in all these because they investigated them and found them to be true, rather they believe in them because they heard about them from their ancestors" The two philosophical works presuppose the power of comprehending and inferring, which is necessary for the reader to differentiate between the lies perpetuated by those who uncritically accept received wisdom and the truths acquired from independent thinking. Walda Heywat continues Zara Yacob’s method of philosophical inquiry across the rest of the chapters of his book, covering a broad range of topics including; Human nature, religion, marriage, work, education, justice, equality of all people, acceptance of other cultures, and advice for leaders. For example, he writes; “Don’t be impressed with the teaching of those inferior in wisdom, who say \” This was a very radical view for an Ethiopian scribe living in the 17th century when the tensions between the Ethiopian\-Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and pagans were such that some settlements had begun to be segregated by faith, with official edicts enforcing these restrictions that would only be loosened at the end of the Gondarine period. On tolerance of other cultures; “if you ‘desire to see good days’, be in harmony with everyone, in love and peace. To achieve this goal, the wisdom of the ancients is beneficial: ‘When you live among your own \[people], live according to the customs of your homeland, but should you go to a foreign land, be like them’… Don’t do anything which is not good according to that \[country’s] custom. Don’t say, ‘this action \[of mine] is not offensive’! Rather, on the contrary, praise the customs of the country that you are living in. Be united with the people of that country, and pray that God will be gracious to everyone according to their character, customs, and actions”. And in his advice to rulers; “If you are put in charge of others, don’t treat them with a heavy hand, or mistreat them with your power. Instead, be fair to everyone, high or low, rich, or poor, and without being timid in others’ presence, but administering justice with righteousness and impartiality. Don’t subjugate others with bitter servitude or enslavement. Instead, protect them as if they were your own children.” In response to his critics who rejected his questioning of established wisdom, Walda Heywat writes; "I won’t write anything which is inconsistent with our intelligence, but only what is present in the heart of all human beings. I write to turn the wise and intelligent toward inquiry, through which they may ‘seek and find’ truth. For inquiring into everything is beautiful wisdom." --- Conclusion: the ‘Hatata’ in African philosophy. Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat occupy an important place in the development of African philosophy. According to both philosophers, Hatata (Inquiry) is the supreme criterion of philosophy, the only way to differentiate between the lies of established dogma and the self\-evident truths revealed through the exercise of reason and independent thought. I find in Walda Heywat’s Hatata some parallels with the work of the 19th\-century West\-African philosopher Dan Tafa, who argued for the use of rational proofs in determining the existence of God and religious laws. , but retracted some of his radical arguments and promised not to teach philosophy to his students anymore. The fact that both African philosophers included a defense of their ideas against criticism underscores the competitive intellectual environment in which such ideas emerged, which allowed room for some scholars to challenge established wisdom, and in other cases even to y. However, it also points to resistance by established elites against such radical thinking, which was a common experience of many philosophers around the world before their ideas were gradually adopted. Criticism of Walda Heywat and Dan Tafa can be contrasted with the relatively “conformist” philosophical treatise of the , which was well\-received in the intellectual communities of the East African coast, appearing in the works of later scholars. The Hatata is an excellent example of modern practical philosophy, and a monumental work of African philosophy that adds to the wealth of Africa’s intellectual heritage --- The intellectual heritage of Africa includes not just philosophy, but also scientific works such as the mathematical treatise of the 18th century West African scholar Muhammad al\-Kashnāwī, which also drew comparisons with contemporary mathematicians in the Western world. please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Matteo Salvadore ·October 2, 2022 The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 1\-16\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 5\-7, Traditional Institutions and Traditional Elites by Paulos Milkias pg 81\-82 Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 2 by Claude Sumner pg 119\-127, Perspectives in African Philosophy: Teaching and research in philosophy: Africa by UNESCO pg 160\-163 The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs\-Moner and Victor M. Fernández, pg 470\-472 The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 37\-38 Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 56\-63, 72, 217, Tirguaamme: An Ethiopian Methodological Contribution for Post\-Socialist Knowledge Traditions in Africa by Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes pg 275 ‘’ by Dag Herbjørnsrud, Ethiopian philosophy pg 56\-63, 69, 72, 74\-79, 93\-94, 309\-310, Ethiopian contention on the issue of Rationality by Belayneh Girma The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 70\-73\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 117\-119\) Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics edited by Teodros Kiros pg 70 Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 31, 49\) Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 41\-42\) Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 37\-40, 46\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 107, ie; the Ten Commandments minus the Sabbath, which was a very contentious issue in Ethiopia and Zara Yacob also admits that “our intelligence does not confirm or deny it”. The 6 commandments of the New Testament are those mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 25:35–36, and are considered even more important than the Ten, see n. 6,9, pg 87 of the ‘The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob’ The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 75, 82, 87 Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 67, 81\-83\) Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics edited by Teodros Kiros pg 72 Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics edited by Teodros Kiros pg 74 Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 102\-104\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 75\-77 The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 78\-79\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 100\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 103\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 105\-106\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 112\-113\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 74\) Ethiopian Philosophy, Volume 3 by Claude Sumner pg 105\) The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 131 A Social History of Ethiopia by Richard Pankhurst pg 207\-247, Muslim Partners, Catholic Foes by Matteo Salvadore pg 62, Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs\-Moner pg 24\-29\. The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 156 The Hatata Inquiries by Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat, translated by Ralph Lee with Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher pg 119\) 25 4)

a brief note on the intellectual contributions of African scholars in the diaspora in a brief note on the intellectual contributions of African scholars in the diaspora the biography of a West African mathematician in Cairo. 4)Around the year 1198, the West African scholar Ibrahim al\-Kanimi from the town of Bilma (in Niger) traveled to the Almohad capital Marakesh (in Morocco), and gained the audience of its sultan, before moving to Seville (in Spain) where he settled and became a celebrated grammarian and poet that appeared in many Andalusian biographies of the time. Al\-Kanimi’s career exemplifies the patterns of the global intellectual exchanges in which several African scholars in the diaspora played an important role. Historical inquiries into the African diaspora across the old world often pay less attention to the intellectual contributions of those Africans to the societies that hosted them, thus leaving us with an incomplete picture of the role of Africans in global history. Yet many diasporic Africans whose biographies are known were important scholars who left a significant intellectual legacy across the world. In the 16th century, turned their monastery of Santo Stefano degli Abissini (near the Vatican Basilica) into a center of Africanist knowledge, where theological, geographic, and political information regarding Ethiopia and the Eastern Christian world could be obtained from scholars like Täsfa Seyon —who had an influence on Pope Marcellus II and Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola. Similarly, in Portugal's capital Lisbon, the Ethiopian envoy Sägga Zäᵓab wrote a critique of the dogmatic Catholic counter\-reformation in his 'faith of the Ethiopians' in 1534, writing that "It would be much wiser to welcome in charity and Christian love all Christians, be they Greeks, Armenians, Ethiopians…because we are all sons of baptism and share the true faith." The book was well received by European scholars in the regions opposed to the counter\-reformation, most notably the Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus, and his student; the Portuguese philosopher Damião de Góis, who eventually published 'The Faith' in 1540\. In the 18th century, some of the West African scholars who had been visiting the pilgrimage cities of Mecca and Medina eventually settled in the region and became influential teachers in the scholarly community (ulama) of Medina. , an influential hadith teacher whose students include many prominent figures of the era, such as; the qadi of Mecca, Abd al\-Ḥāfiẓ al\-ʿUjaymī (d. 1820\); the Moroccan Tijānī scholar Ḥamdūn al\-Ḥājj (d. 1857\); and the Indian scholar Muḥammad al\-ʿAbīd al\-Sindī (d. 1841\) who became the qadi and shaykh of the ulama of medina. Among the most prominent diasporic communities of African scholars was the , whose presence extended from Yemen to Medina to Cairo, and who included prominent figures such as the historian Abd al\-Rahman al\-Jabarti (d. 1825\) who was one of the most prominent scholars in Ottoman Egypt. Al\-jabarti was also acquainted with many of his peers, including the Timbuktu scholar Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al\-Tunbuktī, whom he refers to as an eminent teacher in Medina. Al\-Jabarti's father, Hasan al\-Jabarti penned a glowing tribute to the Kastina mathematician Muhammad al\-Kashnāwī, who was also his teacher, describing him as "the cynosure, the theologian, the ocean of learning, the sea of knowledge, the unparalleled, the garden of science and disciplines, the treasury of secret and witticisms” The biography and works of Muhammad al\-Kashnāwī are the subject of my latest Patreon article, focusing on the West African scholar's contributions to the scientific writings of Egypt. please subscribe to read about it here: --- \] --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeIbrahim al\-Kanimi figure illustre dans les relations culturelles entre le Maroc et Bilad as\-Sudan by Mohammed Ben Cherifa pp. 131\-132, Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of central Sudanic Africa Vol.2\) by John Hunwick pg 17\-18\. An Ethiopian Scholar in Tridentine Rome by Matteo Salvadore pg 29\-30, A Companion to religious minorities in Early Modern Rome by Matthew Coneys Wainwright pg 154\-155 Damião de Gois by Elisabeth Feist Hirsch, pg 58, 74, 121, 148\-151, 153 Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts edited by Ousmane Kane pg 33 A Guide to ʻAbd Al\-Raḥmān Al\-Jabartī's History of Egypt: ʻAjāʼib Al\-āthār Fī ʼl\-tarājim Waʼl\-akhbār, by Abd al\-Raḥmān Jabartī, Thomas Philipp, Guido Schwald pg 342\-343 The Arabic Literature of Nigeria to 1804 by ADH Bivar pg 136 31 4)

The General History of Africa \- by isaac Samuel in The General History of Africa a comprehensive look at states and societies across the continent's entire history. 7)African historiography has come a long way since the old days of colonial adventure writing. Following the re\-discovery of countless across , many of which and several of which have been studied, including , and lesser\-known documents such as those written in the , the , and ; We are now sufficiently informed on , and can combine these historical documents with the developments in African archeology and linguistics, to discredit the willful ignorance of and This article outlines a general history of Africa. It utilizes hundreds of case studies of African states and societies from nearly every part of the continent that I have previously covered in about two hundred articles over the last three years, inorder to paint a more complete picture of the entire continent’s past. \[click on the links for sources] --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by joining our Patreon community, and help keep this newsletter free for all: --- Africa from the ancient times to the classical era. Chronologically, the story of begins in the Nile valley (see map below) where multiple as part of a fairly uniform cultural spectrum which in the 3rd millennium BC produced the earliest complex societies such as the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Nubian A\-Group culture and the kingdom of Kerma. At its height in 1650 BC, the kings who resided in the capital of Kerma controlled a vast swathe of territory that is described as The rulers of Kerma also forged military and commercial alliances with the civilization of Punt, which . In West Africa, the neolithic culture of as Africa’s oldest complex society outside the Nile valley, and would lay the foundations for the rise of the Ghana empire. To its south were groups of semi\-sedentary populations that constructed the beginning around 1350 BC. The central region of west Africa in modern Nigeria was home to the and is renowned for its vast corpus of terracotta artworks, as well as some of the oldest evidence for the independent invention of iron smelting in Africa. In the Lake Chad basin, the Gajigana Neolithic complex emerged around 1800BC in a landscape characterized by large and nucleated fortified settlements, the biggest of which was the and perhaps the aethiopian auxiliaries of Carthage that invaded Sicily and Roman Italy. In the Nile valley, the geographic and , with Nubian mercenaries and priestesses settling in Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Luxor, all of whom were later joined Nubian elites from Kush who settled in Thebes, Abydos, and Memphis. By the and the eastern Mediterranean and left a remarkable legacy in many ancient societies from the ancient Assyrians, Hebrews, and Greeks who referred to them as 'blameless aethiopians.' After Kush's withdrawal from Egypt, the kingdom continued to flourish and eventually established its capital at Meroe, which became one of the largest cities of the ancient world, , and the birthplace of one of Africa's oldest writing systems; the Meroitic script. The Meroitic kingdom of , which were a product of Nubian mortuary architecture as it evolved since the Kerma period, and are attested across various Meroitic towns and cities in both royal and non\-royal cemeteries. The kingdom of after successfully repelling a Roman invasion, thus beginning an extensive period of To the east of Kush was the Aksumite empire, which occupied an important place in the history of late antiquity when due to its control of the lucrative trade between Rome and India, and its formidable armies which conquered parts of Arabia, Yemen and the kingdom of Kush. , ruled by the illustrious king Abraha who organized what is arguably the first international diplomatic conference with delegates from Rome, Persia, Aksum and their Arab vassals. --- The African Middle Ages (500\-1500 CE) After the fall of Kush in the 4th century, the Nubian kingdom of Noubadia emerged in Lower Nubia and was which had seized control of Egypt and expelled the Byzantines in the 7th century. Noubadia later merged with its southern neighbor, the Nubian kingdom of Makuria, and both armies defeated another Arab invasion in 651\. The and planned an alliance with the Crusaders. The expanded the pre\-existing patterns of , such that West African auxiliaries participated in the Muslim expansion into southern Europe and the By the 12th century, oasis towns such as that were engaged in localized trade with the southern kingdom of Kanem which eventually conquered them. The empire of , creating one of Africa's largest polities in the Middle Ages, extending southwards as far as , and eastwards to the western border of the kingdom of Makuria. At its height between the 10th to 13th centuries, the kingdom of , facilitating the movement of pilgrims and religious elites between the two regions. The Zagwe kingdom emerged in the 11th century after the decline of Aksum and is East of the Zagwe kingdom was the sultanate of . The Zagwe kingdom later fell to the ‘Solomonids’ of Ethiopia in the late 13th century who inherited the antagonist relationship between the Christian and Muslim states of North\-East Africa, with one Ethiopian king sending a warning to the Egyptian sultan that; African Christian pilgrims from , where some eventually resided, while others also visited the Byzantine capital Constantinople and the In the same period, , often after a temporary stay in Egypt where West African rulers such as the kings of Kanem had secured for them hostels as early as the 13th century. In many cases, these West African pilgrims were also accompanied by their kings who used the royal pilgrimage as a legitimating device and a conduit for facilitating cultural and intellectual exchanges, with the best documented and in 1324\. of the Middle Ages, thanks not just to the famous pilgrimage of Mansa Musa, but also to one of its rulers’ , as well as Mali’s political and cultural influence on the neighboring societies. To the East of Mali in what is today northern Nigeria . Most notable among these were the cities of Kano, Katsina, Zaria, and Gobir, significantly contributed to the region's cultural landscape, and the . In the distant south\-east of Mali in what is today southern Nigeria was , its religious primacy over the Yorubaland region of southern Nigeria, and its status as one of the earliest non\-Muslim societies in west Africa to appear in external accounts of the middle ages, thanks to its interactions with the Mali empire that included the trade in glass manufactured at Ife. The sculptural art of Ife had its antecedents in the enigmatic kingdom of Nri, which flourished in the 9th century and produced a . The sculptural art tradition of the region would attain its height under the Benin kingdom whose artist guilds created some of . In the immediate periphery of Mali to its west were the old , some of which were under the control of Mali’s rulers. On the empire’s southern border was the and influenced the spread of the distinctive architecture found in the Volta basin region of modern Ghana and Ivory Coast. Straddling Mali’s eastern border was the were within the political and cultural orbit of Mali and its successors like Songhai. On the eastern side of the continent, that were largely populated by diverse groups of Bantu\-speakers such as the Swahili and Comorians. Cosmopolitan cities like Shanga, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi mediated exchanges between the mainland and the Indian Ocean world, including the . The early development of a dynamic maritime culture on the East African coast enabled further expansion into the offshore islands such as the . This , where city\-states like along its northern coastline. The movement of people and exchanges of goods along the East African coast was enabled by the whose mtepe ships carried gold and other commodities as far as India and Malaysia. The gold which enriched the Swahili city\-states was obtained from the kingdoms of south\-eastern Arica which developed around . One of the largest of the Zimbabwe\-style capitals was the that characterized the political landscape of South\-Eastern Africa during this period. Further north of this region in what is now southern Somalia, during the 16th century reinvigorated cultural and commercial exchanges between the coastal cities such as Mogadishu, and the mainland, in a pattern of exchanges that would integrate the region into the western Indian Ocean world. --- Africa and the World during the Middle Ages. Africans continued their exploration of the old world during the Middle Ages, traveling as far as between the 7th and 14th centuries. Another region of interest was the , where there's extensive evidence for the , when Swahili merchants, scholars, craftsmen, pilgrims, and other travelers appeared in both archeological and documentary records. where they often initiated patterns of exchange and migration between the two regions that were facilitated by merchants from various African societies including Aksum, Ethiopia, and the Swahili coast, creating a diaspora that included prominent rulers of some Indian kingdoms. --- African society during the Middle Ages: Religion, Writing, Science, Economy, Architecture, and Art. Political and cultural developments in Africa were shaped by the evolution of its religious institutions, its innovations in science and technology, its intellectual traditions, and the growth of its economies. The , being a product of a gradual evolution in religious practices of societies along the middle Nile, from the cult temples and sites of ancient Kerma to the mixed Egyptian and Nubian deities of the Napatan era to the gods of the Meroitic period. The more common religion across the African Middle Ages was Islam, especially in West Africa where it was adopted in the 11th century, and who are associated with some of the region's oldest centers of learning like Dia and Djenne, long\-distance trade in gold, and the spread of unique architectural styles. ‘Traditional’ religions continued to thrive, most notably the that developed in close interaction with the religious practices of neighboring societies and eventually expanded as far as Tunisia and Burkina Faso. Similar to this was the Yoruba religion of Ifa, which is among Africa's most widely attested traditional religions, and provides a window into the Yoruba’s and the The intellectual networks that developed across Africa during the Middle Ages and later periods were a product of its , while others were established as self\-sustaining communities of scholars across multiple states producing The biographies of several African scholars from later periods have been reconstructed along with their most notable works. Some of the most prolific African scholars include , and . On the other side of the continent, the intellectual networks in the northern Horn of Africa connected many of the region’s scholarly capitals such as Zeila, Ifat, Harar, Berbera with other scholarly communities in the Hejaz, Yemen, and Egypt, where . Along the east African coast, , almost all of which were written in the Swahili language rather than Arabic. Some of Africa’s most prominent scholars had a significant influence beyond the continent. Ethiopian scholars such as Sägga Zäᵓab and Täsfa Sәyon who visited and settled in the cities of Lisbon and Rome during the 16th century engaged in intellectual exchanges, and The writings of West African scholars such as the 18th\-century theologian, . The growth of African states and economies was sustained by everything from metallurgy and glass manufacture to roadbuilding and shipbuilding, to intensive farming and water management, to construction, waste management, and textile making, to the composition of scientific manuscripts on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and Geography. Africa was home to what is arguably . It contains mathematical equations inscribed in cursive Meroitic and drawings of astronomers using equipment to observe the movement of celestial bodies, which was important in timing festivals in Nubia. While popular mysteries of Dogon astronomy relating to the Sirius binary star system were based on a misreading of . A significant proportion of the scientific manuscripts from Africa were , especially in Besides manuscripts on the sciences, religion, philosophy, and poetry, Africans also wrote about music and produced painted art. and instruments that . Additionally, they also created an , being utilized in everything from royal inscriptions to medieval chronicles to the calculation of the Easter computus. African art was rendered in various mediums, some of the most notable include , as well as the . Contrary to common misconception, the history of wheeled transport and road building in Africa reflected broader trends across the rest of the world, with , while others such as Regional and long\-distance trade flourished during the African Middle Ages and later periods. In West Africa, trade was enabled by the , that could ferry goods and passengers across 90% of the river's length Some of the best documented industries in Africa's economic history concern , and played a decisive role in the emergence of early industries on the continent. One of the regions best known for the production of high\-quality textiles was the , some of which ended up in prestigious collections across the western world. The expansion of states and trade across most parts of the continent during the Middle Ages enabled the Some of the African cities whose history is well documented include the , the , the , the , the Hausa , the , the Swahili cities of; , , , and , and lastly, the Ethiopian capital of The growth of cities, trade, and the expansion of states was enabled not just by the organization and control of people but also by the control of land, as various The cities and hinterlands of Africa feature a , some of the best\-known of which include the castles of Gondar, the Nubian temples of Kerma and Meroe, the Swahili palaces and fortresses, the West African mosques and houses, as well as the stone palaces of Great Zimbabwe. Some of the best\-studied , whose constructions include; large palace complexes, walled compounds, double\-story structures with vaulted roofs, and intricately decorated facades. --- Africa during the early modern era (1500\-1800\) The early modern period in African history continues many of the developments of the Middle Ages, as older states expanded and newer states appear in the documentary record both in internal sources and in external accounts. While Africa had for long initiated contact with the rest of the Old World, the arrival of Europeans along its coast began a period of mutual discovery, exchanges, and occasional conflicts. Early invasions by the . Over the succeeding period, African military strength managed to hold the Europeans at bay and dictate the terms of interactions, . The . This strength was attained through combining several innovations including the rapid adoption of new weapons, and also played an important role in the evolution of the military system in parts of the continent during the early modern era, including the to handle them. Bornu's diplomatic overtures to Istanbul and Morroco, and its powerful army enabled it to avoid the fate of But the Moroccans failed to take over Songhai's vassals, thus enabling . In the northern Horn of Africa, Ethiopia was briefly conquered by the neighboring empire of Adal which was supported by the Ottomans, but the In Central Africa the coastal . The . The , which allows us to reconstruct the kingdom's history as told by its own people. While Kongo crushed a major Portuguese invasion in 1622 and 1670, the kingdom became fragmented but was later , in . Another kingdom whose , which, despite its reputation as a 'black Sparta', was neither singularly important in the Atlantic world nor dependent on it. It’s important to note that the . However, the corpus of indicates a localized influence in some regions during specific periods. It is also important to note that , including in . To the east of Dahomey was the and was for some time the suzerain of Dahomey. West of these was the Gold Coast region of modern Ghana, that was dominated by the kingdom of Asante, which reached its height in the 18th and 19th centuries, . On the eastern side of the continent, the , as well as a reorientation of trade and travel, before the Portuguese were expelled by 1698\. In south\-east Africa, the kingdom of In south\-western Africa, the ancient communities of , but the repeated threat of Dutch expansion prompted shifts in , as well as towns such as . In central Africa, the rise of the , and the lucrative trade in copper and ivory the Lunda controlled attracted Ovimbundu and Swahili traders who undertook the first recorded journeys across the region. Increased connectivity in Central Africa did not offer any advantages to the European colonists of the time, as the In the far west of Rozvi was the kingdom of Ndongo and Matamba whose famous . --- Africa and the World during the early modern period. during the early modern period. , some of whose envoys also visited Rome. By the 17th century, African travelers had extended their exploration to the region of western Europe, with several . Africans from the Sudanic often as envoys and scholars. While in eastern Africa, merchants, envoys, sailors, and royals , expanding on pre\-existing links mentioned earlier, with some settling and attaining powerful positions as priests. The eventually Internal exploration across the continent continued, where the The emergence of the as well as the kingdoms of Darfur and Funj in modern Sudan enabled the creation of new routes from West Africa, which facilitated regular . Along the Atlantic coast, --- Africa in the late modern period (18th to 19th centuries) Safe from the threat of external invasion, the states and societies of Africa continued to flourish. In the Comoro Archipelago along the East African coast, . While didn't lead to the establishment of the mythical egalitarian , whose ruler's shifting alliances with the rulers of Nzwani initiated , before the subsumed it. In Central Africa, the 17th and 18th centuries were the height of the . In the far east of Loango was , and south of Kuba was the Luba kingdom, where sculptural artworks like the . In the eastern part of Central Africa, the Great Lakes region was home to several old kingdoms such as Bunyoro, Rwanda, and Nkore, in a highly competitive political landscape which in the 19th century was dominated by , that would play an important role in the region’s contacts and exchanges with the East African coast. In southern Africa, the old heterarchical societies such as built as early as the 16th century were gradually subsumed under that culminated in the so\-called mfecane which gave rise to In West Africa, the period between 1770 and 1840 was also a time of revolution, that led to the formation of large 'reformist' states such as and the , although other states survived such as the . The 'reformist' rulers drew their legitimacy in part from reconstructing local histories such as . Similarly in Sokoto, the empire’s founders and rulers such as Abdullahi Dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello contributing to the so\-called ‘foreign origin’ hypothesis that would be exaggerated by European colonialsts. The 19th century in particular was one of the best documented periods of Africa’s economic history, especially for societies along the coast which participated in the commodities boom. In the Merina kingdom of Madagascar, an ambitious attempt at In Southern Somalia, the , just as the old kingdom of to the Red Sea region and India, while the to the red sea region. In East Africa, the emergence of Zanzibar as a major commercial entrepot greatly expanded pre\-existing trade routes fueled by the as far as modern D.R.Congo In West\-Central Africa, in contrast to the neighboring regions which were coming under colonial rule. In West Africa, participants in the commodities boom of the period included . --- Africa and the World during the late modern period. The 19th century was the height of . African travelers produced detailed first\-hand accounts of their journeys, such as the travel account of the , As well as The 19th century was also the age of imperialism, and the dramatic change in Africa's perception of Europeans can be seen in . --- From Colonialism to Independence. African states often responded to colonial threats by putting up stiff resistance, just like they had in the past. Powerful kingdoms such as the , the Wasulu empire of , the , while the . Some states such as the , while others such as the . But ultimately, only Ethiopia and Liberia succeeded in retaining their autonomy. After half a century of colonial rule that was marked by fierce resistance in many colonies and brutal independence wars in at least six countries (Angola, Algeria, Mozambique, Guinea, Zimbabwe, and Namibia), African states regained their independence and marked the start of a new period in the continent's modern history. --- Conclusion Those looking for shortcuts and generalist models to explain the history of Africa will be disappointed to find that the are no one\-size\-fits\-all theories that can comprehensively cover the sheer diversity of African societies. The only way to critically study the history of the continent is the embrace its complexity, only then can one paint a complete picture of the General History of Africa. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra on Patreon --- Subscribe --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe --- 51 7)

Anti\-slavery laws and Abolitionist thought in pre\-colonial Africa in Anti\-slavery laws and Abolitionist thought in pre\-colonial Africa the view from Benin, Kongo, Songhai and Ethiopia. 1)In 1516, the King of Benin imposed a ban on the exportation of slaves from his kingdom. While little is known about the original purpose of this embargo, its continued enforcement for over two centuries during the height of the Atlantic slave trade reveals the extent of anti\-slavery laws in Africa. A lot has been written about the European abolitionist movement in the 19th century, but there's relatively less literature outlining the gradual process in which anti\-slavery laws evolved in response to new forms of slavery between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. For example, while many European states had anti\-slavery laws during the Middle Ages, the use and trade in slaves (mostly non\-Christian slaves but also Orthodox Christian slaves) continued to flourish, and the later influx of enslaved Africans in Europe after the 1500s reveals that the protections provided under such laws didn't extend to all groups of people. The first modern philosopher to argue for the complete abolition of slavery in Europe was Wilheim Amo —born in the Gold Coast (Ghana)— who in 1729 defended his law thesis ‘On the Rights of Moors in Europe’ using pre\-existing Roman anti\-slavery laws to argue that protections against enslavement also extended to Africans. Amo's thesis, which can be considered the first of its kind in modern abolitionist thought, would be followed up by better\-known abolitionist writers such as Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and William Wilberforce. However, such abolitionist thought would largely remain on paper unless enforced by the state. Official abolition of all forms of slavery that was begun by Haiti in 1807, followed by Britain in 1833 and other states decades later, often didn't mark the end of the institution's existence. Despite abolition serving as a powerful pretext to justify the colonial invasion of Africa, slavery continued in many colonies well into the 20th century. Abolition should therefore be seen as a gradual process in which anti\-slavery laws that were initially confined to the subjects/citizens of a society/state were extended to everyone. Additionally, the efficacy of the anti\-slavery laws was dependent on the capacity of the state to enforce them. And just as anti\-slavery laws in European states were mostly concerned with their citizens, the anti\-slavery laws in African states were made to protect their citizens. In the well\-documented case of the kingdom of Kongo, . During the 1580s and the 1620s, thousands of illegally enslaved Kongo citizens were carefully tracked down and repatriated from Brazil in response to demands by the Kongo King Alvaro I (r. 1568\-1587\) and King Pedro II (r. 1622\-1624\). Kongo's anti\-slavery laws were well\-known by most citizens, in one case, a Kongo envoy who had stopped by Brazil on his way to Rome managed to free a person from Kongo who had been illegally enslaved. Anti\-slavery laws at times extended beyond states to include co\-religionists. In Europe, anti\-slavery laws protected Christians from enslavement by co\-religionists and export to non\-Christians, despite such laws not always being followed in practice. Similarly in Africa, Muslim states often instituted anti\-slavery laws against the enslavement of Muslims. (again, despite such laws not always being followed in practice.) The protection of African Muslims against enslavement was best articulated in the 17th\-century treatise of the Timbuktu scholar Ahmad Baba titled Miraj al\-Suud ila nayl Majlub al\-Sudan (The Ladder of Ascent in Obtaining the Procurements of the Sudan). Court records from Ottoman Egypt during the 19th century include accounts of several illegally enslaved African Muslims who successfully sued for their freedom, often with the help of other African Muslims who were visiting Cairo. African Muslim sovereigns such as the kings of Bornu not only went to great lengths to ensure that their citizens were not illegally enslaved, but also demanded that their neighbors repatriate any enslaved citizens of Bornu. Additionally, the political revolutions that swept 19th\-century West Africa justified their overthrow of the pre\-existing authorities based on the pretext that the latter sold freeborn Muslims to (European) Christians. After the ‘revolutionaries’ seized power, there was a marked decrease in slave exports from the regions they controlled. The evolution of anti\-slavery laws and abolitionist thought in Africa was therefore determined by the state and the religion, just like in pre\-19th century Europe before such protections were later extended to all. In Ethiopia, anti\-slavery laws and abolitionist thought followed a similar trajectory, especially during the 16th and 17th centuries. Pre\-existing laws banning the enslavement and trade of Ethiopian citizens were expanded, and philosophers called for the recognition of all people as equal regardless of their origin. The anti\-slavery laws and abolitionist philosophy of Ethiopia during the 16th and 17th centuries are the subject of my latest Patreon article; Please subscribe to read more about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeBenin and the Europeans, 1485\-1897 by A. F. C. Ryde pg 45, 65, 67, The Slave Trade, Depopulation and Human Sacrifice in Benin History by James D. Graham, A Critique Of The Contributions Of Old Benin Empire To The Trans\-Atlantic Slave Trade by Ebiuwa Aisien pg 10\-12 The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2 pg 30\-35\) That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260\-1500 by Hannah Barker pg 12\-38, The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2 pg 433\-438, 466\-470, 482\-506\) A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441\-1555 By A. Saunders pg 35\-45 Belonging in Europe \- The African Diaspora and Work edited by Caroline Bressey, Hakim Adi pg 40\-41, Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body pg 10\-12 The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition By Manisha Sinha pg 25\-26, 123\-126, Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century By Julia Jorati 187\-192, 267\. The End of Slavery in Africa By Suzanne Miers 7\-25 Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic edited by Derek R. Peterson pg 38\-53, Slavery and its transformation in the kingdom of kongo by L.M.Heywood, pg 7, A reinterpretation of the kongo\-potuguese war of 1622 according to new documentary evidence by J.K.Thornton, pg 241\-243 That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260\-1500 by Hannah Barker pg 39\-55 Slaves and Slavery in Africa Volume 1 edited by John Ralph Willis pg 3\-7\) Slaves and Slavery in Africa Volume 1 edited by John Ralph Willis pg 125\-137, Slaves and Slavery in Africa: Volume Two: The Servile Estate By John Ralph Willis pg 146\-149\) The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3 pg 66\-67\) Jihād in West Africa During the Age of Revolutions by Paul E. Lovejoy 37 1)

The complete history of Brava (Barawa) ca. 1000\-1900: a Swahili enclave in southern Somalia in The complete history of Brava (Barawa) ca. 1000\-1900: a Swahili enclave in southern Somalia Journal of African cities: chapter 11 6)Tucked along the southern coast of Somalia, the old city of Brava preserves the remains of a once bustling cosmopolitan enclave whose influence features prominently in the history of the East African coast. Located more than 500 km north of the Swahili heartland, Brava retained a unique urban society whose language, architecture and culture distinguished it from its immediate hinterland. Its inhabitants spoke a dialect of Swahili called Chimiini, and organised themselves in an oligarchic republic typical of other Swahili cities. They cultivated commercial and political ties with societies across the Indian ocean world and the African mainland, mediating exchanges between disparate communities along the Swahili coast. This article explores the history of Brava and examines its place in the Swahili world between the 11th and 19th century. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The early history of Brava until the 15th century. Archeological and Linguistic evidence for the early history of Brava indicates that it was part of the broader cultural developments occurring in the iron\-age communities of the East African coast during the 1st millennium. These coastal settlements developed a distinct culture marked by mixed farming, commercial ties with the Indian Ocean and African interior, a gradual conversion to Islam, and a common material culture epitomized by local ceramics. Discoveries of 'kwale'\-type wares in the ruins of a rubble and lime house just outside Brava, indicate links with settlements further south in East Africa that are dated to the 3rd\-5th century. More archeological surveys in Brava uncovered imported glazed pottery from the 9th century as well as a funerary inscription dated to 1104 and a mosque inscription dated to 1398, making Brava contemporaneous with the early settlements at Pate, Kilwa, Shanga, and Unguja Ukuu. Such material culture characterizes the oldest settlements of the Sabaki\-speakers of the Bantu\-language family such as the Swahili, kiBajuni, and Comorian languages, thus indicating their presence in Brava and southern Somalia at the turn of the 2nd millennium. But as a consequence of its relative isolation from other Swahili centers, the Chimiini language also contains “archaic” Swahili vocabulary that was lost in other dialects, and it also includes some loan words from the Tunni\-Somali language. Documentary evidence of Brava begins in the 12th century, with Al\-Idrisi's description of the east African coast that includes a brief mention of the town of ‘Barua’ or ‘Maruwa’ which is usually identified as Barawa. He describes it as “the last in the land of the infidels, who have no religious creed but take standing stones, anoint them with fish oil and bow down before them.” Considering the discovery of Islamic inscriptions from a mosque at Brava that are dated to 1105, and the fact that Al\-Idrisi never visited the city, this description likely refers to the mixed society characteristic of Swahili cities in which traditional religions and practices continued to exist alongside Islam. --- --- A more detailed description of Brava is provided in Yemeni sources of the Rasulid era in the 14th century, where one Qadi describes Barāwa (Brava) as a "small locality" near Mogadishu, adding that “There is an anchorage sought by boats from India and from each small city of Sawāḥil,” making Brava an important stop\-point for the Swahili's transshipment trade directed towards Yemeni city of Aden. The importance of Brava in the Swahili world is corroborated by its mention in the 16th century Chronicle of Kilwa as one of the first cities to emerge along the coast, as well as its later ‘conquest’ by the city of Pate in the 14th century, which is mentioned in the Pate chronicle. While Brava wasn’t one of the , the city was visited during three of the voyages of Zheng He, a 15th century Ming\-dynasty official. The two exchanged envoys during the time between his third and seventh voyages (1409\-1433\), with Zheng He being offered camels and ostriches as ‘tribute’. The latter’s companion, Fei Xin, described the people of Brava as honest. A later Portuguese account from the mid\-16th century describes Brava as "well walled, and built of good houses of stone and whitewash". Adding that Brava didn't have a king but was instead ruled as an Oligarchic republic, "governed by its elders, they being honoured and respectable persons." This is a similar structure to other Swahili cities like Lamu, Mombasa, Tumbatu, and the island of Ngazidja that were governed by a council of patricians (waungwana). Brava had been sacked by the Portuguese in 1506, and those who escaped "fled into the country" only returning after the Portuguese had left. --- Subscribe --- Brava from the 16th to the 18th century From their base in Malindi, and later at Mombasa, the Portuguese gradually brought parts of the Swahili coast under their control, but Brava remained mostly independent, despite briefly pledging allegiance in 1529\. Near the end of the century, Oromo\-speakers arrived in parts of Southern Somalia and northern Kenya, compelling some of Brava's hinterland partners such as the Majikenda, to move southwards. This disruption didn’t alter pre\-existing patterns of trade, but reinvigorated the ivory trade between the mainland and the coast. At the turn of the 17th century, the city of Pate in the Lamu archipelago emerged as a most powerful Swahili city, rivaling the Portuguese at Mombasa and bringing Brava into its political orbit. This was partly enabled by Pate's development of trade routes into Yemen and the Hejaz, as well as the arrival and acculturation of individual families of Hadrami\-Sharifs, and Hatimi, these were merchant\-scholars who counterbalanced Portuguese influence. Portuguese accounts of the 17th and 18th centuries often differentiated between the "Mouros da terra" (the native Muslims, ie; Swahili) and the "Mouros de Arabia" (Arab Muslims), often identifying them by the differences in language but attimes by skin color. Dutch and French accounts of the 18th century used the word ‘Moor’ to refer to speakers of the language of the coast (Swahili) as well as the recently arrived immigrants from southern Arabia and the Hejaz, in contrast to the 'Arabs' who were from Oman. However, local constructions of identities in Brava were likely far more complex, as in the urban settlements on the Swahili coast. All immigrant groups —whether they were from the sea, the coast, or the mainland— were often acculturated into the more dominant Swahili\-speaking society through matrimonial alliances, knowledge of the Chimiini dialect, and identifying themselves with individual localities, lineages, and cities, even as they retained prestigious claims of foreign ancestry. For example, the chronicle of Pate chronicle mentions a section of Brava's residents called waBarawa (people from Barawa) some of whom traced their origins to the Hatimi, who apparently originated from Andalusia (Spain), before they settled in Pate during the reign of its king Bwana Mkuu (1586\-1601\) and are said to have “brought many goods” with them. In Brava, These Hatimi married into established local families and began to speak Chimiini as their first language, and some sections of this mixed Bravanese population (attimes called Haramani/Aramani) then migrated further south to the city of Kunduchi, to Mafia Island and to the Mrima coast opposite Zanzibar where they left inscriptions with the nisba (a name indicating a place of origin) of al\-Barawi. Some also adopted the al\-Shirazi nisba common among the elite families of the region at Kilwa and Zanzibar in a pattern of population movements and intermarriage characteristic of the Swahili world. --- --- A report by the Pate sultan to the Portuguese viceroy in 1729 mentions that merchants from Pate sold most of the white and black dhoti (a type of Indian and Local cloth) in Brava in exchange for ivory brought over from the interior by the Oromo. Adding that ships sailed directly from Surat (India) to Brava to avoid Omani\-Arab interference further south. During the same period, envoys from Barawa arrived in Pate to offer the vassalage of their town, hoping for protection from the Oromo. Pate had developed a substantial trade with the Indian cities under Portuguese control such as Surat, and the "shipowners of Barawe" reportedly financed each army with a local ship loaded with ivory for Surat. In 1744 Brava and other Swahili cities refused to recognize the sultan of Oman, Ahmed bin Said, who claimed to be suzerain of the Swahili cities after his predecessors had expelled the Portuguese. His brother, Saif, later traveled to the Swahili coast to collect the support of Brava, among other cities, which "appear to have submitted to him" although this was temporary.In 1770, Brava hosted a deposed Pate sultan named Umar who led a rebellion against the reigning Queen Mwana Khadija. In 1776, a Dutch visitor accompanied by his Comorian interpreter and other Swahili pilots stayed two months in Brava. The Comorian described Brava as "the last safe anchorage" before Mecca and that all the ships that went from Zanzibar and Pate to Mecca and Surat anchored at Brava. Brava was "ruled" by a 'duke' named Tjehamadi who exchanged gifts with the Dutch, and said that he was on "friendly footing with the King of Pate”. Tjehamadi also warned the Dutch that Pate’s king had received information from Mogadishu about a European shipwreck off the coast of Mogadishu, whose entire crew was killed and its goods were taken. The Swahili pilots had also warned the Dutch to avoid Mogadishu, which they said was inhabited by "Arabs and a gathering of evil natives" and that no Moorish or European ships went there. In the later years, Barawa is mentioned in the account of a French trader Morice, along with other Swahili cities, as an independent kingdom governed by Moors (native Muslims) who had expelled the Arabs (Omanis). During his stay on the Swahili coast from 1776\-1784, he observed that there were four small anchorages for small ships along the coastline between Pate and Brava, which were controlled by a group who "do not allow even the Moors or the Arabs to go to them, although they themselves come to Zanzibar." He describes this group as different from the Swahili, Arabs, and the people of the East African mainland, indicating that they were Somali. --- Subscribe --- Brava in the 19th century The above descriptions of Brava's hinterland by the Dutch and French traders likely refer to the ascendancy of the Tunni clan of the Somali\-speaking groups who became important in the Brava’s social landscape and politics during the 19th century, further accentuating Brava's cosmopolitan character. The different communities in Brava, which appear in the city's internal records between 1893\-1900, included not just the Baravanese\-Swahili (known as the Bida/Barawi) and the Hatimi, (these first two groups called themselves ‘waungwana’ and “Waantu wa Miini” ie: people of Brava), but also the Tunni\-Somali (about 2,000 of the total city population of 4\-5,000\). Added to this were a few families of Sharifs and later immigrants such as Hadramis and Baluchis, as well as itinerant European and Indian merchants. All groups gradually achieved a remarkable balance of power and a community of interests that led to a sustained peaceful coexistence. While the city is of considerable antiquity, many of its surviving buildings in the old town appear to have been constructed during the early 19th century ontop of older ruins. The older town, often comprising two\-story houses built with coral stone and rag, with lime\-plastered walls, decorated niches, and carved doors, is bounded by the Jaama mosque on the sea, the Sarmaadi mosque to the southeast, and the Abu Bah Sissiq mosque to the northeast. An early 19th\-century account by a visiting British naval officer indicates that Brava remained in the political orbit of Pate despite the latter’s decline. However, the city itself was still governed by a council of elders who in the late 19th century numbered 7 councilors, of whom five were now Tunni, while the other two were Barawi and Hatimi, reflecting the city's military dependence on the Tunni\-Somali for defense against neighboring groups. Brava was one of the major outlets for ivory, aromatic woods, gum, and myrrh and was a destination for captives that were brought overland from Luqq/Lugh and across the sea from the Mrima coast. The city exported hides to American and German traders at sea, and had a lively real\-estate market with the waungwana selling and buying land and houses in the city. The city's business was mostly handled by the Barawi, Hatimi, and the Sharifs, while the sailors who carried Brava’s goods to Zanzibar and elsewhere were mostly Bajuni (another Bantu\-speaking group related to the Swahili) and Omani\-Arabs. --- --- Brava, like many of the East African coastal cities, later came to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Oman sultan at Muscat and Zanzibar, and the sultan sent a governor to the city in 1837\. However, his authority was mostly nominal, especially in southern Somalia, where the Geledi sultan Yusuf was said to be in control over much of the hinterland just ten years later. In practice, effective authority within the city remained with the elders of Brava who switched their vassalage depending on the region’s political landscape. In 1846, a French visitor found that the Zanzibar\-appointed governor of Brava was a Tunni named Haji Awisa, who was wearing “le costume des Souahhéli de distinction” (the costume of a Swahili of distinction). His son Sheikh Faqi was chosen by the council to be the spokesperson of Brava in Zanzibar, while the leader of the Tunni confederation; Haji Abdio bin Shego Hassan played an important role in the city's politics, and his sons purchased houses in the city, although some of Brava’s Tunni elites sold these properties during the local economic depression of the late 19th\-century caused by the rinderpest epidemic that was introduced by the Italians. Brava became a major center of Sufi scholarship in southern Somalia, closely linked with the scholarly community of Zanzibar, the Hejaz and Yemen. It produced prominent scholars like Muhyi ad\-Din (1794\-1869\), Uways al\-Barawi (1806\-1909\), Qassim al\-Barawi (1878–1922\) , Abdu’l\-Aziz al\-Amawy (1834\-96\), Nur Haji Abdulkadir (1881–1959\), and the renowned woman\-scholar Dada Masiti (c.1820–1919\). Many of Brava’s scholars traveled widely and were influential across East Africa, some became prominent qadis in Lamu, Mombasa and Zanzibar, where they continued to write works in Chimiini, and the local Swahili dialects as well as Arabic. Many of Brava's manuscripts (mostly poems) were written in both Arabic and the Bantu\-language of Chimiini, not just by the Bravanese\-Swahili who spoke it as their first language, but also by resident Tunni scholars who used it as their second language. Such include; Uways al\-Barawi —who besides composing poems in Chimiini and Arabic, also devised a system of writing the Somali language in Arabic script— and Nur Haji Abdulkadir —who was one of the most prolific writers of religious poetry in Chimiini. In the late 19th century, Barava's scholars who followed the Qadiriyya tariqa produced didactic and didascalic poetry in Chimiini, in response to the intrusion of more fundamentalist schools from Arabia and European colonialists. The poetry was part of an intellectual movement and served as an anti\-colonial strategy in Brava, contrasting with the inhabitants of Merca who chose to fight the Italians, and those of Mogadishu, who chose to leave the city. It also reaffirmed Qadiriyya religious practices, encouraged the rapid spread of Islam among the non\-waungwana and linked Brava's scholarly community closer with Zanzibar's scholars. While external visitors often remarked that Swahili scholars preferred to write in Swahili rather than Arabic, which they read but didn't often write, Brava’s scholars were noted for their proficiency in writing both languages. The Brava\-born scholar (and later Mombasa qadi) Muhyi al\-Din was in the 1840s commissioned by the German visitor Johann Ludwig Krapf to translate the first book of Moses from Arabic to Swahili. He also served at the courts of the Omani sultan of Zanzibar as a mediator between the established elites and the Omanis. In response to an attempted invasion by a Majerteen force from Kismayo in 1868, the people of Brava allied with the sultan of Geledi Ahmed Yusuf and pushed back the invaders. In 1875, Brava briefly submitted to the Khedive of Egypt when the latter's troops landed in the region but reverted to local control the following year after the Egyptians left. The Zanzibar sultan regained control and constructed a fort in the city, but would ultimately cede his suzerainty to an Italian company in 1893, which maintained a small presence in the city until 1908 when Brava formally became part of the colony of Somalia Italiana. Over the first decades of the twentieth century, political changes in Somalia resulted in the increased importance of Mogadishu and Merka while Brava consequently declined. By 1950 most of Barawa's older houses, close to the shore, had fallen into disrepair and many of them had been vacated by the families that owned them. With just 10\-20,000 speakers of Chimiini left in the 1990s, the language is in serious decline, so too is the knowledge of Brava's contribution to African history. --- The secluded harbors of Madagascar’s northeastern coast were a refuge for European pirates whose interactions with their Malagasy hosts influenced the emergence of the kingdom of Betsimisaraka. read more about this fascinating chapter of African states and European pirates here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeAn Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Horn by N Chittick pg 120\-122, Settlement Patterns of the Coast of Southern Somalia and Kenya by T.H. Wilson pg 103, The Swahili world edited by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 366 The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society By Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear pg 54, 58, Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History By Derek Nurse, Thomas J. Hinnebusch, Gérard Philipson pg 725, Kenya's Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa by Thomas T. Spear pg 56\) Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture \& the Shungwaya Phenomenon By James De Vere Allen pg 71\) Primitive Islam and Architecture in East Africa by Mark Horton pg 103, n.7, Historic Mosques in Sub\-Saharan Africa: From Timbuktu to Zanzibar By Stéphane Pradines pg 152 L’Arabie marchande: État et commerce sous les sultans rasūlides du Yémen, chapter9, prg 31\. Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture \& the Shungwaya Phenomenon By James De Vere Allen pg 117, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African coast By Randall L. Pouwels pg 36, The Pate Chronicle edited by Marina Tolmacheva pg 48 A History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911 By Anshan Li pg 39\-48, Zheng He: China’s Greatest Explorer, Mariner, and Navigator By Corona Brezina pg 71 A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar, Hakluyt Society, 1866, pg 15, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society By Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear pg 85 Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 84\) Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History By Derek Nurse, Thomas J. Hinnebusch, Gérard Philipson pg 492, 496, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 140, n. 184\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 159\-160\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 196, 168, n.44, 177, n.80\) The Dutch on the Swahili Coast, 1776\-1778 by R. Ross, pg 322\-323, 333, The French at Kilwa Island: An Episode in Eighteenth\-century East African History by Parker Freeman\-Grenville pg 11\-12 Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 54\-65 The Pate Chronicle edited by Marina Tolmacheva pg 64\-65, 259\) Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 18, 55 n.24, The Swahili Coast, 2nd to 19th Centuries: Islam, Christianity and Commerce in Eastern Africa by Greville Stewart Parker Freeman\-Grenville pg 147, East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Syntheses in Pre\-colonial Times pg 41\.Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture \& the Shungwaya Phenomenon By James De Vere Allen pg 216, 218, 233\. Writing in Swahili on Stone and on Paper by Ann Biersteker Arabian Seas By Rene J. Barendse 1700\-1763, pg 187, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa By Edward A. Alpers pg 91, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 146\) Barawa, the coastal town in southern Somalia by Hilary Costa Sanseverino pg 18\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu, 1585\-1810: dynamiques endogènes, dynamiques exogènes by Thomas Vernet pg 153\) Tanganyika Notes and Records, Issues 1\-5, pg 77, The French at Kilwa Island: An Episode in Eighteenth\-century East African History by Parker Freeman\-Grenville pg 216\) The Pate Chronicle edited by Marina Tolmacheva pg 76\-77\) The Dutch on the Swahili Coast, 1776\-1778 by R. Ross pg 343\-346\) The French at Kilwa Island: An Episode in Eighteenth\-century East African History by Parker Freeman\-Grenville pg 11\-12, 122, 141, ) Inter\-Tidal Causeways and Platforms of the 13th\- to 16th\-Century City\-State of Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania Edward Pollard pg 109, Beyond the Stone Town: Maritime Architecture at Fourteenth–Fifteenth Century Songo Mnara, Tanzania by Edward Pollard pg 52, Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 53\-57\) Barawa, the coastal town in southern Somalia by Hilary Costa Sanseverino pg 18\-22\. Lamu in the Nineteenth Century: Land, Trade, and Politics by Marguerite Ylvisaker pg 38\-39\) Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 58\) Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 94\-105\) Barawa, the coastal town in southern Somalia by Hilary Costa Sanseverino pg 18, The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798\-1856 by Christine Stephanie Nicholls pg 366, Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 66, ) The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798\-1856 by Christine Stephanie Nicholls pg 188, 297\-230, Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 59\-60, 66\-67\) Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg pg 78\-79, 83\-89, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African coast By Randall L. Pouwels pg 141\-143, Islamic scholarship in Africa: new directions and global contexts Edited by Ousmane Oumar Kane 326\-334 Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich 64, 'Stringing Coral Beads': The Religious Poetry of Brava by Alessandra Vianello Translocal Connections Across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move by Francesca Declich pg 72\-78, 81\-83\) The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798\-1856 by Christine Stephanie Nicholls pg 71, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African coast By Randall L. Pouwels pg 142 photos by Alessandra Vianello Lamu in the Nineteenth Century: Land, Trade, and Politics by Marguerite Ylvisaker pg 97\-101, Barawa, the coastal town in southern Somalia by Hilary Costa Sanseverino pg 18, 'Stringing Coral Beads': The Religious Poetry of Brava by Alessandra Vianello pg 9 17 6)

a brief note on European pirates and African states during the 'golden age of piracy.' in a brief note on European pirates and African states during the 'golden age of piracy.' a pirate stronghold and kingdom in 18th century Madagascar. 2)For most of its history, maritime trade in the Indian and Atlantic ocean world was characterized by ‘competitive chaos’. Europeans visiting both regions had to contend with preexisting trade networks and cooperate with local rulers. The labeling of individuals as pirates was a means of advancing the economic and political goals of the European states operating in the oceans, and piracy was thus a manifestation of the rivalry and disorder that periodically impacted commerce in these dynamic zones of exchange. Along the African coast, repeated attempts by the Portuguese, and later by the Dutch, and English to monopolize maritime commerce failed, as the mainland regions remained under African control, with each state choosing their trading partners. During this age of mercantilism, European skippers were often encouraged by their home governments to raid the shipping of enemy powers indiscriminately. Many of these pirate raids occurred in the southern Atlantic and were against Iberian ships. For example, Between 1522 and 1539, over 300 Portuguese ships were captured by French privateers (read: pirates) who had been given letters of marque which granted them permission to attack enemy vessels. On the African coast, local rulers were under no obligation to respect Portugal's monopoly over external trade and could trade with anyone who served their interests. In the coastal region of Senegal facing the island of Cabo Verde, the Wolof people of the region regularly traded with pirates on the island rather than the Portuguese who controlled most of it, and had learned to "speak French as if it was their native language". In the early 17th century, the two groups reportedly made off with as much as 200,000 cruzados of goods a year, at the expense of the Portuguese. On the coastline of African states, all foreigners, pirates or otherwise, were compelled to respect African laws and the strict policy of neutrality. Failure to respect these laws resulted in negative and often disastrous consequences for the visiting traders, including a ban from trade, and even the risk of enslavement of the European sailors by Africans who'd take them as prisoners on the mainland until they were ransomed. In 1525, a French privateer reached the coast of the kingdom Kongo to trade for copper and redwood, an action that was in violation of the Portuguese monopoly. After failing to follow the standard procedures of trade, King Afonso of Kongo sent two of his ships to fight with the French ship. The battle ended with several French sailors being captured and taken to Kongo where most were "taken down in irons" and "put in prison," some of them died, while others were retained as artisans. Conversely, a similar fate befell the Portuguese traders who reached the Bijagos islands in modern Guinea, whose inhabitants sheltered pirates (presumably French) and allowed them to set up a "lair and coastal strongpoint" inorder to seize loot from passing ships. The Africans of the Bijagos islands regularly confiscated the goods of the Portuguese sailors, they were also known to "take the white crew as their prisoners, and they sell them in those places where they normally trade for cows, goats, dogs, iron bars." Even in exceptional cases when Europeans became involved in coastal conflicts involving pirates and African states, the results were pyrrhic at best. In 1724, about two years after the defeat of the notorious pirate 'Black Bart' near Cape Lopez (in Modern Gabon), a combined Dutch and British force turned its attention against the most powerful supporter of pirates on the Gold Coast (in modern Ghana), an Akan ruler named Jan Konny (John Conny/John Canoe) who controlled the region of Axim and resided in the Prussian\-built fort Fredericksburg. While they were successful in defeating John Conny, trade to the fort from the interior declined as the mainland kingdom of Asante avoided the merchants who had driven away their ally. The impact of European piracy on Africa's coastal societies was therefore negligible and wasn't different from the 'official' trade. However, one notable exception was the region of north\-eastern Madagascar where several hundred pirates found refuge in the late 17th century. In the secluded harbors of the island's northeastern coast, these pirates formed communities whose interactions with their Malagasy hosts influenced the emergence of the kingdom of Betsimisaraka. The history of the Betsimisaraka kingdom and the European pirates of Madagascar is the subject of my latest Patreon article. Please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeAfonso I Mvemba a Nzinga, King of Kongo: His Life and Correspondence By John K. Thornton pg 113, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250\-1820 By John K. Thornton pg 52 The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: A Documentary History edited by Malyn Newitt pg 83 Afonso I Mvemba a Nzinga, King of Kongo: His Life and Correspondenc By John K. Thornton pg 112\-115, 204\-205\) The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: A Documentary History edited by Malyn Newitt pg 216\-217\) Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an an American Institution By Angela C. Sutton ·April 17, 2022 2)

A history of the Lozi kingdom. ca. 1750\-1911\. in A history of the Lozi kingdom. ca. 1750\-1911\. state and society in south\-central Africa )In the first decade of the 20th century, only a few regions on the African continent were still controlled by sovereign kingdoms. One of these was the Lozi kingdom, a vast state in south\-central Africa covering nearly 250,000 sqkm that was led by a shrewd king who had until then, managed to retain his autonomy. The Lozi kingdom was a powerful centralized state whose history traverses many key events in the region, including; the break up of the Lunda empire, the Mfecane migrations, and the colonial scramble. In 1902, the Lozi King Lewanika Lubosi traveled to London to meet the newly\-crowned King Edward VII in order to negotiate a favorable protectorate status. He was met by another African delegate from the kingdom of Buganda who described him as "a King, black like we are, he was not Christian and he did what he liked" This article explores the history of the Lozi kingdom from the 18th century to 1916, and the evolution of the Lozi state and society throughout this period. Map of Africa in 1880 highlighting the location of the Lozi kingdom (Barosteland) --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early history of the Lozi kingdom The landscape of the Lozi heartland is dominated by the Zambezi River which cuts a bed of the rich alluvial Flood Plain between the Kalahari sands and the miombo woodlands in modern Zambia. The region is dotted with several ancient Iron Age sites of agro\-pastoralist communities dating from the 1st/5th century AD to the 12th/16th century, in which populations were segmented into several settlement sites organized within lineage groups. It was these segmented communities that were joined by other lineage groups arriving in the upper Zambezi valley from the northern regions under the Lunda empire, and gradually initiated the process of state formation which preceded the establishment of the Lozi kingdom. The earliest records and traditions about the kingdom's founding are indirectly associated with the expansion and later break\-up of the Lunda empire, in which the first Lozi king named Rilundo married a Lunda woman named Chaboji. Rulindo was succeeded by Sanduro and Hipopo, who in turn were followed by King Cacoma Milonga, with each king having lived long enough for their former capitals to become important religious sites. The above tradition about the earliest kings, which was recorded by a visitor between 1845\-1853, refers to a period when the ruling dynasty and its subjects were known as the Aluyana and spoke a language known as siluyana. In the later half of the 19th century, the collective ethnonym for the kingdom's subjects came to be known as the lozi (rotse), an exonym that emerged when the ruling dynasty had been overthrown by the Makololo, a Sotho\-speaking group from southern Africa. King Cacoma Milonga also appears in a different account from 1797, which describes him as “a great souva called Cacoma Milonga situated on a great island and the people in another.” He is said to have briefly extended his authority northwards into Lunda’s vassals before he was forced to withdraw. He was later succeeded by King Mulambwa (d. 1830\) who consolidated most of his predecessors' territorial gains and reformed the kingdom's institutions inorder to centralize power under the kingship at the expense of the bureaucracy. Mulambwa is considered by Lozi to have been their greatest king, and it was during his very long reign that the kingdom’s political, economic, and judicial systems reached that degree of sophistication noted by later visitors. --- The Government in 19th century buLozi At the heart of the Lozi State is the institution of kingship, with the Lozi king as the head of the social, economic and administrative structures of the whole State. After the king's death, they're interred in a site of their choosing that is guarded by an official known as Nomboti who serves as an intermediary between the deceased king and his successors and is thus the head of the king's ancestral cult. The Lozi bureaucracy at the capital, which comprised the most senior councilors (Indunas) formed the principal consultative, administrative, legislative, and judicial bodies of the nation. A single central body the councilors formed the National Council (Mulongwanji) which was headed by a senior councilor (Ngambela) as well as a principal judge (Natamoyo) . A later visitor in 1875 describes the Lozi administration as a hierarchy of “officers of state” and “a general Council” comprising “state officials, chiefs, and subordinate governors,” whose foundation he attributed to “a constitutional ruler now long deceased”. The councilors were heads of units of kinship known as the Makolo, and headed a provincial council (kuta) which had authority over individual groups of village units (silalo) that were tied to specific tracts of territories/land. These communities also provided the bulk of the labour and army of the kingdom, and in the later years, the Makolo were gradually centralized under the king who appointed non\-hereditary Makolo heads. This system of administration was extended to newly conquered regions, with the southern capital at Nalolo (often occupied by the King’s sister Mulena Mukwai), while the center of power remained in the north with the roving capital at Lealui. The valley's inhabitants established their settlements on artificially built mounds (liuba) tending farms irrigated by canals, activities that required large\-scale organized labor. Some of the surplus produced was sent to the capital as tribute, but most of the agro\-pastoral and fishing products were exchanged internally and regionally as part of the trade that included craft manufactures and exports like ivory, copper, cloth, and iron. Long\-distance traders from the east African coast (Swahili and Arab), as well as the west\-central African coast (Africans and Portuguese), regularly converged in Lozi’s towns. --- --- The Lozi kingdom under the Kololo dynasty. After the death of Mulambwa, a succession dispute broke out between his sons; Silumelume in the main capital of Lealui and Mubukwanu at the southern capital of Nalolo, with the latter emerging as the victor. But by 1845, Mubukwanu's forces were defeated in two engagements by a Sotho\-speaking force led by Sebetwane whose followers (baKololo) had migrated from southern Africa in the 1820s as part of the so\-called mfecane. Mubukwanu's allies fled to exile and control of the kingdom would remain in the hands of the baKololo until 1864\. Sebetwane (r. 1845\-1851\) retained most of the pre\-existing institutions and complacent royals like Mubukwanu's son Sipopa, but gave the most important offices to his kinsmen. The king resided in the Caprivi Strip (in modern Namibia) while the kingdom was ruled by his brother Mpololo in the north, and daughter Mamochisane at Nololo, along with other kinsmen who became important councilors. The internal agro\-pastoral economy continued to flourish and Lozi’s external trade was expanded especially in Ivory around the time the kingdom was visited by David Livingstone in 1851\-1855, during the reign of Sebetwane's successor, King Sekeletu (r. 1851\-1864\). The youthful king Sekeletu was met with strong opposition from all sections of the kingdom, spending the greater part of his reign fighting a rival candidate named Mpembe who controlled most of the Lozi heartland. After Sekeletu's death in 1864, further succession crisis pitted various royals against each other, weakening the control of the throne by the baKololo. The latter were then defeated by their Luyana subjects who (re)installed Sipopa as the Lozi king. While the society was partially altered under baKololo rule, with the Luyana\-speaking subjects adopting the Kololo language to create the modern Lozi language, most of the kingdom’s social institutions remained unchanged. The (re) installation of King Sipopa (r. 1864\-1876\) involved many Lozi factions, the most powerful of which was led by a nobleman named Njekwa who became his senior councilor and was married to Sipopa's daughter and co\-ruler Kaiko at Nalolo. But the two allies eventually fell out and shortly after the time of Njekwa's death in 1874, the new senior councilor Mamili led a rebellion against the king in 1876, replacing him with his son Mwanawina. The latter ruled briefly until 1878 when factional struggles with his councilors drove him off the throne and installed another royal named Lubosi Lewanika (r.1878\-84, 1885\-1916\) while his sister and co\-ruler Mukwae Matauka was set up at Nalolo. --- King Lewanika’s Lozi state During King Lubosi Lewanika's long reign, the Lozi state underwent significant changes both internally as the King's power became more centralized, and externally, with the appearance of missionaries, and later colonialists. After King Lubosi was briefly deposed by his powerful councilor named Mataa in favor of King Tatila Akufuna (r. 1884\-1885\), the deposed king returned and defeated Mataa's forces, retook the throne with the name Lewanika, and appointed loyalists. To forestall external rebellions, he established regional alliances with King Khama of Ngwato (in modern Botswana), regularly sending and receiving embassies for a possible alliance against the Ndebele king Lobengula. He instituted several reforms in land tenure, created a police force, revived the ancestral royal religion, and created new offices in the national council and military. King Lewanika expanded the Lozi kingdom to its greatest extent by 1890, exercising varying degrees of authority over a region covering over 250,000 sqkm. This period of Lozi expansion coincided with the advance of the European missionary groups into the region, followed by concessioners (looking for minerals), and the colonialists. Of these groups, Lewanika chose the missionaries for economic and diplomatic benefits, to delay formal colonization of the kingdom, and to counterbalance the concessionaries, the latter of whom he granted limited rights in 1890 to prospect for minerals (mostly gold) in exchange for protection against foreign threats (notably the powerful Ndebele kingdom in the south and the Portuguese of Angola in the west). Lewanika oversaw a gradual and controlled adoption of Christianity (and literacy) confined to loyal councilors and princes, whom he later used to replace rebellious elites. He utilized written correspondence extensively with the various missionary groups and neighboring colonial authorities, and the Queen in London, inorder to curb the power of the concessionaires (led by Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa company which had taken over the 1890 concession but only on paper), and retain control of the kingdom. He also kept updated on concessionary activities in southern Africa through diplomatic correspondence with King Khama. The king’s Christian pretensions were enabled by internal factionalism that provided an opportunity to strengthen his authority. Besides the royal ancestral religion, lozi's political\-religious sphere had been dominated by a system of divination brought by the aMbundu (from modern Angola) whose practitioners became important players in state politics in the 19th century, but after reducing the power of Lewanika's loyalists and the king himself, the later purged the diviners and curbed their authority. This purge of the Mbundu diviners was in truth a largely political affair but the missionaries misread it as a sign that the King was becoming Christian and banning “witchcraft”, even though they were admittedly confused as to why the King did not convert to Christianity. Lewanika had other objectives and often chided the missionaries saying; "What are you good for then? What benefits do you bring us? What have I to do with a bible which gives me neither rifles nor powder, sugar, tea nor coffee, nor artisans to work for me." The newly educated Lozi Christian elite was also used to replace the missionaries, and while this was a shrewd policy internally as they built African\-run schools and trained Lozi artisans in various skills, it removed the Lozi’s only leverage against the concessionaires\-turned\-colonists. --- The Lozi kingdom in the early 20th century: From autonomy to colonialism. The King tried to maintain a delicate balance between his autonomy and the concessionaries’ interests, the latter of whom had no formal presence in the kingdom until a resident arrived in 1897, ostensibly to prevent the western parts of the kingdom (west of the Zambezi) from falling under Portuguese Angola. While the Kingdom was momentarily at its most powerful and in its most secure position, further revisions to the 1890 concessionary agreement between 1898 and 1911 steadily eroded Lewanika's internal authority. Internal opposition by Lozi elites was quelled by knowledge of both the Anglo\-Ndebele war of 1893 and the Anglo\-Boer war of 1899\-1902\. But it was the Anglo\-Boer war that influenced the Lozi’s policies of accommodation in relation to the British, with Lozi councilors expressing “shock at the thought of two groups of white Christians slaughtering each other”. The war illustrated that the Colonialists were committed to destroying anyone that stood in their way, whether they were African or European, and a planned expulsion of the few European settlers in Lozi was put on hold. Always hoping to undermine the local colonial governors by appealing directly to the Queen in London, King Lewanika prepared to travel directly to London at the event of King Edward’s coronation in 1902, hoping to obtain a favorable agreement like his ally, King Khama had obtained on his own London visit in 1895\. When asked what he would discuss when he met King Edward in London, the Lozi king replied: “When kings are seated together, there is never a lack of things to discuss.” It is likely that the protection of western Lozi territory from the Portuguese was also on the agenda, but the latter matter was considered so important that it was submitted by the Portuguese and British to the Italian king in 1905, who decided on a compromise of dividing the western region equally between Portuguese\-Angola and the Lozi. While Lewanika had made more grandiose claims to territory in the east and north that had been accepted, this one wasn’t, and he protested against it to no avail After growing internal opposition to the colonial hut tax and the King’s ineffectiveness had sparked a rebellion among the councilors in 1905, the colonial governor sent an armed patrol to crush the rebellion, This effectively meant that Lewanika remained the king only nominally, and was forced to surrender the traditional authority of Kingship for the remainder of his reign. By 1911, the kingdom was incorporated into the colony of northern Rhodesia, formally marking the end of the kingdom as a sovereign state. --- A few hundred miles west of the Lozi territory was the old kingdom of Kongo, which created an extensive international network sending its envoys across much of southern Europe and developed a local intellectual tradition that includes some of central Africa’s oldest manuscripts. Read more about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeBlack Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901\-1914 By Jeffrey Green pg 22 Map by Sam Bishop at ‘theafricanroyalfamilies’ Iron Age Farmers in Southwestern Zambia: Some Aspects of Spatial Organization by Joseph O. Vogel Iron Age History and Archaeology in Zambia by D. W. Phillipson A History of West Central Africa to 1850 By John K. Thornton pg 310, Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 18\-20\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 5, 10\-15\) A History of West Central Africa to 1850 By John K. Thornton pg 310\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 57\-59\) The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 2 Map by Mutumba Mainga Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 30\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 38\-41, The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 3\-5 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 33\-36, 44\-47, 50\-54\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 32, 130\-131\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 61\-71\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 74\-82, The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 9\-11 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 87\-92, The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 11\-12 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 103\-113, The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 13\-15 The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 19\- 34 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 115\- 136\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia pg 150\-161\) The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 38\-56, Barotseland's Scramble for Protection by Gerald L. Caplan pg 280\-285 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 174\-175\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 137\-138\) Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 179\-182\) The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 76\-81 The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 63\-68, 74\-75 The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 76 Bulozi under the Luyana Kings: Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre\-colonial Zambia by Mutumba Mainga pg 192\) The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 88\-89\. The Elites of Barotseland 1878\-1969: A Political History of Zambia's Western Province by Gerald L. Caplan pg 90\-103 18 )

a brief note on Africa in 16th century global history. in a brief note on Africa in 16th century global history. the international relations and manuscripts of Kongo 3)The 16th century was one the most profound periods of change in Africa's international relations. Africans had led the initiative in establishing international contact across Eurasia, and the expansion of the Ottoman and Portuguese empires in the 16th century further accelerated Africa's engagement with the rest of the world, reshaping pre\-existing patterns of regional alliances and rivalries. In the northern Horn of Africa, the armies of the Adal sultanate defeated the Ethiopian forces in 1529 as their leader, Imam Ahmad al\-Ghazi, launched a series of successful campaigns that briefly subsumed most of Ethiopia. Al\-Ghazi's campaigns eventually acquired an international dimension and became increasingly enmeshed in the global conflict between the Portuguese and the Ottomans. The Turks supplied al\-Ghazi with firearms and soldiers, while the Portuguese provided the same to the Ethiopian ruler Gelawdewos, who eventually won the war in 1543\. Around the same time, the rulers of the Swahili city\-states along the East African coast who were opposed to the Portuguese presence sent envoys to the Ottoman provinces in Arabia beginning in 1542, looking for allies to aid them in expelling the Portuguese. After several more embassies in the 1550s and 60s, Ottoman corsair Ali Beg brought his forces to the East African coast in 1585 and 1589, but was eventually forced to withdraw after an army from the mainland drove his forces from the coast. On the other side of the continent the simultaneous expansion of the Portuguese and Ottomans into north\-western Africa threatened the regional balance of power between the empires of Morocco and Bornu. After a series of diplomatic initiatives by Bornu’s envoys to Marrakech and Istanbul, the Moroccans defeated the Portuguese in 1578, just as Bornu's ruler Mai Idris Alooma was halting the Ottoman advance into Bornu’s dependancies in southern Libya. In all three regions, the globalized rivalries between the regional powers are mentioned in some of Africa's best known works of historical literature. The chronicle on Adal’s ‘Conquest of Abyssinia’ was completed in 1559, in the same decade that the chronicle of the Swahili city of Kilwa was written, and not long before the Bornu scholar Aḥmad Furṭū would complete the first chronicle of Mai Idris' reign in 1576\. While all three chronicles are primarily concerned with domestic politics, they also include an international dimension regarding the diplomatic activities of their kingdoms. Much further south in the region of west\-central Africa, another African society entered the international arena, without engaging in the global rivaries of the period. The sudden entry of the kingdom of Kongo into global politics and the emergence of its intellectual tradition was one of the most significant yet often misunderstood developments in 16th\-century Africa. The international activities of the kingdom of Kongo and its intellectual traditions are the subject of my latest Patreon article. please subscribe to read about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe ·March 13, 2022 3)

The Mali empire: A complete history (ca. 1250\-1650\) in The Mali empire: A complete history (ca. 1250\-1650\) )At its height in the 14th century, the Mali empire was one of Africa's largest states, extending over an estimated 1\.2 million square kilometers in West Africa. Encompassing at least five modern African states, the empire produced some of the continent's most renowned historical figures like Mansa Musa and enabled the growth and expansion of many of the region's oldest cities like Timbuktu. From the 13th century to the 17th century, the rulers, armies, and scholars of Mali shaped the political and social history of West Africa, leaving an indelible mark on internal and external accounts about the region, and greatly influenced the emergence of successor states and dynasties which claimed its mantle. This article outlines the history of Mali from its founding in the early 13th century to its decline in the late 17th century, highlighting key events and personalities who played important roles in the rise and demise of Mali. Map of Imperial Mali in the 14th century. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Background to the emergence of Mali: west Africa during the early 2nd millennium and the Sudiata epic. The region where the Mali empire would emerge appears in some of the earliest accounts about West Africa, which locate it along the southern fringes of the Ghana empire. The 11th\-century account of Al\-Bakri mentions the “great kingdom” of Daw/Do along the southern banks of the Niger River, and another kingdom further to its south named Malal. He adds that the king of Malal adopted Islam from a local teacher, took on the name of al\-Muslimânî and renounced the beliefs of his subjects, who “remained polytheists”. This short account provides a brief background on the diverse social landscape in which Mali emerged, between the emerging Muslim communities in the cities such as Jenne, and the largely non\-Muslim societies in its hinterland. Archeological discoveries of terracotta sculptures from Jenne\-Jeno and textiles from the Bandiagara plateau dated to between the 11th\-15th centuries, in an area dotted with mosques and inscribed stele, attest to the cultural diversity of the region. The complementary and at times conflicting accounts about Mali's early history were shaped by the divergent world views of both communities and their role in the emergence of Mali. Written accounts penned by local West African scribes (especially in Timbuktu) and external writers offer abundant information on the kingdom’s Muslim provinces in its north and east but ignore the largely non\-Muslim regions. Conversely, the oral accounts preserved by the non\-Muslim jeli (griots), who were the spokespersons for the heads of aristocratic lineages and transmitted their histories in a consistent form, have very little to say about Muslim society of Mali, but more to say about its southern provinces. Both accounts however emphasize their importance to the royal court and the Mansas, leaving little doubt about their equal roles in Mali's political life. The foundational epic of Mali as recounted by the griots mentions several popular characters and places in the traditions of Mande\-speaking groups, with a special focus on Sudianta, who was born to a king of Manden (a region straddling the border between modern Mali and Guniea) and a woman from the state of Do (Daw) named Sogolon. The succession of a different son of the king forced Sogolon and Sudianta to move from Manden to the region of Mema (in the central region of modern Mali), just as Manden was conquered by a king named Sumanguru. Sudianta later travels back to Manden, allies with neighboring chieftains, defeats Sumanguru, and assumes the throne as the first Mansa ( Sultan/King ) of Mali. Sunjata and his allies then undertake a series of campaigns that expand the embryonic empire. The cultural landscape of the epic is indisputably that of traditional Mandinka society which, for seven centuries, has developed, worked on, and transmitted to the present day a story relating to events of the 13th century. Despite the authoritative estimates provided in many recent accounts about Mali's history, the dates associated with the events in Sudianta's epic are heavily disputed and are at best vaguely assigned to the first half of the 13th century. However, the association of Sudianta with the creation of the empire's institutions such as the ‘Grand council’ of allied lineage heads, represents a historical reality of early Mali’s political history. --- Mali in the 14th century: from Sudiata to Mansa Musa That the founding and history of Mâli were remembered in what became its southwestern province of Manden was likely due to the province’s close relationship with the ruling dynasty, both in its early rise and its later demise. Outside the core of Manden, the ruler of Mâli was recognized as an overlord/suzerain of diverse societies that were incorporated into the empire but retained some of their pre\-existing power. These traditional rulers found their authority closely checked by Mali officers called farba/farma/fari (governors), who regulated trade, security, and taxation. Because sovereignty was exercised at multiple scales, Mali is best described as an empire, with core regions such as Mande and Mema, and outlying provinces that included the former Ghana empire. It was from the region of the former Ghana empire that a scholar named Shaykh Uthman, who was on a pilgrimage to Cairo, met with and provided a detailed account of the Mansas to the historian Ibn Khaldun about a century and a half later. Uthman’s account credits the founding of the empire to Mârî Djâta, who, according to the description of his reign and his name, is to be identified with Sundiata. Sudianta was succeeded by Mansa Walī (Ali), who is described as "one of the greatest of their Kings", as he made the pilgrimage during the time of al\-Zâhir Baybars (r. 1260\-1277\). Mansa Walī was later succeeded by his brothers Wâtî and Khalîfa, but the latter was deposed and succeeded by their nephew Mansa Abû Bakr. After him came Mansa Sakura, a freed slave who seized power and greatly extended the empire's borders from the ocean to the city of Gao. He also embarked on a pilgrimage between 1299\-1309 but died on his way back. He was succeeded by Mansa Qû who was in turn succeeded by his son Mansa Muhammad b. Qû, before the throne was assumed by Mansa Musa (r. 1312–37\), whose reign is better documented as a result of his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. The royal pilgrimage has always been considered a vector of integration and legitimization of power in the Islamic world, fulfilling multiple objectives for both the pilgrims and their hosts. In West Africa, it was simultaneously a tool of internal and external legitimation as well as a tool for expanding commercial and intellectual links with the rest of the Muslim world. In Mali, the royal pilgrimage had its ascendants in the pre\-existing traditions of legitimation and the creation of political alliances through traveling across a ‘sacred geography’. The famous account of Mansa Musa's predecessor failing at his own expedition across the Atlantic is to be contrasted with Mansa Musa's successful expedition to Mecca which was equally extravagant but was also deemed pious. More importantly, Mansa Musa's story of his predecessor's demise explains a major dynastic change that allowed his 'house' —descended from Sudianta's brother Abû Bakr— to take the throne. Mansa Musa returned to Mali through the city of Gao which had been conquered by Mali during Mansa Sakura’s reign, but is nonetheless presented in later internal sources as having submitted peacefully. Mansa Musa constructed the Jingereber mosque of Timbuktu as well as a palace at the still unidentified capital of the empire. His entourage included scholars and merchants from Egypt and the Hejaz who settled in the intellectual capitals of Mali. Some of the Malian companions of Musa on his pilgrimage returned to occupy important offices in Mali, and at least four prominent ‘Hajjs’ were met by the globe\-trotter Ibn Battuta during his visit to Mali about 30 years later . According to an account provided to al\-‘Umarī by a merchant who lived in Mali during the reign of Mansa Musa and his successors, the empire was organized into fourteen provinces that included Ghana, Zafun (Diafunu), Kawkaw (Gao), Dia (Diakha), Kābara, and Mali among others. Adding that in the northern provinces of Mali “are tribes of ‘white’ Berbers under the rule of its sultan, namely: the Yantaṣar, Tīn Gharās, Madūsa, and Lamtūna” and that “The province of Mali is where the king’s capital, ‘Byty’, is situated. All these provinces are subordinate to it and the same name Mālī, that of the chief province of this kingdom, is given to them collectively.” Later internal accounts from Timbuktu corroborate this account, describing provinces and towns as the basis of Mali's administration under the control of different officers, with a particular focus on cities such as Walata, Jenne, Timbuktu, and Gao. --- --- Mali under Mansa Musa and Mansa Sulayman It’s from Gao that another Malian informant of Ibn Khaldun named Abû AbdAllah, a qadi of the city, provided an account of the 14th\-century rulers of Mali that ended with the 'restoration' of the old house and the deposition of Abu Bakr's house. The rivalry between the two dynastic houses may explain the relative 'silence' in oral accounts regarding the reigns of the Abu Bakr house, especially Mansa Musa and his later successor Mansa Sulayman (r. 1341–60\), who was visited by Ibn Battuta in 1352\. Ibn Battuta’s account includes a description of Mansa Sulayman's court and an outline of the administrative structure of the empire, mentioning offices and institutions that appear in the later Timbuktu chronicles about Mali's successor, the Songhai empire. He mentions the role of the Queen, who is ranked equal to the emperor, the nâ'ib, who is a deputy of the emperor, a royal guard that included mamluks (slaves bought from Egypt), the griots who recounted the history of his predecessors, the farba (governors), the farâriyya, a term for both civil administrators and military officers, as well as a litany of offices such as the qadis (judges), the mushrif/manshājū who regulated markets, and the faqihs (juriconsult) who represented the different constituencies. Ibn Battuta's account also highlights the duality of Mali's social\-political structure when the King who had earlier been celebrating the Eid festival as both a political and religious event in the presence of his Muslim subjects and courtiers, but was later a central figure of another important festival by Mali's non\-Muslim griots and other subjects, the former of whom wore facemasks in honor of the ancestral kings and their associated histories. The seemingly contradictory facets of Mali's political spaces were in fact complementary. Mansa Musa initiated diplomatic relations with the Marinid sultanate of Fez (Morocco) during the reign of Abū ’l\-Ḥasan (r. 1331–1348\) that would be continued by his successors. During Mansa Musa’s reign, “high ranking statesmen of the two kingdoms were exchanged as ambassadors”. and Abū ‘l\-Ḥasan sent back “novelties of his kingdom as people spoke of for long after”. The latter’s embassy was received by Mansa Sulayman, who reciprocated by sending a delegation in 1349, shortly before Ibn Battuta departed from Fez to arrive at his court in 1852\. Ibn Battuta remarked about an internal conflict between Sulaymân and his wife, Queen Qâsâ, who attempted to depose Sulayman and install a rival named Djâtil, who unlike Mansa Musa and Sulayman, was a direct descendant of Sudianta. The Queen's plot may have failed to depose the house of Abu Bakr whose candidates remained on the throne until 1390, but this dynastic conflict prefigured the succession crises that would plague later rulers. After his death in 1360, Sulayman was briefly succeeded by Qāsā b. Sulaymān, who was possibly the king's son or the queen herself acting as a regent. Qasa was succeeded by Mārī Jāṭā b. Mansā Maghā (r. 1360\-1373\), who sent an embassy to the Marinid sultan in 1360 with gifts that included a “huge creature which provoked astonishment in the Magrib, known as the giraffe”. He reportedly ruined the empire before his son and successor Mansa Mūsā II (r. 1373\-1387\) restored it. Musa II’s wazir (high\-ranking minister) named Mārī Jāṭā campaigned extensively in the eastern regions of Gao and Takedda. After he died in 1387, Mūsā II was briefly succeeded by Mansā Maghā before the latter was deposed by his wazir named Sandakī. The latter was later deposed by Mansa Maḥmūd who restored the house of Sudiata with support from Mali’s non\-Muslim provinces in the south. --- Subscribe --- The intellectual landscape of Mali. Regarding the early 15th century, most accounts about Mali focus on the activities of its merchants and scholars across Mali's territories, especially the Juula/Dyuula who'd remain prominent in West Africa's intellectual traditions The Mali empire had emerged within an already established intellectual network evidenced by the inscribed stele found across the region from Ghana's capital Kumbi Saleh to the city of Gao beginning in the 12th century. Mali's elites and subjects could produce written documents, some of which were preserved in the region's private libraries, such as Djenne's oldest manuscript dated to 1394\. Additionally, the Juula/Jakhanke/Wangara scholars whose intellectual centers of Diakha and Kabara were located within the Mali empire’s heartland spread their scholarly traditions to Timbuktu, producing prominent scholars like Modibo Muḥammad al\-Kābarī, whose oldest work is dated to 1450. While writing wasn’t extensively used in administrative correspondence within Mali, the rulers of Mali were familiar with the standard practices of written correspondence between royals which required a chancery with a secretary. For example, al\-‘Umarī mentions a letter from Mansa Mūsā to the Mamluk ruler of Cairo, that was “written in the Maghribī style… it follows its own rules of composition although observing the demands of propriety”. It was written by the hand of one of his courtiers who had come of the pilgrimage. Its contents comprised of greetings and a recommendation for the bearer,” and a gift of five thousand mithqāls of gold. About a century later, another ruler of Mali sent an ambassador to Cairo in order to inform the latter’s ruler of his intention to travel to Mecca via Egypt. After the ambassador had completed his pilgrimage, he returned to Cairo in July 1440 to receive a written response from the Mamluk sultan. The Mamluk letter to Mali, which has recently been studied, indicates that the sultan granted Mansa Yusuf's requests, writing: "For all his requests, we have responded to his Excellency and we have issued him a noble decree for this purpose."According to the manual of al\-Saḥmāwī, who wrote in 1442, the ruler of Mali at the time was Mansa Yūsuf b. Mūsā b. ʿAlī b. Ibrahim. --- An empire in decline: Mali during the rise of Songhai in the 16th century. It’s unclear whether Mansa Yusuf succeeded in undertaking the pilgrimage since the last of the royal pilgrimages from Takrur (either Mali or Bornu) during the 15th century occurred in 1431. Mali had lost control of Timbuktu to the Maghsharan Tuareg around 1433 according to Ta’rīkh as\-sūdān, a 17th century Timbuktu chronicle. Most local authorities from the Mali era were nevertheless retained such as the qadis and imams. The Tuareg control of Timbuktu ended with the expansion of the Songhai empire under Sunni Ali (r. 1464\-1492\), who rapidly conquered the eastern and northern provinces of Mali, including Gao, Timbuktu, Jenne, and Walata. The account of the Genoese traveler Antonio Malfante who was in Tuwat (southern Algeria) around 1447 indicates that Gao, Timbuktu, and Jenne were separate polities from Mali which was “said to have nine towns.” A Portuguese account from 1455\-56 indicates that the “Emperor of Melli” still controlled parts of the region along the Atlantic coast, but mentions reports of war in Mali's eastern provinces involving the rulers of Gao and Jenne. Between 1481 and 1495, King John II of Portugal sent embassies to the king of Timbuktu (presumably Songhai), and the king of Takrur (Mali). The first embassy departed from the Gambia region but failed to reach Timbuktu, with only one among the 8\-member team surviving the journey. A second embassy was sent from the Portuguese fort at El\-Mina (in modern Ghana), destined for Mali, after the The sovereign who received the Portuguese delegation was Mansa Maḥmūd b. Walī b. Mūsā, the grandson of the Mansa Musa II (r. I373/4 to I387\). According to the Portuguese account; "This Moorish king, in reply to our King's message, amazed at this novelty \ While no account of the envoys' negotiations at the capital of Mali was recorded, it seems that later Malian rulers weren’t too receptive to the overtures of the Portuguese, as no further delegations were sent by the crown, but instead, one embassy was sent by the El\-mina captain Joao Da Barros in 1534 to the grandson of the abovementioned Mansa. By then, the gold trade of the Juula to el\-Mina had declined from 22,500 ounces a year in 1494, to 6,000 ounces a year by 1550, as much of it was redirected northwards. Between the late 15th and mid 16th century, the emergence of independent dynasties such as the Askiya of Songhai and the Tengella of Futa Toro challenged Mali's control of its northern provinces, and several battles were fought in the region between the three powers. Between 1501 and 1507, Mali lost its northern provinces of Baghana, Dialan, and Kalanbut to Songhai, just as the regions of Masina and Futa Toro in the northwest fell to the Tengella rulers and other local potentates. Mali became a refuge for rebellious Songhai royals such as Askiya Muḥammad Bonkana Kirya who was deposed in 1537\. He moved to Mali’s domains where his son was later married. But the deposed Aksiya and his family were reportedly treated poorly in Mali, forcing some of his companions to depart for Walata (which was under Songhai control) while the Bonkana himself remained within Mali’s confines in the region of Kala, west of Jenne. It’s shortly after this that in 1534 Mansa Mahmud III received a mission from the Elmina captain Joâo de Barros, to negotiate with the Mali ruler on various questions concerning trade on the River Gambia. Mali remained a major threat to Songhai and often undertook campaigns against it in the region west of Jenne. In 1544 the Songhai general (and later Askiya) Dawud, led an expedition against Mali but found the capital deserted, so his armies occupied it for a week. Dawud's armies would clash with Mali's forces repeatedly in 1558 and 1570, resulting in a significant weakening of Mali and ending its threat to Songhai. The ruler of Mali married off his princess to the Askiya in acknowledgment of Songhai’s suzerainty over Mali --- From empire to kingdom: the fall of Mali in the 17th century. Songhai’s brief suzerainty over Mali ended after the collapse of Songhai in 1591, to the Moroccan forces of al\-Mansur. The latter attempted to pacify Jenne and its hinterland, but their attacks were repelled by the rulers of Kala (a Bambara state) and Massina, who had thrown off Mali’s suzerainty. The Mali ruler Mahmud IV invaded Jenne in 1599 with a coalition that included the rulers of Masina and Kala, but Mali's forces were driven back by a coalition of forces led by the Arma and the Jenne\-koi as well as a ruler of Kala, the last of whom betrayed Mahmud but spared his life.. While Mali had long held onto its western provinces along the Gambia River, the emergence of the growth of the kingdom of Salum as a semi\-autonomous polity in the 16th century eroded Mali's control over the region and led to the emergence of other independent polities. By 1620, a visiting merchant reported that the Malian province had been replaced by the kingdoms of Salum, Wuli, and Cayor. Over the course of the early 17th century, Mali lost its suzerainty over the remaining provinces and was reduced to a small kingdom made up of five provinces that were largely autonomous. Mali’s power was eventually eclipsed by the Bambara empire of Segu which subsumed the region of Manden in the late 17th century, marking the end of the empire. --- In the Hausaland region (east of Mali) two ambitious Hausa travelers explored Western Europe from 1852\-1856, journeying through Malta, France, England, and Prussia (Germany). Read about their fascinating account of European society here --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Michael Gomez Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 18\-19 Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara by Alisa LaGamma pg 48\-78 The imperial capital of Mâli François\-Xavier Fauvelle prg 7, Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pg 53 In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and Performance edited by Ralph A. Austen African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 62\-63, Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pg \51, \30\-34 Map by Roderick McIntosh The imperial capital of Mâli François\-Xavier Fauvelle prg 8\) African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 69, 82, 84, 87\. In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and Performance edited by Ralph A. Austen pg 48 Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 93\-94 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 96\-99\) ·January 1, 2023 Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pg \64\-65, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 124\-125\) Travels of Ibn Battuta Vol4 pg 951\-952, 956, 967, 970\-971 Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 53\-54 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 126\-129 The great mosque of Timbuktu by Bertrand Poissonnier pg 31\-34 Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pg \140\-145\) Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pg \145\-156, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 139\-141\) Les masques et la mosquée \- L'empire du Mâli by François\-Xavier Fauvelle pp. 211\-225\) Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 95, 100 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 148\-149\) Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 96 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 150\-151, Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 97\-98 From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, 2015, pg 173\-188 ·September 18, 2022 Ressusciter l’archive. Reconstruction et histoire d’une lettre mamelouke pour le sultan du Takrūr (1440\) by Rémi Dewière Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants by Nehemia Levtzion, Jay Spaulding pg 118 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 30\-31, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 183\-185\) African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez pg 151\-153\.) Wangara, Akan and Portuguese I by Ivor Wilks pg 338\-339, D’ Asia by João de Barros pg 260\-261\. Wangara, Akan and Portuguese II by Ivor Wilks, pg 465\-6 General History of Africa Volume IV by UNESCO pg 180\-182, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 108\-110, 113 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 134\-135 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael A. Gomez, pg 207 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 140, 148, 153\-154, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 234\-236\) General History of Africa Volume IV by UNESCO pg 183\-184\) General History of Africa Volume IV by UNESCO pg 184, The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 4 pg 171\-174 (\ are not the exact page numbers) 37 )

a brief note on European and African perspectives in travel literature in a brief note on European and African perspectives in travel literature A Hausa explorer of western Europe. )The study of written history is in many ways, a study of perspectives. In the parts of Africa where the most accessible accounts about the region’s past used to be the travel literature of European visitors, the study of African history was a study of European perspectives of Africa. The Eurocentric perspective of travelers such as James Bruce in 18th century Ethiopia, and Heinrich Barth in 19th century West Africa, informed much of their understanding of African societies. However, there are a few sections in these European travelogues in which the African perspective of their guests is reproduced, revealing how the Europeans were seen by their hosts. The Scottish traveler James Bruce, who visited Ethiopia in order to find the source of the Nile, was hospitably received by the ruling Empress Mentewwab at her palace in QwesQwam near Gondar. But the empress found Bruce's reasons for travel to be rather odd; remarking to Bruce that "life furnishes us with the perverseness and contradiction of human nature!, You have come from Jerusalem, through vile Turkish governments, and hot, unwholesome climates, to see a river and a bog, no part of which you can carry away." It’s interesting that Mentewwab's critique of the main objective of James Bruce's entire adventure was retained. The queen wished to visit Jerusalem, which Bruce and many Ethiopian pilgrims had been to, but the Scottish traveler only wished to see the source of the Nile, which from Mentewwab's perspective was a frivolous goal. While the opinions of the African hosts about the European travelers were mostly positive, such as Heinrich Barth's stay in the west African states of Bornu and Sokoto, some instances of conflict blighted African perceptions of the European visitors, and by extension, of European society. During his stay in Timbuktu around 1851, Heinrich Barth was not so hospitably received by the Fulbe authorities of the , whose control over the city was contested by the Tuaregs. One Massina officer repeatedly pestered the German traveler with "insulting language". Barth writes that this Massina officer "Spoke of the Christians \[Europeans] in the most contemptuous manner, describing them as sitting like women in the bottom of their steamboats, and doing nothing but eating raw eggs; concluding with the paradoxical statement, which is not very flattering to Europeans, that the idolatrous Bambara \[of Segu] were far better people and much farther advanced in civilization than the Christians." The conflict between Massina and the Tuaregs near Timbuktu who protected Barth, likely influenced the Massina officer's negative opinion of European society, which he ranked lower than his 'pagan' rivals, the Bambara of Segu. Barth also blamed Mungo Park for propagating the stereotype that Europeans were fond of raw eggs, something that was disliked by their West African guests. Just like most European writers had formulated their perspective of Africa without actually traveling to the continent, similar perceptions about European society were mostly made by Africans who hadn't been there. Fortunately, a number of African travelers who had been visiting Europe began documenting their accounts in the 19th century, forming a more accurate perspective of European society. One such remarkable account was left by the , providing both an African perspective of Europe, and his European hosts' perspective of their African guest. For example, Selim notes that after refusing to order wine and pork, the servants of the Hotel where he was staying in st. Petersburg revealed that they were also Muslims to the astonishment of Selim, who wrote of the encounter; "I remained silent! So in the countries of the whites, there were such Muslims!." Traveling across the Russian countryside, he encountered people in Kalmykia who revered him as one of their spirits "who had landed from his mountain," He met people in Samara who fled from him "thinking he was the devil," and people in Semipalatinsk who "acclaimed him as a King" and thought he was the leader of his white companions. Selim's account is one of a handful of travelogues by Africans who visited Europe, but it’s mostly concerned with northern Europe. A few decades before Selim embarked on his journey, an adventurous African visitor from the Hausalands traveled to England and Germany, providing a rare description of Western European society by an African. The account of this Hausa traveler in Western Europe and his observations of European society are the subject of my latest Patreon article, Please subscribe to read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe22 )

The colonial myth of 'Sub\-Saharan Africa' in medieval Islamic geography: the view from Egypt and Bornu. in The colonial myth of 'Sub\-Saharan Africa' in medieval Islamic geography: the view from Egypt and Bornu. . 2)Few intellectual figures of the Muslim world were as prolific as the 15th\-century Egyptian scholar Jalal al\-Suyuti. A polymath with nearly a thousand books to his name and a larger\-than\-life personality who once claimed to be the most important scholar of his century, Jalal al\-Suyuti is considered the most controversial figure of his time. One of the more remarkable events in al\-Suyuti's life was when he acted as an intermediary between the ruler of the west\-African kingdom of Bornu, and the Abbasid caliph Al\-Mutawakkil II —an important figure descended from the Abbasid rulers whose empire fell in 1258 , but was reconstituted at Cairo without their temporal power. Recounting his encounter with the ruler of Bornu, al\-Suyuti writes that; "In the year 889 \ The Bornu sultan accompanying these pilgrims was Ali Dunama (r. 1465\-1497\), his kingdom controlled a broad swathe of territory stretching from southern Libya to northern Nigeria and central Chad. Bornu's rulers and students had been traveling to Egypt since the 11th century in the context of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, making stopovers at Cairo's institutions to teach and study. Their numbers had grown so large that by 1242, they had built a school in Cairo and were regularly attending the college of al\-Azhar. Al\-Azhar hosted students from many nationalities, each of whom lived in their own hostel headed by a teacher chosen from their community, who was in turn under a rector of the college with the title of Shaykh al\-Azhar. In 1834, the shaykh al\-Azhar was Hasan al\-Quwaysini, an influential Egyptian scholar whose students included Mustafa al\-Bulaqi, the latter of whom was a prominent jurist and teacher at the college. Through his contacts with Bornu’s students, al\-Quwaysini acquired a didactic work of legal theory written by the 17th\-century Bornu scholar Muhammad al\-Barnawi and was so impressed by the text that he copied it and asked al\-Bulaqi to write a commentary on it. Mustafa's commentary circulated in al\-Azhar's scholarly community and was later taken to Bornu in a cyclic exchange that characterized the intellectual links between Egypt and Bornu. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- There's no misconception more persistent in discourses about Africa's past than the historicity of the term sub\-Saharan Africa; a geo\-political term which ostensibly separates the African regions bordering the Mediterranean from the rest of the continent. Many proponents of the term's usage claim that it is derived from a historical reality, in which the ruling Arab elite of the southern Mediterranean created geographic terms separating the African territories they ruled from those outside their control. They also claim that the 'racial' and 'civilizational' connotations that this separation carries were reflected in the nature of the interaction between the two regions, purporting a unidirectional exchange in which cultural innovations only flowed southwards from "North" Africa but never in reverse. However, a closer analysis of the dynamic nature of exchanges between Egypt and Bornu shows that the separation of "North Africa" from 'Sub\-Saharan' Africa was never a historical reality for the people living in either region, but is instead a more recent colonial construct with a fabricated history. --- About a century before al\-Suyuti had brokered a meeting between the Bornu sultan and the Abbassid Caliph, an important diplomatic mission sent by the Sultan of Bornu ʿUthmān bin Idrīs to the Mamluk sultan al\-Ẓāhir Barqūq had arrived in Cairo in 1391\. The Bornu ambassador carried a letter written by their sultan's secretary as well as a 'fine' gift for the Mamluk sultan according to the court historian and encyclopedist al\-Qalqashandī (d. 1418\). The letter related a time of troubles in Bornu when its rulers were expelled from its eastern province of Kanem after a bitter succession crisis. In it, the Bornu sultan mentions that a group of wayward tribes of “pagan” Arabs called the judham, who roamed the region between Egypt and Bornu had taken advantage of the internal conflict to attack the kingdom. He thus requested that the Mamluk sultan, whom he accords the title of Malik (king), should "restrain the Arabs from their debauchery" and release any Bornu Muslims in his territory who had been illegally captured in the wars. In their response to the Bornu sultan, the titles used by the Mamluk chancery indicated that the Bornu sultan, whom they also referred to as Malik, was as highly regarded as the sultanates of Morocco, Tlemcen or Ifrīqiya and deserved the same etiquette as them. This remarkable diplomatic exchange between Bornu and Mamluk Egypt, in which both rulers thought of each other as equal in rank and their subjects as pious Muslims, underscores the level of cultural proximity between Egyptian and Bornuan society in the Middle Ages. Bornu eventually restored its authority over much of Kanem, pacified the wayward Arabs who were reduced to tributary status, and established its new capital at Ngazargamu which had become a major center of scholarship by the time its sultan Ali Dunama met Al\-Suyuti in 1484\. The Egyptian scholar mentions that the pilgrims who accompanied Sultan Ali Dunama included a qadi (judge) and "a group of students" who took with them a collection of more than twenty of al\-Suyuti's works to study in Bornu. Al\-Suyuti also mentions that he brokered another meeting between the Abbasid Caliph and another sultan of Takrur; identified as the Askiya Muhammad of Songhai (r. 1493\-1528\), when the latter came to Cairo on pilgrimage in 1498\. Al\-Suyuti was thus the most prominent Egyptian scholar among West African scholars, especially regarding the subject of theology and tafsīr studies (Quranic commentary). His influence is attested in some of the old Quranic manuscripts found in Bornu, which explicitly quote his works. --- --- The vibrant intellectual traditions of Bornu were therefore an important way through which its society was linked to Mamluk Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world, both politically and geographically. Works on geography by Muslim cartographers such as the Nuzhat of al\-Idrisi (d. 1165\) and the Kharīdat of Ibn al\-Wardī (d. 1349\) were available in Bornu where its ruler Muhammad al\-Kanemi (r.1809\-1837\) showed a map to his European guest that was described by the latter as a “map of the world according to Arab nations”. Such geographic works were also available in Bornu’s southwestern neighbor; the empire of Sokoto, where they were utilized by the 19th\-century scholar Dan Tafa for his work on world geography titled ‘Qataif al\-jinan’ (The Fruits of the Heart in Reflection about the Sudanese Earth (world)". Both Dan Tafa and the classical Muslim geographers defined different parts of the African continent and the people living in them using distinct regional terms. The term Ifriqiyya —from which the modern name of the continent of Africa is derived— was only used to refer to the coastal region that includes parts of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, which used to be the Roman province of Africa. The term Maghreb (West) was used to refer to the region extending from Ifriqiyya to Morocco. The region below the Maghreb was known as "Bilad al\-Sudan" (land of the blacks), extending from the kingdom of Takrur in modern Senegal to the kingdom of Kanem \ Providing additional commentary on the origin of the term Bilad al\-Sudan, Dan Tafa writes that "Sudan means the southern regions of the earth and the word is the plural for ‘black’ stemming from the ‘blackness’ of their majority.” The term 'Sudan' is indeed derived from the Arabic word for the color 'black'. Its singular masculine form is Aswad and its feminine form is Sawda; for example, the black stone of Mecca is called the 'al\-Ḥajaru al\-Aswad'. However, the use of the term Sudan in reference to the geographic regions and the people living there wasn't consonant with 'black' (or 'Negro') as the latter terms are used in modern Europe and America. Some early Muslim writers such as the prolific Afro\-Arab writer Al\-Jahiz (d. 869\) in his work ‘Fakhr al\-Sudan 'ala al\-Bidan’ (The Boasts of the Dark\-Skinned Ones Over The Light\-Skinned Ones) utilised the term 'Sudan' as a broad term for many African and Arab peoples, as well as Coptic Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese. However, the context in which al\-Jahiz was writing his work, which was marked by intense competition and intellectual rivalry between poets and satirists in the Abbasid capital Bagdad, likely prompted his rather liberal use of the term Sudan for all of Africa and most parts of Asia. A similarly broad usage of the term Sudan can be found in the writings of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889\) whose account of the ancient myth of Noah’s sons populating the earth, considered Ham to be the father of Kush who in turn produced the peoples of the ‘Sudan’; that he lists as the ‘Nuba’, Zanj, Zaghawa, Habasha, the Egyptian Copts and the Berbers. which again, don’t fit the Euro\-American racial concept of ‘Black’. On the other hand, virtually all of the Muslim Geographers restricted their use of 'Bilad al\-Sudan' to the region of modern West Africa extending from Senegal to the Lake Chad Basin, and employed different terms for the rest of Africa. Unlike the abovementioned writers, these Geographer’s use of specific toponyms and ethnonyms could be pinpointed to an exact location on a map. It was their choice of geographic terms that would influence knowledge of the African continent among later Muslim scholars. The middle Nile valley region was referred to as Bilad al\-Nuba (land of the Nubians) in modern Sudan. The region east of Nubia was referred to as "Bilad al\-Habasha" (land of the Habasha/Abyssinians) in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea, while the east African coast was referred to as "Bilad al\-Zanj" (land of the Zanj). The region/people between al\-Sudan and al\-Nuba were called Zaghawa, and between al\-Nuba and al\-Habasha were called Buja. On the other hand, the peoples living between al\-Habasha and al\-Zanj were called Barbar, the same as the peoples who lived between the Magreb and Bilad al\-Sudan. \both maps are originally oriented south but the images here are turned to face north\ These terms were utilized by all three geographers mentioned above to refer to the different regions of the African continent known to Muslim writers at the time. Most of the names for these regions were derived from pre\-existing geographic terms, such as the classical terms for Nubia and Habasha which appear in ancient Egyptian and Nubian documents, as well as the term 'Zanj' that appears in Roman and Persian works with various spellings that are cognate with the Swahili word ‘Unguja’, still used for the Zanzibar Island. While Muslim geographers made use of pre\-existing Greco\-Roman knowledge, such as al\-Idrisi’s reference to Ptolemy’s Geographia in the introduction to his written geography, the majority of their information was derived from contemporary sources. The old greco\-roman terms such as ‘aethiopians’ of Africa that were vaguely defined and located anywhere between Morocco, Libya, Sudan, and Ethiopia, were discarded for more precise terms based on the most current information by travelers. But their information was understandably limited, as they thought the Nile and Niger Rivers were connected; believing that the regions south of the Niger River were uninhabited, and that all three continents were surrounded by a vast ocean. There was therefore no broad term for the entire African continent in the geographic works of Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world, nor was there a collective term for “black” Africans. The Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406\) who lived most of his later life in Cairo, was careful to caution readers about the specificity of these geographic terms and ethnonyms, noting in his al\-Muqaddimah that "The inhabitants of the first and second zones in the south are called Abyssinians, the Zanj and the Sudan. The name Abyssinia however is restricted to those who live opposite Mecca and Yemen, and the name Zanj is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean." --- The names of the different peoples from each African region were also similar to the broad geographic terms for the places where they came from, such as the 'Sudan' from West Africa, the ‘Nuba’ from Sudan, the ‘Habasha’ from Ethiopia, and the Zanj from East Africa. While some writers used these terms inconsistently, such as the term ‘Barbar’ which could be used for Berber, Somali, and Nubian Muslims, or Zanj which could be used for some non\-Muslim groups in 19th\-century west\-Africa; the majority of writers used them as names of specific peoples in precise locations on a map. On the other hand, the Muslims who came from these regions were often named after the most prominent state, such as the Takruri of West Africa who were named after the kingdom of Takrur, and the Jabarti of the northern Horn of Africa who were named after the region of Jabart in the Ifat and Adal sultanate. It’s for this reason that the hostels of Al\-Azhar in the 18th century were named after each community; the Riwāq al\-Dakārinah for scholars from Takrūr, the Riwāq Dakārnah Sāliḥ for scholars from Kanem, and the Riwāq al\-Burnīya for scholars from Bornu. Others recorded in the 19th century include the Riwāq al\-Djabartiya for scholars from the Somali coast, Riwāq al\-Barabira for Nubian scholars (from modern Sudan). While each community concentrated around their hostels and their respective shayks, the different scholars of al\-Ahzar frequently intermingled as the roles of ''teacher' and 'student' changed depending on an individual scholar's expertise on a subject. For example, prominent West African scholars such as Muhammad al\-Kashinawi (d. 1741\) from the city of Katsina, southwest of Bornu, were among the teachers of Hasan al\-Jabarti (d. 1774\), the father of the famous historian ʿAbd al\-Raḥmān al\-Jabartī (d. 1825\) whose family was originally from the region around Zeila in northern Somalia. Abd al\-Raḥmān al\-Jabartī included Muhammad al\-Kashinawi in his biography of important scholars and listed many of the latter’s works. Another prominent West African scholar at Al\-Azhar was the 18th\-century Shaykh al\-Burnāwī from Bornu whose students and contemporaries included prominent Egyptian and Moroccan scholars such as Abd al\-Wahhab al\-Tāzī (d. 1791\) . Both Muhammad al\-Kashinawi and Shaykh al\-Burnāwī acquired their education in West Africa, specifically in Bornu where most of their teachers were attested before they traveled to Cairo to teach. It’s in this context that the writings of scholars from Bornu such as the 17th\-century jurist Muhammad al\-Barnawi, mentioned in the introduction, became known in Egypt among the leading administrators of al\-Azhar like Mustafa al\-Bulaqi (d. 1847\) who was the chief Mufti (jurisconsult) of the Maliki legal school of Egypt and Hasan al\-Quwaysini, who was the rector of the college itself. The Bornu scholar Al\-Barnawi, also known as Hajirami in West Africa, was the imam of one of the mosques in the Bornu capital Ngazargamu, and was a prominent teacher before he died in 1746\. He is known to have authored several works, the best known of which was his didactic work of legal theory titled 'Shurb al\-zulal' (Drinking pure water) written between 1689 and 1707\. The work follows the established Maliki tradition of Bornu, citing older and contemporary scholars from across the Muslim world including Granada, Fez, Cairo, and Timbuktu. In the early 19th century, the Maliki mufti al\-Bulaqi wrote a commentary on al\-Barnawi's which he titled Qaşidat al \- Manhal al\-Sayyāl li \- man arāda Shurb al\-Zulal. Many copies of the latter found their way back to the manuscript collections of northern Nigeria. --- After the Portuguese sailed around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, the classical geography of al\-Idrisi was updated in European maps, along with many of the geographic terms of Muslim cartography. Over the centuries, additional information about the continent was acquired, initially from and Kongo who visited and , and later by European travelers such as James Bruce and Mungo Park who visited East and West Africa in the eighteenth century. As more information about Africa became available to European writers, it was included in the dominant discourses of Western colonialism —a political and social order that purported a racial and cultural superiority of the West over non\-Western societies. Such colonial discourses were first developed in the Americas by writers such as John Locke and were furthered by Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel in their philosophies of world history. Hegel in particular popularized the conceptual divide between "North Africa" (which he called “European Africa”), and the rest of Africa (which he called "Africa proper"), claiming the former owes its development to foreigners while condemning the latter as "unhistorical". These writers provided a rationale for colonial expansion and their “racial\-geographical” hierarchies would inform patterns of colonial administration and education, especially in the French\-controlled regions of the Maghreb and West Africa, as well as in British\-controlled Egypt and Sudan. The French and British advanced a Western epistemological understanding of their colonies, classifying races, cultures, and geographies, while disregarding local knowledge. Pre\-existing concepts of ethnicity were racialized, and new identities were created that defined what was “indigenous” against what was considered “foreign”. The institutionalization of disciplines of knowledge production in the nineteenth century transformed concepts of History and Geography into purely scientific disciplines, thus producing particular Geo\-historical subjectivities such as the "Arab\-Islamic" on the one hand, and "African" on the other. In this new conceptual framework, the spatial designations like ‘North Africa’ and ‘Sub\-Saharan Africa’ were imaged as separate geographical entities. Any shared traditions they have are assumed to be the product of unidirectional links in which the South is subordinate to the North. The modern historiography of the Islamic world also emerged in the context of European colonialism and largely retained its Euro\-American categorization of geographic entities and peoples. The Sahara was thus re\-imagined as a great dividing gulf between distinct societies separating North from South, the “Black/African” from “White/Arab”. The old ethnonyms such as 'Sudan', 'Habash', and ‘Zanj’ were translated as 'Black' —a term developed in the Americas and transferred to Africa—, and the vast geographic regions of Bilad al\-Sudan, Bilad al\-Habasha, and Bilad\-al\-Zanj were collapsed into 'Sub\-Saharan' Africa. Gone are the complexities of terms such as the Takruri of Sudan, or the Jabarti of Habash, and in come rigid terms such as 'Sub\-Saharan Muslims' from 'Black Africa'. The intellectual and cultural exchanges between societies such as Egypt and Bornu, where rulers recognized each other as equals and scholars such as al\-Suyuti and al\-Barnawi were known in either region, are re\-imagined as unidirectional exchanges that subordinate one region to the other. Contacts between the two regions are approached through essentialized narratives that were re\-interpreted to fit with Eurocentric concepts of 'Race.' While recent scholarship has discarded the more rigid colonial terminologies, the influence of modern nationalist movements still weighs heavy on the conceptual grammar and categories used to define Africa’s geographic spaces. Despite their origin as anti\-colonial movements, some of the nationalist movements on the continent tended to emphasize colonial concepts of "indigeneity" and"national identity" and assign them anachronistically to different peoples and places in history. For this reason, the use of the terms ‘North\-Africa’ and ‘Sub\-Saharan Africa’ are today considered politically and culturally expedient, both negatively and positively —by those who want to reinforce colonial narratives of Africa's separation and those who wish to subvert them. Whether it was a product of the contradiction between the Arab nationalism championed by Egypt’s Abdel Nasser that sought to 'unite' the predominantly Arab\-speaking communities, that clashed with —but at times supported— Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah whose Pan\-Africansm movement included the North. Or it is a product of the continued instance of UN agencies on the creation of new and poorly\-defined geopolitical concepts like MENA ("The Middle East and North Africa") and the other fanciful acronyms like WANA, MENASA, or even MARS. The result was the same, as communities on both sides of the divide internalized these new identities, created new patterns of exclusion, and imbued them with historical significance. But for whatever reason the term 'Sub Saharan' Africa exists today, it did not exist in the pre\-colonial world in which the societies of Mamluk Egypt and Bornu flourished. It wasn't found on the maps of Muslim geographers, who thought the West African kingdoms were located within the Sahara itself and nothing lived further south. It wasn't present in the geo\-political ordering of the Muslim world where Bornu's ruler Ali Dunama, even in the throes of civil war, addressed his Egyptian peer as his equal and retained the more prestigious titles for himself. In the same vein, his successor Idris Alooma would only address the Ottoman sultan as 'King' but rank himself higher as Caliph, similar to how Mansa Musa refused to bow to the Mamluk sultan, but was nevertheless generously hosted in Cairo. The world in which al\-Suyuti and al\-Barnawi were living had no concept of modern national identities with clearly defined boundaries, It had its own ways of ordering spaces and societies that had little in common with the colonial world that came after. It was a world in which scholars from what are today the modern countries of Nigeria, Somalia, and Morocco could meet in Egypt to teach and learn from each other, without defining themselves using these modern geo\-political concepts. It was a world in which Sub\-Saharan Africa was an anachronism, a myth, projected backward in colonial imaginary. --- The northern Horn of Africa produced some of Africa’s oldest intellectual traditions that include the famous historian Abdul Rahman al\-Jabarti of Ottoman\-Egypt. Read more about the intellectual history of the Northern Horn on Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeAl\-Suyūṭī, a polymath of the Mamlūk period edited by Antonella Ghersetti Jalal ad\-Din As\-Suyuti's Relations with the People of Takrur by E.M. Sartain pg pg 195 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 223, 249\. Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants pg 106, Ethnoarchaeology of Shuwa\-Arab Settlements By Augustin Holl pg 12\-13 Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies: Studies on Diplomacy and Diplomatics edited by Frédéric Bauden, Malika Dekkiche pg 674\-678\) Jalal ad\-Din As\-Suyuti's Relations with the People of Takrur by E.M. Sartain pg 195\) Tafsīr Sources in Annotated Qur’anic Manuscripts from Early Borno by Dmitry Bondarev pg 25\-57 A Geography of Jihad. Jihadist Concepts of Space and Sokoto Warfare by Stephanie Zehnle pg 79, 85\-101\. A Geography of Jihad. Jihadist Concepts of Space and Sokoto Warfare by Stephanie Zehnle pg 89\) A Geography of Jihad. Jihadist Concepts of Space and Sokoto Warfare by Stephanie Zehnle pg 94\) The Image of Africans in Arabic Literature : Some Unpublished Manuscripts by by Akbar Muhammad 47\-51 Reader in al\-Jahiz: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Master By Thomas Hefter The Sahara: Past, Present and Future edited by Jeremy Keenan pg 96 Arabic External Sources for the History of Africa to the South of Sahara Tadeusz Lewicki Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270\-1527 by Taddesse Tamrat pg 12 New Encyclopedia of Africa, Volume 1, edited by John Middleton pg 208\) A Geography of Jihad. Jihadist Concepts of Space and Sokoto Warfare by Stephanie Zehnle pg 80\-84, Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic\-Islamic World pg 74\-87 A Region of the Mind: Medieval Arab Views of African Geography and Ethnography and Their Legacy by John O. Hunwick pg 106\-120 Ibn Khaldun, the maqadimma: an introduction to history, by Franz Rosenthal, pg 60\-61\) Models of the World and Categorical Models: The 'Enslavable Barbarian' as a Mobile Classificatory Label" by Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias. Takrur the History of a Name by 'Umar Al\-Naqar pg 365\-370, Islamic principalities in southeast Ethiopia pg 31 Islamic Scholarship in Africa by Ousmane Oumar Kane pg 8\) E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913\-1936\. A \- Bābā Beg, Volume 1 by E. J. Brill pg 533\-534 Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts pg 30\-32, PhD thesis) Al\-Azhar and the Orders of Knowledge by Dahlia El\-Tayeb Gubara pg 213\. Islamic Reform and Conservatism: Al\-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam by Indira Falk Gesink pg 90, 28 The Arabic Literature of Nigeria to 1804 by A.D.H. Bivar pg 130\-131, Arabic Literature of Africa Vol.2 edited by John O. Hunwick, Rex Séan O'Fahey pg 41\) John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism By Barbara Arneil Black Rights/white Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism By Charles Wade Mills Hegel and the Third World by Teshale Tibebu pg 224\) The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East By Abdelmajid Hannoum, The Walking Qurʼan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa by Rudolph T. Ware, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo\-Egyptian Sudan By Heather J. Sharkey. (PhD thesis) Al\-Azhar and the Orders of Knowledge by Dahlia El\-Tayeb Gubara, pg 189\-192 On Trans\-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross\-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth\-Century Western Africa by Ghislaine Lydon pg 36\-46 The Walking Qurʼan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa by Rudolph T. Ware pg 21\-36 Nkrumaism and African Nationalism by Matteo Grilli, The Arabs and Africa edited by Khair El\-Din Haseeb) The Multidimensionality of Regions in World Politics by Paul J. Kohlenberg, Another Cartography is Possible: Relocating the Middle East and North Africa by Harun Rasiah ·August 27, 2023 2)

a brief note on the Intellectual history of Africa in a brief note on the Intellectual history of Africa the Jabarti diaspora of North\-Eastern Africa. )The African continent has historically been home to dozens of writing systems including some of the world’s oldest such as the Meroitic script of Kush, the Ge'ez script of Aksum, and the Old Nubian script of medieval Nubia, as well as some of the more recent scripts such as , Vai and Njoya's syllabary. Each of these writing systems produced its own literary traditions and contributed to the continent’s intellectual history. While many of these writing systems were created within the continent, their usage was often confined to the societies that invented them. The vast majority of writing in most African societies was done using the Arabic script which was also rendered into various African languages as the Ajami script. This was in large part due to the gradual adoption of Islam as a common religion across many African societies, which facilitated cross\-cultural exchanges and the usage of the Arabic script without the need for extending political authority as was the case for Kush’s Meroitic script, Ethiopia’s Ge’ez script, or King Njoya’s script, that were all associated with royal power. Documents written in the Arabic script are thus attested in more than eighty languages across the continent from the Atlantic coast of Senegal to the East African coast in Tanzania to the forested regions of Eastern Congo. In virtually all these societies, the tradition of literacy and the use of the script was propagated by African scholars through complex intellectual networks that cut across varied social interactions and political boundaries. Over centuries, this African literary tradition has left a priceless heritage in manuscript collections from Timbuktu to Kano, to Lamu, which underscore the salient role played by Africa's scholarly diasporas in the spread of learning across the continent. In West Africa, the most dynamic of these scholarly diasporas were the Wangara of the Inland delta of central Mali. Appearing among the earliest documentary records about West Africa, . These merchant scholars are associated with many of the region's earliest centers of learning and the emergence of intellectual movements that continue to shape the region's social landscape. In East Africa, the Swahili were the region's equivalent of the Wangara. Initially confining their activities to the coast and its immediate hinterland, , crossing into Uganda, Zambia, and Congo, until they reached the Atlantic coast of Angola. They were integrated into the region's societies, and contributed to the region's intellectual culture, producing a large collection of manuscripts across many locations from Kenya to Mozambique to the D.R.C. While the intellectual history of West Africa and East Africa has attracted the bulk of attention from modern researchers, the northern horn of Africa was home to an equally vibrant literary tradition in Arabic and Ajami that is at times overshadowed by the focus on the Ge'ez literature of Ethiopia. The intellectual traditions of the northern Horn of Africa produced some of the continent’s oldest centers of learning such as Harar and Zeila, as well as many prominent scholars, most notably the Ottoman\-Egyptian historian Abdul Rahman al\-Jabarti. The intellectual networks and scholars of the northern Horn of Africa are the subject of my latest Patreon article Please subscribe to read more about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe29 )

State and society in southern Ethiopia: the Oromo kingdom of Jimma (ca. 1830\-1932\) in State and society in southern Ethiopia: the Oromo kingdom of Jimma (ca. 1830\-1932\) 2)Modern Ethiopia is a diverse country comprised of many communities and languages, each with its history and contribution to the country's cultural heritage. While Ethiopian historiography is often focused on the historical developments in the northern regions of the country, some of the most significant events that shaped the emergence of the modern country during the 19th century occurred in its southern regions. In a decisive break from the past, several monarchical states emerged among the Oromo\-speaking societies in the Gibe region of southwestern Ethiopia, the most powerful of which was the kingdom of Jimma. Reputed to be one of the wealthiest regions in Ethiopia, the kingdom's political history traverses several key events in the country's history. This article explores the history of the kingdom of Jimma from its emergence in 1830 to its end in 1932, reframing the complex story of modern Ethiopia from an Oromo perspective. Map of Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Background on the political landscape of southern Ethiopia between the 16th and early 19th century. Around the 16th century, the Gibe region of south\-western Ethiopia was dominated by Oromo\-speaking groups, who, through a protracted process of migration and military expansion, created diverse societies and political structures over some pre\-existing societies such as the Sidama\-speaking polities of Kaffa and Enarea. By the mid\-18th century, increased competition for land, livestock, markets, and trade routes, between these Oromo societies led to the emergence of several states in the region. At the turn of the 19th century, there were at least five polities in the upper Gibe region that were known by contemporary visitors as the kingdoms of Limmu\-Enarea; Gomma; Guma; Gera; and Jimma. The emergence of these kingdoms was influenced as much by internal processes in Oromo society; such as the emergence of successful military leaders, as it was by external influences; such as the revival of Red Sea trade and the expansion of trade routes into southern Ethiopia. Initially, the most powerful among these states was the kingdom of Limmu\-Enarea founded by Bofo after a successful defense of the kingdom against an invasion by the kingdom of Guma. Limmu\-Enarea reached its height during the reign of Bofu's son Ibsa Abba Bagibo (1825\-61\), a powerful monarch with a well\-organized hierarchy of officials. Its main town of Sakka was an important commercial center on the trade route between Kaffa and the kingdoms of Shewa and Gojjam (part of the Ethiopian empire). It attracted Muslim merchants from the northern regions, who greatly influenced the adoption of Islam in the kingdom and its neighbors including the kingdom of Jimma. The polity of Jimma was established in the early 19th century by Abba Magal, a renowned Oromo warrior who expanded the kingdom from his center at Hirmata. By 1830, the kingdom of Jimma emerged as a powerful rival of Enarea, just as the latter was losing its northern frontier to the kingdom of Shewa. Jimma's king, Sanna Abba Jifar, had succeeded in uniting several smaller states under his control and conquered the important centers along the trade route linking Kaffa to the northern states of Gojjam and Shewa. In several clashes during the late 1830s and 1840s, Jimma defeated its neighbors on all sides, including Enarea. Abba Jifar transformed the kingdom from a congeries of small warring factions to a centralized state of growing economic and political power. --- The government in Jimma Abba Jifar created many administrative and political innovations based on pre\-existing institutions as well as external influences from Muslim traders. Innovations from the latter in particular were likely guided by the cleric and merchant named Abdul Hakim who settled near the king's palace at Jiren. However, traditional institutions co\-existed with Islamic institutions, and the latter were only gradually adopted as more clerics settled in Jima during the late 19th century. Administration in Jimma was centralized and controlled by the king through a gradually developed bureaucracy. The capital of Jimma was at Jiren where the palace compound of the King was established in the mid\-19th century on a hill overlooking Hirmata, around which were hundreds of soldiers, servants and artisans. The building would later be reconstructed in 1870 by Abba Jifar II after a fire. Near the palace lived court officials, such as the prime minister, war minister, chief judge, scribes, court interpreters, lawyers, musicians, and other entertainers. There were stables, storehouses, treasuries, workshops, reception halls, houses for the royal family and visitors, servants, soldiers and a mosque. The kingdom was divided into sixty provinces, called k'oro, each under the jurisdiction of a governor, called an abba k'oro, whose province was further divided into five to ten districts (ganda), each under a district head known as the abba ganda. These governors supplied soldiers for the military and mobilized corvee labor for public works, but retained neither an army nor the right to collect taxes. Appointed officials staffed the administrative offices of Jimma, and none of the offices were hereditary save for the royal office itself. Officials such as tax collectors, judges, couriers, and military generals were drawn from several different categories including royals and non\-royals, wealthy figures and men who distinguished themselves in war, as well as foreigners with special skills, including mercenaries, merchants, and Muslim teachers. These were supported directly by the king and through their private estates rather than by retaining a share of the taxes sent to the capital. --- --- Expansion and consolidation of Jimma in the second half of the 19th century Abba Jifar was succeeded by his son Abba Rebu in 1855 after the former's death. He led several campaigns against the neighboring kingdom of Gomma during his brief 4\-year reign but was defeated by a coalition of forces from the kingdoms of Limmu, Gera, and Goma. His successor, Abba Bo'Ka (r. 1858\-1864\), also reigned for a relatively brief period during which Jimma society was Islamized, mosques were constructed near Jiren and land was granted to Muslim scholars. He also ordered his officials to build mosques in their respective provinces and to support local Sheikhs, making Jimma an important center of Islamic learning in southern Ethiopia. Abba Bo'ka was succeeded by Abba Gommol (r.1864\-1878\), under whose long reign the kingdom's borders were expanded eastwards to conquer the kingdom of Garo in 1875\. The latter's rulers were integrated into Jimma society through intermarriage and appointment as officials at Jiren, and wealthy figures from Jimma settled in Garo. After he died in 1878, Gommol was succeeded by his 17\-year\-old son Abba Jifar II, who was soon confronted with the southward expansion of the kingdoms of; Gojjam under Takla Haymanot; and Shewa under Menelik II. --- --- Jimma during the reign of Abba Jifar II At the time of Abba Jifar II's ascension, many who visited Jimma accorded him little hope of retaining his kingdom for long in the face of the expansionist armies of Shewa and Gojjam. But the shrewd king avoided openly confronting the armies of Gojjam, which were themselves defeated by the Shewa armies of Menelik in 1882\. Abba Jifar then opted to placate Menelik's ambitions by paying annual tribute in cash and ivory, while Jimma's neighboring kingdoms would later become the target of Shewa's expansionist armies. Aside from a brief incident coinciding with Menelik’s enthronement as the Ethiopian emperor in 1889, Jimma remained firmly under the control of Abba Jifar II who would ultimately outlive his suzerain. During Abba Jifar II's long reign, trade flourished, agriculture and coffee growing expanded, and Jimma and its king gained a reputation for wealth and greatness. It is described by one visitor in 1901 as "almost the richest land of Abyssinia" and its capital Jiren was visited by 20\-30,000 merchants where "all the products of southern Ethiopia are sold there, in many double rows of stalls about a third of a mile long. A later visitor in 1911 remarks that Abba Jafir was an intelligent ruler who “takes great pride in the prosperity of his country.” especially road\-making Another visitor in 1920 observed that “Jimma owes its riches, not to any great natural superiority over the rest of the country, but to the liberal policy which encourages instead of cramping the industry of its inhabitants.” The markets of Jimma attracted long\-distance caravans and were home to craft industries whose artisans furnished the palace and the army with their products. Hirmata, the trade center of Jimma's capital, was the greatest market of southwestern Ethiopia, attracting tens of thousands of people to it from all directions. Tolls were levied on caravans passing through the tollgates of the kingdom, while markets were under the control of a palace official. The basis of the domestic economy in Jimma, like in the neighboring states, was agro\-pastoralism, concentrating on grains such as barley, sorghum, and maize, as well as raising cattle for the household economy. The main exports from Jimma to the regional markets included ivory and gold that were resupplied from the south, and coffee that was grown locally. While Coffee hardly featured in the agricultural products of Jimma in the 1850s, it had become the dominant export by the late 19th century. In 1897, another visitor to Jimma observed "very extensive" farming of Coffee with "almost no fallow land", adding that the farmers produced "not only to meet local needs and pay taxes but also for export of bread \ --- The fall of Jimma in the early 20th century In the later years, Abba Jifar's kingdom was surrounded on all sides by Ethiopian provinces directly administered by Menelik's appointees who intended to add Jimma to their provinces by taking advantage of Menelik's withdrawal from active government. Abba Jifar thus strengthened his army by purchasing more firearms and recruiting Ethiopian soldiers. The era of Menelik's successor Lij Iyasu (r. 1913\-16\) offered temporary respite. Still, relations became tense under Iyasu’s successor Empress Zewditu, as Haile Sellassie gradually took control of the government and eventually succeeded her in 1930\. He then began centralizing control over the empire, especially its rich coffee\-producing south. By 1930, the aging king retired from active rule and left the government in the hands of his grandson Abba Jobir, who was faced with a combination of increased demand of tribute to Addis, the appointment of an Imperial tax collector, and falling coffee prices. Abba Jobir’s attempts to assert his autonomy by directly confronting the Imperial armies were stalled when he was imprisoned by Haile Selassie and a rebellion broke out in Jimma that was only suppressed in 1832\. After this rebellion, a governor was directly appointed over Jimma, ending the kingdom's autonomy. During the Italian occupation, Abba Jobir was freed and appointed sultan of the province of Galla\-sidamo albeit without full autonomy. He was later re\-imprisoned after the return of Haile Selassie who would later free him. By then, the kingdom of Jimma had been subsumed under the Ethiopian province of Kaffa, and is today part of the Oromia region. --- Many cultural developments along the East African coast are often thought to have been introduced by foreigners from southwestern Asia who migrated to the region, but recent research has revealed that East Africans regularly traveled to and settled in Arabia and the Persian Gulf where they established diasporic communities Read more about this history of East African travel to Arabia here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis pg 323\-322\) The Emergence and Consolidation of the Monarchies of Enarea and Jimma in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Mordechai Abir pg 206\-208, The Islamization of the Gibe Region, Southwestern Ethiopia from c. 1830s to the Early Twentieth Century by G Gemeda pg 68\-70\) The Cambridge History of Africa vol 5 pg 85, The Emergence and Consolidation of the Monarchies of Enarea and Jimma in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Mordechai Abir pg 208\-210\) The Emergence and Consolidation of the Monarchies of Enarea and Jimma in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Mordechai Abir pg 217\-218, Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 41 ) Map by Herbert S. Lewis Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 41\-42, The Islamization of the Gibe Region, Southwestern Ethiopia from c. 1830s to the Early Twentieth Century by G Gemeda pg 69\-71\) The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society: JRGS, Volume 25 By Royal Geographical Society pg 212 Heritages and their conservation in the gibe region (Southwest Ethiopia): a history, ca. 1800\-1980 by Nejib Raya pg 73\-77 Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 68\-76, The Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis pg 238\) The Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis pg 331\-332\) The Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis pg 329\-330\) Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 43, The Islamization of the Gibe Region, Southwestern Ethiopia from c. 1830s to the Early Twentieth Century by G Gemeda pg 72\) Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 43\-44\) photo by Nejib Raya, reading: Heritages and their conservation in the gibe region (Southwest Ethiopia): a history, ca. 1800\-1980 photo by Nejib Raya Photo by ‘Jiren’ on Facebook, further reading: History of Islamic education in Jimma from 1830 to 2007 by Abdo Abazinab The Rise of Coffee and the Demise of Colonial Autonomy by Guluma Gemeda pg 53\-54, Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo Monarchy: Ethiopia, 1830\-1932 By Herbert S. Lewis pg 45, Between the Jaws of Hyenas \- A Diplomatic History of Ethiopia (1876\-1896\) By Richard Caulk pg 166 From the Somali Coast Through Southern Ethiopia to the Sudan By Oscar Neumann pg 390 A Journey in Southern Abyssinia by C. W. Gwynn, pg 133 Through South\-Western Abyssinia to the Nile by L. F. I. Athill pg 355 The Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis pg 333\-334\) The Galla State of Jimma Abba Jifar by Herbert S. Lewis 325\-326\) On the Countries South of Abyssinia by CT Beke pg 260 The Rise of Coffee and the Demise of Colonial Autonomy: The Oromo Kingdom of Jimma and Political Centralization in Ethiopia by Guluma Gemeda pg 60\-61\) Photo by L. F. I. Athill The Rise of Coffee and the Demise of Colonial Autonomy: The Oromo Kingdom of Jimma and Political Centralization in Ethiopia by Guluma Gemeda pg 55\-57\) The Rise of Coffee and the Demise of Colonial Autonomy: The Oromo Kingdom of Jimma and Political Centralization in Ethiopia by Guluma Gemeda pg 62\-66\) 20 2)

Reversing the Sail: a brief note on African travelers in the western Indian Ocean in Reversing the Sail: a brief note on African travelers in the western Indian Ocean The Swahili in Arabia and the Persian gulf 2)In December of 2000, a team of researchers exploring the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen made a startling discovery. Hidden in the limestone caves of the island was a massive corpus of inscriptions and drawings left by ancient visitors from India, Africa, and the Middle East. At least eight of the inscriptions they found were written in the Ge'ez script associated with the kingdom of Aksum in the northern horn of Africa. The remarkable discovery of the epigraphic material from Socotra is of extraordinary significance for elucidating the extent and scale of the Indo\-Roman trade of late antiquity, which linked the Indian Ocean world to the Meditterean world. Unfortunately, most historiography regarding this period overlooks the role played by intermediaries such as the , as evidenced by Aksumite material culture spread across the region from the Jordanian city of Aqaba to the city of Karur in south\-Eastern India. The limited interest in the role of African societies in ancient exchanges reifies the misconception of the continent as one that was isolated in global processes. As one historian remarks; "Narratives of Africa’s relation to global processes have yet to take full account of mutuality in Africa’s global exchanges. One of the most complicated questions analysts of African pasts have faced is how African interests figure into an equation of global interfaces historiographically weighted toward the effects of outsiders’ actions." For the northern Horn of Africa in particular, ancient societies such as the Aksumites were actively involved in the political processes of the western Indian Ocean. Aksumite armies sent several expeditions into western Arabia from the 3rd to 6th century to support local allies and later to subsume the region as part of the Aksumite state. . The recent discovery of royal inscriptions in Ge'ez commissioned by Abraha across central, eastern, northern, and western Arabia indicates that Aksumite control of Arabia was more extensive than previously imagined. A few centuries later, the red\-sea archipelago of Dahlak off the coast of Eritrea served as the base for the . From 1022 to 1159, this dynasty founded by an Abyssinian administrator named Najah controlled one of the most lucrative trade routes between the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean. The Najahid rulers established their capital at Zabid in Yemen, struck their own coinage, and received the recognition of the Abbasid Caliph. Around the same time the Abyssinians controlled western Yemen, another African community established itself along the southern coast of Yemen. These were the Swahili of the East African coast, a cosmopolitan community whose activities in the Indian Ocean world were extensive. The Swahili presence in Portuguese India in particular is well\-documented, but relatively little is known about their presence in south\-western Asia. Cultural exchanges between East Africa and southwestern Asia are thought to have played a significant role in the development of Swahili culture, and resident East Africans in Arabia and the Persian Gulf were likely the agents of these cultural developments. My latest Patreon article focuses on the Swahili presence in Arabia and the Persian Gulf from 1000 CE to 1900\. subscribe and read about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeDomesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization by Jeremy Prestholdt, pg5 Trade in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by D. J. Mattingly pg 147 24 2)

A history of Grande Comore (Ngazidja) ca. 700\-1900\. in A history of Grande Comore (Ngazidja) ca. 700\-1900\. State and society on a cosmopolitan island )Situated a few hundred miles off the East African coast are a chain of volcanic islands whose history, society, and urban settlements are strikingly similar to the coastal cities of the mainland. The Comoro archipelago forms a link between the East African coast to the island of Madagascar like a series of stepping stones on which people, domesticates, and goods travelled across the western Indian Ocean. The history of Comoros was shaped by the movement and settlement of different groups of people and the exchange of cultures, which created a cosmopolitan society where seemingly contradictory practices like matriliny and Islam co\-existed. While the states that emerged on the three smaller islands of Nzwani, Mwali, and Mayotte controlled most of their territories, the largest island of Ngazidja was home to a dozen states competing for control over the entire island. This article explores the history of Ngazidja from the late 1st millennium to the 19th century. Location of Grande Comore on the East African Coast. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early history of Grande Comore from the 7th\-14th century. The Comoro Archipelago was settled in the late 1st millennium by speakers of the Sabaki subgroup of Bantu languages from the East African coast. From these early populations evolved the Comorian languages of Shingazidja, Shimwali, Shindzuani, and Shimaore spoken on the islands of Ngazidja, Mwali, Nzwani, and Mayotte respectively. In the later centuries, different parts of the archipelago would receive smaller groups of immigrants including Austroneasian\-speakers and Arabs, as well as a continued influx from the Swahili coast. Archeological evidence suggests that Comoros' early settlement period is similar to that found along the East African coast. Small settlements of wattle and daub houses were built by farming and fishing communities that were marginally engaged in regional trade but showed no signs of social hierarchies. At Ngazidja, the 9th\-12th century settlement at Mbachilé had few imported ceramics (about 6%), while another old village contained an Islamic burial but little evidence of external contact. The ruins of later settlements on Ngazidja in the 13th\-14th century include traces of masonry buildings of coral lime and more imported pottery, especially in the town of Mazwini. According to local tradition, this early settlement at Mazwini was abandoned and its inhabitants founded the city of Moroni. It was during this period that the Comoros islands first appeared in textural accounts often associated with the Swahili coast. The earliest of these accounts may have been al\-idrisis’ probable reference to Nzwani (Anjouan), but the more certain reference comes from the 15th\-century navigator Ibn Majid who mentions Ngazidja by its Swahili name. --- The emergence of states on Grande Comore (15th\-17th century) The Comoro Islands were part of the 'Swahili world' of the East African coastal cities and their ruling families were often related both agnatically and affinally. Beginning in the 13th century, the southernmost section of the Swahili coast was dominated by the city of Kilwa, whose chronicle mentions early ties between its dynasty and the rulers of Nzwani. By the 15th century, the route linking Kilwa to Comoros and Madagascar was well established, and the cities lying along this route would serve as a refuge for the Kilwa elite who fled the city after it was . It was during this period between the 15th and 16th centuries that the oldest states on Ngazidja were founded. Traditional histories of Ngazidja associate the oldest dynasties on the Island with the so\-called 'Shirazi', a common ethnonym that appears in the early history of the Swahili coast —In which a handful of brothers from Shiraz sailed to the east African coast, married into local elite families, and their unions produced the first rulers of the Swahili cities—. Ngazidja’s oral tradition is both dependent upon and radically different from Swahili tradition, reflecting claims to a shared heritage with the Swahili that were adapted to Ngazidja’s social context. Ngazidja’s Shirazi tradition focuses on the states that emerged at Itsandra and Bambao on the western half of the island. In the latter, a ‘Shirazi’ princess from the Swahili coast arrived on the island and was married to Ngoma Mrahafu, the pre\-existing ruler (bedja) of the land/state (Ntsi) of southern Bambao, the daughter born to these parents was then married to Fe pirusa, ruler of northern Bambao. These in turn produced a son, Mwasi Pirusa, who inherited all of Bambao. A later shipwreck brought more 'Shirazis' from the Swahili city of Kilwa, whose princesses were married to Maharazi, the ruler of a small town called Hamanvu. This union produced a daughter who was then married to the ruler of Mbadani, and their daughter married the ruler of Itsandra, later producing a son, Djumwamba Pirusa, who inherited the united state of Itsandra, Mbadani and Hamanvu. This founding myth doubtlessly compresses a long and complex series of interrelationships between the various dynastic houses in Comoros and the Swahili coast. It demonstrates the contradictions inherent in establishing prestigious origins for local lineages that were culturally matrilineal; where the sons of a male founder would have belonged to the mother's lineage and undermined the whole legitimation project. , the Ngazidja traditions claim that it was Shirazi princesses who were married off to local rulers (mabedja), and were then succeeded by the product of these unions, whether sons or daughters, that would take on the title of sultan ( mfaume/mflame). These traditions also reflect the genetic mosaic of Comoros, as recent studies of the genetic heritage of modern Comorians show contributions predominantly from Africa, (85% mtDNA, 60% Y\-DNA) with lesser amounts from the Middle East and South\-East Asia. But as is the case with the Swahili coast, the process of integrating new arrivals from East Africa and the rest of the Indian Ocean world into Comorian society was invariably complex, with different groups arriving at different periods and accorded different levels of social importance. --- --- Traditional accounts of Comorian history, both written and oral, stress the near\-constant rivalry between the different states on Ngazidja, as well as the existence of powerful rulers in the island's interior. Portuguese accounts from the early 16th\-century note that there were around twenty independent states on Ngazidja, they also remark on the island’s agricultural exports to the Swahili coast, which included "millet, cows, goats, and hens" that supply Kilwa and Mombasa. The Comoro ports became an important stopping point for European ships that needed provisions for their crew, and their regular visits had a considerable political and economic impact on the islands, especially Nzwani. While the islands didn't fall under , several Portuguese traders lived on the island, carrying on a considerable trade in livestock and grain, as well as Malagasy captives. By the middle of the 16th century, Ngazidja was said to be ruled by Muslim dynasties "from Malindi" —a catchall term for the Swahili coast. Later arrivals by other European ships at the turn of the 17th century had mixed encounters with the rulers of Ngazidja. In 1591 an English crew was killed in battle after a dispute, another English ship in 1608 was warmly received at Iconi, while a Portuguese crew in 1616 reported that many of their peers were killed. Ngazidja's ambiguous reputation, and its lack of natural harbors, eventually prompted However, the pre\-existing regional trade with the Swahili coast, Madagascar and Arabia continued to flourish. --- State and society on Grande Comore: 17th\-19th century. By the 17th century, the sultanates of Ngazidja had been firmly established, with eleven separate states, the most powerful of which were Itsandra and Bambao. Each sultanate was centered around a political capital, which generally included a palace where the sultan (Mfaume wa Nsti) resided next to his councilors. Sometimes, a powerful sultan would succeed in imposing his hegemony over all the sultanates of the island and thus gain the title of Sultan Ntinbe. Power was organized according to a complex hierarchy that extended from the city to the village, with each local leader (mfaume wa mdji) providing its armies, raising taxes, and settling disputes, while religious scholars carried out social functions and also advised the various rulers. The choice of the sultan was elective, with candidates being drawn from the ruling matrilineage. The sultan was assisted by a council comprised of heads of lineages and other patricians, which restricted his powers through assemblies. The various local sultans nominally recognized the authority of the sultan ntibe, an honorific office that was alternatively claimed by the two great clans; the Hinya Fwambaya of Itsandra (allied with Washili and Hamahame), and the Hinya Matswa Pirusa, of Bambao (allied with Mitsamiouli, Hambou, Boudé and Boinkou). while other clans included the M'Dombozi of Badgini (allied with Domba and Dimani) --- Subscribe --- The second half of the 17th century was a period of prosperity for Ngazidja, particularly the state of Itsandra, which, under the rule of Sultan Mahame Said and his successor Fumu Mvundzambanga, saw the construction of the Friday mosques in Itsandramdjini and Ntsudjini. Sultan Fumu was succeeded by his niece, Queen Wabedja (ca. 1700\-1743\) who is particularly remembered in local traditions for her lengthy rule both as regent for her three short\-lived sons and as a Queen regnant for nearly half a century. A skillful diplomat, Queen Wabedja married off her daughters to the ruling families of the rival clan of Hinya Matswa Pirusa, which controlled the cities of Mitsamihuli, Ikoni, and Moroni. Trade with the Swahili coast boomed with Itsandramdjini as the island’s premier commercial centre. Itsandra became a center of learning whose scholars included Princess Mmadjamu, a celebrated poet and expert in theology and law. The period of Wabedja's rule in the early 18th century is remembered as a golden age of Ngazidja's history. Like most of the Swahili coast, the island of Ndazidja received several . They married locally and were acculturated into the dominant Comorian culture, particularly its matriclans. These families reinvigorated the society's Islamic culture and learning, mostly based in their village in Tsujini, but also in the city of Iconi. However, unlike the Swahili dynasties and the rulers of Nzwani, the Alawi of Ngazidja never attained political power but were only part of the Ulama. Most cities (mdji) and towns in Ngazidja are structured around a public square: a bangwe, with monumental gates (mnara) and benches (upando) where customary activities take place and public meetings are held. The palaces, mosques, houses, and tombs were built around these, all enclosed within a series of fortifications that consisted of ramparts (ngome), towers (bunarisi), and doors (goba). In Ngazidja, each city is made up of matrilineages ordered according to a principle of precedence called kazi or mila. The Comorian marital home belongs to the wife, but the husband who enters it becomes its master. It is on this initial tension that broader gender relationships are built, and the house's gendered spaces are constructed to reflect Comorian cultural norms of matrilocality. Larger houses include several rooms serving different functions, with some that include the typical zidaka wall niches of Swahili architecture and other decorative elements, all covered by a mix of flat roofs and double\-pitched thatched roofs with open gables to allow ventilation. --- --- At the end of her reign, Wabedja handed over power to her grandson Fumnau (r. 1743\-1800\), a decision that was opposed by Nema Feda, the queen of the north\-eastern state of Hamahame. Nema Feda marched her army south against Fumnau’s capital Ntsudjini, but was defeated by the combined forces of Bambao and Itsandra. The old alliance between the two great clans crumbled further over the succession to the throne of Washili. This conflict led to an outbreak of war in which the armies of Itsandra's king Fumnau and Bambao's king Mlanau seized control over most of the island's major centers before Fumnau turned against Mlanau's successor and remained sole ruler of Ngazidja with the title of sultan ntibe. During this period, , prompting sultan Fumnau to construct the fortifications of Itsandramdjini, a move which was copied by other cities. The island remained an important center of trade on the East African coast. According to a visitor in 1819, who observed that the Ngazidja had more trade than the other islands, exporting coconuts to Zanzibar, cowries to India, and grain to Nzwani. --- --- Grande Comore in the 19th century The sultans of Ngazidja maintained close ties with Nzwani and Zanzibar, and the island's ulama was respected along the Swahili coast. While both Nzwani and Zanzibar at times claimed suzerainty over the island, neither was recognized by any of Ngazidja's sultans. The island's political fragmentation rendered it impossible for Nzwani's rulers to claim control despite being related to some of the ruling families, while Zanzibar's Omani sultans followed a different sect of Islam that rendered even nominal allegiance untenable. The 19th century in Ngazidja was a period of civil conflict instigated in large part by the long reign of the Bambao sultan Ahmed (r. 1813\-1875\), and his ruinous war against the sultans of Itsandra. In the ensuing decades, shifting political alliances and wars between all the major states on the island also came to involve external powers such as the Portuguese, French, and Zanzibar (under the British) whose military support was courted by the different factions. In the major wars of the mid\-19th century, sultan Ahmed defeated sultan Fumbavu of Itsandra, before he was deposed by his court in Bambao for allying with Fumbavu's successor Msafumu. Ahmed rallied his allies and with French support, regained his throne, but was later deposed by Msafumu. The throne of Bambao was taken by Ahmed's grandson Said Ali who rallied his allies and the French, to defeat Msafumu's coalition that was supported by Zanzibar. Said Ali took on the title of sultan ntibe, but like his predecessors, had little authority over the other sultans. This compelled him to expand his alliance with the French by inviting the colonial company of the french botanist Leon Humblot, to whom he leased much of the island (that he didn't control). In January 1886, against all the traditions of the established political system, Said Ali signed a treaty with France that recognized him as sultan of the entire island and established a French protectorate over Ngazidja. This deeply unpopular treaty was met with stiff opposition from the rest of the island, forcing Said Ali to flee in 1890 and the French to bring in troops to depose the Sultans. By 1892, the island was fully under French control and the sultanate was later abolished in 1904, marking the end of its autonomy. --- The Portuguese invader of Kilwa, Francisco de Almeida, met his death at the hands of the Khoi\-San of South Africa, Read more about the history of one of Africa’s oldest communities here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones and Ian Walker The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria Jean LaViolette pg 267\-268, Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 36\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria Jean LaViolette pg 271, 273\-274 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, Adria Jean LaViolette pg 281\-282, The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th Century by Malyn Newitt pg 144\) The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th Century by Malyn Newitt pg 142\-144\) The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 16, The Making of the Swahili: A View from the Southern End of the East African Coast by Gill Shepherd pg 140 Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World By Iain Walker pg 60\-61, Cités, citoyenneté et territorialité dans l’île de Ngazidja by Sophie Blanchy Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World By Iain Walker pg pg 59\-64\) Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as a major determinant of human bicultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean by Said Msaidie The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 16\) The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 146\-151, Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 53\) Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 54\-55\) Cités, citoyenneté et territorialité dans l’île de Ngazidja by Sophie Blanchy Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 68, 44\) Map by Charles Viaut et al, these states constantly fluctuated in number from anywhere between 8 to 12 This and similar photos by Charles Viaut et al Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 71\) Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 71\) Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family Networks in East Africa, 1860\-1925 by Anne K. Bang pg 27\-31, 47\-53\) Le patrimoine bâti d’époque classique de Ngazidja (Grande Comore, Union des Comores). Rapport de synthèse de prospection et d’étude de bâti by Charles Viaut et al., pg 40\-41\) Cités, citoyenneté et territorialité dans l’île de Ngazidja by Sophie Blanchy La maison urbaine, cadre de production du statut et du genre à Anjouan (Comores), XVIIe\-XIXe siècles by Sophie Blanchy Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 72\-73\) The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 22\) Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 73, 102\) Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 102\) Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros By Iain Walker pg 103\-104, The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 32\) Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean by M. D. D. Newitt pg 32\) 14 )

a brief note on the ancient Herders and Foragers of South Africa. in a brief note on the ancient Herders and Foragers of South Africa. a social history of the KhoiKhoi community (2000BP \- 1880\) 2)At the start of the common era, much of southwestern Africa was populated by an ancient group of foragers and herders collectively known as the Khoe\-San; a diverse community that is often divided into the hunter\-gatherers (San) and herder (Khoekhoe) populations. The Khoe\-San have a complex and enigmatic history that spans thousands of years and isn’t well recorded, but recent advances in archeological, linguistic, and genetic research have begun to clarify their history. Popular historiography of southern Africa is often biased in favor of the more complex societies established by sedentary farmers, as is often the case for most of the world. In this region, such states are often associated with the sedentary Bantu\-speaking agro\-pastoralists in south\-eastern Africa, such as and . While the history of the later periods largely focuses on these kingdoms’ interactions with the colonial states founded by the Dutch and British settlers, which were also predominantly farming societies. Scholars who perpetuate this bias unknowingly legitimize the myth of the 'empty land' which served as the main rationale for colonial expansion. In this historically inaccurate but politically convenient myth, the nomadic Khoe\-san communities supposedly did not utilize the land they lived on, and it was thus left vacant for European expansion and settlement. Parallel to this myth was the claim that the kingdoms dominated by the Bantu\-speaking sedentarists (whom the Europeans considered to be utilizing their land) were supposedly recent arrivals in the 18th and 19th centuries. The colonialists thus legitimized their expansion by claiming to be protecting the rights of the ‘indigenous’ Khoe\-San communities—the very same groups whom they were displacing. At the heart of this myth is the notion that only large, sedentary communities organized as kingdoms possessed the capacity to utilize the land they lived on, and that the nomadic Khoe\-San populations were too small to utilize their land, nor form complex societies that could defend their claims. But like all colonial myths, this falsity isn't grounded in the historical realities of the Khoe\-San. When European ships landed on the South African coast in November 1497, their leader, Vasco Da Gama, found the Khoe\-San living along the shores of the Atlantic. He quickly learned that the Khoe\-San didn't take kindly to strangers who took their resources without permission when an initially peaceful encounter turned violent and he was chased back to his ship by the Khoe\-San. In 1510, his successor, Francisco de Almeida was killed in battle with the Khoe warriors, along with 50 of his crew, after they had invaded a coastal community of the Khoe\-San and kidnapped some of their children. In the succeeding centuries, Khoe\-San communities fought a seemingly never\-ending series of wars against waves of colonial invasions by the Dutch and later by the British. Some of the Khoe\-San succeeded in establishing much larger and more complex societies across southern Africa, including , and several constitutional monarchies in South Africa that would last until the 1870s. My latest Patreon article focuses on the history of the Khoe community of South Africa, from its earliest appearance in the archeological record around 2,000 years ago to the collapse of the last independent Khoe kingdom in 1880\. Please subscribe and read more about it here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe17 2)

Seafaring, trade and travel in the African Atlantic. ca. 1100\-1900\. in Seafaring, trade and travel in the African Atlantic. ca. 1100\-1900\. historical links between West Africa and Central Africa. (Africans exploring Africa chapter 4\) 2)Like all maritime societies, mastery of the ocean, was important for the societies of Africa's Atlantic coast, as was the mastery of the rest of their environment. For many centuries, maritime activity along Africa's Atlantic coast played a major role in the region's political and economic life. While popular discourses of Africa's Atlantic history are concerned with the forced migration of enslaved Africans to the Americas, less attention is paid to the historical links and voluntary travel between Africa's Atlantic societies. From the coast of Senegal to the coast of Angola, African seafarers traversed the ocean in their own vessels, exchanging goods, ideas, and cultures, as they established diasporic communities in the various port cities of the African Atlantic. This article explores the history of Atlantic Africa's maritime activity, focusing on African seafaring, trade, and migration along the Atlantic coast. Political map of Atlantic Africa in the 17th century --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- State and society along the African Atlantic. The African Atlantic was both a fishery and a highway that nurtured trade, travel, and migration which predated and later complemented overseas trade. Africans developed maritime cultures necessary to traverse and exploit their world. Coastal and interior waters enabled traders, armies, and other travelers to rapidly transport goods, people, and information across different regions, as well as to seamlessly switch between overland, riverine, and sea\-borne trade to suit their interests. Mainland West Africa is framed beneath the river Niger’s arch and bound together by an array of watercourses, including the calm mangrove swamps of Guinea and Sierra Leone. The Bights of Benin and Biafra’s lagoon complex extends from the Volta River, in what is now Ghana, to the Nigerian–Cameroonian border. Similarly, West\-Central Africa was oriented by its rivers, especially the Congo and Kwanza rivers, in a vast hydrographic system that extended into the interior of central Africa. In many parts of West and Central Africa, different kinds of vessels were used to navigate the waters of the Atlantic, mainly to fish, but also for war and trade. When the Portuguese first reached the coast of Malagueta (modern Liberia) in the early 1460s they were approached by "some small canoes" which came alongside the Portuguese ships. On the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), it was noted of Elmina in 1529, that "the blacks of the village have many canoes in which they go fishing and spend much time at sea." While on the Loango coast, a visitor in 1608 noted that locals “go out in the morning with as many as three hundred canoes into the open sea”. Canoes were Atlantic Africans’ solution for navigating diverse waterways between the ocean, lagoons, and rivers. Many of these canoes were large and sea\-worthy, measuring anywhere between 50\-100ft in length, 5ft wide, and with a capacity of up to 10 tonnes. The size and design of these vessels evolved as Africans interacted with each other and with foreign traders. In the Senegambia and the Gold Coast, large watercraft were fitted with square sails, masts, and rudders that enabled them to sail out to sea and up the rivers. For most of its early history, the Atlantic coast of West Africa was dominated by relatively small polities on the frontiers of the large inland states like the Mali empire, and the kingdoms of Benin and Kongo, which were less dependent on maritime resources and trade than on the more developed resources and trade on the mainland. The relatively low maritime activity by these larger west and central African states —which conducted long\-distance trade on the mainland— was mostly due to the Atlantic Ocean’s consistent ocean currents, which, unlike the seasonal currents of the Indian Ocean, only flowed in one direction all year round. This could enable sailing in one direction eg using the Canary Current (down the coast from Morocco to Senegal), the Guinea Current (eastwards from Liberia to Ghana), and the Benguela Current (northwards from Namibia to Angola), but often made return journeys difficult. The African Atlantic was thus the domain of the smaller coastal states and societies whose maritime activities, especially fishing, date back a millennia before the common era. While many of their coastal urban settlements are commonly referred to as “ports,” this appellation is a misnomer, as the Atlantic coast of Africa possesses few natural harbors and most “ports” were actually “surf\-ports,” or landings situated on surf\-battered beaches that offered little protection from the sea, and often forced large ships to anchor 1\-5 miles offshore. Canoemen were thus necessary for the transportation of goods across the surf and lagoons. --- An overview of African maritime activity in the Atlantic The maritime activities of African mariners appear in the earliest documentation of West African coastal societies. As early as the 15th century coastal communities in Atlantic Africa were documented using surf\-canoes to transport goods to sea. Portuguese sailors off the coast of Liberia during the 1470s reported: “The negroes of all this coast bring pepper for barter to the ships in the canoes in which they go out fishing.” While another trader active in the Ivory Coast during the 1680s, noted that “Negroes in three Canoa’s laden with Elephant’s Teeth came on Board” his ship. Senegambian mariners transported kola nuts down the Gambia river, into the ocean, and along the coast to “the neighborhood of Great and Little Scarcies rivers, \. Overlapping networks of maritime and inland navigation sustained coastwise traffic from Cape Verde (in Senegal) to Cape Mount (in Liberia), bringing mainly kola nuts and pepper northwards. Similarly in west\-central Africa, traders from as far as Angola journeyed northwards to Mayumba on the Loango coast, a distance of about 400 miles, to buy salt and redwood (tukula) that was ground into powder and mixed with palm oil to make dyes. The Mpongwe of Gabon carried out a substantial coastal trade as far north as Cameroon according to an 18th century trader. Mpongwe canoes were large, up to 60ft long, and were fitted with masts and sails. With a capacity of over 10 tonnes, they regularly traveled 300\-400 miles, and according to a 19th\-century observer, the Mpongwe’s boats were so well built that they "would land them, under favorable circumstances, in South America". However, it was the mariners of the Gold Coast region who excelled at long\-distance maritime activity and would greatly contribute to the linking of Atlantic Africa’s regional maritime systems and the founding of diasporic communities that extended as far as west\-central Africa. Accounts indicate that many of these mariners, especially the Akan (of modern Ghana and S.E Ivory Coast), and Kru speakers (of modern Liberia), worked hundreds of miles of coastline between modern Liberia and Nigeria. --- The seafarers of the Gold Coast. The practice of recruiting Gold Coast canoemen for service in the Bight of Benin appears to have begun with the Dutch in the 17th century. The difficult conditions on the Bight of Benin (between modern Togo and S.W Nigeria) made landing impossible for European ships, and the local people lacked the tradition of long\-distance maritime navigation. The Europeans were thus reliant on canoemen from the Gold Coast for managing the passage of goods and people from ship to shore and back through the surf. Gold coast mariners journeying beyond their homeland were first documented in an anonymous Dutch manuscript from the mid\-17th century, in a document giving instructions for trade at Grand Popo (in modern Benin): "If you wish to trade here, you must bring a new strong canoe with you from the Gold Coast with oarsmen, because one cannot get through the surf in any boat". In the 18th century, the trader Robert Norris also observed Fante canoemen at Ouidah (in modern Benin), writing that “Landing is always difficult and dangerous, and can only be effected in canoes, which the ships take with them from the Gold Coast: they are manned with fifteen or seventeen Fantees each, hired from Cape Coast or El Mina; hardy, active men, who undertake this business, and return in their canoe to their own country, when the captain has finished his trade.” Another 18th\-century trader, John Adams who was active at Eghoro along the Benin river in south\-western Nigeria, wrote that "A few Fante sailors, hired on the Gold coast, and who can return home in the canoe when the ship's loading is completed, will be found of infinite service in navigating the large boast, and be the means of saving the lives of many of the ship's crew." These canoemen who traversed the region between south\-eastern Ivory Coast and south\-western Nigeria, were mostly Akan\-speaking people from the gold coast and would be hired by the different European traders at their settlements. Most came from the Dutch fort at El\-mina, but some also came from the vicinity of the English fort at Anomabo. At the last port of call, the canoemen would be released to make their way back to the Gold Coast, after they had received their pay often in gold, goods, and canoes. Gold Coast mariners were also hired to convey messages between the different European forts along the coast. Their services were particularly important for communications between the Dutch headquarters at El\-Mina and the various out\-forts in the Gold Coast and beyond. This was due to the prevailing currents which made it difficult for European vessels to sail from east to west, and in instances where there were no European vessels. Communication between Elmina and the outforts at Ouidah and Offra during the late 17th century was often conducted by canoemen returning home to the gold coast in their vessels. --- --- African Trade and Travel between the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin. The long\-distance travel between the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin stimulated (or perhaps reinvigorated) trade between the two regions. This trade is first documented in 1659 when it was reported that ‘for some years’ the trade in ‘akori’ beads (glass beads manufactured in Ife), which had earlier been purchased by the Europeans from the kingdoms of Allada and Benin, for re\-sale on the Gold Coast in exchange for gold, had been monopolized by African traders from the Gold Coast, who were going in canoes to Little Popo and as far as Allada to buy them. Another French observer noted in 1688 that Gold Coast traders had tapped the trade in cloth at Ouidah: ‘the Negroes even come with canoes to trade them, and carry them off ceaselessly.’ Mariners from the Gold Coast were operating as far as the Benin port of Ughoton and possibly beyond into west\-central Africa. In the 1680s, the trader Jean Barbot noted that Gold Coast mariners navigated “cargo canoes” using “them to transport their cattle and merchandise from one place to another, taking them over the breakers loaded as they are. This sort can be found at Juda \ Some of these mariners eventually settled in the coastal towns of the Bight of Benin. A document from the 1650s mentions a ‘Captain Honga’ among the noblemen of the king of Allada, serving as the local official who was the “captain of the boat which goes in and out.” By the 1690s Ouidah too boasted a community of canoemen from Elmina that called themselves 'Mine\-men'. Traditions of immigrant canoemen from El\-mina abound in Little Popo (Aneho in modern Togo) which indicates that the town played an important role in the lateral movement of canoemen along the coast. The settlement at Aneho received further immigrants from the Gold Coast in the 18th century, who created the different quarters of the town, and in other towns such as Grand Popo and Ouidah. As a transshipment point and a way station where canoemen waited for the right season to proceed to the Gold Coast, the town of Aneho was the most important diasporic settlement of people from the Gold Coast. External writers noted that the delays of the canoemen at Aneho were due to the seasonal changes, particularly the canoemen’s unwillingness to sail at any other time except the Harmattan season. During the harmattan season from about December to February, winds blow north\-east and ocean currents flow from east to west, contrary to the Guinea current’s normal direction. --- Subscribe --- African seafaring from the Gold Coast to Angola. The abovementioned patterns of wind and ocean currents may have facilitated travel eastwards along the Atlantic coast, but often rendered the return journey westwards difficult before the Gold Coast mariners adopted the sail. That the Gold Coast mariners could reach the Bight of Benin in their vessels is well documented, but evidence for direct travel further to the Loango and Angola coast is fragmentary, as the return journey would have required sailing out into the sea along the equator and then turning north to the Gold coast as the European vessels were doing. The use of canoemen to convey messages from the Dutch headquarters at El\-mina to their west\-central African forts at Kakongo and Loango, is documented in the 17th century. According to the diary of Louis Dammaet, a Dutch factor on the Gold Coast, in 1654, small boats could sail from the Gold Coast to Loango, exchange cargo, and return in two months. Additionally, internal African trade between West Africa and west\-central Africa flourished during the 17th century. Palm oil and Benin cloth were taken from Sao Tome to Luanda, where it would be imported into the local markets. Benin cloth was also imported by Loango from Elmina, while copper from Mpemba was taken to Luanda and further to Calabar and Rio Del Rey. While much of this trade was handled by Europeans, a significant proportion was likely undertaken by African merchants, and it’s not implausible that local mariners like the Mpongwe were trading internally along the central African coast, just like the Gold Coast mariners were doing in the Bight of Benin, and that these different groups of sailors and regional systems of trade overlapped. For example, there is evidence of mariners from Lagos sailing in their vessels westwards as far as Allada during the 18th century where they were regular traders. These would have met with established mariners like the Itsekiri and immigrants such as those from the Gold Coast. And there's also evidence of mariners from Old Calabar sailing regularly to the island of Fernando Po (Bioko), in a pattern of trade and migration that continued well into the early 20th century. It is therefore not unlikely that this regional maritime system extended further south to connect the Bight of Benin to the Loango Coast. --- Travel and Migration to Central Africa by African mariners: from fishermen to administrators. There is some early evidence of contacts between the kingdoms of Benin and Kongo in the 16th century, which appear to have been conducted through Sao Tome. In 1499, the Oba of Benin gifted a royal slave to the Kongo chief Dom Francisco. A letter written by the Kongo king Alfonso I complained of people from Cacheu and Benin who were causing trouble in his land. In 1541 came another complaint from Kongo that Benin freemen and slaves were participating in disturbances in Kongo provoked by a Portuguese adventurer. But the more firm evidence comes from the 19th century, during the era of 'legitimate trade' in commodities (palm oil, ivory, rubber) after the ban on slave exports. The steady growth in commodities trade during this period and the introduction of the steamship expanded the need for smaller watercraft (often surfboats) for ship\-to\-shore supplies and to navigate the surf. Immigrant mariners from Aneho came to play a crucial role in the regional maritime transport system which developed in parallel to the open sea transport. By the late 19th century, an estimated 10,000 men were involved in this business in the whole of the Bight of Benin as part much broader regional system. Immigrant mariners from Aneho settled at the bustling port towns of Lome and Lagos during the late 19th century and would eventually settle at Pointe\-Noire in Congo a few decades later, where a community remains today that maintains contact with their homeland in Ghana and Togo. Parallel to these developments was the better\-documented expansion of established maritime communities from the Gold Coast, Liberia, and the Bight of Benin, into the Loango coast during the late 19th century, often associated with European trading companies. Many of these were the Kru' of the Liberian coast, but the bulk of the immigrant mariners came from Aneho and Grand Popo (known locally as 'Popos’), El\-Mina (known locally as Elminas), and southwestern Nigeria (mostly from Lagos). A number of them were traders and craftsmen who had been educated in mission schools and were all generally referred to by central Africans as coastmen("les hommes de la côte"). Most of these coastmen came with the steamers which frequented the regions’ commodity trading stations, where the West Africans established fishing communities at various settlements in Cabinda, Boma, and Matadi. Others were employed locally by concessionary companies and in the nascent colonial administration of French Brazaville and Belgian Congo. One of the most prominent West African coastmen residing in Belgian Congo was the Lagos\-born Herzekiah Andrew Shanu (1858\-1905\) who arrived in Boma in 1884 and soon became a prominent entrepreneur, photographer, and later, administrator. He became active in the anti\-Leopold campaign of the Congo Reform movement, providing information about the labour abuses and mass atrocities committed by King Leopold’s regime in Congo. When his activism was discovered, the colonial government banned its employees from doing business with him, which ruined him financially and forced him to take his life in 1905\. The immigrants from West Africa who lived in the emerging cities of colonial Congo such as Matadi, Boma, and Leopodville (later Kinshasha) also influenced the region’s cultures. They worked as teachers, dock\-hands, and staff of the trading firms that were active in the region. These coastmen also carried with them an array of musical instruments introduced their musical styles, and created the first dance ochestra called 'the excelsior'. Their musical styles were quickly syncretized with local musical traditions such as maringa, eventually producing the iconic musical genres of Congo such as the Rumba. While the population of West African expatriates in central Africa declined during the second half of the 20th century, a sizeable community of West Africans remained in Pointe Noire in Congo. The members of this small but successful fishing community procure their watercraft from Ghana and regularly travel back to their hometowns in Benin, just like their ancestors had done centuries prior, only this time, by air rather than by ocean. --- Did Mansa Musa’s predecessor sail across the Atlantic and reach the Americas before Columbus? Read about Mansa Muhammad's journey across the Atlantic in the 14th century, and an exploration of West Africa's maritime culture on Patreon --- Why was the wheel present in some African societies but not others? Read more about the history of the wheel in Africa here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by J.K.Thornton Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400\-1800 by John Thornton pg 17\-20 West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic by Robin Law pg 3, Africa and the Sea by Jeffrey C. Stone pg 79 West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic by Robin Law pg 4\-5\) A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250\-1820 By John K. Thornton pg 11\-14, Remote Sensing of the African Seas edited by Vittorio Barale, Martin Gade, pg 6\-9, Map by Vittorio Barale and Martin Gade A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250\-1820 By John K. Thornton pg 13 Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 101\) Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 121\-122\) A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250\-1820 By John K. Thornton pg 12\) West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic by Robin Law pg 7, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson 125, Eurafricans in Western Africa By George E. Brooks pg 166 Kongo power and majesty by Alisa LaGamma pg 47\-48\) Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture By Eugenia W. Herbert, pg 216, Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo,: Volume 1 By Sir Richard Francis Burton, pg 83, Precolonial African Material Culture By V Tarikhu Farrar, pg 243 Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 126\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 68, Africans and Europeans in West Africa By Harvey M. Feinberg pg 67\) Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 112 Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 69\) Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 126\-127\) Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo By John Adams pg 243\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 69\-70, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 127\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 70, Africans and Europeans in West Africa By Harvey M. Feinberg pg 68\-70\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 71, West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic by Robin Law pg 23\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 147, 158, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 126\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 70\-74, 78\-88, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson pg 132\) Afro\-European Trade in the Atlantic World by Silke Strickrodt pg 74\) West Africa's Discovery of the Atlantic by Robin Law pg 6, 7\-9\) The External Trade of the Loango Coast and Its Effects on the Vili, 1576\-1870 by Phyllis M. Martin (Doctoral Thesis) pg 111\-115 Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo By John Adams, pg 96 Studies in Southern Nigerian History by Boniface I. Obichere pg 209, The Calabar Historical Journal, Volume 3, Issue 1 pg 48\-50 Benin and the Europeans, 1485\-1897 by Alan Frederick Charles Ryder pg 36, n.1\) Migrant Fishermen in Pointe\-Noire by E Jul\-Larsen pg 15\-16\) Navigating African Maritime History pg 117\-138, Travel and Adventures in the Congo Free State pg 44 In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885\-1960 by Christraud M. Geary pg 103\-104\) Les pêcheries et les poissons du Congo by Alfred Goffin pg 16, 181, 208\) Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville By Phyllis Martin pg 27 In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885\-1960 By Christraud M. Geary pg 104\-106\) Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos By Gary Stewart, 'Being modern does not mean being western': Congolese Popular Music, 1945 to 2000 by Tom Salter Pg 2\-3\) 19 2)

Roads and wheeled transport in African history. in Roads and wheeled transport in African history. Why the kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey used wheels while Asante did not. 3)The wheel is often regarded as one of humanity's greatest inventions, yet its historical significance remains a subject of considerable debate. Vehicles with wheels require good roads, but in most parts of the world, road construction could only be undertaken by large hegemonic states whose primary interest in building those roads was improving the mobility of their armies, rather than increasing civilian transport. Road building and maintainence in Africa appears to have been more extensive than has been previously understood. The list of Africa's road\-building states wasn't just confined to the 'great road system' of Asante and the paved roads of the Aksumite kingdom and Gondarine Ethiopia, it also includes the used for transporting people and their cattle, the which has drawn parallels with Asante, as well as the less extensive road networks in Dahomey. Yet in all these African road\-building societies, there was a noted absence of wheeled transport. The stone blocks used in constructing the great obelisks of Aksum were not moved in wagons, nor were Aksumite armies campaigning along the kingdom's paved roads in chariots, even though Aksum was familiar with societies that had both wagons and chariots such as the kingdom of Kush. Similary, the Asante did not utilize wheeled transport, despite being in contact with Dahomey where wheeled vehicles were relatively common, and with the Europeans at the coast, for whom wheel technology was becoming increasingly important. The history of wheeled transport in the African kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey, as well as the absence of wheels in the road\-building kingdom of Asante shows that the historical significance of the wheel in pre\-industrial transport and technology is far more complex than is often averred. In this two\-part article, I outline the history of the wheel in Kush and Dahomey by placing it in the global context of wheeled transport from its invention around 4,000BC to the industrial era. Using recent research that shows how the wheel was first spread across the ancient world, before it was abandoned for over a millennia, only to later re\-emerge in the 17th century, I argue that Africa wasn't exempt to these trends. The kingdom of Kush adopted wheeled transport just like the rest of the ancient world, and that its sucessors (such as the Aksumites, the Arabs, and even post\-Roman Europe) largely abandoned the wheel just as it was disappearing everywhere else, before early modern kingdoms like Dahomey re\-discovered wheeled transport as a consequence of the wheel’s re\-popularization in western Europe. The second half the article, which is included below, explains why the Asante kingdom did not adopt wheeled transport despite posessing an extensive road system. Using comparisons with the road system of the kingdom of Burma which had wheeled transport in the 19th century, its shown that Asante's road users would not have seen any significant improvements in travel speed had they adopted wheeled transport. I also include a section of the colonial governor Lord Lugard's failed ox\-cart project in nothern Nigeria, showing that the non\-adoption of wheeled transport wasn't due to Africans’ ignorance of its benefits —as colonialists often claimed— but because the cost of wheeled transport greatly outweighed the returns. PART I; on wheeled transport in Kush and Dahomey: --- --- PART II --- --- Built roads but absent wheels: why wheeled transport wasn't fully adopted in precolonial Asante, comparisons with Burma and lord Lugard's failed ox\-cart project in northern Nigeria The absence of wheeled transportation in sub\-Saharan Africa is a topic most Africanists tend to avoid despite it being frequently mentioned as an example of Africa's technological backwardness. This has created an asymmetry between non\-specialists on African history who exaggerate the wheel's centrality In pre\-modern technology (especially in transport), versus Africanists who either; avoid it the "wheel question" altogether or downplay the wheel's importance without offering convincing explanations. It's important to note that the wheel was present in sub\-saharan Africa, especially in ancient Nubia; from the Kerma era's representations of wheeled chariots in lower Nubia; to the extensive use and depictions of chariots in Kushite warfare; to the medieval era where the saqia water\-wheel was used in agriculture. However, this extensive use of the wheel was mostly confined to the region of Sudan, even though many parts of Africa were familiar with the wheel since antiquity. One particulary notable society that was familiar with the wheel was the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana. Considering Asante's extensive road network and the kingdom's contacts with europeans in coastal forts, it may on first sight appear to be rather surprising that Asante didn't adopt the use of wheeled transport. However, a comparison of Asante with the 18th century kingdom of Burma (Myanmar) which also had a road system but used wheeled transport, reveals that using wheels offered no significant advantages in logistics. This article explores the history of transportation in Asante, comparing it with the Konbaung dynasty of Burma to explain why wheeled transportation was absent in most of Africa, and why colonialists like lord Lugard failed to implement wheeled transport in northern Nigeria. --- A summary of Antony Hopkins' and Robin Law's arguments on the absence of wheeled transport in precolonial Africa: Atleast two west Africanists have studied the history of wheel in west Africa; the first was a brief comment on the wheeled transport in Antony G. Hopkins’ Economic history of west Africa, the second is a monograph on wheeled transport in pre\-colonial west Africa by Robin Law. Hopkins argues that besides the tsetse infested areas where the value of wheeled vehicles was reduced by the high mortality of draught animals, even in places where draught animals were available and used in transportation, wheeled vehicles were considered uneconomic because its greater cost was not justified by the proportionately greater returns because the poor quality of the roads would have greatly reduced the efficiency of wheeled vehicles and the cost of improving the system would have been prohibitive, he concludes that pack animals predominated because they were cheap to buy, inexpensive to operate and well suited for the terrain. Robin law on the other hand, argued that wheeled transport could not be adopted without improved roads, but the roads would not be improved as long as there was no wheeled transport to use them, he observed that improving roads solely to accommodate wheeled vehicles would be a speculative gamble on the future profits to be realized from such improvements, the kind of gamble the Asante were in no position to make, but one that colonial governments with a more aggressive ideology of economic progress (or exploitation) could undertake. He goes over the history of the wheel in Africa, particularly the disappearance of the horse drawn chariot in the Sahara that was replaced by the camel, and thus ushering in the caravan trade which rendered wheeled transportation all but obsolete, he then covers the ceremonial wheeled carriages in the coastal kingdoms of Asante and Dahomey from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and the practice of rolling barrels down roads rather than using carts which one west African trader found would be too expensive to maintain due to the poor quality of the roads that were built for foot travel rather than wheeled carriages, he also covers the use of the wheeled gun carriages in much of west Africa. This article follows both Antony Hopkins and Robin law's argument that the Asante government appreciated the necessity of good roads and undertook their construction to such an extent that they were central to its administration, but the cost of building roads good enough for wheeled transport was prohibitive because of the speculative nature of such an infrastructure investment. Using a recent study by Michael Charney comparing the kingdom of Asante with the kingdom of Burma, I advance the argument that the adoption of the wheel by itself wouldn't greatly improve the speed or robustness of Asante's road system since its presence in the fairly similar kingdom of Burma didn't result in a better or faster overland transportation system there, and that discourses on the history of wheeled transportation overestimate its importance in pre\-modern transport, instead, the real transportation revolution happened with the internal combustion engine of trains and cars, both of which would be adopted much faster under the colonial and post\-independence era governments. --- The Asante kingdom's great roads system The Asante kingdom was a precolonial state near the southern Atlantic coast of west Africa that was established in 1701 until its fall to the British in 1900 after which its territory was ruled under the gold coast colony, and at independence became the modern country of Ghana. The great roads of the Asante were "conduits of authority" beginning at the capital and ending at the frontier, the road system radiated out of Kumasi \- the Asante capital, and was central to Asante expansion, the empire followed the road rather than the road system following the empire's expansion, but also importantly, these roads augmented the old established trade routes connecting the Asante capital Kumasi to the commercial cities of the west Africa, ie: Bonduku, Daboya, Yendi to its north \-which would then meet the caravan routes to Jenne, Timbuktu and Katsina; and to its south, the great roads linked Kumasi to the coastal ports such as Accra and Elmina thus joining the maritime routes terminating in Europe and the Americas. Before this road system was built in the early 18th century, travel in the interior of the gold coast was virtually impossible, the road systems were thus built to make overland travel less arduous, the road building process followed the imperial expansion of the Asante, and their salience in Asante's administration was such that opposition to road building in conquered states (eg the closure of existing roads) was the earliest indication of rebellion Asante roads were constructed by clearing the vegetation, leveling the soil, lining the sides with trees and for a few in the metropolitan Kumasi, the roads were paved with stones. Bridges were also built along the major highways, using posts that are sunk into the centers of the river, on these posts are placed strong beams that are fasted onto the posts, poles are then placed on top of the beams and covered with earth 6 inches thick. The road building process involved negotiations of agreements between local chiefs where these roads passed and control posts manned by highway police were set up at strategic points along these roads, usually at the halting places , these halting places, were central to the administration of the empire, not only serving to provision and accommodate passing travelers but also as centers for local authority to which reference could be made whenever cases of banditry were reported on these highways. The majority of these halting places would then grew into sizable towns and it was the authorities in these towns that were tasked with repair work along the highways; all were paid a significant sum in gold to carry out these works. The state official in charge of maintaining highways was the akwanmofohene, this roads "minister" was authorized to make payments to laborers who cleared the roads and to fine those committing nuisances (such as highway robberies) revenues from such amounted to 6,750 ounces of gold. Another state official was the nkwansrafo, who headed the highway police, garrisoned control points on the routes close to the frontiers of the kingdom, monitored the flow of commodities and taking custom duties. One such repair of a highway was undertaken by Asante king Osei Bonsu in 1816, the roads were straightened, cut to a standard width of 30\-40 feet and roots dug up, this repair work was complete by 1817 , one traveler named Huydecoper who used this road said of it "the highway is fairly good, despite the roots and tree stumps that still remain" As a result of these improvements, the roughly 210 km long journey between cape coast and kumasi was reported to have been accomplished by William Hutton in 6 days, at an average speed of 35 km per day in 1820\. However, records from the 1840s indicate that travel speeds had greatly improved. The rate of repairing these roads however couldn't be maintained to the same degree of the modern state as environmental factors made the cost of maintain them quite heavy, Ghana experiences heavy seasonal rains such that the cost benefit of regularly clearing such roads was untenable (save for the annual repair of the highways) an example of this limitation can be seen in Bowdich's account of one of the Kumase\-Bosompora river road one of the main highways in the system; Bowdich had found the road to be well cleared and it was in many places about 8 feet wide, this he observed in May of 1817, but on his return journey using the same road in September of that year, the rainy season had set in violently and the pristine road had been reduced to "a continued bog" so much that Bowdich's Asante escort was reluctant to travel on it. Throughout their interactions with European travelers and missionaries, the Asante got to learn of ways of improving their transportation, the four wheeled carriage that had been gifted to him and transported by the missionary Freeman in 1840s was just one of the items that aroused the Asante king's curiosity , even more so when he was told of the transportation system that was in England "the rapidity with which travelling is performed by railroads and steam\-packets, very much interested and astonished him" As Wilks writes "the Asante government begun to explore the possibilities of utilizing European capital ad skills to create a railroad system in Asante". But the defeat of 1874 and the disintegration of the kingdom in the 1890s forced them to abandon these plans. Fortunately, the Asante's road building legacy continued into the colonial and independent era; two thirds of the Asante road network would become motor roads under the later governments. --- Asante vs Burma : wheeled transportation in a tropical kingdom Michael Charney's study offers an excellent comparison of transportation systems the Asante and the Konbaung kingdom of Burma. While Burma lies on a much higher latitude than Asante (at 21° N vs 7° N), and is us capable of supporting draught animals, it has a fairly similar climate with heavy seasonal rainfall. Burma adopted wheeled transportation and had a similar road system as the Asante although it was markedly less robust since the Burmese state was more focused on restricting the mobility of its agriculturalist population than the on exporting gold, kola and slaves like the Asante, for whom good mobility was paramount. Perhaps the most enabling feature of Burma's adoption of wheeled transportation was the terrain, thin vegetation and the dry climate of much of its northern heartland As charney writes "Much of the Burmese heartland was flat and dry and easily traversable on buffalo carts, even off of the tracks and roads. In wetter areas of the kingdom, such as the Lower Burma delta, the overgrowth was not nearly as impenetrable as the West African jungle and any road controls in the former would have been easily circumvented" These conditions also existed in Asante's northern tributaries but were absent in much of its central and southern regions, which only 200 years before Asante's ascendance were covered in dense tropical rainforests that required the importation of slave labor from west\-central Africa to clear the forests and transform the land into terrain more suitable for agriculture. But more importantly, Burma had extensive contacts with the Chinese empires and various western Asian empires among whom, wheeled transportation was known unlike the Asante who northern contacts were the Hausa and Juula traders from the Sahel who only used pack animals. Charney writes that highway robbery in Burma was a significant problem for overland transport unlike in Asante, in part because the Burmese government was less focused on policing and maintaining its road system primarily because the traffic couldn't be restricted to these roads unlike in Asante, this meant less customs revenues could be collected by the Burmese state from roads thus obviating the need to maintain them. with no central infrastructure for road repair nor any highway police focus was instead placed on the irrawaddy river whose traffic was much easier to control and thus collect customs from traders. While Charney doesn't provide figures for the speed of road transportation in precolonial Burma, the speed of its road travel can be derived from the neighboring Chinese province of Yunnan where ox\-drawn carts are used, in the 19th century the distance between the cities of Xundian and Weining averaged 17km and 12\.3km per day, which is roughly half the travelling speed in Asante of 35 km a day. In both states , transportation and communication systems can be seen to be fairly sufficient relative to each state's capacity to control trade traffic. The adoption and use of wheeled transport in Burma didn't by itself result in a more robust or even faster overland transportation system than in Asante, and its therefore unlikely that Asante's transportation would be significantly improved by a wide scale adoption of animal powered or human\-powered wheeled vehicles. --- Lugard's failed ox\-cart project in northern Nigeria: a counter\-factual on the adoption of the wheel in pre\-colonial Africa While the significance of the internal combustion engine in revolutionizing transport in western Europe during the industrial period is beyond the scope of this article, it's important to note that before its introduction in west Africa, early colonial administrators complained about the prohibitive cost required to maintain roads in the gold coast colony. as Robin law writes; "Even the British colonial government in the Gold Coast baulked at the gamble in 1870, concluding that roads suitable for wheeled traffic would be too expensive to build and were in any case undesirable since 'even if good roads were built, there would be no vehicles to travel on them", or as As the Reverend C. C. Reindorf succinctly put it in the 1880s: “We have the wheel\-wrights but where are the roads?". Additionally, the Europeans in their various forts and small coastal protectorates made little use of wheeled transportation either, and made little effort in building roads in their nascent colonies. It should be noted that it was the Asante who built the best roads in the gold coast region, not the British colony of the Fante. An example of what would have happen if wheeled transport in the form of ox\-drawn or human\-drawn carts had been introduced in Asante could be seen in lord Lugard's failed attempt to use such vehicles in northern Nigeria where transport was dominated by mules and other pack animals. Frustrated with the labor costs for pack animals and head porterage, which the colonial government and state monopolies such as the Niger company primarily relied upon in transport, Lugard purchased 1538 oxen and 100 carts in 1904\-05 and brought drivers and mechanics from India to operate a transport service, the acting commissioner Wallace also promoted Lugard's transport scheme by quoting rates of 1/9d per ton mile for ox carts vs double for carriers. However, the Niger company deemed the scheme unworkable knowing that the oxcarts could only operate for 9 months being useless in the wet season, something which Lugard had ignored. In reality, the Ox\-cart transport in fact ended up costing slightly more per ton mile than other carriers, the cart road being operational only 5 months a year afterwhich the carts wore out and the animals died of pleuropneumonia. By the end of the decade , the scheme was abandoned, and the government reverted back to using pack animals and head porterage by 1908, having failed at using a quick fix of wheeled carts. It's important to note that Lugard's scheme involved no significant investment in road infrastructure particularly bridges which would have vindicated Wallace's estimates, but the advantages Wallace claimed in his estimates hinged on improving the methods of transport without significant improvement in roads; the later improvements would no doubt cancel out whatever advantages would have been realized. --- conclusion: the (in) effeciency of wheeled transport. It was therefore not the absence of the wheel that placed a constraint on transportation in Asante, nor the lack of draught animals or wheeled vehicles themselves (as we have seen that the regions which had these still fared no better in robustness of transportation) but as with all pre\-industrial technologies, it was the discovery of new sources of power (in this case, the fuel used in the internal combustion engine) that would result in significant improvement in transportation. As Hopkins concluded: before the industrial revolution, the use of wheeled vehicles in western Europe was just as constrained as it was in Africa, and often due to the same causes. () Hopkins provides the example of 18th century Spain, where pack animals like donkeys were the most important means of transport, and that even though oxcarts were widely available, they were used in short haul work. He adds that the same century in England, a writer commented on the use of pack animals in the country: "Long trains of these faithful animals, furnished with a great variety of equipment … wended their way along the narrow roads of the time, and provided the chief means by which the exchange of commodities could be carried on’." It can therefore be concluded that Africa's transportation systems were fairly robust and were best suited for African conditions, and that the wheel's non\-adoption was solely because it wouldn't offer significant advantages to offset its costs, it was due to this inefficiency that other means of transportation such as pack animals and head porterage proved more efficient for both pre\-colonial and colonial governments before the widespread use of the trains and cars. --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeAn Economic History of West Africa By A. G. Hopkins pg 117\-120 ) Wheeled Transport in Pre\-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 258\) Wheeled Transport in Pre\-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 255\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks, pg 1\-3\) Journal of Various Visits to the Kingdoms of Ashanti, Aku, and Dahomi, in Western Africa by Freeman pg 57, pg 118 Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 34\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 35\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 37\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century: By Ivor Wilks pg 9 Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee by T. Bowdich, pgs 29, 30, 152 and 150\-5\) Journal of Various Visits to the Kingdoms of Ashanti, Aku, and Dahomi, in Western Africa by Freeman pg 132\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century by Ivor Wilks pg 41, 13\) Before and after the wheel : Precolonial and colonial states and transportation in West Africa and mainland Southeast Asia by Michael W. Charney 2016, pg 14\-16\) Before and after the wheel : Precolonial and colonial states and transportation in West Africa and mainland Southeast Asia by Michael W. Charney pg 16\) Mountain Rivers, Mountain Roads: Transport in Southwest China, 1700‐1850 By Nanny Kim pg 379\) Wheeled Transport in Pre\-Colonial West Africa by Robin Law pg 257\) The Struggle for Transport Labor in Northern Nigeria, 1900\-1912 by Ken Swindell pg 149\-152\) An Economic History of West Africa By A. G. Hopkins pg pg 121\) 25 3)

The empire of Samori Ture on the eve of colonialism (1870\-1898\) in The empire of Samori Ture on the eve of colonialism (1870\-1898\) a revolution with a contested legacy. 2)For many centuries, political systems in the societies of the west\-African savannah were sustained by a delicate but stable relationship between the influencial merchant class and the ruling nobility. But in the last decades of the 19th century, a revolution among the merchant class overthrew the nobility and created one of the largest empires in the region. The empire of Samori Ture, which at its height covered an area about the size of France, was the first of its kind in the region between eastern Guinea and northern Ghana. Unlike the old empires of west Africa, Samori's vast state was still in the ascendant when it battled with the colonial armies, and found itself constantly at war both within and outside its borders. This article explores the history of Samori's Ture's empire from its emergence as a militant revolution to its collpase after the longest anti\-colonial wars in French west\-Africa. Map of west Africa in the 19th century highlighting the empire of Samori Ture --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Genesis of a merchant revolution. At the time of Samory's birth in 1830, his Mande\-speaking birthplace of Konya (in southern Guinea) was controlled by a symbiotic alliance between the Juula Muslim elites and the traditional nobility which was mostly non\-Muslim. The relationship between the Juula families —to whom Samori belonged— and the nobility was symptomatic of the former’s Suwarian tradition, which placed emphasis on pacifist commitment, education and teaching as tools of proselytizing, but rejected conversion through warfare (jihad). The Juula of Konya, who were part of west Africa’s wangara diaspora, practiced an Islam that was no different from their co\-religionists across west and north Africa: they built mosques for their community and established schools for their kinsmen, but they also advised the nobility in political matters and entered marital alliances with them. But the emerging reform movements of 18th\-19th century west Africa inspired new political ideologies which upended the established relationship between Muslim elites and the ruling nobility across the region. These reform movements and ideologies prompted sections of the Juula merchants to agitate for the formation of their own state independent of the traditional dynasties. The Juula reform movements thus produced their own local leaders such as the Juula family of Moli Ule Sise, which defeated the pre\-existing dynasties and took over much of Konya by 1835\. While Samori received some rudiments of Islam in his youth from other Juula teachers, his early career was mostly concerned with long\-distance Kola trade, which the Juula merchants excelled at. This trade, often in kola\-nut from the southern forest regions, gold from the Bure gold\-fields, local cloth and other items, was carried on between the various cities such as Kankan and the Niger valley where horses were bought, and also the coast where firearms and other items were bought. The Juula were thus often pre\-occupied with trade than with proselytization, while the political and military hegemony remained with the traditional aristocrats and later with their Sise suzerains. Samori initially fought with the Sise armies as a mercenary from 1853\-1859, later fighting for a rival Juula dynasty of the Berete in 1861 until 1861 when they expelled him, forcing him to turn to his non\-Muslim maternal family, the Kamara, from whom he raised an army that fought with the Sise to defeat the Berete in 1865\. Samori later took on the aristocratic title of fama (sword bearer) rather than mansa (ruler) to symbolize his political ambitions independent of the Kamara who had given him his army. He then established his capital at Bisandugu in 1873 and begun a series of campaigns across the region, ostensibly aimed at opening trade routes, and relieving the Juula from the traditional aristocracy. From 1875\-1879, Samori's armies had advanced as far as the upper Niger valley (southern Mali) from where he extended his control over Futa Jallon to the west, the Bure goldfields to the north, and the Wasulu region to the east. He then launched two major campaigns that defeated the Sise suzerains of Konya as well as the Kaba dynasty of Kankan between 1880 and 1881\. Samori had arrived at the borders of the declining Tukulor empire of Umar Tal's successors which was being taken over by the French forces. In February of 1882, the French ordered Samori to withdraw his armies from the trading town of Kenyeran where one of Samori’s defeated foes was hiding, but Samori refused and sacked the town. This led to a surprise attack on his army by a French force which was however forced to retreat after Samori defeated it. Samori's brother, Kémé\-Brema, then advanced against the French at Wenyako near Bamako in April, winning a major battle on 2 April, before he lost another in 12 April. After Samori took control of Falaba in Sierra Leone in 1884, he dispatched emissaries to British\-controlled Freetown in the following year, to propose to the governor that he place his country under British protection inorder to stave off the French advance. This initiative failed however, as the French seized Bure in 1885, prompting Samory raise a massive army led by himself, as well as his brothers Kémé\-Brema and Masara\-Mamadi. Samori's formidable forces forced the French to withdraw from Bure, but later concluded a treaty with them in March 1886\. The two parties later signed another treaty in March 1887 that laid down the border between the French colonies and his empire. --- --- State and society in Samory’s first empire. Having come from a non\-royal background, Samori's legitimacy initially rested on his military success and personal qualities, before he claimed to be a divinely elected ruler charged with brining order to the region. Lacking the traditional prerogatives of a ruler, Samori chose to institute a theocratic regime led by himself as the Almamy (imam), a title he took on in 1884 after years of study. The state was administered by a council from the capital (Bisandugu) consisting of top military leaders, and pre\-existing chiefs, but later included muslim elites from Kankan. This largely military adminsitration was adopted across the territories from 1879, but differed significantly from place to place as traditional customary law as well as Juula and Islamic law were applied dissimilarly. The empire was divided into ten districts under civilian governors, while the two in the center and the capital itself being under Samory's control. The latter were home to the army’s elite corps of about 500 soldiers, which served as the source of most of the officers for the rest of the army. This army was divided into the infantry wing (sofa) which by 1887 of about 30,000 and a cavalry wing of 3,000 in the 1880s. During peacetime, the soldiers and other workers were engaged on plantations, especially around the capital, with some farms reportedly as large as 200sqkm. An annual tax was levied on all subjects, following a traditional practice utilized by his predecessors. Samori also instructed his subjects to pay their local Shaykhs an annual stipend, enabling him to establish teachers in each community as auxiliaries to his political agents. The latter exercised surveillance over the population while the former provided primary education for children in Koranic schools. Internal trade rested on the usual commodities of gold, kola, ivory, agricultural produce, and captives, used to purchase horses from the Upper Niger valley region and guns from British sierra leone. However, Samori’s experimentation with a theocratic government did not last long, as it ran counter to his Juula subject's symbiotic partnership with their non\-Muslim allies. Samori thus faced a major internal conflict when his own father (who had since become non\-Muslim) and traditional nobility of the Kamara expressed their opposition to Samori's plans of removing the customary law, and making Islam the state religion. These plans involved the end of the traditional nobility’s festivals (from which they drew their social power) and the designation of Samori's sons as his sucessors instead of his brothers. A comprise was later found where some non\-Muslim festivals would continue as long as the nobility joined Samori and his peers in Friday prayers, but tensions would remain and be further exacerbated as Samori recruited more men for his seige of Sikasso. --- Fall of Samori’s first empire and the move to the east. In 1887, Samori mustered all his forces to attack Sikasso, the capital of king Tieba's Kenedugu kingdom. Failing to force Tieba's army out of the fortified city for open battle, Samori besieged the city for over a year. The walls of Sikasso, like most fortified cities across west Africa, enclosed a lot of farmland, which allowed the defenders to withstand a siege much longer than the lightly provisioned attackers could sustain it. So when local rebellions broke out in Wasulu, Samori lifted the siege, and the ensuing wars forced him to end his theocratic experiment. Samori had afterall recruited non\-Muslims in his armies who he used against Muslim strongholds such as Kankan, and in 1883 he defended the non\-Muslim Bambara of Bana against the Tukulor armies. So following the mass rebellions of 1888, and Samori's observation of the Muslims' betrayal, he abandoned his northward push to Sikasso, and reverted to his more pragmatic policies for his eastern expansion into the predominatly Muslim societies of Gyaman and Gonja. Samori reorganized the army, concluded a treaty with the British in May 1890 which enabled him to buy modern weapons. In April 1891, the French forces attacked Kankan and sacked Bisandugu, but were defeated by Samory at the battle of Dabadugu on 3 September 1891\. The French invaded the core regions of Wasulu and managed to defeat Samory in January 1892 and capture Bisandugu, gradually forcing Samory to move his empire eastwards. In the last decade of the 19th century, Samory's forces campaigned over a vast swathe of territory extending upto to the upper Volta basin of Ghana. Samori's eastern advance begun with the establishment of a forward base in the Jimini region of north\-eastern Ivory Coast. After protracted negotiations, Samori obtained the support of the kingdom of Kong in April 1895\. He then thus turned his attention to the Juula town of Bunduku in the kingdom of Gyaman. However, the Gyaman ruler rejected Samori's calls for alliance, beginning a series of battles that ended with the fall of Gyaman's army and the abandonment of Bunduku. But once Samori assured the Juula of Bonduku of his wish for peace, they returned and surrender to him in July 1895\. Shortly after his occupation of Bonduku, Samori dispatched envoys to the Asante king Prempeh to explain that he invaded Gyaman because of its ruler's refusal to allow him to open a trade path in that territory, and offered to assist the Asante king to pacify his fragmented kingdom. The , with 300 officials and gifts of gold inorder to negotiate a mutual defense pact. Alarmed by the possible resurgence of Asante power, the British hastened plans to invade Asante, and duly informed Samori to not intervene. After their occupation of Asante's capital Kumase, Samori sent an assuring message to the British that he only wished for peaceful trade, but the British remained wary of his intentions and French expansion from the north. Samori retuned to Jimini at the end of the year, leaving the newly conquered regions of Gyaman under the care of his son Sarankye Mori who later established himself at Buna. Sarankye Mori entrusted the invasion of Gonja to his subordinate, Fanyinama of Korhogo. The state of Gonja was a confederation of rivaring chiefdoms, one of these was the chiefdom of Kong whose ruler requested Kanyinama's support to defeat its rival, the chiefdom of Bole. Fanyinama's forces quickly occupied Bole by early 1896, and entered a complex pattern of relationships with neighboring states such as the kingdom of Wa which briefly recognized Samori's suzeranity. --- --- State and society in Samory’s second empire until its collapse in 1898\. Like in Wasulu, Samori's new empire in the Upper Volta was mostly administered by a military government and derived its strength from its formidable army. Samori's armies were reputed to be the most disciplined, the best trained and the best armed in west Africa. Samori was able to equip his army with repeating rifles and ammunition. His officers were armed with Kropatschek rifles (in use by the French army in 1878\) and other Gras rifles, (in use by the French army in 1874\) while the bulk of the army carried breechloaders, some of which were manufactured locally. The gunsmiths of Samori manufactured single\-shot breechloading rifles from scratch at a rate of about a dozen per week. The demand for locally made weapons became more acute as Samori was cut off from Sierra leone. The only other African armies that manufactured guns locally were the Merina kingdom and Tewodros' Ethiopia, although both utilised foreign craftsmen while Samori used local smiths who had worked undercover in St. Louis. Samori’s gunsmiths also made gunpowder, cartridges and spare parts. Samori's strength lay not simply in his efficient military but also in his intention to use it as an instrument of radical social reform. Mosques and schools were opened even in small villages where Islamic law introduced, and new converts were recruited into the army. Its also likely that Samory intended to reform agricultural production, replacing the old system of lineage farming with large plantations. But these reforms were poorly received by Samori’s Juula subjects, who rebelled against his rule, prompting him to sack Buna in 1896, executing both its non\-Muslim ruler and his Muslim allies. Samori's new state also embroiled itself in the internal rivaries of the region's various kingdoms, which inevitably attracted the attention of the French in the north and the British in the south. Central to this rivary were fears on Samori's side that the ruler of Wa was attempting to form an alliance with the French against him, only for the ruler of Wa to host the British in January 1897\. Added to this were rebellions by the Juula of Kong who rejected Samori's legitimacy and were allying with the French. In March 1897 Sarankye Mori defeated a British column under the command of Henderson at Dokita, near Wa, and the threat of Samory's retribution forced Wa to turn to the British. At the same time, Samori sacked the city of Kong in May 1897, executed its senior Ulama, and pushed on to Bobo\-Dioulasso where he encountered a French column and retreated. Caught between the French and the British, and having vainly attempted to sow discord between the British and the French by returning to the latter the territory of Buna coveted by the former, Samori fled to his allies in Liberia. On the way, he was captured in a surprise attack by the French on 29 September 1898 and deported to Gabon where he died in 1900\. --- Subscribe --- Samori’s legacy: a struggle for legitimacy. After the collapse of Samory's state, several dissonant narratives emerged which attempted to characterize its nature, Some of his French foes considered him a 'black Napoleon,' and the archetypal enemy of their "civilizing mission", while the subjects of the formally independent kingdoms he conquered recalled his punitive campaigns in the upper Volta as a period of calamity. However, none of these perspectives bring us any closer to the internal nature of the state Samori had built. Samori had no sucessors and left no chroniclers or griots to disseminate his propaganda, all that remained after his army was broken were the Juula merchants he was supposedly fighting for, who were at best ambivalent towards his low standing as a scholar and at worst opposed to his use of arms. It is very difficult to characterize the organization of Samori's state since its structure was in continuous modification. What initially begun as a bourgeoisie revolution evolved into a theocratic empire that later became an anti\-colonial state. The common thread uniting these distinctions appears to have been Samori’s struggle for legitimacy. Despite being a great military strategist, Samori’s rule was never fully accepted as legitimate, unlike the nobility he deposed, he thus found himself constantly at war not just with the colonialists but also with his own subjects, leaving behind a contested legacy of triumph and tragedy. --- In the 5th century BC, the armies of Carthage invaded the Italian island of Sicily with an army that included aethiopian contigents, around the same time that a proto\-urban settlement was flourishing in northern Nigeria, and the Garamantian civilization in the central Sahara. Read more about the probable links between these three societies and the origins of Carthage’s ‘black African’ armies, on our Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe·September 18, 2022 Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 262\-263, 265\) Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 265\-266, Traders and the Center in Massina, Kong, and Samori's State by Victor Azarya pg 436\-437\) Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 266\) UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 125\) Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 268\-271\) UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 123, Wars of imperial conquest in Africa by Bruce Vandervort pg 130 Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 268, 270\-271, UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 124\) Traders and the Center in Massina, Kong, and Samori's State by Victor Azarya 438\-439, Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 272\) Studies in West African Islamic History: Volume 1 By John Ralph Willis pg 269, 273\) Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana By Ivor Wilks pg 121 UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 126\) Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana By Ivor Wilks pg 120\) Asante in the Nineteenth Century By Ivor Wilks pg 302\-304, Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa's Past By Ann Brower Stahl pg 98\) Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana pg 121\-122\) Wars of imperial conquest in Africa by Bruce Vandervort pg 132\-133, UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 123\) History Of Islam In Africa by N Levtzion pg 107\-108\) Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana pg 128\-140, History Of Islam In Africa by N Levtzion pg 108, West African Challenge to Empire By Mahir Şaul pg 71\-72 UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII pg 127\) 19 2)

a brief note on Trade and Travel in the ancient Sahara and beyond. in a brief note on Trade and Travel in the ancient Sahara and beyond. uncovering the origins of Carthage's aethiopian auxiliaries. )Covering nearly a third of the African continent, the Sahara Desert conjures visions of torrid heat waves rising over an endless sea of burning sand dunes where only the bravest nomads dared to tread. Discourses on the Sahara throughout history have been dominated by the persistent belief that the desert was largely uninhabited and uninhabitable. Closely related to these discourses was the diffusionist hypothesis that African societies depended on exogenous contact in order to achieve social evolution. Combining these two presumptions about the Sahara and African societies, early scholarship introduced the concept of a habitable 'corridor', that was understood to be a narrow stretch of land across the desert and the only route through which Mediterranean influences could reach "inner Africa". It was in this context that Nubia was imagined to be a corridor through which technological and cultural innovations were "transmitted" from the Mediterranean world to Africa. The same concept of a corridor through the desert was applied to the Fezzan and Kawar oases of the central Sahara. All these corridors were thought of as routes through which everything from iron technology to statecraft were transmitted from Egypt and Carthage to the rest of Africa. As later research uncovered the ancient foundations of social complexity in Africa, the diffusionist paradigm was largely discarded by most scholars. The ancient in central Nigeria had no connections to Carthage, nor were the forms of Nubian statecraft similar to Egypt. As one scholar summarized: "Surely corridors usually lead to a few rooms, but the Nubian corridor, in which so much happened, does not seem to have led anywhere." Yet the concept of a corridor cutting through the barren desert persisted, no longer as a conduit for transmitting "civilization" from North to south, the Saharan oases were now imagined to be highway stations along ancient routes which supposedly begun on the mediteranean coast and terminated in the old towns of west Africa and Sudan. Maps of medieval Africa are today populated with lines crisscrossing the desert, that are meant to represent fixed routes taken by carravans in the centuries past. However, like its diffusionist precursor, this notion of oases as fixed highway stations along direct lines in the desert has not stood up to closer scrutiny. As one historian of the Sahara cautions; "It is thus hazardous and inexact to depict Saharan trails on maps as though they were established as major highways. The historical geography of Saharan trails is in fact very complicated, with numerous variants on routes followed depending on the shifting geopolitical realities as well as the natural limitations of travel across a hyper\-arid zone." Trans\-Saharan travel and exchanges proceeded by regional stages, with the eventual long\-distance transport being accomplished by numerous local exchanges. The societies and economies of Saharan communities were largely sustained by local resources and regional trade, rather than depending on tolls from long\-distance trade. Such was the case for the Kawar Oasis towns, as well as the , both of whose domestic economies did not significantly rely on long\-distance trade with north\-Africa, but from regional trade with neighboring states. However, travel and trade did occur across the Sahara, often utilizing well\-known itineraries through which goods and technologies were exchanged. How far back Trans\-Saharan travel and exchanges begun is a matter of heated debate, with most scholars asserting that it started with the introduction of the camel at the start of the middle ages, while others claim that wheeled chariots were crossing the Sahara during the age of the Romans and the Carthaginians. The ancient links between Carthage and West Africa is the subject of my latest Patreon article, in which I explore the evidence for ancient exchanges in the central Sahara, inorder to uncover the origins of the aethiopian auxiliaries of Carthage’s armies. read more about it here: --- Join the African history Patreon community and support this website --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe --- African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective by Graham Connah, pg 65 Trade in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by D. J. Mattingly, pg 8 17 )

The myth of Mansa Musa's enslaved entourage in The myth of Mansa Musa's enslaved entourage "Stories about his \[Mansa Musa's] journey have numerous anecdotes which are not true and which the mind refuses to admit". 3)The pilgrimage of Mansa Musa in 1324 is undoubtedly the most famous and most studied event in the history of the west\-African middle ages. The ruler of the Mali empire has recently become a recognized figure in global history, in large part due to recent estimates that was the wealthiest man in history. Thanks to the abundance of accounts regarding his reign, Musa has become a symbol of a prosperous and independent Africa actively participating in world affairs, leaving an indelible mark not just on European atlases, but also in the memories and writings of West Africa. But as is often common with any interest in Africa’s past, there's a growing chorus of claims that Mansa Musa was escorted by thousands of enslaved people to Egypt, which would make him one of the largest slave owners of his time. While many who make these claims don't ground them in medieval accounts of Musa's pilgrimage, they have found some support in the book 'African dominion' written by the west\-Africanist Michael Gomez, who asserts that the Mansa travelled with an entourage of 60,000 mostly enslaved persons. However, other specialists in west African history such as John Hunwick find these numbers to be rather absurd, arguing that they were inflated in different accounts and were based on unreliable sources. Indeed, the multiplicity of historical accounts regarding Musa's pilgrimage seem to have favored the emergence of dissonant versions of the same event, which were eventually standardized over time. This article outlines the various accounts on Mansa Musa's entourage, inorder to uncover whether the Malian ruler was the largest slave owner of his time or he was simply the subject of an elaborately fabricated story. Detail from the 14th century Catalan Atlas showing Mansa Musa --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The Limits of west\-African sources on Mansa Musa. Most claims that Mansa Musa was followed by a large entourage of slaves rely on the west African chronicle titled Tarikh al\-Sudan, written by a scholar named Abd al\-Rahman Al\-sa'di in 1655\. Al\-Sa'di's chronicle was one of three important 17th century west African manuscripts —the others being; the Tarikh al\-Fattash and the Notice Historique— which modern historians call the Timbuktu chronicles. The Timbuktu chronicles were written not long after the fall of Mali’s sucessor; the Songhai empire, by scholars whose families were prominent during its heyday. In their desire to construct a coherent and legitimating narrative of the ‘western Sudan’ (an area encompassing modern Mali to Senegal), the chroniclers offer a special place to the Mali empire. They include details on both the former empire which had fallen to the Askiya dynasty of Songhai, as well as the contemporaneous state which was at almost constant war with Songhai before the latter’s collapse. As some of the oldest internal sources written by west Africans about their own history, modern historians had long considered them to be more reliable reconstructions of the region’s past compared to external accounts written outside the region. However, specialists on west African history have recently acknowledged the limitations of the Timbuktu chronicles and their authors regarding the earlier periods of the region's history. The historian Paulo de Moraes Farias, who uncovered a number of inscribed stelae from the medieval city of Gao from which the Askiya title and the first Muslim west\-African rulers are first attested, has shown that Al\-Sa'di was not aware of Gao significance but dismissed it as a center of 'undiluted paganism'. Cautioning modern historians, Paulo de Moraes writes that: "They (the Timbuktu chroniclers) were not mere informants but historians like ourselves, and they had their own difficulties in retrieving evidence and reconstructing the past from the point of view of their novel intellectual and political stance". Similary, the historian Mauro Nobili has shown that the Tarikh al\-Fattash was mostly a 19th century chronicle that utilised information from two 17th century chronicles; Tarikh Ibn al\-Mukhtar of the west African chronicler Ibn al\-Mukhtar and the Tarikh al\-Sudan of Al\-Sa’di . He also argues that the Timbuktu chronicles were not mere repositories of hard facts waiting to be mined by modern historians, but were, like all historical documents, . The Timbuktu chroniclers, like all historians past and present, were themselves aware of the limitations of their sources, with one Timbuktu chronicler for example, mentioning that there were no internal documents on the Kayamagha dynasty of the Ghana empire. This limitation of textural sources wasn't alleviated by the oral sources available to the Timbutku historians. For example, Ibn al\-Mukhtar's chronicle, which was written in 1664, includes many anecdotes about Mansa Musa derived from oral accounts, but he also relayed the fact that there were a significant number of stories said about Mansa Musa's pilgrimage that seemed fabricated, warning his readers that; "Stories about his \[Mansa Musa's] journey have numerous anecdotes which are not true and which the mind refuses to admit". He adds that "Among these, the fact that every time he was in a town on Friday on his way here towards Egypt, he did not fail to build a mosque there the same day" Others include having his servants dig a pool for his wife in the middle of the desert, and one of his scouts descended into a well to capture a highway robber who was cutting the buckets from the ropes that they were lowering into the well, so that Musa’s carravan couldn’t draw water. Even though such stories were evidently exaggerated and fabricated, the anecdotes about Mansa Musa's pilgrimage show that the era of the Mali empire was a turning point in the Islamic and imperial identity of the western Sudan —an identity which the Timbuktu writers were furthering despite their objections to the unreliability of their sources. Besides internal accounts, the Timbuktu chroniclers also utilized external sources from the “East”, especially those coming from Mamluk Egypt and Morocco. In his account of Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage for example, al\-Sa'di specifically mentions his source to be Ibn Battuta's Riḥla (Travels) which contains a section on the famous globe\-trotter's stay in Mali from 1352\-1353\. However, al\-Sa'di only used Ibn Battuta as a source regarding a short anecdote on the place Musa stayed while he was in Cairo, but other details about Musa's entourage were clearly derived from another unamed source since Ibn Battuta makes no mention of Musa's companions besides naming several 'black Hajjis' who accompanied their sovereign to Mecca. We therefore turn to the so\-called 'Eastern' sources to uncover the documents which the Timbuktu chroniclers used for their information on Musa's entourage. --- --- The earliest accounts of Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage and entourage from Egypt, Syria and Mecca. The oldest Egyptian account of Mansa Musa's pilgrimage comes from a text by the Mamluk official Šihāb al\-Nuwayrī in his Nihāyat al\-arab that was written around 1331\. A high administrator and controller of the financial office during the reign of Mamluk sultan Al\-Malik al\-Nāṣir (r. 1293 to 1341\), al\-Nuwayri had access to state documents and provides us with what is so far the earliest account of Musa’s arrival in Egypt and his entourage. Al\-Nuwayri writes that; "During this year \ This account doesn't identify the status of Musa's entourage, which he calls his ‘company’, but simply mentions that they came with a lot of gold and spent it lavishly in Egypt. Another, much longer account about Musa's time in Egypt was written by a son of a Mamluk official named, Ibn al\-Dawādārī, in his kanz al\-durar, that was written around the year 1335\. "During this year \ His account —which I have shortened for the sake of brevity, as i will most accounts mentioned below— is similar to the one of al\-Nuwayri, but adds more details about Mali’s gold sources and Musa’s meeting with the Mamluk sultan. However, Al\-Dawadari also doesn't describe the status of Musa's entourage, but simply refers to them as 'companions'. Another early account on Musa’s pilgrimage was written by the Syrian historian Šams al\-Dīn al\-Ḏahabī in his Duwal al\-Islām, completed before 1339, but it only describes Musa's entourage in Cairo as a "large crowd". Al\-Dahabi's section on Musa's pilgrimage was repeated verbatim by the Mamluk official Šihāb al\-ʿUmarī in the first version of his Masālik al\-Absâr, before he later wrote a more detailed account using his own sourcs in the second version of the same work that is now famous in the historiography of Musa's pilgrimage. In the second version of al\-ʿUmarī's Masālik al\-Absâr, the Mamluk official provides a more detailed account of Musa's stay in Cairo, based on interviews with officials who hosted the Malian ruler. In a very lengthy account which includes details of Musa arriving with "a hundred camel\-loads of gold", and his meeting with the Mamluk sultan where both parties exchanged gifts, al\-Umari writes that "He \[the Mamluk sultan] continued to send him \[Mansa Musa] Turkish slaves and abundant provisions throughout his stay" and that "He had a quantity of provisions purchased for his \[Mansa Musa's] companions and his suite." Like the previous authors, al\-Umari simply describes Musa's entourage as companions, and the only mention of 'slaves' in the context of Musa's pilgrimage were the "Turkish slaves” gifted to Musa by the Egyptian sultan. The first reference to slaves in Musa’s entourage appears to be the Turkish slaves gifted to him by the Egyptian ruler. Al\-Umari’s account on Mansa Musa would be repeated almost verbatim by other Egyptian scholars, including Aḥmad al\-Muqrī (fl. 1365\) who also refered to them simply as 'companions'. Our next source on Mansa Musa's pilgrimage comes from the 'Holy city' of Mecca, where an exceptional eyewitness account is provided by the Meccan scholar Abd Allāh al\-Yāfiʿī (d. 1367\) in his Mirʾāt al\-ǧinān completed some time before his death. The people of Mali arrived in the Hejaz at a time following years of unrest in Mecca, and against a backdrop of strengthening Mamluk\-Egyptian control over the holy cities. There had been several conflicts over the control of the city between the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen, the Mamluks of Egypt and a few independent figures who all claimed protection over the city. Mansa Musa's carravan arrived under the protection of the Mamluks, and this is the description of his time in the Holy city that al\-Yāfiʿī witnessed: "During this year, the king of Takrūr Mūsā b. Abī Bakr b. Abī al\-Aswad presented himself for the pilgrimage with thousands of his soldiers (ʿaskar) … I add, concerning his spirit of common sense and wisdom, that I saw him while he was at the latticed window rising above the Ka'ba of the building from ribāṭ al\-Ḫūzī. He had calmed his restless companions following a discord (fitna) which had arisen between them and the Turks. They had brandished, during this discord, the swords in the Sacred Mosque (al\-masǧid al\-ḥarām), while Musa, being in an overhanging position, had seen upon them. He had ordered them to reconsider their intention to fight showing an intense anger towards them because of this fitna. It is a sign of the superiority of his \ The Meccan author specifically uses "I add" and “I saw” to mark this passage out as his own eye\-witness account, making his account the only primary source that retells specific events which were seen by the author. Importantly, the description of the fitna (quarrel/discord) which he recounts provides the first rough estimate of Mansa Musa's companions, and their status. Such violent quarrels were relatively common in the Ḥaram of Mecca in the context of pilgrimages, as they often reflected political struggles over the control of the Holy cities, but this one in particular was an internal dispute between the Malians and the Mamluks (Turks). This account indicates that Mansa Musa's entourage numbering in the thousands was heavily armed, and were it not for Musa's wise intervention, this would have been added to the 7 fitnas in Mecca that were recorded in the 14th century. Al\-Yāfiʿī's account would be copied verbatim by later Meccan scholars such as Taqī al\-Dīn al\-Fāsī (d. 1429\) . --- Subscribe --- Later accounts of Musa’s pilgrimage and the first estimates of his entourage: from ‘Companions’ to ‘Maids’. Our next source on Mansa Musa's entourage in Egypt comes from the Syrian qadi Zayn Ibn al\-Wardī in his Tatimmat al\-muḫtaṣar which was completed in the late 1340s. He writes that: "King Šaraf al\-Dīn Mūsā b. Abī Bakr, king of Takrūr, arrived for the pilgrimage. His company numbered more than 10,000 Takrūrī." While he also doesn't specify the status of Musa's companions, he identifies them as Takruri, a term often used to refer to pilgrims from west\-Africa when they were in Egypt and the Hejaz. It is derived from the medieval kingdom of Takrur (in modern Senegal), which was allied to the Almoravid conquerors of Andalusia (Spain). This term, which specifically marks out Musa’s entourage as pious free\-born Muslims, fits well with the prestigious title of Šaraf al\-Dīn (“Eminence of the faith”) that the author gave to Mansa Musa. This text also marks the first time Musa's entourage is estimated to be 10,000, an absurdly high figure that would be repeated further exaggerated in later accounts. Just like Al\-Ḏahabī —the other Syrian historian mentioned before— Al\-Wardi never met Musa and his entourage, nor did he have access to Mamluk officials or archives, but instead based his story on oral accounts and hearsay circulating in the region. This approach to collecting information on Musa’s pilgrimage was similary taken by another Syrian historian, named Ibn Kaṯīr in his 1366 work al\-Bidāya wa alnihāya. The Syrian writes that "the king of Takrur arrived in Cairo on account of the pilgrimage on the 25th of Ragab. He established his camp at Qarafa. He had with him Maghribīs (North Africans?) and servants (khadam) numbering around 20,000\." This is the only mention of 'North Africans' in Musa's entourage which is now said to number 20,000, and it’s also the first mention of the presence of 'servants' using the specific term Kadam that usually refered to male attendants. However, this particular deviation is only encountered in this account, as other writers, especially those in Egypt, continue to refer to Musa's entourage as 'companions' or 'large crowds'. These include; Zayn al\-Dīn ʿUmar Ibn al\-Wardī (d. 1349\) who calls them a "company of 10,000 Takruri", Ṣalāḥ al\-Dīn al\-Ṣafadī (d. 1363\) who refers to them as a “large crowd”, Badr al\-Dīn (d. 1377\) who refers to them as a company made up of 10,000 of his “subjects”, and the Meccan historian Taqī al\-Dīn al\-Fāsī (d. 1429\) who refers to them as "15,000 Takārura". Later accounts focus more on Musa's meeting with the Mamluk sultan, without mentioning anything about his 'companions', with the exception of the Mamluk\-Egyptian encyclopedist Al\-Qalqašandī who in his 1412 book Ṣubḥ al\-aʿšā, wrote that: “It is said that 12,000 maids (waṣāʾif) dressed in brocade tunics carried his effects." This specific sentence, which again begins with the characteristic 'it is said' to indicate that its based on hearsay, provides a figure not based on any previous estimate but on an attempt to reconcile different estimates of Musa's entourage. The author claims to have taken this particular estimate from the Kitab al\-ʿIbar of the historian Ibn Ḫaldūn (1406\), but the latter did not in fact provide any figures on Mansa Musa's companions in his section on the Malian king's pilgrimage. The use of the term waṣāʾif which was used for female servants in domestic contexts in Mamluk\-Egypt (instead of jawārī for female slaves), is yet more evidence that this anecdote was simply a fabrication by Al\-Qalqašandī, whose sources refered to Mansa Musa’s entourage as his “companions" who were by all indications entirely male and well\-armed, and not some roving harem of medieval fantasy. However, the brief detail on Musa acquiring servants/slaves in Egypt is again brought up by the Mamluk\-Egyptian historian Al\-Maqrīzī (d. 1442\) in his al\-Sulūk li\-maʿrifat duwal almulūk, which he completed later in his life. He writes that "He \ This passage is evidently copied directly from earlier accounts on Musa's initial stay in Cairo, specifically al\-ʿUmarī’s mention of Turkish slaves sent by the Mamluk sultan, although its not implausible that Musa and his companions acquired other slaves in Egypt on their own account (as will be mentioned below). Al\-Maqrīzī later provides a more detailed account of Mansa Musa's entourage in his monograph on the pilgrimages made by Muslim sovereigns, titled al\-Ḏahab al\-masbūk. He writes that; "It is said that he \[Mansa Musa] came with 14,000 maids for his personal service. His companions showed consideration by purchasing Turkish and Ethiopian servants, singers and clothing." Writing more than a century after Musa's arrival in Cairo, Al\-Maqrizi seems to have taken a lot of liberties with his description of Musa's entourage. The expression "it is said that" which is followed by an inflated number of Musa's maids indicates that this passage was based on hearsay that had been exaggerated. However, this exceptional account on Musa's supposedly all\-female entourage, who now included ‘Ethiopians’ wouldn't appear in later Egyptian accounts of the 15th and 16th century, such as the description of Musa's pilgrimage by al\-Maqrizi's rival Badr al\-Dīn al\-ʿAynī (d. 1451\), nor did they appear in the work of Ibn Ḥaǧar (d. 1449\), nor in the work of Ibn Iyās (d. 1524\). --- --- The disputed estimates of Musa’s entourage and their status in pre\-colonial and modern western African historiography. It was this estimate of over 10,000 companions of Mansa Musa that would be uncritically copied in later accounts, and further exaggerated to absurd proportions, that were eventually reproduced in the Timbuktu chronicles. The Ta’rīkh al\-fattāsh claims that the Mansa embarked “with great pomp and vast wealth \ Its important to note that the Tarikh al\-Sudan of Al\-Sa’di mentions that there were only 500 slaves in the entire entourage numbering 60,000\. Some specialists on west African history who take these figures at face value, such as Michael Gomez, claim the 'disparity' between the two Timbuktu chronicles is due to Mansa Musa having begun his journey with many more followers than actually arrived with him in Cairo. Other specialists, such as John Hunwick, rightly dismiss both estimates as "grossly inflated", explaining that "logistical problems of feeding and providing water during the crossing of the Sahara rule out numbers of this order" Indeed the outline of external sources on Musa's entourage provided above supports Hunwick's argument that these numbers were deliberately fabricated, and this was mostly like done by different authors inorder to paint a laudatory portrait of Mansa Musa’s remarkable pilgrimage. None of the early sources provide estimates of Musa's entourage or their exact status, with the exception of the eye\-witness account from Mecca which describes them as 'thousands' of well\-armed men. All accounts that include exact estimates of Musa's entourage mention that it was based on hearsay, and later accounts would add more absurd fabrications, claiming that Musa's entourage was an all\-female troop of servants. While Musa's companions did acquire 'Turkish' slaves that were brought back to Mali (and were met by Ibn Battuta), we can be certain based on the available evidence that Musa's entourage consisted almost entirely of free west African Muslims who accompanied their emperor on a journey that many of them were very familiar with. This undermines the Michael Gomez's claim that "the vast majority of the royal retinue was enslaved", an assertion that relies on him ignoring the multiple sources that specifically identify Musa's companions as west\-African muslims (Takruri), to instead focus on the few sources that claim Musa entourage was made up of servants termed; waṣāʾif and khadam, both of which Gomez also mistranslates as ‘slaves’, not to mention his willful misrepresentation of Al\-Sa’di’s passage which explicitly mentions that there were only 500 slaves in the 60,000 strong entourage. Also relevant to these accounts of Musa’s entourage are the estimates of '100 camel\-loads' of gold (about 12 tonnes) on which Musa's title for history's wealthiest man rests, some of which were supposedly carried by his retinue. The amount of gold itself doesn’t seem out of the ordinary if we consider that not all the gold was his, and with the exception of Al\-Sa’di’s chronicle, there is no mention of people carrying this gold but only camels. , and they often left their properties in the form of gold, luxury cloth and camels under the care of Egyptian officials for their return journey after visiting Mecca. With one pilgrim leaving behind 200 mithqals of gold and camels in 1562, while another group of six west Africans left 500 mithqals gold, cloth and several personal effects. During his visit to Mali, Ibn Battuta met atleast four Hajjis, some of whom had accompanied Mansa Musa to Mecca, these include; Hajj Abd al\-Rahman who was the royal Qadi and lived in the capital of Mali; Hajj Farba Margha who was a powerful official that lived near Mema; Hajj Farba Sulaiman who was another official that lived near Timbuktu (he also owned an Arab slave girl from Damascus presumably acquired while on pilgrimage), and Hajj Muhammad al\-Wajdi who was a resident of Gao and had visited Yemen. Its therefore likely that many of Mansa Musa's companions were free west African Muslims, and that a significant share of the ruler’s golden treasure belonged to them. The above outline shows that despite the abundance of accounts regarding Musa’s pilgrimage, the event was not recorded from authoritative informants but from a combination of only partially reliable sources that were inturn altered by the different interpretations of multiple writers with their own authorial intentions. A more objective account of Musa’s pilgrimage can thus only be obtained after untangling the web of fabrications and biases which colour the works of past historians as well as modern ones. --- Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage was one of several occasions where Africans explored their own continent and some accounts claim he passed by the great pyramids of Giza. More than 3,000 years before Musa, people from the North\-East African kingdoms of Kush and Punt also regulary travelled to and settled in ancient Egypt. Read more about this on our Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMeanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie pg 95\-98 Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie 98\-105\) Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith : Aḥmad Lobbo, the Tārīkh al\-fattāsh and the Making of an Islamic State in West Africa by Mauro Nobili Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie pg 96\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 195\-196\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 10 The Travels of Ibn Battuta Vol. 4 pg 967, 969\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 215\-216\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 217\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 219\-220\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 221\-222, 226\) Échos d’Arabie. Le Pèlerinage à La Mecque de Mansa Musa by Hadrien Collet pg 115\-116 Échos d’Arabie. Le Pèlerinage à La Mecque de Mansa Musa by Hadrien Collet pg pg 117\-119\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 224\-225\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 225\-226 A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic By Hans Wehr pg 267, The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia edited by Oliver Leaman pg 579, Race and Slavery in the Middle East by Terence Walz pg 58, Gomez himself occasionally translates the word khadam as servant in Ibn Battuta’s description of Mali’s court, African dominion by M. Gomez, pg 160 Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 224\-5, 227, 229, Échos d’Arabie. Le Pèlerinage à La Mecque de Mansa Musa by Hadrien Collet pg 120\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 232\-245\) «Post\-publication note: Ibn Khaldūn’s mention of 12,000 maids comes from another section of the Muqaddima, from a source which he thought not to include in his section relating to the pilgrimages of the kings of Takrur in which he makes no mention of Musa’s entourage» Slave Trade Dynamics in Abbasid Egypt by Jelle Bruning Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 236\) Le sultanat du Mali \- Histoire régressive d'un empire médiéval XXIe\-XIVe siècle by Hadrien Collet pg 236\-237, 240\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 11 African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa By Michael Gomez pg 106, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 11, n.3 Travels of Ibn Battuta Vol4 pg 951\-952, 956, 967, 970\-971 27 3)

a brief note on the history of Africans exploring their own continent in a brief note on the history of Africans exploring their own continent plus: Ancient Egypt in Africa. )Africa is world's second largest continent and arguably the most difficult to traverse. Historically, many parts of the continent that were conducive to human settlement and activity were home to large, complex societies which rank among some of the world's oldest civilizations. These include ancient kingdoms of the Nile valley and the northern Horn of Africa, the empires along the Niger river, the kingdoms of west\-central Africa and the lakes region, as well as the city\-states of the East African coast and kingdoms of south\-eastern Africa. In between these densely populated regions were pockets of relatively inhospitable land covered with thick forests and barren deserts. Yet despite this seemingly insurmountable barrier, Africans suceeded in creating vast networks of communication that cut across the deserts and forests between them, facilitating cross\-cultural exchanges and expanding Africans' knowledge of their own continent. In west\-Africa, extended from the shores of the Atlantic in Senegal to the forest region of central Ghana and across the shifting sands of the Sahara into North\-Africa. By the early 2nd millennium, Wangara traders and scholars had established urban settlements along different nodes of this complex network, easily switching goods between various cities as they interacted with other commercial diasporas. In central Africa the Ovimbundu traders of central Angola pioneered cross\-continental routes that moved goods between the city of . Here, they encountered the established network of the Yao and Nywamwezi, whose own trading routes connected the Swahili cities of the East African coast to the kingdoms of the Lakes region. Eventually, the Swahili would expand these trade routes with the first recorded cross\-continental journey in the region that begun at Bagamoyo in Tanzania and arrived at Luanda in 1852\. Long\-distance trade was not the only activity undertaken along these routes. Envoys, scholars, pilgrims and other travelers also utilized the same routes to visit and settle different parts of the continent and beyond. The Djenne\-born scholar Muhammad Salma al\-Zurruq (b. 1845\) for example, travelled across west Africa and the Ottoman domains before returning to Mali, only to embark on another trip that saw him ending up in Sudan. But arguably the most fascinating case was that of the Bornu scholar al\-Faki Ahmad Umar who following long\-established pilgrimage and trade routes. But long before these west African and Central African networks emerged, the region of North\-eastern Africa was arguably the most interconnected part of the continent. The rise of ancient states of Egypt, Kush and Punt was largely enabled by the robust exchange of ideas, technologies and goods across the region, brought by the people who visited and settled within the different communities. The history of ancient Egypt in its north\-east African context is the subject of my latest Patreon article, in which I explore the regional interaction and population movement between Egypt and its neighbors; Kush and Punt, from the perspective of the latter. Read more about it here; --- If Mansa Musa did pass by Giza, “it suggests medieval Mali was well aware of Pharaonic Egypt’s illustrious past, with the mansā purposely seeking to connect with it” \-Michael Gomez --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe16 )

Historical links between Africa and Armenia (ca. 600\-1900\) in Historical links between Africa and Armenia (ca. 600\-1900\) Travelers, merchants and scholars from Nubia, Ethiopia and Armenia who visited the southern Caucasus and North\-eastern Africa. 2)Africans travelled across most parts of the Old world prior to the modern era, from the cities of Islamic Spain to the Imperial courts of China, and many places between. Among the lesser\-known regions visited by Africans was the southern Caucasus, a region between the Caspian and Black sea that was under the control of various empires and kingdoms. In the early centuries of the common era, this region was controlled by the kingdom of Armenia, which was itself part of several ‘Eastern’ Christian societies that extended to the Nubian kingdoms of the Nile valley and the Aksumite kingdom in the Horn of Africa. Pilgrims, scholars and traders travelled across this region, fostering cultural exchanges that can be gleaned from the influences of the Ethiopic script in the Armenian script as well as the influences of Armenian art in Ethiopian art. The kingdom of Armenia was later gradually subsumed under the Roman (Byzantine) and Persian (Sassanian) empires by the 5th century, remaining under the control of suceeding Islamic empires, with the exception of the independent kingdoms of Bagratuni (885\-1045\) and Cilicia (1198\-1375\). Armenian speakers would thereafter constitute an influencial community in the eastern Mediterranean, where they would interact with their African co\-religionists and eventually establish cultural ties that led to Africans visiting the southern Caucasus and Armenians visiting and settling in Ethiopia. This article explores the history of cultural exchanges between the southern Caucasus and North\-east Africa focusing on the historical links between Armenia, and the kingdoms of Makuria and Ethiopia. Map showing the kingdoms of Armenia, Makuria and Ethiopia as well as the probable route taken by Ewostatewos from Ethiopia to Armenia. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early Contacts between the Nubian, Ethiopian and Armenian diasporas the eastern Mediterranean. Diasporic communities of Africans from the Nubian kingdoms and Aksum, were first established in Egypt which was home to many important sites of Christian asceticism since antiquity, and from here spread out into the eastern Mediterranean and eventually into the southern Caucasus. One of the earliest mentions of 'Ethiopians' in Egypt (an ethnonym that was at the time used for both Nubians and Aksumites) is first made in a 7th century text by the Armenian scholar Anania Shirakatsi, who mentions that an 'Ethiopian' named Abdiē contributed to the joint project of the Alexandrian scholar Aeas in establishing the 532\-year cycle. Anania also mentions Ethiopians (presumably Aksumites) in other works concerned with the calendar as well as providing an accurate Armenian transcription of Gǝʿǝz month names which he faithfully reproduced from his Ethiopian informants. This remarkably early encounter between Armenian and Aksumite scholars indicates that the links between the two regions were much older than the few available sources can reveal. Both Aksum/Ethiopia and Nubia had a long history of connections with the 'Holy lands' where Nubian pilgrims are identified as early as the 8th century. One of the earliest mentions of African Christians in the eastern Mediterranean comes from the Syriac patriarch Michael Rabo (r. 1166–99\) who suggests the presence of Nubians and Ethiopians in Syria, Palestine, Armenia, and Egypt during the late 1120s. Descriptions of the diasporic community of both Nubians and Ethiopians reach their peak during the 13th to 15th century, where they are identified by many Latin (crusader) accounts who mention an 'infinite multitude' of these African Christians in the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem), Nazareth, Bethlehem, as well as in Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria. These polygot texts facilitated comparative study of the bible by different groups as well as common reading in the liturgy, since Nubians used Greek and Coptic (alongside Old Nubian) in liturgical contexts, such texts attest to the presence of Ethiopians, Nubians and Armenians in Egyptian monasteries. --- --- Nubians and Ethiopians in the Cilician kingdom of Armenia. It was during their stay in the 'Holy lands' that the Nubian and Ethiopians interacted with their Armenian peers as part of the shifting alliances and conflicts over the control of holy sites and places of worship between the various Christian factions, as well as the intellectual and cultural exchanges which prefigured such interactions. There is some fragmentary evidence of Nubians in Cilician Armenia during the 13th century. This can be gleaned from a statement by the Armenian prince Hayton of Corycus, who, whilst in France, wrote in his Crusade treatise that Armenians could be used as messengers between the Latin Papacy and the Nubians. It may be presumed that some Nubians travelled to Armenia as messengers at various times in order for Hayton, who was also a prince of Armenia, to advertise seemingly strong communication networks between Nubia and Armenia. There is afterall, evidence of a Nubian king travelling with his entourage to the Byzantine capital Constantinople in 1203 from Jerusalem, likely using an overland route through Armenia. Stronger evidence for Africans in Armenia however, comes from Ethiopia. In the early 14th century, the Ethiopian scholar named Ewosṭatewos created a powerful, yet dissenting, movement in northern Ethiopia about the observance of the Christian and Jewish sabbath, which eventually led to his banishment. In 1337\-8, he left Ethiopia with some of his followers, beginning a long journey that led them through the kingdom of Makuria (in Sudan), Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus before he finally arrived in Cilician Armenia. Ewostatewos had left Ethiopia with a significant entourage of other monks and scholars, who briefly assisted the king of Makuria in a battle against an enemy, before they proceeded to Egypt. While staying in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, Ewostatewos met the Armenian Patriarch Katolikos Jacob II of Cilicia, who had been exiled by his king for his refusal to submit to the Roman Catholic Papacy. Ewostatewos thus decided to visit Armenia without fail, the monk and his followers made a stopover at Cyprus before reaching mainland Armenia. The Ethiopian monk settled and eventually died in the 'Armenian lands' in 1352 and was reportedly buried by the Patriarch himself. His followers, who included the scholars Bäkimos, Märqoréwos and Gäbrä Iyasus later returned to Ethiopia with an Armenian companion and contributed to the composition of their leader's hagiography titled gadla Ēwosṭātēwos (Contending of Ēwosṭātēwos). In the suceeding centuries, Ewostatewos' followers became influencial in the Ethiopian church, and would ultimately comprise a significant proportion of the Ethiopian scholars who travelled to the Eastern and Northern Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th century, where they established themselves at the Santo Stefano monastery in Rome. During this time, the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia had fallen to the Mamluks of Egypt, whose expansion south had also led to the collapse of Makuria, leaving Ethiopia as the only remaining Christian kingdom between the eastern mediteranean and the red sea region. Travel by pilgrims, envoys and scholars neverthless continued and contacts between Armenians and Ethiopians remained. One of the well\-travelled Ethiopian scholars at Santo Stefano was Yāʿeqob, a 16th century scholar whose journey took him to the tomb of Ewostatewos in what was then Ottoman Armenia. In his travelogue, which he composed while at Santo Stefano, Yaeqob wrote that; "I went to Jerusalem, the Holy City, me son of abuna Ēwosṭātēwos and son of Anānyā, who came to the city of Kwalonyā, tomb of the holy ʾabuna Ēwosṭātēwos, me, Yāʿeqob, pilgrim (nagādi), who came down \ This city of Kwalonya that is mentioned by Yaeqob, which contained the tomb of Ewostatewos, has been identified by some scholars to be the city of Şebinkarahisar in Turkey. However, this location is far from certain and seems to have been on the frontier of the Cilician kingdom. Neverthless, it indicates that the followers of Ewostatewos were atleast familiar with Armenia where their founder was buried, despite the entire region being under the control of the Ottomans by the 16th century. Ewostatewos' tomb would remain a crucial link between Armenians and Ethiopians over the suceeding centuries. --- The beginnings of Armenian travel to Ethiopia. While the diplomatic contacts between Ethiopia and Cilicia were rendered untenable after the fall of the latter, cultural and commercial contacts between the two regions flourished thanks to interactions between their diasporic communities. Beginning in the 16th century, there were a number of Armenians in Ethiopia who, because of their shared religion, gained the confidence of the Ethiopian elites, and served as the latter's trade agents. Several Armenians in particular served a succession of monarchs as businessmen, and by extension as ambassadors. The best known of them in this period was Mateus, who in 1541, travelled alongside the Ethiopian envoy Yaʿǝqob to India and Portugal on behalf of Ethiopian Empress Eleni. Mateus had conducted business between Cairo and Ethiopia for many years as a trader and informant for the Ethiopian court, which had co\-opted him like many foreigners before and after him. Between the 1646 and 1696, the Armenian merchant Khodja Murad served as emissary and broker to three successive Ethiopian emperors, on whose behalf he traveled several times to Yemen, India and as far as Batavia, Insulindia, while his nephew Murad Ibn Mazlum, was delegated to head the embassy designated to the court of the French king Louis XIV. He was later followed by the Armenian bishop Hovannès Tutundji, who travelled from Cairo to Gondär in 1679, where he brought back a relic of the Ethiopian saint Ewostatewos. Another Armenian visitor to Ethiopia from this period was the monk Avédik Paghtasarian, who reached Gondar in 1690\. and wrote a work titled “This is the way to travel to Abyssinia” Some of the Armenian travelers to Ethiopia left detailed descriptions of their journey across the kingdom which increased external knowledge about the region. The most detailed of these accounts was written by the Armenian traveler Yohannes Tovmacean. He was born in Constantinople but mostly resided in the Armenian monastery in Venice, afterwhich he became a merchant in his later life and travelled widely. He reached Massawa in 1764 and proceeded via Aksum and Adwa to Gondär Where he was appointed as one of the treasurers to Empress Mentewwab before making his way back to the coast in 1766\. His travelogue describes many aspects of Ethiopian society that he observed and also mentions several Armenians he found in Gondar such as Stephan, a jeweler from Constanipole and another treasurer named Usta Selef. The journey of T'ovmacean took place a few decades before the better known visit of Ethiopia by James Bruce, who also encountered some Armenians at the Ethiopian capital Gondar, writing that; "These men are chiefly Greeks, or Armenians, but the preference is always given to the latter. Both nations pay caratch, or capitation, to the Grand Signior \ --- Subscribe --- The creation of an Armenian diaspora in Ethiopia Armenians had been, along with the Greeks and the Arabs, among the only foreigners allowed to travel or stay regularly, and with relative freedom, in Ethiopia during the 17th and 18th centuries when the Gondarine rulers severed relationships with the Latin Christians of southern Europe. The Armenian presence in Ethiopia eventually took on a diasporic dimension with the arrival and establishment of the first real immigrants followed by their families, from the last quarter of the 19th century, especially in northern regions such as Tigray. The town of Adwa in Tigray, which was a major center for crafts production, was home to a number of Armenian jewelers and armorers who served the Ethiopian court and church elites. One such Armenian jeweler in the mid 19th century was Haji Yohannes, who was said to have formerly been an illegal coiner, another was an armorer named Yohannes. Armenian craftsmen could be found in other towns such as in Antalo, the capital of Ras Walda Sellase, where there was an Armenian leatherworker named Nazaret, and in Ankobar, where there was an Armenian silversmith named Stefanos. While these goldsmiths and silversmiths did not command a high social position in Ethiopia, they were vital to its urban economy. The Armenian community in 19th century Ethiopia weren't only craftsmen but also included influencial figures that played a role in the Ethiopian church. In the 1830s, for example, the provincial ruler of Tigray, Sebagadis, and his successor, had involved an Armenian in a mission to urge the Coptic patriarch of Egypt to appoint an abuna (Patriach of the Ethiopian church). The doctrinal relationship between the Armenian and Ethiopian Churches, as well as the antiquity of their exchanges, ensured that regular contacts were maintained between Ethiopian and Armenian diasporas in the Holy lands. This was especially true for Jerusalem, which remained one of the few foreign destinations of interest to Ethiopians after in the 17th century, and where the local Ethiopian community was placed under the protection of the Armenian community by the Ottoman sultan. The relationship between the Armenian, Ethiopian and Coptic communities in Jerusalem was however, less than cordial, with all claiming control over important sites of worship while leveraging their connections with international powers to support their claim or mediate their disputes. --- One such mediator in the 19th century were the British, who mostly leaned towards the Ethiopian community's side in Jerusalem even as their relationship with Tewodros, the Ethiopian ruler at the time, was in decline. The British thus worked with the Armenian patriarch in Jerusalem who organized a mission to Ethiopia in 1867 that was led by two Armenian clergymen; Dimothéos Sapritchian and Isaac. The two visitors left a detailed description of Ethiopia and were briefly involved in the issue of finding a new abuna, with Isaac almost assuming the role, but the appointment was ultimately made in the time\-honored way, following nomination by the Alexandrian Patriarch. The two Armenian clergymen eventually left Ethiopia in 1869\. The Armenian community in Ethiopia would continue to flourish under Tewodros' sucessors, especially during the reign of Menelik II (1889\-1913\) when they numbered around 200 and later exceeded 1,000 by the 1920s, following the genocide of Ottoman\-Armenians and a major wave of migration of Armenians to Ethiopia. Just like their predecessors, many of the Armenians served in various capacities both elite and non\-elite, often as craftsmen, traders and courtiers. Under the patronage of Menelik and his sucessors, the Armenian community in Ethiopia was naturalized and eventually came to regard Ethiopia as a ‘diasporic homeland’, a sentiment which continues to the present day. --- Ethiopia is one of the few places in the world that developed its own notation system, and is home to an one of the world’s oldest musical traditions. read more about it in my latest Patreon essay; --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeArmeno\-Aethiopica in the Middle Ages by Zaroui Pogossian pg 117\-119\) Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World by Adam Simmons, A Note towards Quantifying the Medieval Nubian Diaspora by Adam Simmons pg 27\-29, A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly pg 434\) Africa and Byzantium By Andrea Myers Achi pg 157, 165 A Note towards Quantifying the Medieval Nubian Diaspora by Adam Simmons pg 29\) Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques du gadla Ēwosṭātēwos Olivia Adankpo Dictionary of African Biography, Volumes 1\-6 pg 320, The History of Ethiopian\-Armenian Relations by R. Pankhurst, A companion to religious minorities in Rome by Matthew Coneys Wainwright pg 177\-185\) Les Arméniens dans le commerce asiatique au début de l'ère moderne: Armenians in asian trade in the early modern era by Sushil Chaudhury, pg 121\-127 Foreign relations with Ethiopia: human and diplomatic history (from its origins to present) by Lukian Prijac pg 14, Les Arméniens dans le commerce asiatique au début de l'ère moderne: Armenians in asian trade in the early modern era by Sushil Chaudhury pg 128\-145 A Medieval Armenian T\-O Map by Rouben Galichian The Visit to Ethiopia of Yohannes T'ovmacean: An Armenian Jeweller in 1764\-66 by V. Nersessian and Richard Pankhurst A Social History of Ethiopia by Richard Pankhurst pg 103\) Les Arméniens en Éthiopie, une entorse à la « raison diasporique » ? by Boris Adjemian pg 108\-113\) A Social History of Ethiopia by Richard Pankhurst pg 235\-238\) An Armenian Involvement in Mid\-Nineteenth\-Century Ethiopia by David W. Phillipson pg 142\) The Monk on the Roof: The Story of an Ethiopian Manuscript Found in Jerusalem (1904\) by Stéphane Ancel An armenian involvement Mid\-Nineteenth\-Century Ethiopia by David W. Phillipson pg 137\-143\) Immigrants and Kings Foreignness in Ethiopia, through the Eye of Armenian Diaspora by Boris Adjemian 16 2)

a brief note on the history of Music in Africa in a brief note on the history of Music in Africa plus an overview of Ethiopian musical traditions )The continent of Africa is home to some of the oldest and most diverse range of musical traditions, instruments and performances in world history Evidence of music in Africa appears long before the emergence of complex societies and states. The stone age paintings of tassili n'Ajjer in southern Algeria, which was occupied during the green\-Sahara period, include depictions of figures dancing and playing musical instruments that are dated to around 6,000\-4,000 BC. In Eastern Africa, the earliest evidence of music appears in the rock art paintings from Kondoa in Tanzania dated to around 4,000\-1,000BC, which include depictions of figures playing musical instruments. By the time the first states emerged in the Nile Valley, the northern Horn of Africa, and the West African Sahel, Music had become a salient feature of political and social in Africa. A combination of archeological evidence, oral traditions, and written sources attest to the broad range of instruments, dances and performances of music across much of the African continent, demonstrating the connection between music and other aspects of daily life. Representations of musicians and musical instruments abound in many African artworks, from the wall paintings of Ancient Kush and medieval Nubia, to the illustrated manuscripts of Ethiopia, to the sculptural art of the west African kingdoms of Ife and Benin. Processions of musicians and dancers populate the painted scenes on the temple walls in Kush and the monasteries of medieval Nubia, representations of musical instruments appear frequently in the vast corpus of sculptural art produced by the artists of Benin and ife, while manuscripts written by Ethiopian scribes include illustrations of biblical figures playing local musical instruments. Written documents of poetry and songs in African societies date back to the earliest internal and external accounts about the continent since antiquity. From the musical manuscripts of Ethiopia to the written poetry of the Swahili coast and Islamic west Africa, these internal accounts document how music was conceived and transmitted by Africans in various contexts. External accounts written by classical writers such as Hanno, medieval Arab travelers like Ibn Battuta and later European explorers, leave little doubt about the centrality of Music to various African cultures. Increased interactions between various African regions and external societies brought together a diverse range of cultures and traditions, which were then dispersed by the African diaspora across parts of the Old world and the Americas. New music forms, instruments, and dances emerged as different societies interacted with one another, influencing their practices of religion, political institutions, cultural festivals and identities. Nowhere is this dynamism in Africa’s musical history more evident than in the musical traditions of Ethiopia. The 'Solomonic' state of Ethiopia which flourished from 1270\-1974 was home to some of Africa's oldest music traditions and a unique notation system for recording music that is one of a few of its kind in the world. The musical history of Ethiopia is the subject of my latest Patreon article, Please read more about it here: --- "every musical accompaniment to which the resources of the court could reach had all been summoned and here was a melee of gongs and kettle drums, timbres and trumpets, horns and bells, Dancing there in the midst of all, a wondrous sight was the king himself" Georg August Schweinfurth, 1874 --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe22 )

The African diaspora in Portuguese India: 1500\-1800\. in The African diaspora in Portuguese India: 1500\-1800\. Sailors, Merchants and Priests. 2)The Indian sub\-continent has historically been home to one of Africa's best documented diasporic communities in Asia. For many centuries, Africans from different parts of eastern Africa travelled to and settled in the various kingdoms and communities across India. Some rose to prominent positions, becoming rulers and administrators, while others were generals, soldiers and royal attendants. The arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian ocean world in 1498 was a major turning point in the history of the African diaspora in India. Political and commercial alliances were re\-oriented, initiating a dynamic period of cultural exchanges, trade and travel by Africans. Sailors and merchants from the Swahili coast, royals from the Mutapa kingdom, and crewmen from Ethiopia established communities across the various cities of the western Indian coast who joined the pre\-existing African diaspora on the subcontinent. This article explores the history of the African diaspora in Portuguese India from the 16th to the 18th century, focusing on Africans who travelled to India out of their own volition, and eventually resided there permanently. Map showing the cities and kingdoms of the western Indian Ocean mentioned below --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Background on the Swahili city\-states, the Portuguese and the western India coast at the turn of the 16th century. The earliest African diaspora in Portuguese India was closely associated with the Portuguese arrival in the western Indian ocean. When the ships of Vasco Dagama rounded the cape and landed on Mozambique\-island in 1498, the rivaling Swahili city\-states were alerted to the presence of a new player in the coast’s factious political environment. Malindi quickly took advantage of the Portuguese presence to overpower its rival, Mombasa. Malindi’s sultan hosted Vasco Da gama, whose hostile encounter at Mozambique\-island and Mombasa had earned him a bad reputation among many of the Swahili elites. Malindi boasted a cosmopolitan population that included not just the Swahili and other African groups, but also itinerant Indian and Arab merchants. Among these was an experienced sea\-captain named Malema Cana who agreed to direct the Portuguese crew to the Indian city of Calicut. Later Portuguese expeditions would eventually battle with the rulers of Calicut and Goa, seizing both by 1510 and making Goa the capital of their possessions in the Indian ocean. In the suceeding decades, a number of Indian cities would fall under Portuguese control including Diu, Daman, Surat, Bassein, Bombay, and Mangalore. On the East African coast, a similar pattern of warfare led to the capitulation of Mombasa, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mozambique island, and Sofala to the Portuguese over the course of the 16th century. Malindi leveraged its alliance with the Portuguese to become the capital of the Portuguese posessions on the east African coast and thus the seat of the “captain of the coast of Malindi”. Like many of the large Swahili cities, the merchants of Malindi were engaged in trade with the Indian ocean world, primarily in ivory and gold —a lucrative trade which continued after the Portuguese occupation of Goa. --- --- Swahili voyages to Portuguese India: trading expeditions of Sultans and Merchants. Prior to the Portuguese arrival, Swahili traders had been carrying goods on locally\-built mtepe ships and on foreign ships to the coasts of Arabia, India and south\-east Asia as far as the city of Malacca. This trade continued after the Portuguese ascendancy but was re\-oriented. The Malindi sultan thus pressed his advantage, as early as 1517, by sending a letter to his suzerain, the king of Portugal, requesting a letter of protection to allow him free travel in his own ship throughout the Portuguese possessions from al\-Hind (India) to Sofala (Mozambique). This was the first of several requests of safe passage made on behalf of Swahili sailors who were active in Portuguese India. There are similar letters from the late 16th century of a Malindi sultan, king Muhammad, sending a ship to the Portuguese settlement of Bassein (India) in 1586, as well as to Goa during the same year to warn the Portuguese about the Ottoman incursion of Abi Bey who had allied with some Swahili towns led by Mombasa and Pate. And around the year 1596, the same Malindi sultan wrote to Philip II of Spain, asking that his ships should sail freely throughout the Iberian possessions in India without paying taxes, He also asked for the free passage for a Malindi trading mission to China (likely, to Macau), to improve his finances. These requests were granted, the latter in particular may have been a consequence of the decline in Malindi's trade during the late 16th century and the eventual shift of the Portuguese administration of east Africa to Mombasa in 1593\. Such requests of safe passage and duty free trade also taken up by private merchants who sailed on their own ships to India. For example the Mozambique\-island resident named Sharif Muhammad Al\-Alawi, who passed on the 1517 Malindi letter to the Portuguese, also requested a letter of safe passage for his own ship. Several later accounts mention East African merchants sailing regulary to India. An account from 1615 mentions a Mogadishu born Mwalimu Ibrahim who is described as an expert in navigation from “Mogadishu to the Gulf of Cambay”, his brother was involved in Portuguese naval wars off the coast of Daman. While another 1619 account mentions itinerant traders from the Malindi coast visiting Goa regulary, including a trader from Pate named Muhammad Mshuti Mapengo who was “well\-known in Goa, where he often goes.” --- Subscribe --- Swahili voyages to Portuguese India: Envoys and Political alliances. The activities of the Swahili elites in Portuguese India were partly dependent on their city's political relationship with local Portuguese authorities. When the Portuguese captured Mombasa in 1593, a more complex relationship was developed with the Swahili cities both within their direct control such as Mombasa, Pemba and Malindi, and those outside it such as Pate. Regular travel by Swahili elites to India were undertaken in the early 17th century as the nature of Portuguese control was continously re\-negotiated. This was especially the case for the few rulers who adopted Catholism and entered matrimonial alliances with the Portuguese such as the brother of the king of Pemba who in the 1590s travelled to Goa but refused the offer to be installed as king of Pemba. A better known example was the sending of the Mombasa Prince Yusuf ibn al\-Hasan to Goa in 1614 after a power struggle with the Portuguese governor at Mombasa had ended the assassination of his father. The prince was raised by the ‘Augustinian order’ in Goa where he was baptized as Don Jeronimo Chingulia. While in Goa, he married locally (albeit to a Portuguese woman) and was active in the Portuguese navy, before he was later crowned king of Mombasa in 1626 in preparation for his travel back to his home the same year. He would be the first of many African royals who temporarily or permanently resided in Goa, among whom included his cousin from Malindi named Dom Antonio. Swahili factions allied with the Portuguese often travelled to Goa and some lived there permanently. These include Bwana Dau bin Bwana Shaka of Faza, a fervent supporter of the Portuguese who settled in Goa after 1698 and kept close ties with the administration. In 1724, Mwinyi Ahmed Hasani Kipai, an ambitious character from Pate, took a ship in Barawa to meet the Portuguese in Surat and later on in Goa. In 1606, two Franciscan friars met a mwalimu (ship pilot) from Pemba whom they described as a Swahili "old Muslim negro", that in 1597 had guided the ship of Francisco da Gama, the future viceroy of India, from Mombasa to Goa. Others included emissaries who travelled to Goa on behalf of their sultans, such include the Mombasa envoys Mwinyi Zago and Faki Ali wa Mwinyi Matano, that reached Goa in 1661 and 1694 respectively. --- --- Mutapa priests in India: royal Africans of the Dominican order. Contemporaneous with the Portuguese presence on the east African coast was their expansion into the interior of south east Africa, especially in the kingdom of Mutapa in what is now Zimbabwe. From the early 17th century when the Portuguese were extending their control into parts of this region, members of the royal courts who allied with the Portuguese and adopted Catholicism often travelled to Goa and Lisbon for religious studies. These travels were primarily facilitated by the ‘Dominican order of preachers’, a catholic order that was active in the Mutapa capital and the region's trading towns, establishing religious schools whose students also included Mutapa princes. Unlike the itinerant nature of the Swahili presence in India, the presence of elites from Mutapa in India was a relatively permanent phenomenon.. Among the first of Mutapa princes to be sent to India was Dom Diogo, son of the Mutapa king Gatsi Rucere, he was sent to Goa in 1617 for further education by the Dominican prior, with the hope that he might suceed his ageing father. However, Dom Diogo died a few years after his arrival in Goa, becoming the first of the Mutapa elites who remained in Portuguese India. He had likely been accompanied to Goa by a little\-known prince who later converted and became a priest named Luiz de Esprito Santo. This priest would later return to Mutapa to proselytize but died in the sucession wars after king Gatsi’s death. He was soon followed by other Mutapa princes including Miguel da Presentacao, son of Gatsi's sucessor, king Kapararidze. Miguel spent most of his life in Goa from May 1629, where he would be educated and later earn a degree in theology. The young prince also travelled to Lisbon in 1630, where he received a Dominican habit and accepted into the order as a frair. The unusual circumstances in which this young old African prince was accepted into the order was likely due to royal intervention. Miguel returned to Goa in 1633 and was ordained as a priest, serving in the Santa Barbara priory in Goa, teaching theology and acting as a vicar of the Santa Barbara parish. In 1650, the Portuguese king requested that he return to Mutapa to suceed king Mahvura but Miguel chose to stay in Goa, where he would later be awarded the title master of theology in 1670 shortly before his death. Two other Mutapa princes were also sent to India at the turn of the 18th century by the Mutapa king Mhande (Dom Pedro). The first of these was Mapeze, who was baptized as Dom Constantino in 1699 and sent to the Santa Barbara priory in Goa the following year. Shortly after, Constantino was joined in Goa by his brother Dom Joao. Both of the princes' studies and stay in India were financed by the Portuguese crown, which influenced the local Dominican order to accept them, with Constantino receiving a Dominican habit. After reportedly committing an indiscretion, Constantino was briefly banished to Macao (in China) by the vicar general of Goa, before the Portuguese king ordered that the prince be returned to Goa in 1709\. When the Mutapa throne was taken by a king opposed to the Portuguese in 1711, the Portuguese king asked Constantino to return to Mutapa and take up the throne, but the later refused, claiming that he had renounced all worldly ambitions, an excuse that the Portuguese accepted. Constatino received a pension from the crown but was in conflict with his local religious superiors, which forced him to request safe passage to Lisbon for him and his brother. Constantino died en route but his brother opted to go to Brazil where he was eventually buried in the cathedral of Bahia. More African elites and students were sent to Goa during the 18th century, despite the great decline of the Portuguese presence in Mutapa, Eastern Africa and India. Atleast one Mutapa prince is known to have been sent to Goa around 1737 to enter the Dominican order, but he died shortly after his arrival. In the late 18th century, there were a number of Africans from Mozambique who received training in the Dominican priory at Goa, many of whom remained in India. Unlike the princes, these were youths whose families lived next to the mission stations in Mozambique, atleast 6 of them are known to have been admitted in 1770, but its unknown if they completed their training. --- --- Establishing an African diaspora in India: the East Africans and Ethiopian community in India. Besides the itinerant merchants, royals, and priests, the African population of Portuguese India also included the families of merchants, sailors, crewmen, dockworkers and other personalities, all of whom worked in various capacities in the various port cities. Alongside the relatively small numbers of African elites who resided permanently in India, these Africans comprised the bulk of the African diaspora in Portuguese India. The abovementioned requests for letters of safe passage by Swahili sultans, hint at the predominantly African crew of the ships which sailed to India. Internal Swahili accounts such as the Pate chronicle mention atleast two sultans who organized trading expeditions to India, especially along the Gujarat coast, during the 16th and 17th century. In 1631, a sultan of Pate sent a ship to Goa whose crew mostly consisted of his wazee (councilors/elders of Pate), and in 1729, another sultan of Pate asked of the Portuguese the right to send “one of his ships” loaded with ivory to Diu. The African merchants who sailed to India were not all itinerant traders, but included some who stayed for long periods and married locally. In 1726, a letter from the king of Pate cited one Bwana Madi bin Mwalimu Bakar from Pate “who goes each year to Surat where he is married.” Matrimonial alliances were a common feature of commercial relationships in the Indian ocean world \-including among the Swahili, and it would not have been uncommon for Swahili merchants who travelled to India to have engaged in them and raised families locally. But the Swahili were not the only African group which permanently resided in Portuguese India. According to Jan Huygen van Linschoten, who lived in Goa in the 1580s, “free Muslim Abyssinians are employed in all India as sailors and crew aboard the trading ships which sail from Goa to China, Japan, Bengal, Malacca, Hormuz and all the corners of the Orient.” These sailors and often took their family aboard and comprised the bulk of the crew, such that the Portuguese who owned and/or captained the ship were often the minority. Some these African sailors also held high offices, such as in the India city of Dabhol in 1616, where the captain of a large ship was a Muslim “black native” from “Abyssinia”, and a pilot of a Mughal trading ship docked in Goa’s habour in 1586 was an Abyssinian who chided a Portuguese captain for losing to the Ottoman corsair Ali Bey on the Swahili coast. The use of the ethnonym “Abyssinians” here is a generic reference to various African groups from the northern Horn of Africa, who had long been active in India ocean trade. While the above references are concerned with Muslim Abyssinians, there are atleast two well known Christian Ethiopians who travelled to India in the early 15th century. They include a well\-travelled scholar named Yohannes, who journeyed across much of southern Europe and reached Goa on his return journey in 1526, where he met with another Ethiopian named Sägga Zäab, who was the Ethiopian ambassador to Portugal. Many Christian Ethiopians also reached Portuguese India during the period when the two nations were closely allied against the Ottomans. These Ethiopians not only travelled for trade but for permanent settlement, the latter of which was often sponsored by the Portuguese. For example in the 1550s, the viceroy Dom Constantino de Braganca granted villages in the Daman district to Christian Abyssinians. This community proved quite sucessful and produced prominent benefactors for the local Jesuit missions such as one named catholic Ethiopian named Ambrosio Lopes, who left a significant fortune for the Jesuit church in Bassein. Another is the ‘Abyssinian Christian matron’ named Catharina de Frao, who proselytized among local Muslim and Hindu women. As a testament to the dynamic nature of the African diaspora in Portuguese India, the resident ‘Abyssinian’ community of India, called the Siddis, who had arrived to the subcontinent some centuries before the Portuguese, was attimes involved in conflict with the latter, who were themsleves supported by other Ethiopians. Before the abovementioned viceroy Constantino De Braganca acquired Daman in 1558, he had to battle with the forces of a siddi named Bofeta, who was incharge of the city’s garrison comprised of mixed Turkish and Ethiopian soldiers. And the city of Diu was itself guarded by a force comprised mostly of Siddis before it was taken by the Portuguese in 1530 The African community in Portuguese India therefore occupied all levels of the social hierachy; from transient envoys and merchants to resident royals, priests, soldiers, sailors and crewmen. This community was borne out of the complex political and commercial exchanges between Africa and India during the era of Portuguese ascendance in the Indian ocean, and was part of the broader patterns of cultural exchange that eventually saw Africans arriving on the shores of Japan in 1543\. --- READ more about the African diaspora in 16th century Japan here: --- Around 3,5000 years ago, a complex culture emerged in the region of central Nigeria that produced Africa’s second largest collection of sculptural art during antiquity, as well as the earliest evidence for iron smelting in west Africa READ about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Thomas Vernet Empires of the monsoon: A history of the Indian Ocean and its invaders by Richard Seymour pg 163\-178\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 81\-82\) ·October 16, 2022 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet 169\-170 pg 167\-169, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 101 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 180, 184\-185, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 143\) Identidade pessoal, reconhecimento social e assimilação: a inclusão de membros de famílias reais africanas e asiáticas na nobreza portuguesa by Manuel Lobato pg 123\-124, Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 194 The Swahili Coast, 2nd to 19th Centuries, by G. S. P. Freeman\-Grenville pg 94, The Church in Africa 1450\-1950 by Adrian Hastings pg 128, Identidade pessoal, reconhecimento social e assimilação by Manuel Lobato pg 125\-126 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 189\) East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 184\) The Church in Africa 1450\-1950 by Adrian Hastings, 120\-121\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa: A Social History (1577\-1990\) By Philippe Denis pg 19\-20, Iberians and African Clergy in Southern Africa by Paul H. Gundani pg 183\-184 Iberians and African Clergy in Southern Africa by Paul H. Gundani pg 180\-181 The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa: A Social History (1577\-1990\) By Philippe Denis pg 31\-33\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa: A Social History (1577\-1990\) By Philippe Denis 42\-44\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa: A Social History (1577\-1990\) By Philippe Denis pg 49, 61\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 151, 153\) Les cités\-États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 152\) East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 185, The Ottoman Age of Exploration By Giancarlo Casale pg 167 African cosmopolitanism in the early modern Mediterranean by M. Salvadore pg 68\-69 The Portuguese in India and Other Studies, 1500\-1700 By A.R. Disney, The History of the Diocese of Damaun by Manoel Francis X. D'Sa pg 46 History of Christianity in India: From the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, 1542\-1700 by Church History Association of India, pg 321 Indian Ocean and Cultural Interaction, A.D. 1400\-1800 by Kuzhippalli Skaria Mathew pg 37 25 2)

a brief note on the origin of African civilizations in a brief note on the origin of African civilizations plus, the Nok Neolithic culture. )Beginning around 12,000 years ago, a wide\-ranging set of developments emerged independently in several societies across the world. Plants and animals were domesticated, pottery and advanced tools appeared, and settlements were established. This archeological period, often refered to as the 'Neolithic' or 'Late stone Age', was protracted and diverse, with different features appearing in different regions at different time periods —and no region exhibits this diversity more than Africa. The earliest domesticates, advanced tools and permanent settlements in Africa first appear in the Upper and Middle Nile Valley in what is today Egypt and Sudan between 9,000\-5,000 BC. This region was home to that eventually gave rise to the first states, with dynastic Egypt around 3,000BC and the Kerma kingdom around 2,500BC. A similar process in the Northern Horn of Africa saw , prior to the rise of the D'MT polity around 900BC and the Aksumite kingdom by the turn of the common era. In West Africa, Neolithic cultures emerged between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. This was a dynamic period with substantial changes of settlement systems, economy, technology, and land use. Due to increasing aridity, human occupation gradually shifted from the drying Sahara into the more humid areas of West Africa. There was considerable variability in these developments, with pottery, livestock and cereal agriculture appearing as early as the 6th millennium BC, thus preceeding permanent settlements and iron tools by several millennia. The period was later suceeded by the emergence of large sedentary communities, the first cities (eg; Jenne\-Jeno) and early states (eg; the Ghana empire) during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium CE. Only a few West African Neolithic cultures with complete archaeological traditions, including material culture, settlement and socio\-economic systems, have been studied for this period. The most distinctive are the (2200\-400 BC), the Kintampo culture of Ghana (2100–1400 BC), the Gajiganna culture of North\-east Nigeria (1800–800 BC), and the Nok culture of central Nigeria (1500–1 BC). The Nok culture is unique and renowned because of its elaborate terracotta sculptures, as well as providing the earliest evidence of iron smelting in west Africa. My latest Patreon article explores the history and significance of the Nok culture in the origins of African kingdoms, institutions and inventions: --- (photos by Robert Vernet) --- Thank you for reading African History Extra. This post is public so feel free to share it. for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe30 )

Guns and Spears: a military history of the Zulu kingdom. in Guns and Spears: a military history of the Zulu kingdom. 3)Popular history of Africa before the colonial era often divides the continent’s military systems into two broad categories —the relatively modern armies along the Atlantic coast which used firearms, versus the 'traditional' armies in the interior that fought with arrows and spears. And it was the latter in particular, whose chivalrous soldiers armed with antiquated weapons, are imagined to have quickly succumbed to colonial invasion. Nowhere is this imagery more prevalent than in mainstream perceptions of the Anglo\-Zulu war of 1879\. Descriptions of Zulu armies armed with short spears and shields, bravely rushing over open ground in the face of heavy fire in an attempt to get to grips with the redcoats, has come to dominate our understanding of colonial warfare. It casts this 'traditional' African army as an atavistic warrior people in their twilight, whose supposed failure to innovate doomed them to their seemingly inevitable fall. Like all simplified narratives, the popular division between traditional and modern military systems is more apparent than real. The guns of Queen Njinga’s army in Matamba (Angola) were just as effective at defeating the Portuguese colonial armies in the 17th century, as the arrows of Chagamire Dombo were at crushing the colonialists forces in Mutapa (Zimbabwe). And as the the 19th century colonial expansionism intensified, the Zulu armies defeated the British in the field on no less than three occasions. This article explores the history of Zulu military innovations within their local context in south\-east Africa, and the overlooked role of firearms in Zulu warfare. Map of southern Africa in the early 19th century showing the Zulu kingdom. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- Genesis of the Zulu military system: Southern African armies and weapons from the 16th to the 18th century. The Zulu kingdom emerged in the early 19th century, growing from a minor chiefdom in Mthethwa confederation, to become the most powerful state in south\-east Africa. Expanding through conquest, diplomacy and patronage, the kingdom subsumed several smaller states over a large territory measuring about 156,000 sqkm. The Zulu state owed much of its expansion to its formidable army during the reign of King Shaka (1812\-1828\), the kingdom's first independent ruler. The Zulu military developed during Shaka's reign utilized a distinctive form of organization, fighting formations and weapons, that were popularized in later literature about colonial warfare in Africa. Chief among these was the regiment system, and the short\-spears known as assegai that were utilized in the famous cow\-horn formation of close\-combat fighting. Like most historical traditions which attribute important cultural innovations to the kingdom's founder, these innovations are thought to have been introduced by king Shaka. However, they all predate the reign of the famous Zulu king, and most of them were fairly common among the neighboring states of south\-east Africa. Among such states was the Thuli chiefdom, which, during its expansion south of the Thukela River in the late 18th century, employed the short\-spear in close combat. Another tradition relating the the Mtehthwa king Dingiswayo also attributes the use of short stabbing spears to his armies, replacing the throwing spear. The line of transmition then follows both of these innovations from Dingiswayo's son to a then prince Shaka, when the Zulu were still under Mtehthwa's suzerainty. The short spear often associated with king Shaka was itself a relatively ancient weapon among the polities of south\-east Africa. The earliest descriptions of armies in the region from the mid 16th century include mentions of warriors armed with wooden pikes "and some assegais \ The type of assegais used in the region where the Zulu kingdom would later emerge would have been fairly similar to the ones associated with Shaka. One account from 1799 mentions that the armies in Delagoa bay region were "armed with a small spear" which they "throw with great exactness thirty or forty yards". The account also describes their armies' war dress, their large shields and their form of organization with guard units for the King. These were all popularized in later accounts of the Zulu army but were doubtlessly part of the broader military systems of the region. The above fragmentary accounts of military systems in south\-east Africa indicate that traditions attributing the introduction/invention of the Zulu’s military formations and weapons to Shaka were attimes more symbolic than historical, although they would be greatly improved upon by the Zulu. --- Development and innovation of the Zulu military system from Shaka to Dingane: Assegais and Firearms. According to the Zulu traditions recorded in the late 19th century, Shaka trained his warriors to advance rapidly in tight formations and engage hand\-to\-hand, battering the enemy with larger war\-shields, then skewering their foes with the short spear. Shaka's favorite attack formation was an encircling movement known as the impondo zankomo (beast's horns), in which the the isifuba, or chest, advanced towards the enemy’s front, while two flanking parties, called izimpondo, or horns, surrounded either side. There were many types of assegais in 19th century Zululand, including the isijula, the larger iklwa and unhlekwane, the izinhlendhla (barbed assegais), and the unhlekwana (broad\-bladed assegai) among others. Assegais were manufactured by a number of specialized smiths, who enjoyed a position of some status, and were made on the orders of, and delivered to, the king, who would distribute them as he saw fit. The assegai transcended its narrow military applications as it epitomized political power and social unity of the state. It also played an important part in wedding and doctoring ceremonies, as well as in hunting. It acquired an outsized position in Zulu warfare and concepts of honor that emphasized close combat battle. The Zulu army originally formed during the reign of Shaka's predecessor, Senzangakhona (d. 1812\), was an age\-based regimental force that developed out of pre\-existing region\-based forces called amaButho. These regiments were instructed to build a regional barracks (Ikhanda) where they would undergo training. The barracks served as a locus for royal authority as temporary residences of the King and a means to centralize power. Shaka greatly expanded this regimental system, enrolling about 15 regiments, with the estimated size of his army being around 14,000 in the early 19th century, which he sent on campaigns/expeditions (impi) across the region. --- --- The exact size of the regiment, the location of their barracks and the number of regiments varied under sucessive rulers. When a new regiment was formed, the king appointed officers, or izinduna to command it. These were part of the state officials, specifically chosen by the king to fulfil particular roles within the administrative system. Regiments consisted of companies (amaviyo) under the command of appointed officers, which together formed larger divisions (izigaba) also commanded by appointed officers, who were in turn under the senior commanders of the Zulu army. The creation of the different regiments was largely determined by the King, while the military training of the cadets who joined them was mostly an informal process. Some of the regiments dating back to Shaka's time were still present at the time of the Anglo\-Zulu war, others had been created during the intervening period, while others were absorbed. The regiments were distinguished by their war dress and shields, although these two changed with time. These regiments were armed with both the short spear and large shield, but they also carried guns —an often overlooked weapon in Zulu historiography. One particular regiment associated with this weapon in the Anglo\-Zulu war were the abaQulusi, a group which eventually came to consider themselves to be directly responsible to the King. The Zulu had been exposed to firearms early during kingdom's creation in the 1820s. Shaka was keenly intrested in the guns carried by the first European visitors to his court and acquired musketry contigents to bolster his army. He also sent Zulu spies to the cape colony and intended to send envoys to England inorder to learn how to manufacture guns locally. His sucessors, Dingane (r. 1828\-1840\) and Mpande (r. 1840\-1872\), acquired several guns from the European traders as a form of tribute in exchange for allowing them to operate within the kingdom. --- \<\<the journey from Zululand to England wouldn't have been an unusual undertaking, since African explorers —including from southern Africa— had been \>\> --- While firearms acquired by the Zulu during Dingane’s reign were not extensively used in battle before the war between the Boers and the Zulu between 1837\-1840, they quickly became part of the diverse array of weaponry used by his army. The Zulu had innovated their fighting since Shaka’s day, bringing back the javelin (isiJula) for throwing at longer distances, as well as knobkerries (a type of mace or club). Dingane also armed some of his soldiers with firearms, the majority of which seem to have been captured from the Boers after some Zulu victories. The Zulu army of Dingane also rarely fought using the cow\-horn formation but frequently took advantage of the terrain to create more dispersed formations, often seeking to surprise the enemy and prevent them from making any effective defense. The Zulu developed an extensive vocabulary reflecting their familiarity with the new technology, with atleast 10 different words for types of firearm, each with its own history and origin, as well as a description of its use. These included a five\-foot long gun called the ibala, a large barreled gun known as the imbobiyana, a double barreled shotgun known as the umakalana which was reserved for the elite, two other shotguns known as isinqwana and ifili (the first of which was used in close range fighting), and the "elephant gun" known as the idhelebe which unlike the rest of the other guns was acquired from the Boers rather than the Portuguese. Other guns include the iginanda, umhlabakude, igodhla, and isiBamu. The bulk of firearms in the kingdom arrived from the British colony of Natal and the Portuguese station at Delagoa Bay, especially during the reign of Cetshwayo (r. 1872\-1879/1884\). The king utilized the services of a European trader named John Dunn whose agents transshipped the weapons from the Cape and Natal to Delagoa Bay and into Zululand. In the 1860s and 70s, the exchange price of a good quality double\-barrel muzzle loader dropped from 4 cows or £20 to just one, while an Enfield rifle that was standard issue for the British military in the 1850s cost even less. This trade was often prohibited by the British in the Cape and Natal who feared the growing strength of the Zulu, but the "illegal" sales of guns carried on until the Portuguese were eventually forced to prohibit the trade in 1878\. Portuguese accounts indicate that between 1875 and 1877, 20,000 guns, including 500 breech\-loaders, and 10,000 barrels of gunpowder were imported annually, the greater proportion of which went to the Zulu kingdom. This indicates a total estimate of 45,000 guns including 1,125 breech loaders and 22,500 barrels of gun powder. Another account from 1878 mentions the arrival of 400 Zulu traders at Delagoa who purchased 2,000 breech loaders. Zulu smiths learned how to make gunpowder under the supervision of the king's armorer, Somopho kaZikhala with one cache containing about 1,100 lb of gunpowder in 178 barrels. --- Subscribe --- Firearms and Assegais in the Zulu victory over the British. By the time of the Anglo\-Zulu war in 1878, the majority of Zulu fighters were equipped with firearms, although they were unevenly distributed, with some of the military elites purchasing the best guns while the rest of the army had older models or hardly any. King Cetshwayo became aware of this when a routine inspection of members of one of the regiments revealed that they had few guns, and he ordered them to purchase guns from John Dunn. While the number of guns was fairly adequate, ammunition and training presented a challenge as they often had to use improvised bullets, and not many of them were drilled in good marksmanship. From the Zulu army's perspective however, the kingdom was at its strongest despite some of the constraints. The British estimated King Cetshwayo’s army at a maximum strength of 34 regiments of which 7 weren't active service, thus giving an estimate of 41,900, although this was likely an over\-stated. The force gathered at the start of the Anglo\-Zulu War, which probably numbered about 25,000 men, was the largest concentration of troops in Zulu history. With about as many guns as the Asante army (in Ghana) when they faced off with the British in 1874\. The perception of the Zulu army by their British enemies often changed depending on prevailing imperial objectives and the little information about the Zulu which their frontier spies had collected. One dispatch in November 1878 noted that the “introduction of firearms” wrought “great changes, both in movements and dress”, upon the “ordinary customs of the Zulu army”. Another dispatch by a British officer in January 1879 observed that Zulu armies “are neither more bloodthirsty in disposition nor more powerful in frame than the other tribes of the Coast region”. The slew of seemingly contradictory dispatches increased close to the eve of the battle, with another officer noting that the Zulu army's "method of marching, attack formation, remains the same as before the introduction of fire arms.". The above assessments, and the other first\-hand accounts provided below must all be treated with caution given the context in which they were made and the audience for which they were intended. Throughout January 1879, a low\-intensity war raged in the northwestern marches of the kingdom, culminating with a major clash at Hlobane. One account of the first battle of Hlobane on 21st January details the abaQulusi regiment's careful charges to minimize losses and their extensive use of firearms. The officer noted that his force was "engaged with about 1,000 Zulus, the larger proportion of whom had guns, many very good ones; they appeared under regular command, and in fixed bodies. The most noticeable part of their tactics is that every man after firing a shot drops as if dead, and remains motionless for nearly a minute. In case of a night attack an interval of time should be allowed before a return shot is fired at a flash". He also noted that they fired guns when the British advanced but utilized the assegai when the enemy was in retreat. While the first engagement at Hlobane ended in a British victory, this minor defeat for the Zulu was reversed the next day once they engaged with the bulk of the colonial forces at Isandlwana. Instead of a wild charge down the hill and across the wide plain, the Zulu regiments filed down the gullies of the escarpment and made a series of short dashes from one ridge to another toward the British position, only rising up to charge at the enemy once they were within a very short distance of the camp. The battle of Isandlwana, on 22 January 1879, was an imperial catastrophe, and a monumental victory for the Zulu, resulting in the loss of over 1,300 soldiers, including 52 officers and 739 Colonial and British men, 67 white non\-commissioned officers and more than 471 of the Natal Native Contingent. --- --- Firearms in Zulu military strategy. The role of firearms in the Zulu victory was understated in later accounts for reasons related to the changing purposes to which depictions of the Zulu were put by the British over the course of the war. The dispatch by the colonial commissioner who had ordered the invasion, Henry Frere, suggested that the defeat resulted from the British having faced “10 or even 20 times their own force, and \ Yet there are reports of the same battle which accurately describe the Zulu advance using firearms, before the last charge with assegais. One officer notes that the Zulu army advanced carefully, noting that "it was a matter of much difficulty to do really good execution among the ranks of the enemy, owing to the fact that with marvelous ingenuity they kept themselves scattered as they came along", another observed that "From rock and bush on the heights above started scores of men; some with rifles, others with shields and assegais. Gradually their main body; an immense column opened out in splendid order upon each rank and firmly encircled the camp”. This contradicts the notion that the Zulu were simply throwing hordes of spearmen into the battle, something that would've been extremely costly given the kingdom's relatively low population (of just 100\-150,000 subjects) and very limited manpower compared to what the British could muster from the neighboring colonies. This tactic was also witnessed at a later battle at Gingindlovu, on 2 April. The officer observed that once the Zulu were within 800 yards of the British camp, "they began to open fire. In spite of the excitement of the moment we could not but admire the perfect manner in which these Zulus skirmished. A knot of five or six would rise and dart through the long grass, dodging from side to side with heads down, rifles and shields kept low and out of sight. They would then suddenly sink into the long grass, and nothing but puffs of curling smoke would show their whereabouts." A later interview with Zulu war veterans in 1882 summarizes their preferred tactics as thus; "They went through various manoeuvres for my entertainment, showing me how they made the charges which proved so fatal to our troops. They would rush forward about fifty yards, and imitating the sound of a volley, drop flat amidst the grass; then when firing was supposed to have slackened, up they sprung, and assegai and shield in hand charged like lightning upon the imaginary foe, shouting ‘Usutu’." Its likely that Henry Frere's account of charging athletes with assegais was an oversimplification of this final advance, when the initial slow advance with firearms gave way to a swift charge with assegais. The choice to utilize both firearms and assegais was influenced as much by cultural significance of the assegai as it was by the relatively low quality of the firearms and marksmanship. Zulu guns were of diverse origins, including German, British and American muskets, but some were old models having been made in 1835, in contrast to the British's Martini\-Henry which was made just 8 years before the war. While these Zulu guns had been relatively effective in the earlier wars, they constrained the range at which Zulu marksmen could accurately fire their weapons and increase enemy causalities. The Zulu captured 1000 Martini\-Henrys and 500,000 rounds of ammunition at Isandlwana which they put to good use in later battle of Hlobane which they won on 28th March 1879 and as well as the defeat at Khambula the next day. As one British officer at Khambula observed, the Zulu he encountered were "good shots" who "understood the use of the Martini\-Henry rifles taken at Isandlwana". However, the captured weapons weren't sufficient for the whole army to use in later engagements and were distributed asymmetrically among the soldiers. King Cetshwayo had hoped his victory at Isandlwana would persuade the British to reconsider their policies, but it only provoked a bitter backlash, as more British reinforcements poured into the region. Isandlwana had been a costly victory, a type of fighting which the Zulu army had not before experienced, and the terrible consequences of the horrific casualties they suffered became more apparent with each new battle, with the successive defeats at Gingindlovu and Ulundi eventually breaking the army. --- --- Conclusion. The Zulu army was a product of centuries in developments in the military systems of south\-east Africa. The Zulu’s amaButho system and fighting formations were well\-adapted to the South African environment in which they emerged, and were continuously innovated in the face of new enemy forces and with the introduction of new weapons, including guns. While the Zulu did not kill most of their enemy with firearms, references to the Zulu’s mode of attack suggest that their tactical integration of firearms reflected a greater familiarity and skill in their use than is often acknowledged. The Zulu frequently demonstrated adaptive skills in their tactical deployment of a diverse array of weapons and fighting styles that defy simplistic notions of traditional military organization. The gun\-wielding regiments that quietly crept behind the hill of Isandlawana, with their shields concealed behind the bushes, were nothing like the charging hordes of imperial adventure that blindly rushed into open fields to be mowed down by bullets. The Zulu army was a highly innovative force, acutely aware of the advantages of modern weaponry, the need for tactical flexibility in warfare, and the limits of the kingdom’s resources. In this regard, the Zulu were a modern pre\-colonial African army par excellence. --- In the 16th century, Africans arrived on the shores of Japan, many of them originally came from south\-east Africa and eastern Africa, and had been living in India. read more about this African discovery of Japan here: for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe·January 8, 2023 The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815–1828 By Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 27, 31, 61\-62\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 62, 81\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 145\-146\) The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 32, 192\-209\) A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire pg 144, 147\) The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815–1828 By Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 35\-41, The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 33\-34, 51\-54\) The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 60, 64, 82\) The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 61, 84, 105\-107, A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by Karen Jones pg 146,) A Note on Firearms in the Zulu Kingdom with Special Reference to the Anglo\-Zulu War, by J. J. Guy pg 557\-558 The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815–1828 By Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 152, 166, 243, 256, Companion to the Anglo\-Zulu War By Ian Knight pg 183\) The Zulu\-Boer War 1837–1840 By Michał Leśniewski pg 97\-100 The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples pg 63, Zulu–English Dictionary Alfred T. Bryant pg 20 Kingdom in crisis By John Laband pg 62\-63, A Note on Firearms in the Zulu Kingdom with Special Reference to the Anglo\-Zulu War, by J. J. Guy pg 560 A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by Karen Jones pg 131, Kingdom in crisis By John Laband pg 63\) Companion to the Anglo\-Zulu War By Ian Knight pg 184 The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 35\) A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by by Karen Jones pg 132\) A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by by Karen Jones pg 136\-137, The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 210\) Companion to the Anglo\-Zulu War By Ian Knight pg 118 A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by by Karen Jones pg 132\) Witnesses at Isandlwana by Neil Thornton, ‎Michael Denigan, A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire by by Karen Jones pg 139\) The Zulu\-Boer War 1837–1840 By Michał Leśniewski pg 97 The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 212\) The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg 213\) Kingdom in crisis By John Laband pg 64\-65, Companion to the Anglo\-Zulu War By Ian Knight pg 185\) The Anatomy of the Zulu Army by Ian Knight pg pg 42\) 20 3)

a brief note on the African exploration of Asia in a brief note on the African exploration of Asia plus; the African presence in Japan (1543\-1639\) )For much of Africa’s history, many of its travelers who ventured outside the continent often went to western and southern Asia. In antiquity, the North\-East African kingdoms of Kush and Aksum which were closest to Asia, extended their control over parts of western Asia and Arabia. African rulers, soldiers, merchants, pilgrims and other settlers established communities across the region —from Nineveh in Iraq to — and engaged in cultural exchanges which linked societies on either shores of the red sea. Over the middle ages, envoys and merchants from Aksum travelled further into south Asia, and the south\-western parts of India. Their exploratory initiative was later taken over by the Swahili who plied the routes between the Persian gulf and India, eventually travelling to the south\-east Asian islands of Malaysia, and reaching the east\-Asian state of China. What initially begun as sporadic contacts between China and the kingdoms of Aksum and Makuria, rapidly grew into regular diplomatic exchanges involving several African envoys from many different Swahili, Somali and Ethiopian states travelling to China during the Song dynasty. In the 10th\-14th century period alone, . Chinese travelers reciprocated these visits, sending two major exploratory missions that reached eastern Africa in the early 14th and early 15th century, a few decades prior to the European irruption in the Indian ocean. The African exploration of Asia wasn't halted by the arrival of Portuguese interlopers, but was instead re\-oriented to exploit the changes in the political and commercial landscape of the Indian ocean world. As political alliances shifted between different regional and global powers, African kingdoms alternated their external interests between western Asia and south Asia, depending on their relationship with the Portuguese. Africans converged in the Portuguese city of Goa in India, creating a diasporic community that included visiting royals and envoys, catholic priests, mercenaries, and servants. It was from this African community in south\-Asia that the first Africans who travelled to Japan originated, arriving on the island nation in the 1540s. The history of African travel to Japan is the subject of my latest Patreon post, Read more about it here: --- --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe13 )

A history of Women's political power and matriliny in the kingdom of Kongo. in A history of Women's political power and matriliny in the kingdom of Kongo. )In the 19th century, anthropologists were fascinated by the concept of matrilineal descent in which kinship is traced through the female line. Matriliny was often confounded with matriarchy as a supposedly earlier stage of social evolution than patriarchy. Matriliny thus became a discrete object of exaggerated importance, particulary in central Africa, where scholars claimed to have identified a "matrilineal belt" of societies from the D.R. Congo to Mozambique, and wondered how they came into being. This importance of matriliny appeared to be supported by the relatively elevated position of women in the societies of central Africa compared to western Europe, with one 17th century visitor to the Kongo kingdom remarking that "the government was held by the women and the man is at her side only to help her". In many of the central African kingdoms, women could be heads of elite lineages, participate directly in political life, and occasionally served in positions of independent political authority. And in the early 20th century, many speakers of the Kongo language claimed to be members of matrilineal clans known as ‘Kanda’. Its not difficult to see why a number of scholars would assume that Kongo may have originally been a matrilineal —or even matriarchal— society, that over time became male dominated. And how this matrilineal African society seems to vindicate the colonial\-era theories of social evolution in which “less complex” matriarchal societies grow into “more complex” patriarchal states. As is often the case with most social histories of Africa however, the contribution of women to Kongo’s history was far from this simplistic colonial imaginary. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- Scholars have often approached the concept of matriliny in central Africa from an athropological rather than historical perspective. Focusing on how societies are presently structured rather than how these structures changed through time. One such prominent scholar of west\-central Africa, Jan Vansina, observed that matrilineal groups were rare among the foragers of south\-west Angola but common among the neighboring agro\-pastoralists, indicating an influence of the latter on the former. Vansina postulated that as the agro\-pastoral economy became more established in the late 1st millennium, the items and tools associated with it became highly valued property —a means to accumulate wealth and pass it on through inheritance. Matrilineal groups were then formed in response to the increased importance of goods, claims, and statuses, and hence of their inheritance or succession. As leadership and sucession were formalised, social alliances based on claims to common clanship, and stratified social groups of different status were created. According to Vansina, only descent through the mother’s line was used to establish corporate lineages headed by the oldest man of the group, but that wives lived patrilocally (ie: in their husband's residence). He argues that the sheer diversity of kinship systems in the region indicates that matriliny may have developed in different centers along other systems. For example among the Ambundu, the Kongo and the Tio —whose populations dominated the old kingdoms of the region— matrilineages competed with bilateral descent groups. This diverse framework, he suggests, was constantly remodeled by changes in demographics and political development. Yet despite their apparent ubiquity, matrilineal societies were not the majority of societies in the so\-called matrilineal belt. Studies by other scholars looking at societies in the Lower Congo basin show that most of them are basically bilateral; they are never unequivocally patrilineal or matrilineal and may “oscillate” between the two. More recent studies by other specialists such as Wyatt MacGaffey, argue that there were never really any matrilineal or patrilineal societies in the region, but there were instead several complex and overlapping forms of social organization (regarding inheritance and residency) that were consistently changed depending on what seemed advantageous to a give social group. Moving past contemporary debates on the existance of Matriliny, most scholars agree that the kinship systems in the so\-called matrilineal belt was a product of a long and complex history. Focusing on the lower congo river basin, systems of mobilizing people often relied on fictive kinship or non\-kinship organizations. In the Kongo kingdom, these groups first appear in internal documents of the 16th\-17th century as political factions associated with powerful figures, and they expanded not just through kinship but also by clientage and other dependents. In this period, political loyalty took precedence over kinship in the emerging factions, thus leading to situations where rivaling groups could include people closely related by descent. Kongo's social organization at the turn of the 16th\-17th century did not include any known matrilineal descent groups, and that the word 'kanda' —which first appears in the late 19th/early 20th century, is a generic word for any group or category of people or things. The longstanding illusion that 'kanda' solely meant matrilineage was based on the linguistic error of supposing that, because in the 20th century the word kanda could mean “matriclan” its occurrence in early Kongo was evidence of matrilineal descent. In documents written by Kongo elites, the various political and social groupings were rendered in Portuguese as geracao, signifying ‘lineage’ or ‘clan’ as early as 1550\. But the context in which it was used, shows that it wasn’t simply an umbrella term but a social grouping that was associated with a powerful person, and which could be a rival of another group despite both containing closely related persons. In Kongo, kinship was re\-organized to accommodate centralized authority and offices of administration were often elective or appointive rather than hereditary. Kings were elected by a royal council comprised of provincial nobles, many of whom were themselves appointed by the elected Kings, alongside other officials. The kingdom's centralized political system —where even the King was elected— left a great deal of discretion for the placement of people in positions of power, thus leaving relatively more room for women to hold offices than if sucession to office was purely hereditary. But it also might weaken some women's power when it was determined by their position in kinship systems. [![detail of the Parma Watercolors; "PW070: Black male and female aristocrats" read about these images of Kongo here: "detail of the Parma Watercolors; \"PW070: Black male and female aristocrats\" read about these images of Kongo here: women of Kongo, ca. 1663, . --- --- Kongo's elite women could thus access and exercise power through two channels. The first of these is appointment into office by the king to grow their core group of supporters, the second is playing the strategic role of power brokers, mediating disputes between rivalling kanda or rivaling royals. Elite women appear early in Kongo's documented history in the late 15th century when the adoption of Christianity by King Nzinga Joao's court was opposed by some of his wives but openly embraced by others, most notably the Queen Leonor Nzinga a Nlaza. Leonor became an important patron for the nascent Kongo church, and was closely involved in ensuring the sucession of her son Nzinga Afonso to the throne, as well as Afonso's defeat of his rival brother Mpanzu a Nzinga. Leonor held an important role in Kongo’s politics, not only as a person who controlled wealth through rendas (revenue assignments) held in her own right, but also as a “daughter and mother of a king”, a position that according to a 1530 document such a woman “by that custom commands everything in Kongo”. Her prominent position in Kongo's politics indicates that she wielded significant political power, and was attimes left in charge of the kingdom while Afonso was campaigning. Not long after Leonor Nzinga’s demise appeared another prominent woman named dona Caterina, who also bore the title of 'mwene Lukeni' as the head of the royal kanda/lineage of the Kongo kingdom's founder Lukeni lua Nimi (ca. 1380\). This Caterina was related to Afonso's son and sucessor Pedro, who was installed in 1542 but later deposed and arrested by his nephew Garcia in 1545\. Unlike Leonor however, Caterina was unsuccessful in mediating the factious rivary between the two kings and their supporters, being detained along with Pedro. In the suceeding years, kings drawn from different factions of the lukeni lineage continued to rule Kongo until the emergence of another powerful woman named Izabel Lukeni lua Mvemba, managed to get her son Alvaro I (r. 1568\-1587\) elected to the throne. Alvaro was the son of Izabel and a Kongo nobleman before Izabel later married Alvaro's predecessor, king Henrique, who was at the time still a prince. But after king Henrique died trying to crush a jaga rebellion in the east, Alvaro was installed, but was briefly forced to flee the capital which was invaded by the jagas before a Kongo\-Portugal army drove them off. Facing stiff opposition internally, Alvaro relied greatly on his mother; Izabel and his daughter; Leonor Afonso, to placate the rivaling factions. The three thereafter represented the founders of the new royal kanda/house of kwilu, which would rule Kongo until 1624\. Following in the tradition of Kongo's royal women, Leonor Afonso was a patron of the church. But since only men could be involved in clerical capacities, Leonor tried to form an order of nuns in Kongo, following the model of the Carmelite nuns of Spain. She thus sent letters to the prioress of the Carmelites to that end. While the leader of the Carmelite mission in Kongo and other important members of the order did their best to establish the nunnery in Kongo, the attempt was ultimately fruitless. Leonor neverthless remained active in Kongo's Church, funding the construction of churches, and assisting the various missions active in the kingdom. Additionally, the Kongo elite created female lay associations alongside those of men that formed a significant locus of religiosity and social prestige for women in Kongo. As late as 1648, Leonor continued to play an important role in Kongo's politics, she represented the House of kwilu started by king Alvaro and was thus a bridge, ally or plotter to the many descendants of Alvaro still in Kongo. One visiting missionary described her as “a woman of very few words, but much judgment and government, and because of her sage experience and prudent counsel the king Garcia and his predecessor Alvaro always venerate and greatly esteem her and consult her for the best outcome of affairs". This was despite both kings being drawn from a different lineage, as more factions had appeared in the intervening period. --- Subscribe --- The early 17th century was one of the best documented periods in Kongo's history, and in highlighting the role of women in the kingdom's politics and society. Alvaro's sucessors, especially Alvaro II and III, appointed women in positions of administration and relied on them as brokers between the various factions. When Alvaro III died without an heir, a different faction managed to get their candidate elected as King Pedro II (1622\-1624\). Active at Pedro's royal council were a number of powerful women who also included women of the Kwilu house such as Leonor Afonso, and Alvaro II's wife Escolastica. Both of them played an important role in mediating the transition from Alvaro III and Pedro II, at a critical time when Portugual invaded Kongo but was defeated at Mbanda Kasi. Besides these was Pedro II's wife Luiza, who was now a daughter and mother of a King upon the election of her son Garcia I to suceed the short\-lived Pedro. However, Garcia I fell out of favour with the other royal women of the coucil (presumably Leonor and Escolastica), who were evidently now weary of the compromise of electing Pedro that had effectively removed the house of Kwilu from power. The royal women, who were known as “the matrons”, sat on the royal council and participated in decision making. They thus used the forces of an official appointed by Alvaro III, to depose Garcia I and install the former's nephew Ambrosio as king of Kongo. However, the kwilu restoration was short\-lived as kings from new houses suceeded them, These included Alvaro V of the 'kimpanzu' house, who was then deposed by another house; the ‘kinlaza’, represented by kings Alvaro VI (r. 1636\-1641\) and Garcia II (r. 1641\-1661\) . Yet throughout this period, the royal women retained a prominent position on Kongo's coucil, with Leonor in particular continuing to appear in Garcia II's court. Besides Leonor Afonso was Garcia II's sister Isabel who was an important patron of Kongo's church and funded the construction of a number of mission churches. Another was a second Leonor da Silva who was the sister of the count of Soyo (a rebellious province in the north), and was involved in an attempt to depose Garcia II. In some cases, women ruled provinces in Kongo during the 17th century and possessed armies which they directed. The province of Mpemba Kasi, just north of the capital, was ruled by a woman with the title of 'mother of the King of Kongo', while the province of Nsundi was jointly ruled by a duchess named Dona Lucia and her husband Pedro, the latter of whom at one point directed her armies against her husband due to his infidelity. According to a visiting priest in 1664, the power exercised by women wasn't just symbolic, "the government was held by the women and the man is at her side only to help her". However, the conflict between Garcia II and the count of Soyo which led to the arrest of the two Leonors in 1652 and undermined their role as mediators, was part of the internal processes which eventually weakened the kingdom that descended into civil war after 1665\. In the post\-civil war period, women assumed a more direct role in Kongo's politics as kingmakers and as rulers of semi\-autonomous provinces. After the capital was abandoned, effective power lay in regional capitals such as Mbanza Nkondo which was controlled by Ana Afonso de Leao, and Luvota which was controlled by Suzanna de Nobrega. The former was the sister of Garcia II and head of his royal house of kinlaza, while the latter was head of the kimpanzu house, both of these houses would produce the majority of Kongo's kings during their lifetimes, and continuing until 1914\. Both women exercised executive power in their respective realms, they were recognized as independent authorities during negotiations to end the civil war, and their kinsmen were appointed into important offices. The significance of Kongo's women in the church increased in the late 17th to early 18th century. Queen Ana had a reputation for piety, and even obtained the right to wear the habit of a Capuchin monk, and an unamed Queen who suceeded Suzanna at Luvota was also noted for her devotion. It was in this context that the religious movement led by a , which ultimately led to the restoration of the kingdom in 1709\. Her movement further "indigenized" the Kongo church and elevated the role of women in Kongo's society much like the royal women had been doing. For the rest of the 18th century, many women dominated the political landscape of Kongo. Some of them, such as Violante Mwene Samba Nlaza, ruled as Queen regnant of the 'kingdom' of Wadu. The latter was one of the four provinces of Kongo but its ruler, Queen Violante, was virtually autonomous. She appointed dukes, commanded armies which in 1764 attempted to install a favorable king on Kongo's throne and in 1765 invaded Portuguese Angola. Violante was later suceeded as Queen of Wadu by Brites Afonso da Silva, another royal woman who continued the line of women sovereigns in the kingdom. Women in Kongo continued to appear in positions of power during the 19th century, albeit less directly involved in the kingdom's politics as consorts of powerful merchants, but many of them were prominent traders in their own right. Excavations of burials from sites like Kindoki indicate that close social groups of elites were interred in the same cemetery complex alongside rich grave goods as well as Christian insignia of royalty. Among these elites were women who were likely consorts or matriarchs of the male relatives buried alongside them. The presence of initiatory items of kimpasi society as well as long distance trade goods next to the women indicates their relatively high status. It’s during this period that the matrilineal ‘kandas’ first emerged near the coastal regions, and were most likely associated with the commercial revolutions of the period as well as contests of legitimacy and land rights in the early colonial era. The social histories of these clans were then synthesized in traditional accounts of the kingdom’s history at the turn of the 20th century, and uncritically reused by later scholars as accurate reconstructions of Kongo’s early history. While a few of the clans were descended from the old royal houses (which were infact patrilineal), the majority of the modern clans were relatively recent inventions. --- --- The above overview of women in Kongo's history shows that elite women were deeply and decisively involved in the political and social organization of the Kongo kingdom. In a phenomenon that is quite exceptional for the era, the political careers of several women can be readily identified; ranging from shadowy but powerful figures in the early period, to independent authorities during the later period. This outline also reveals that the organization of social relationships in Kongo were significantly influenced by the kingdom's political history. The kingdom’s loose political factions and social groups which; could be headed by powerful women or men; could be created upon the ascension of a new king; and didn't necessary contain close relatives, fail to meet the criteria of a historically 'matrilineal society'. Ultimately, the various contributions of women to Kongo's history were the accomplishments of individual actors working against the limitations of male\-dominated political and religious spaces to create one of Africa’s most powerful kingdoms. --- The ancient libraries of Africa contain many scientific manuscripts written by African scholars. Among the most significant collections of Africa’s scientific literature are medical manuscripts written by west African physicians between the 15th and 19th century. Read more about them here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe How Societies Are Born by Jan Vansina pg 88\-97\) The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman pg 50\) Changing Representations in Central African History by Wyatt Macgaffey pg 197\-201\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 440\) Changing Representations in Central African History by Wyatt Macgaffey pg 200 The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman pg 50, A note on Vansina’s invention of matrilinearity by Wyatt Macgaffey pg 270\-271 Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 439\-440 Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg pg 439\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 442\-443\) A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by John Thornton pg 40 Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 444\-445\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 446\) A Kongo Princess, the Kongo Ambassadors and the Papacy by Richard Gray, Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 447, The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman pg 155\-156\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 452\-453\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 449\) A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by John Thornton pg 148\-149 Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 452\-453\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 454\) The Kongolese Saint Anthony by John Thornton pg 24\-39, Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 455\-456 Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 457, The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman pg 153\) Elite women in the kingdom of Kongo by J.K.Thornton pg 459\-460\) Kongo in the age of empire by Jelmer Vos pg 47, 53 The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman pg 157\-158\) A note on Vansina’s invention of matrilinearity by Wyatt Macgaffey pg 279, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular By Wyatt MacGaffey pg 62\-63 Origins and early history of Kongo by J. K Thornton. pg 93\-98\. Kongo in the age of empire by Jelmer Vos pg 43, 53\. 22 )

a brief note on Africa's Scientific Manuscripts in a brief note on Africa's Scientific Manuscripts plus; the history of Medicine in Africa. )Among the oldest manuscripts and inscriptions written by Africans are documents relating to the study of science. The writing and application of scientific knowledge on the continent begun soon after the emergence of complex societies across the continent, from the ancient kingdoms of the middle Nile and the Ethiopian highlands, to the west African empires and East African city\-states of the middle ages. The continent is home to what is arguably the world's oldest astronomical observatory at the ancient Nubian capital of Meroe —the first building of its kind exclusively dedicated to the study of the cosmos. inorder to time events and predict meteorological phenomena. Their observatory complex was complete with inscriptions of astronomical equations and illustrations of people handling astronomical equipment. Besides this fascinating piece of ancient technology, many of the continent's societies were home to intellectual communities whose scholars wrote on a broad range of scientific topics. From the Mathematical manuscripts of the 18th century scholar Muhammad al\-Kishnawi, to the Geographical manuscripts of the 19th century polymath Dan Tafa, to the Astronomical manuscripts found in various private libraries across the cities of Timbuktu, Jenne, and Lamu. The history of science in Africa was shaped by the , as ideas spread between different regions and external knowledge was adopted and improved upon in local contexts. This interplay between innovation and invention is best exemplified in the development of medical science in Africa. The history of medical writing in Africa encompasses the interaction of multiple streams of therapeutic tradition, these include 'classical' medicine based on the humoral theory, 'theological' medicine based on religious precedent, and the pre\-existing medical traditions of the different African societies. West Africa has for long been home to some of the continent's most vibrant intellectual traditions, and was considered part of the Islamic world which is credited with many of the world's most profound scientific innovations. The well established and highly organized regional and external commercial links which linked the different ecological zones of the region, encouraged the creation of highly complex societies, but also brought the diseases associated with nucleated settlements and external contacts. West African societies responded to these health challenges in a variety of ways, utilizing their knowledge of materia medica and pharmacopeia to treat and prevent various diseases which affected their populations. Many of these treatments were procured locally, but others were acquired through trade between regional markets and across the Sahara. These supplemented the intellectual exchanges between the two regions, as scholars composed medical manuscripts documenting all kinds of medical knowledge available to them. The Medical manuscripts written by west African scholars are the subject of my latest Patreon article, In which I look beyond the simple acknowledgement of the existence of scientific manuscripts in Africa to instead study the information contained in these historical documents. Read more about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe21 )

How Africans wrote their own history: Debates and dialogues between four west African historians in the 16th and 19th century. in How Africans wrote their own history: Debates and dialogues between four west African historians in the 16th and 19th century. Facts, myths and royal propaganda. 4)The nineteenth\-century in West Africa was a time of revolution and intellectual renaissance. A political movement that had begun a century before in the region of modern Senegal fanned out along the banks of the Niger river to the shores of lake Chad, overthrowing old governments and replacing them with clerical authorities of high intellectual caliber. The movement expanded rapidly east into the region of northern Nigeria, conquering the pre\-existing kingdoms and subsuming them under the empire of Sokoto in 1804\. But the newly formed Sokoto empire soon met its match further east when its advance was halted by the old empire of Bornu on the shores of lake Chad. Having failed to expand east, a splinter movement advanced west into central Mali, it quickly overwhelmed the divided aristocracies of the region and subsumed them under the empire of Massina in 1818\. Having run out of new lands to conquer, the three empires of Massina, Sokoto and Bornu became embroiled in an ideological conflict; one that produced some of Africa's most remarkable accounts of written history. Map showing the empires of Massina, Sokoto and Bornu in the 19th century. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- The Massina empire was founded by Ahmad Lobbo, a charismatic leader who rose from relative obscurity in the intellectual community of Jenne, an ancient city in Mali. Extending from Jenne to the old city of Timbuktu, the Massina state was one of the largest empires in West Africa since the collapse of Songhai in 1591, and its establishment reversed the political fragmentation of the preceding centuries. was led by a parliament known as the 'Great council', which consisted of about a hundred scholar\-administrators who assisted Ahmad Lobbo. The most prominent figure on the 'Great council' was Nuh al\-Tahir, a prolific man of letters who is one of Africa's most influencial historians. The year is 1838 in the walled city of Hamdullahi, capital of the Massina Empire in central Mali. One of the city's founding residents and administrators is writing a short text whose opening paragraph reads "This is the chronicle of the needful one, Nuh ibn al\-Tahir ibn Musa” Once he was finished writing it, he gave it the title 'Tarikh al\-Fattash' (The chronicle of the inquisitive researcher). As a scholar, Nuh al\-Tahir was a prominent figure who is credited as a teacher of several important scholars in the intellectual communities of Jenne and Hamdullahi. Among his students was a particulary excellent scholar named Uthman dan Fodio who'd later became the founder of the Sokoto Empire in what is now nothern Nigeria. Nuh al\-Tahir specialized in history and grammar, the latter of which earned him the honorific title 'master of literacy'. As an administrator, Nuh al\-Tahir was a top member of Massina's 'Great council' for much of its early history. The Great council of a hundred scholars was divided into two houses, the more powerful of which comprised about forty permanent members and was in turn led by two councilors of whom Nuh al\-Tahir was one. His office at the head of Massina's government placed him in charge of mediating disputes between the council and the military, electing provincial governors for the empire's various districts, and leading the school system of Hamdullahi. Nuh al\-Tahir's position made him one of the foremost scholar\-administrators in revolutionary West Africa, and incidentally, the unofficial spokesperson of the Massina Empire and its ruler Amhad Lobbo. Nuh al\-Tahir’s partisan career is echoed throughout his extant writings, including the 'Tarikh al\-Fattash'. Initially, Nuh al\-Tahir wrote the Tarikh al\-Fattash as a focusing on the life of the Songhai emperor Askiya Muhammad who reigned from 1493 to 1528\. First, he presents the Askiya as a 'Caliph' —a powerful title only claimed by rulers of the largest Muslim empires in history who styled themselves as the political and religious sucessors of the prophet. He then writes about the prominent Muslim figures of the 16th century who recognized the Askiya as a caliph while he was on pilgrimage to mecca. In the semi\-fictional account that follows, Nuh al\-Tahir describes many prophetic and miraculous events that the Askiya witnessed on his pilgrimage journey through Mamluk Egypt and Mecca. The most significant of these prophetic encounters was one which the Askiya had with the sixteenth century Egyptian scholar Jalal al\-Din al\-Suyuti. According to the chronicle, Al\-Suyuti is said to have told Askiya Muhammad that one of the latter's distant descendants named ‘Ahmad of Massina’ will inherit the title of Caliph. Evidently, this inexplicably prophesied figure of 'Ahmad of Massina' was none other than Nuh al\-Tahir's patron, Amhad Lobbo. According to Nuh al\-Tahir's short chronicle, all events surrounding Askiya Muhammad's pilgrimage and reign shared one thing in common; that the Askiya was the eleventh Caliph in the list of Muslim emperors who suceeded the prophet Muhammad, and that there would be a twelfth caliph named ‘Ahmad of Massina’ who will come after him. Nuh al\-Tahir would then greatly expand the chronicle, to provide more context of the political and social life in Songhai during Askiya's reign. Fortunately for his bold project, the vibrant intellectual community of Songhai had produced several remarkable scholars who composed detailed chronicles about its history. After Songhai's fall to forces from the Saadi dynasty of Morocco in 1591, the deposed Songhai emperors who retained the title of Askiya, established themselves in Dendi in what is now northern Benin. The Askiyas then begun a decades\-long reconquest of Songhai territories, pushing the Moroccans out of many provinces and confining them to the large cities such as Jenne and Timbuktu. After losing thousands of men but failing to pacify the fallen empire's provinces, the Moroccans pulled out of the region, abandoning the remaining soldiers to their fate. These remaining soldiers were known as the Arma, and they began a long series of peaceful negotiations with the Askiyas in Dendi that were mediated by Songhai's scholary families. Among these peace\-making Songhai scholars living in the seventeenth century was one named Ibn al\-Mukhtar, who was based in Dendi, and another named Al\-Sa'di who was based in Jenne. . Al\-Sa'di completed his chronicle on Songhai's history in 1656 while Ibn al\-Mukhtar finished his in 1664, the two documents were original compositions which relied on different sources to reconstruct a similar story. Al\-Sa'di's chronicle was widely circulated in nineteenth century West Africa and survived in complete form with its title as Tarikh al\-Sudan (The chronicle on West Africa). On the other hand Ibn al\-Mukhtar's chronicle wasn't widely circulated, it only survived in a fragmentary form that had no title. Nuh al\-Tahir utilized information from the two seventeenth century chronicles to reconstruct the history of Songhai, which he then embellished with his own semi\-fictional account about Askiya Muhammad. One particular historical figure he focused on was Mahmud Ka‘ti, a sixteenth century scholar who was close to the Askiya Muhammad, and who also happened to be the grandfather of Ibn al\-Mukhtar. Then, taking advantage of Ibn al\-Mukhtar's untitled chronicle, Nuh al\-Tahir gave his own chronicle the title Tarikh al\-Fattash and intentionally misattributed its authorship to Mahmud Ka‘ti. The final version of the Tarikh al\-Fattash chronicle was a very lengthy document, covering over a hundred leaves. Nuh al\-Tahir therefore wrote a short summary of the chronicle for wider circulation which he titled 'Letter on the Appearance of the Twelfth Caliph' (or 'Risala'). This summary document outlined the main claims contained in the Tarikh al\-Fattash which it attributed not to Nuh al\-Tahir, but to the sixteenth century scholar Mahmud Ka‘ti. The original short chronicle which Nuh al\-Tahir wrote with his name in the title was hidden away in his personal library, while the 'Risala' was circulated widely circulated throughout West Africa and North Africa. This ingenious process of textural manipulation has long eluded modern researchers who worked on the Tarikh al\-Fattash, but has since been meticulously uncovered by the historian . --- --- In the study of Africa's past, modern historians bewailed the paucity of internal accounts written by Africans, and they were often forced to rely on biased and inadequate external sources written by non\-Africans who were unfamiliar with the internal dynamics of the continent. But the recent discovery of countless African manuscripts from thousands of archives and private libraries across the continent has created an invaluable wealth of information on Africa's past. The cities of Timbuktu and Jenne are among the dozens of intellectual capitals across the continent whose corpus of old manuscripts have been catalogued and digitized by several institutions over the last few decades. However, as scholars rushed to translate these precious documents and mine them for hard evidence on Africa’s past, they soon discovered another challenge —Africa's internal sources contained their own unique biases and perspectives. The existence of biases in primary sources isn't unique to African history, it is a by all societies across the world. Writers of history in many regions of the world since antiquity, were cognizant of their own biases and a few of them strived to appear non\-partisan in their works. As such, part of the work done by modern historians and philologists is to critically examine historical works for such biases inorder to reconstruct a more objective account of history. What makes the internal biases in African accounts relatively unique was that since African documents had only recently been discovered, the process of translating and analyzing them to resolve the biases is still in its early stages. Such was the case with the Tarikh al\-Fattash, which contains a contested account about the life of a historical personality that was hotly debated by West African intellectuals of the nineteenth century. In debating the accuracy of the Tarikh al\-Fattash's interpretation of Songhai's history, Nuh al\-Tahir's fiercest critic was Dan Tafa, a scholar from the Sokoto Empire in what is now northern Nigeria. Dan Tafa, who is formally known as Abd al\-Qādir al\-Turūdī, was a prolific intellectual who ranks among Africa's polymaths. His literary production includes over seventy two extant books covering a broad range of subjects from . Unlike Nuh al\-Tahir who was an administrator, Dan Tafa didn't serve in the Sokoto government and he briefly alludes to this lack of a government office his 1855 philosophical apologia titled 'Covenants and Treaties'. While Dan Tafa wasn't an administrator, he was in all respects Nuh al\-Tahir's intellectual peer when it came to being an accomplished scholar. Dan Tafa was the most prominent member of Sokoto's intellectual community, he run an important school, and was the unofficial advisor of several provincial governors in Sokoto. Dan Tafa's reputation proceeded him, such that by the time the German explorer Heinrich Barth visited Sokoto in 1853, Dan Tafa was considered by his peers and by Barth as "the most learned of the present generations of the inhabitants of Sokoto… The man was Abde Kader dan Tafa, on whose stores of knowledge I drew eagerly". In short, Dan Tafa wasn't the type of person to easily give into Nuh al\-Tahir's craftily written claims. Dan Tafa had received a copy of the 'Risala' in 1842, after a series of diplomatic exchanges between Ahmad Lobbo and the rulers of the Sokoto Empire. The political history of Massina and Sokoto were closely intertwined. Early in his career, Ahmad Lobbo had accepted the nominal suzeranity of Sokoto's founder Uthman dan Fodio, but Ahmad Lobbo later decided to create the Massina state by his own effort. In Massina, Ahmad Lobbo's authority rested on a complex network of political and religious claims that didn't require any connection with the more respected founder of Sokoto. After Uthman's death in 1817, there was a brief sucession crisis in Sokoto that pitted Uthman’s brother Abdullahi dan Fodio against his son Muhammad Bello. Eventually, Muhammad Bello suceeded his father and forced his uncle, Abdullahi, to submit after a series of negotiations between the two. but didn’t intervene. So when Bello challenged Ahmad Lobbo's authority in a series of letters that demanded he resubmits to Sokoto, the latter argued that Bello’s sucession crisis had rendered Massina independent of Sokoto. After failed attempts to foment rebellions in Massina and a heated exchange of letters, Bello eventually reached a settlement with Ahmad Lobbo and withdrew his claims. Bello was suceeded by AbuBakr Atiku in 1838 after a brief interregnum during which AbuBakr Atiku's brother, named Muhammad al\-Bakhari, had initially been elected by Sokoto's state council before he was later deposed. This Muhammad al\-Bakhari also happened to be a friend of Ahmad Lobbo. Exploiting the brief unrest, Lobbo requested that the Sokoto elite recognize him as the leader of both Massina and Sokoto, sending two written requests to that end between the years 1838 and 1841\. Understandably, the Sokoto elite rejected Lobbo's overtures in writing, and it was on the second occasion in particular that Dan Tafa explicitly cuts into the heart of Lobbo's legitimacy by critiquing the Tarikh al\-Fattash and its author, Nuh al\-Tahir. Addressing Nuh al\-Tahir directly, Dan Tafa writes that "We read what you wrote in it concerning the issue of the twelve caliphs mentioned in the hadith and that you claim al\-Shaykh Ahmad Lobbo is the twelfth of them according to what is written in the Tarikh al\-Fattash". Dan Tafa then proceeds to provide a point\-by\-point refutation of Nuh al\-Tahir's in a treatise he titled ‘Abd al\-Qādir al\-Turūdī's response to Nuh al\-Tahir'. Using the works of many respected Islamic scholars, Dan Tafa flatly rejects the claim that Ahmad Lobbo was the last of the twelve prophesied caliphs. More importantly, Dan Tafa denies any connection between Askiya Muhammad and Ahmad Lobbo, writing that even if the title of Caliph was bestowed onto the Askiya, "Where did you get the idea that what applied to him could apply to someone else?". Dan Tafa's sharp critique of the Tarikh\-al Fattash shows that while Nuh al\-Tahir's chronicle was intended to equip Ahmad Lobbo with unassailable legitimacy as a Caliph based on the prophecy about Askiya Muhammad purportedly recorded by Mahmud Ka‘ti, it was roundly rejected in Sokoto. However, the chronicle was well received within Massina itself and in other parts of West Africa, and most of its claims were accepted. The Tarikh al\-Fattash was therefore as much a work of historical literature as it was a partisan text intended by its author to advance the political agenda of his royal patron. It’s thus very similar to its predecessors such as al\-Sa'di's Tarikh al\-Sudan whose political objective was to reconcile the Askiya and Arma elites. The Tarikh al\-Fattash shows that West African chronicles were not mere agglutinative repositories of information waiting to be mined by modern researchers for hard facts, but were instead products of complex intellectual traditions that were heavily influenced by their authors' social and political context. The chronicles contain carefully crafted discourses interweaving past realities with contemporary concerns, and were products of a dynamic scholary culture where concepts of power and legitimacy were imposed, engaged and contested. Approaching them from this perspective allows us to construct a more comprehensive picture of African history as presented in the chronicles, not just as a series of events, but as the author's interpretation of the events. --- --- Some years before his critique of Nuh al\-Tahir's interpretation of Songhai's history, Dan Tafa had in 1824 completed a work on the history titled (The Sweet Meadows of Contemplation). This text contains a general history of West Africa, but was especially focused on the Hausaland \-a region in nothern Nigeria dominated by Hausa speakers whose kingdoms were subsumed by Sokoto when the empire was founded in 1808\. Dan Tafa opens with the explanation for his writing the chronicle that: "I decided then to collect together here some of the historical narratives of these lands of the Sudan in general and the lands of the Hausa in particular". He then adds that "the science of historiography serves to sharpen one's intellect and awaken in some the resolution to conduct historical research". To compile his account on the kingdoms of the Hausa before Sokoto, Dan Tafa utilized pre\-existing accounts, both oral and written, which included semi\-legendary tales of immigrant kings who founded the Hausa states. According to Dan Tafa, the immigrant founders of the Hausa states were sons of an obscure figure named Bawu, about whom he says was a slave official appointed by the ruler of Bornu. The empire of Bornu was a large state in the Lake Chad basin along the eastern frontier of the Hausalands, and was also the suzerain of most of the Hausa kingdoms. After he provides a brief account of West African history including an account of the Songhai Empire, Dan Tafa then narrows down his focus to the founding of the Hausa states such as the kingdoms of Kano and Gobir. Writing that "All of the rulers of these lands (ie : the Hausalands) were originally the political captives of the ruler of Bornu" and that they used to pay tribute to Bornu "until the establishment of our present government". Curiously, Dan Tafa excludes the kingdom of Gobir from the Hausa dynasties which he claimed were founded by political captives from Bornu. He explains that Gobir's ruler refused to pay tribute to Bornu and remained independent of it, reportedly because his dynasty was of noble origin and had no ties to Bawu. Dan Tafa then narrows down his account to focus on the history of the Gobir kingdom; from its founding until it fell in war with the forces of Uthman dan Fodio in 1804\. The decisive defeat of Gobir was the central event in the founding of the Sokoto Empire and a precursor to the fall of the remaining Hausa states. Dan Tafa's interpretation of early Hausa history was evidently partisan, and the reason why had a lot to do with the contemporary political relationship between Bornu and Sokoto. --- Subscribe --- In the decades prior to Dan Tafa's writing of his chronicle, the old empire of Bornu had concluded several major battles with newly founded Sokoto, after the forces of Uthman dan Fodio attacked it in three failed invasions from 1808 to 1810\. To justify its war with Bornu, Sokoto had used the pretext that the former was supporting the deposed Hausa rulers and that its society was polytheistic. While the physical battle had been lost, the ideological battle continued between the rulers of Bornu and Sokoto. In 1812, Uthman's sucessor Muhammad Bello, who was also an accomplished scholar, completed a chronicle on West African history titled (Easy Expenditure on the History of the Lands of Takrur). This lengthy chronicle had a broad geographical scope that included the history of most of West Africa as well as the Hausalands. It was in this chronicle that Bello first advanced the theory that the legendary Hausa founder; Bawu, was a royal slave of Bornu rulers. An assertion that Dan Tafa would later copy. Over in Bornu, the empire's defacto ruler at the time was a highly accomplished scholar named Muhammad al\-Kanemi who had gathered a large following prior to his rise in Bornu's government. Al\-Kanemi's followers had saved Bornu from Sokoto's attacks in 1809 and 1810, and he later authored several works defending Bornu from the accusations levelled by both Uthman Dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello. Al\-Kanemi charged the Sokoto government with the same accusations it had leveled against Bornu, revealing the flaws in the legitimacy of Sokoto's invasion. Al\-Kanemi and Bello would then continue to exchange counter\-accusations, basing their arguments on the written histories of their states. This reinvigorated the ongoing intellectual renaissance in Sokoto, especially regarding the re\-discovery and translation of the written history of the region. Among the most notable intellectual products of the ideological war between Bornu and Sokoto was the abovementioned chronicle written by Bello. In his chronicle, Bello mentioned that he received his information on the Hausa kingdoms' origins from a non\-Hausa scholar named Muhammad al\-Baqiri, the latter of whom was ethnically Songhai —the dominant ethnic group in what is today eastern Mali and after whom the empire of Songhai was named. Muhammad al\-Baqiri would later become the ruler of the neighboring sultanate of Asben which lay along the nothern border of Sokoto, just north of where the Gobir kingdom had been located. who claimed that Bawu, the legendary Hausa founding figure, was a slave official of Bornu, and that the Gobir kingdom was ruled by a dynasty of noble origin. The figure of Bawu was likely a mischaracterized version of the legendary Hausa founder Bajayidda. However, Bajayidda was widely recalled in Hausa traditions to be of noble origin rather than a slave official in Bornu. The suspiciously Gobir\-centric elements in both Dan Tafa and Bello’s chronicles may have been current within Gobir itself, since the kingdom had been at war with the other Hausa states before it was defeated by Sokoto. However, the choice made by Muhammad Bello to use this specific interpretation in his chronicle was doubtlessly also informed by contemporary politics. By assuming the mantle of Gobir's noble dynasty after defeating them in battle, and "liberating" the rest of Hausa's supposedly slave dynasties from Bornu's oppression, the in the region. Dan Tafa's chronicle was therefore historicizing contemporary political dynamics inorder to legitimize the continued presence of the Sokoto government in Hausaland. Despite Dan Tafa’s sharp critique of Nuh al\-Tahir, even he agreed that the interpretation of historical events took precedence over a simple outline of historical ‘facts’. However, Hausa scholars in Sokoto rejected Dan Tafa’s version of their history that was centered on their subservience to Bornu. The Hausa chronicler Malam Bakar, who served as an official in the Sokoto province of Kano during the 1880s, composed a monumental work on state known as the 'Kano chronicle'. In this chronicle, Malam Bakar centered the origins of Kano's founders within Hausaland rather than Bornu, adding that they were all of noble origins and ruled their states independently of any external power. He highlighted the role of the autochtonous groups in Kano's early history, and attributed the Islamic institutions of the Hausa to migrant scholars from the Songhai Empire rather than from Bornu. He also clarified that Kano's tributary relationship with Bornu begun around 1450, which was many centuries after the city\-state had been established, adding that it ended around 1550, when Kano's defiant king refused to bow to Bornu's demands. --- --- In writing his chronicle, Malam Bakar relied on living at the time. These genealogists and praise singers occupied important offices in the Hausa kingdoms and were retained under the Sokoto government. They were tasked with carefully preserving the kingdom’s oral history, often in the form of poetry, which was later transcribed into writing during the Sokoto era. Malam Bakar's chronicle therefore records an account of Kano's history in an unbroken fashion from the Hausa era to the Sokoto era. It treats each ruler of Kano as equally legitimate, even if Kano under Sokoto was only a province governed by an appointed official rather than an independent state ruled by a King as it had been about a half a century prior to the chronicle’s composition. As an active official in the Kano administration, Malam Bakar's reasons for compiling the chronicle were likely , since its governor was at the time seeking further autonomy from Sokoto. Bakar's interpretation of early Hausa history therefore strives to represent both the Hausa and Sokoto accounts of Kano's history in equal measure inorder to reconcile the two eras, just like the seventeenth century scholar al\-Sa'di had done in reconciling the Askiya dynasty and the Arma. This choice was also likely informed by the fact that unlike Dan Tafa and Nuh al\-Tahir who represented the new elite, Malam Bakar was part of the established elite, and was thus more supportive of the deposed rulers than the “revolutionaries”. In Malam Bakar's chronicle, the kingdom of Kano during the pre\-Sokoto era is depicted as a defiant upstart . Although briefly tributary to Bornu, the chronicle mentions that a king of Kano named Kisoki who reigned from 1509 to 1565, defiantly refused to pay tribute to Bornu. When Bornu's ruler asked him "What do you mean by making war" Kisoki replied: "I do not know, but the cause of war is the ordinance of Allah." Bornu's army then attacked Kano but failed to take it, thus assenting to Kano's independence. This victory over Bornu allowed Kisoki to take on the boastful title "physic of Bornu", and no further king of Kano is mentioned giving tribute to Bornu after Kisoki. While the above account was carefully preserved in oral traditions at Kano, it was only recorded in the nineteenth century and says little about Bornu's perspective of the same events. Over in Bornu, the empire had nurtured a . One of these was the court historian Aḥmad ibn Furṭu who in 1576 wrote a chronicle titled ‘Ghazawāt Barnū’ (The Bornu conquests), nearly a century before the Songhai chroniclers got to work on theirs. Ibn Furtu's chronicle was one of two monumental works which documented the military campaigns of his patron; the Bornu emperor Mai Idris Alooma who reigned from 1564 to 1596\. Idris Alooma, formally known as Idris ibn Ali, was one of Africa’s most accomplished empire builders. His armies campaigned extensively over a vast region extending from the Fezzan region of southern Libya, to the Kawar region of northern Niger to the Kanem region of eastern Chad, to the Mandara region of nothern Cameroon, and to the Hausalands in nothern Nigeria, where they went as far as Kano. Ibn Furtu personally accompanied his patron on several of these campaigns, providing a first\-hand account of the relationship between Kano and Bornu from the perspective of the latter. Idris Alooma was undertaking a restoration of Bornu's power over the territories it had lost during a lengthy dynastic conflict, but had been regaining since the reign of his grandfather Mai Ali who reigned from 1497 to 1519\. Idris Alooma was by all accounts a shrewd figure, he began his career by blocking the southern advance of the Ottomans in the Fezzan, sending his embassies to the Ottoman capital Istanbul and courting regional powers. Alooma also acquired thousands of , and initiated diplomatic contacts with the Saadis of Morocco to form an alliance of convenience against the Ottomans, a few decades before the Saadis would march their forces south against Songhai. Inorder to document Idris Alooma's conquests, Ibn Furtu borrowed themes from the chronicle of Mai Ali's court historian Masfarma Umar titled ‘The conquests of Njimi'. Ibn Furtu explains the reason for writing his chronicle; that “the cause of our engaging in this work at this time, is the perusal of the compilation of Masfarma Umar concerning the epoch of his Sultan”. Adding that “When we studied that work concerning the war in Njimi describing its battles and phases, we determined to compose a similar work on the age of our Sultan” and that he “employed the materials from the past, working on and imitating models of the past”. Importantly, Ibn Furtu mentions that “We have ceased to doubt that our Sultan al Haj Idris ibn Ali accomplished much more than his grandfather”. and conquests, and portrayed him as the rightful heir to Mai Ali's legacy in the eyes of Bornu's divided elite. He portrayed Bornu as the cultural and political center of West Africa where all regions, including Kano, were at the periphery. Ibn Furtu's chronicle says little about Kano's subservience to Bornu but instead describes the former as one of only two neighboring states whose political structure was similar to Bornu's. He describes Kano as a kingdom within which were many walled towns, adding that the forces of Kano utilized these fortified towns to attack Bornu, but would then quickly retreat behind the safety of their walls. He then proceeds to recount the various campaigns that Idris Alooma's armies undertook against Kano and its surrounding walled towns in retaliation for Kano's attacks on Bornu. He concludes the account of Bornu's victorious campaigns over Kano, that "the people of Kano became downcast in the present and fearful of the future". Ibn Furtu then moves on to the next campaign without elaborating on the political ramifications of Bornu's victories over Kano besides mentioning that its walled towns were reduced to "clouds of dust" save for the fortification of ‘Dalla’ (in Kano itself) which remained standing. In Ibn Furtu's chronicle, Kano wasn't included among the vassals of Bornu unlike the other enemies that had been defeated by Alooma's armies, but was instead recognized as an independent state occupying a clearly defined territory. Alooma's campaign against Kano wasn't perceived as a restoration of Bornu's power over Kano but as a response to Kano's aggression. Once Bornu's army had suceeded in destroying the walled towns of Kano, its army marched on victoriously to fight against other foes, many of whom eventually submitted to Bornu, unlike Kano. Despite Furtu having lived closer to the purported date of Kano's founding than both Dan Tafa and Malam Bakar, the Bornu chronicler felt not need to expound on Kano's early history. And while Furtu may have been aware of Kano's earlier tributary relationship that had only ended a few decades prior to the writing of his chronicle, he chose not to include it. Adding the chronicles of Bornu to the corpus of documents on Africa's past reveals yet another aspect in African works of history; some of them say more about the times they were produced than about earlier dynamics. Unlike most of the abovementioned chronicles which were more concerned with the past than with the present inorder to reconcile the former with the latter, Ibn Furtu's chronicle is evidently concerned with contemporary events. Ibn Furtu was pre\-occupied with elevating the stature of his patron, the "Caliph" , while reducing the latter to a mere 'King'. He was thus less concerned with expounding on the history of Kano, which he considered a periphery state "at the borders of Islam", than he was with Bornu which he considered to be the center of the world, and its ruler, to be the only "commander of the faithful". Ibn Furtu’s account therefore only includes the victorious actions of Idris Alooma against Kano, and downplays the realities of Kano's autonomy which would have undermined his authorial intentions. And like all chronicles explored above, his document was evidently a partisan account with a clear political objective. The four west African chroniclers; Nuh al\-Tahir, Dan Tafa, Malam Bakar and Ibn Furtu, offer us important insights into how Africans wrote their own history. Their chronicles are revealed to be more than just an archival collection of past events recorded by literate witnesses. requires the usual care which scholars are expected to exercise to ensure that the chronicler's political biases and perspectives are considered before the documents can be accurately utilized. Scholars looking for ‘hard facts’ about early West African history in these chronicles have attimes failed to recognize the authorial biases that had modified narratives and interpretations of the past. The writing of history is after all, closely associated with the need to legitimize political power, and the imperative need for each community to weave links towards its past. West African chroniclers were engaged in creative and artful reconstructions of their past. Their works of history were sophisticated products of African intellectuals with precise rhetorical plans and authorial intentions. Approaching them as such allows up to appreciate the complex intellectual pasts and historical engagements of members of the African intelligentsia who have shaped current historiographical overviews of the African past. --- Africans have been travelling and exploring the world beyond their continent since antiquity; from the more proximate regions of western Asia and Southern Europe, to the far\-off lands of India and China. Beginning in the 17th century, African travelers crossed the Alps to discover the lands of western Europe. Read more about this fascinating age of African exploration on my Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe22 4)

a brief note on the African exploration of the Old world in a brief note on the African exploration of the Old world plus: the African discovery of north\-western Europe. 3)Africans have been travelling and exploring the world beyond their continent since antiquity. Documentation of the African presence outside the continent begun as soon as the kingdom of Kush expanded into western Asia in the 7th century BC, and would continue into the early centuries of the common era when Kushite envoys were a regular presence in eastern Rome. In the suceeding period, African travelers from across many parts of the continent reached the , explored the , and . The rulers of Aksum and Ethiopia sent their embassies and merchants across the western Indian ocean, the city\-states of the Swahili coast established contacts with India and China, and West African royals and scholars created disporic communities in Arabia and Jerusalem. While the African presence in Asia is better documented, African journeys into Europe also occurred fairly regulary since the early 1st millennium. African royals, students and pilgrims from the kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia explored the capitals and pilgrimage sites of Eastern and Southern Europe. , and a few joined their North\-African peers to create . After the fall of the Byzantines, African embassies and scholars from as far as Mali to Bornu and Chad begun making an appearance at the Ottoman capital Istanbul. By the early modern era, the presence of African travelers in southern Europe was far from a novelty. Gradually, the journeys of African travelers took them beyond the more familiar regions of southern Europe and into the lesser known societies of north\-western Europe. Travelling across the Alps and the northern Atlantic, Africans of varying statuses, including envoys, scholars and students, arrived in the capitals of north\-western European kingdoms of Britain, France, the Holy Roman Empire and the low countries. The history of African exploration and discovery of North\-western Europe is the subject of my latest Patreon article; Read about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe29 3)

A complete history of Abomey: capital of Dahomey (ca. 1650\-1894\) in A complete history of Abomey: capital of Dahomey (ca. 1650\-1894\) Journal of African cities chapter 10\. 2)Abomey was one of the largest cities in the "forest region" of west\-Africa; a broad belt of kingdoms extending from Ivory coast to southern Nigeria. Like many of the urban settlements in the region whose settlement was associated with royal power, the city of Abomey served as the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey. Home to an estimated 30,000 inhabitants at its height in the mid\-19th century, the walled city of Abomey was the political and religious center of the kingdom. Inside its walls was a vast royal palace complex, dozens of temples and residential quarters occupied by specialist craftsmen who made the kingdom's iconic artworks. This article outlines the history of Abomey from its founding in the 17th century to the fall of Dahomey in 1894\. Map of modern benin showing Abomey and other cities in the kingdom of Dahomey. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- The early history of Abomey: from the ancient town of Sodohome to the founding of Dahomey’s capital. The plateau region of southern Benin was home to a number of small\-scale complex societies prior to the founding of Dahomey and its capital. Like in other parts of west\-Africa, urbanism in this region was part of the diverse settlement patterns which predated the emergence of centralized states. The Abomey plateau was home to several nucleated iron\-age settlements since the 1st millennium BC, many of which flourished during the early 2nd millennium. The largest of these early urban settlements was Sodohome, an ancient iron age dated to the 6th century BC which at its peak in the 11th century, housed an estimated 5,700 inhabitants. Sodohome was part of a regional cluster of towns in southern Benin that were centers of iron production and trade, making an estimated 20 tonnes of iron each year in the 15th/16th century. The early settlement at Abomey was likely established at the very founding of Dahomey and the construction of the first Kings' residences. Traditions recorded in the 18th century attribute the city's creation to the Dahomey founder chief Dakodonu (d. 1645\) who reportedly captured the area that became the city of Abomey after defeating a local chieftain named Dan using a Kpatin tree. Other accounts attribute Abomey's founding to Houegbadja the "first" king of Dahomey (r. 1645\-1685\) who suceeded Dakodonu. Houegbadja's palace at Abomey, which is called Kpatissa, (under the kpatin tree), is the oldest surviving royal residence in the complex and was built following preexisting architectural styles. (read more about ) The pre\-existing royal residences of the rulers who preceeded Dahomey’s kings likely included a hounwa (entrance hall) and an ajalala (reception hall), flanked by an adoxo (tomb) of the deceased ruler. The palace of Dan (called Dan\-Home) which his sucessor, King Houegbadja (or his son) took over, likely followed this basic architectural plan. Houegbadja was suceeded by Akaba (r. 1685\-1708\) who constructed his palace slightly outside what would later become the palace complex. In addition to the primary features, it included two large courtyards; the kpododji (initial courtyard), an ajalalahennu (inner/second courtyard), a djeho (soul\-house) and a large two\-story building built by Akaba's sucessor; Agaja. Agaja greatly expanded the kingdom's borders beyond the vicinity of the capital. After nearly a century of expansion and consolidation by his predecessors across the Abomey Plateau, Agaja's armies marched south and captured the kingdoms of Allada in 1724 and Hueda in 1727\. In this complex series of interstate battles, Abomey was sacked by Oyo's armies in 1726, and Agaja begun a reconstruction program to restore the old palaces, formalize the city's layout (palaces, roads, public spaces, markets, quarters) and build a defensive system of walls and moats. The capital of Dahomey thus acquired its name of Agbomey (Abomey \= inside the moat) during Agaja's reign. --- --- The royal capital of Abomey during the early 18th century The administration of Dahomey occurred within and around a series of royal palace sites that materialized the various domestic, ritual, political, and economic activities of the royal elite at Abomey. The Abomey palace complex alone comprised about a dozen royal residences as well as many auxiliary buildings. Such palace complexes were also built in other the regional capitals across the kingdom, with as many as 18 palaces across 12 towns being built between the 17th and 19th century of which Abomey was the largest. By the late 19th century, Abomey's palace complex covered over a hundred acres, surrounded by a massive city wall about 30ft tall extending over 2\.5 miles. These structures served as residences for the king and his dependents, who numbered 2\-8,000 at Abomey alone. Their interior courtyards served as stages on which powerful courtiers vied to tip the balance of royal favor in their direction. Agaja's two story palace near the palace of Akba, and his own two\-story palace within the royal complex next to Houegbadja's, exemplified the centrality of Abomey and its palaces in royal continuity and legitimation. Sections of the palaces were decorated with paintings and bas\-reliefs, which were transformed by each suceeding king into an elaborate system of royal "communication" along with other visual arts. Abomey grew outwardly from the palace complex into the outlying areas, and was organized into quarters delimited by the square city\-wall. Some of the quarters grew around the private palaces of the kings, which were the residences of each crown\-prince before they took the throne. Added to these were the quarters occupied by the guilds/familes such as; blacksmiths (Houtondji), artists (Yemadji), weavers, masons, soldiers, merchants, etc. These palace quarters include Agaja's at Zassa, Tegbesu’s at Adandokpodji, Kpengla’s at Hodja, Agonglo’s at Gbècon Hwégbo, Gezo’s at Gbècon Hunli, Glele's at Djègbè and Behanzin's at Djime. --- Abomey in the late 18th century: Religion, industry and art. Between the end of Agaja's reign and the beginning of Tegbesu's, Dahomey became a tributary of the Oyo empire (in south\-western Nigeria), paying annual tribute at the city of Cana. In the seven decades of Oyo's suzeranity over Dahomey, Abomey gradually lost its function as the main administrative capital, but retained its importance as a major urban center in the kingdom. The kings of this period; Tegbesu (r. 1740\-1774\), Kpengla (r. 1774\-1789\) and Agonglo (r. 1789\-1797\) resided in Agadja’s palace in Abomey, while constructing individual palaces at Cana. But each added their own entrance and reception halls, as well as their own honga (third courtyard). Abomey continued to flourish as a major center of religion, arts and crafts production. The city's population grew by a combination of natural increase from established families, as well as the resettlement of dependents and skilled artisans that served the royal court. Significant among these non\-royal inhabitants of Dahomey were the communities of priests/diviners, smiths, and artists whose work depended on royal patronage. The religion of Dahomey centered on the worship of thousands of vodun (deities) who inhabited the Kutome (land of the dead) which mirrored and influenced the world of the living. Some of these deities were localized (including deified ancestors belonging to the lineages), some were national (including deified royal ancestors) and others were transnational; (shared/foreign deities like creator vodun, Mawu and Lisa, the iron and war god Gu, the trickster god Legba, the python god Dangbe, the earth and health deity Sakpata, etc). Each congregation of vodun was directed by a pair of priests, the most influencial of whom were found in Abomey and Cana. These included practitioners of the cult of tohosu that was introduced in Tegbesu's reign. Closely associated with the royal family and active participants in court politics, Tohosu priests built temples in Abomey alongside prexisting temples like those of Mawu and Lisa, as well as the shrines dedicated to divination systems such as the Fa (Ifa of Yoruba country). The various temples of Abomey, with their elaborated decorated facades and elegantly clad tohosu priests were thus a visible feature of the city's architecture and its function as a religious center. --- Subscribe --- Besides the communities of priests were the groups of craftsmen such as the Hountondji families of smiths. These were originally settled at Cana in the 18th century and expanded into Abomey in the early 19th century, setting in the city quarter named after them. They were expert silversmiths, goldsmiths and blacksmiths who supplied the royal court with the abundance of ornaments and jewelery described in external accounts about Abomey. Such was their demand that their family head, Kpahissou was given a prestigious royal title due to his followers' ability to make any item both local and foreign including; guns, swords and a wheeled carriage described as a "square with four glass windows on wheels". The settlement of specialist groups such as the Hountondji was a feature of Abomey's urban layout. Such craftsmen and artists were commisioned to create the various objects of royal regalia including the iconic thrones, carved doors, zoomorphic statues, 'Asen' sculptures, musical instruments and figures of deities. Occupying a similar hierachy as the smiths were the weavers and embroiderers who made Dahomey's iconic textiles. Cloth making in Abomey was part of the broader textile producing region and is likely to have predated the kingdom's founding. But applique textiles of which Abomey is famous was a uniquely Dahomean invention dated to around the early 18th century reign of Agadja, who is said to have borrowed the idea from vodun practitioners. Specialist families of embroiders, primarily the Yemaje, the Hantan and the Zinflu, entered the service of various kings, notably Gezo and Glele, and resided in the Azali quarter, while most cloth weavers reside in the gbekon houegbo. The picto\-ideograms depicted on the applique cloths that portray figures of animals, objects and humans, are cut of plain weave cotton and sewn to a cotton fabric background. They depict particular kings, their "strong names" (royal name), their great achievements, and notable historical events. The appliques were primary used as wall hangings decorating the interior of elite buildings but also featured on other cloth items and hammocks. Applique motifs were part of a shared media of Dahomey's visual arts that are featured on wall paintings, makpo (scepters), carved gourds and the palace bas\-reliefs. Red and crimson were the preferred colour of self\-representation by Dahomey's elite (and thus its subjects), while enemies were depicted as white, pink, or dark\-blue (all often with scarifications associated with Dahomey’s foe: the Yoruba of Oyo). The bas\-reliefs of Dahomey are ornamental low\-relief sculptures on sections of the palaces with figurative scenes that recounted legends, commemorated historic battles and enhanced the power of the rulers. Many were narrative representations of specific historical events, motifs of "strong\-names" representing the character of individual kings, and as mnemonic devices that allude to different traditions. The royal bas\-relief tradition in its complete form likely dates to the 18th century during the reign of Agonglo and would have been derived from similar representations on temples, although most of the oldest surviving reliefs were made by the 19th century kings Gezo and Glele. Like the extensions of old palaces, and building of tombs and new soul\-houses, many of the older reliefs were modified and/or added during the reigns of successive kings. Most were added to the two entry halls and protected from the elements by the high\-pitched low hanging thatch roof which characterized Abomey's architecture. --- Abomey in the 19th century from Gezo to Behanzin. Royal construction activity at Abomey was revived by Adandozan, who constructed his palace south of Agonglo's extension of Agaja's palace. However, this palace was taken over by his sucessor; King Gezo, who, in his erasure of Adandozan's from the king list, removed all physical traces of his reign. The reigns of the 19th century kings Gezo (r. 1818\-1858\) and Glele (r.1858\-1889\) are remembered as a golden age of Dahomey. Gezo was also a prolific builder, constructing multiple palaces and temples across Dahomey. However, he chose to retain Adandozan's palace at Abomey as his primary residence, but enlarged it by adding a two\-story entrance hall and soul\-houses for each of his predecessors. Gezo used his crowned prince’s palace and the area surrounding it to make architectural assertions of power and ingenuity. In 1828 he constructed the Hounjlo market which became the main market center for Abomey, positioned adjacent and to the west of his crowned prince’s palace and directly south of the royal palace. Around this market he built two multi\-storied buildings, which occasionally served as receptions for foreign visitors. Gezo’s sucessor, King Glele (r. 1858\-1889\) constructed a large palace just south of Gezo's palace; the Ouehondji (palace of glass windows). This was inturn flanked by several buildings he added later, such as the adejeho (house of courage) \-a where weapons were stored, a hall for the ahosi (amazons), and a separate reception room where foreigners were received. His sucessor, Behanzin (r. 1889\-1894\) resided in Glele's palace as his short 3\-year reign at Abomey couldn’t permit him to build one of his own before the French marched on the city in 1893/4\. As the French army marched on the capital city of Abomey, Behanzin, realizing that continued military resistance was futile, escaped to set up his capital north. Before he left, he ordered the razing of the palace complex, which was preferred to having the sacred tombs and soul\-houses falling into enemy hands. Save for the roof thatching, most of the palace buildings remained relatively undamaged. Behanzin's brother Agoli\-Agbo (1894\-1900\) assumed the throne and was later recognized by the French who hoped to retain popular support through indirect rule. Subsquently, Agoli\-Agbo partially restored some of the palaces for their symbolic and political significance to him and the new colonial occupiers, who raised a French flag over them, making the end of Abomey autonomy. --- East of the kingdom of Dahomey was the Yoruba country of Oyo and Ife, two kingdoms that were home to a vibrant intellectual culture where cultural innovations were recorded and transmitted orally; read more about it here in my latest Patreon article; --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribemap by J.C.Monroe The Precolonial State in West Africa: Building Power in Dahomey by J. Cameron Monroe pg 36\-41\) Razing the roof : the imperative of building destruction in dahomè by S. P. Blier pg 165\-174, The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth Larsen pg 11, 21\-24, Wives of leopard by Edna Bay pg 50\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 28\-30\) Razing the roof : the imperative of building destruction in dahomè by S. P. Blier pg 174\-175\) Wives of leopard by Edna Bay pg 9, The Precolonial State in West Africa by J. Cameron Monroe pg 24\-25\) The Precolonial State in West Africa by J. Cameron Monroe pg 21, The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 37,43\-44\) Razing the roof : the imperative of building destruction in dahomè by S. P. Blier pg 173\-175\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 164\-172\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 47\-53\) Wives of leopard by Edna Bay pg 21\-24, 62\) Wives of leopard by Edna Bay pg 91\-96\) Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun By Edna G. Bay pg 55\- 66 Museums \& History in West Africa By West African Museums Programme, pg 78\-81\) The art of dahomey Melville J. Herskovits pg 70\-74 African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power by S. P. Blier pg 323\-326\) Palace Sculptures of Abomey by Francesca Piqué pg 49\-75, Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun By Edna G. Bay pg 96\-98, ) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 12\-14, 28, 37, 56\-61, 69\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 61\-62, 66\-69\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 173\) The Royal Palace of Dahomey: symbol of a transforming nation by Lynne Ann Ellsworth pg 72\-74, 82\) "Le Musée Histoire d'Abomey" by S. P. Blier pg 143\-144\) 14 2)

\\a Brief note on Africa's intellectual history in \\a Brief note on Africa's intellectual history plus; the Yoruba intellectual culture ca. 1000\-1900\. )Writing has been a fundamental part of African history since antiquity. The continent is home to some of the world's ; from the ancient scripts of Egypt, Kush and Aksum, to the medieval literature of Nubia, Ethiopia, 'Sudanic’ Africa and the east\-African coast. Scholars in many African societies created vibrant intellectual cultures, producing a vast corpus of literary works including historical chronicles, scientific compositions, theological writings, philosophical treatises and poetry. The intellectual exchanges they fostered resulted in the creation of a closely\-knit web of scholary capitals which housed many of the continents most renowned education centers. It was in these centers of education like , Jenne, Sokoto, Sennar, and Zanzibar, that many of the continent's political and cultural innovations were developed. As scholars exchanged ideas on concepts of theology, politics and social organization, they spawned that were distinctly African in origin. The significance of these African intellectual cultures has only recently begun to receive attention in modern scholarship, which has dispelled the misconception of the "Oral continent par excellence". And just as the scope of pre\-colonial Africa's literary output is now increasingly appreciated, so too has the focus on African societies whose intellectual culture was predominantly oral. While it had long been acknowledged by anthropologists and linguists that the utility of African oral traditions went beyond their use in historiography, its only recently that research has shed more light onto the complexity of African orality. The oral traditions of African societies are the products of the rich intellectual culture created by diverse communities of 'oral scholars' whose importance cut across all facets of African society. From the royal genealogists who 'recorded' their kingdom's history, to the priests who encoded vast amounts of 'oral literature' about African theologies, to the poets who preserved and transmitted the society's philosophy, the intellectual cultures of oral societies is a fascinating but still poorly understood chapter of African history. The intellectual history of oral societies is the subject of my latest Patreon article, using the case study of the Yoruba in south\-western Nigeria. read more about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe25 )

Historical links between the Ottoman empire and Sudanic Africa (1574\-1880\) in Historical links between the Ottoman empire and Sudanic Africa (1574\-1880\) travel and exchanges between Istanbul and the states of; Bornu, Funj, Darfur and Massina. 4)In 1574, an embassy from the empire of Bornu arrived at the Ottoman capital of Istanbul after having travelled more than 4,000 km from Ngazargamu in north\-eastern Nigeria. This exceptional visit by an African kingdom to the Ottoman capital was the first of several diplomatic and intellectual exchanges between Istanbul and the kingdoms of Sudanic Africa \-a broad belt of states extending from modern Senegal to Sudan. In the three centuries after the Bornu visit of Istanbul; travelers and scholars from the Sudanic kingdoms and the Ottoman capital criss\-crossed the meditteranean in a pattern of political and intellectual exchanges that lasted well into the colonial era. This article explores the historic links between the Ottoman empire and Sudanic Africa, focusing on the travel of diplomats and scholars between Istanbul and the kingdoms of Bornu, Funj, Darfur and Massina. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- Diplomatic links between the Bornu empire and the Ottomans: envoys from Mai Idris Alooma in 16th century Istanbul The Ottoman empire was founded at the turn of the 13th century, growing into a large Mediterranean power by the early 16th century following a series of sucessful campaigns into eastern Europe, western Asia and North\-Africa. Like other large empires which had come before it, Ottoman campaigns into Sudanic Africa were largely unsuccessful. The earliest of these campaigns were undertaken against the Funj kingdom in modern Sudan, more consequential however, were the proxy wars between the Ottomans and the Bornu empire in the region of southern Libya. The empire of Bornu was founded during the late 11th century in the lake chad basin. The rulers of Bornu maintained an active presence in southern Libya since the 12th century, and regulary sent diplomats to Tripoli and Egypt from the 14th century onwards. Bornu's rulers, scholars and pilgrims frequently travelled through the regions of Tripoli, Egypt, the Hejaz (Mecca \& Medina) and Jerusalem. These places would later be taken over by the Ottomans in the early 16th century, and Bornu would have been aware of these new authorities. In 1534, the Bornu ruler sent an embassy to the Ottoman outpost of Tajura near Tripoli, the latter of which was at the time under the Knights of Malta before it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1551\. In the same year of the Ottoman conquest of Tripoli, the Bornu ruler sent an embassy to the new occupants, with another in 1560 which established cordial relations between Tripoli and Bornu. But by the early 1570s, relations between Bornu and Ottoman\-Tripoli broke down when several campaigns from Tripoli were directed into the Fezzan region of southern Libya which was controlled by Bornu’s dependents. In the year 1574, the Bornu ruler Mai Idris Alooma sent a diplomatic delegation of five to Istanbul in response to the Ottoman advance into Bornu's territories in southern Libya. This embassy was headed by a Bornu scholar named El\-Hajj Yusuf, and it remained in Istanbul for four years before returning to Bornu around 1577\. In response to this embassy, the Ottoman sultan sent an embassy to the Bornu capital Ngazargamu (in North\-eastern Nigeria) which arrived in 1578\. More than 10 archival documents survive of this embassy, the bulk of which are official letters by the Ottoman sultan Murad III adressed to the Bornu ruler and the Ottoman governor of Tripoli. The Ottomans agreed to most of the requests of the Bornu ruler except handing over the Fezzan region, something that Idris Alooma would solve on his own when the Ottoman garrison in the Fezzan was killed around 1585. Yet despite this brief period of conflict, relations between the Ottomans and Bornu flourished, with being sent to Bornu to bolster its military. The exchange of embassies between the Ottomans and the Bornu rulers is mentioned in the 1578 Bornu chronicle titled kitāb ġazawāt Kānim (Book of the Conquests of Kanem), whose author Aḥmad ibn Furṭū wrote that; "Did you ever see a king equal to our sultan or close to it, when the lord of Dabulah \[Istanbul] sent his emissaries from his country with sweet words, sincere and requested affection and for a desired union? Alas, in truth, all sultans are inferior to the Bornu sultan." Ibn Furtu gives the Ottoman sultan a diminutive title of malik (King); compared to the title 'Sultan' which was used for Bornu's neighbors: Kanem and Mandara, while the Bornu ruler was given the prestigious title 'Caliph'. This reflected the political tensions between the Ottomans and Bornu, as much as it served to legitimate the authority of the Bornu rulers relative to their regional peers. Contacts between Bornu and the Ottomans were thereafter confined to Tripoli, Egypt and the Hejaz, without direct visits between Istanbul and Ngazargamu. An exceptional decree issued by the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul during the early 17th century was copied in Bornu at an uncertain date, but aside from this, the intellectual cultures of Bornu contain no scholars from Istanbul, nor did Bornu's scholars visit the Ottoman capital, opting to confine their activities to scholary communities in Tripoli and Egypt. --- The Ottoman\-Funj war and an Ottoman visitor in 17th century Sennar. The Funj kingdom was founded around 1504 shortly before the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517\. Expanding northwards from its capital Sennar, the Funj would encounter the Ottomans at the red\-sea port of Suakin as well as the town of Qasr Ibrim in lower Nubia. A report by a Ottoman naval officer in 1525, which contains a dismissive description of the Funj and Ethiopian states as well as recommendations to conquer them with an army of just 1,000 soldiers, indicates that the Ottomans drastically underestimated their opponent. The ottoman general Özdemir Pasha had suceeded in creating the small red\-sea province of Habesh in 1554 (which was essentially just a group of islands and towns between Suakin and Massawa), but his campaign into Funj territory from Suakin was met with resistance from his own troops. In 1560s the Ottomans occupied the fort of Qasr Ibrim and by 1577, had moved their armies south intending to conquer the Funj kingdom. According to an account written around 1589, the Ottoman army advanced against the city of old Dongola on the Nile with many boats, and the Funj army met them nearby at Hannik where a battle ensued that ended with an Ottoman defeat and withdraw (with just one boat surviving). The Ottoman\-Funj border was from then on established at Sai island, although it would be gradually moved north to Ibrim. In the suceeding century following the Ottoman defeat, relations between the Funj kingdom and their northern neighbor were normalized as trade and travel increased between the two regions. In 1672/3, the Funj kingdom was visited by the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi on his journey through north\-east Africa. Starting at Ibrim in late 1672, Evliya set off with a party of 20 within a merchant carravan of about 800 traders mostly from Funjistan (ie: Funj), carrying letters from the Ottoman governor of Egypt addressed to the Funj ruler to ensure Evliya's safety. Evliya arrived in the region of 'Berberistan'; the northern tributary province of Berber in the Funj kingdom, which begun at Sai Island. He passed through several fortified towns before arriving at the provincial capital of Dongola. The province was ruled by a certain king 'Huseyin Beg' who recognized the Funj ruler at Sennar as his suzerain. Evliya stayed in Berber for several weeks before proceeding to old Dongola (the former capital of Makuria) where the Funj territories formally begun. From old Dongola, Evliya passes through several castellated towns before he reaches the city of Arbaji within the core Funj territories. He stopped over for a few days where he had a rather uncomfortable meeting with the local ruler before proceeding to the Funj capital sennar where he stayed for over a month. Sennar was described as a large city with several quarters surrounded by a 3\-km long wall, pierced by three large gates and defended by 50 cannons. The Funj king (Badi II r. 1644\-1681\) controlled a vast territory, reportedly with as many as 645 cities and 1,500 fortresses. King Badi received the official letters from the Egyptian governor that Evliya had brought with him, and wrote his own letters addressed to the sender. The Funj king accompanied Evliya on a tour of the kingdom's southern territories, afterwhich they both returned to Sennar where the King gave Evliya provisions for his return journey. But upon reaching Arbaji where he encountered Jabarti merchants (Ethiopian Muslims), Evliya decided to head east through the northern frontier of the Ethiopian state to the red sea coast. The last leg of Evliya's trip took him through northern Dembiya (ie: Gondarine\-Ethiopia), proceeding to the red sea coastal city of suakin before turning south to the coastal cities of the horn including Massawa and Zeila, and later retracing his route back to Egypt. Evliya arrived in Cairo in April 1673 accompanied by three Funj envoys, presenting the gifts from the Funj king and his letters to the governor of Egypt. --- --- Diplomatic and Intellectual links between the kingdoms of Funj and Darfur, and the Ottomans: traveling scholars and envoys from the eastern Sudan in Istanbul While most diplomatic and intellectual exchanges between the Ottomans and the Funj were confined to Egypt, some Funj scholars travelled across the Ottoman domains as far as the empire's capital at Istanbul. The earliest documented Funj scholar to reach Istanbul was Ahmad Idrìs al\-Sinnàrì (b. 1746\). He travelled from Funj to Yemen for further studies, moving through the Hejaz and from there to Egypt. He later travelled to Istanbul and to Aleppo where he would live out the rest of his life. Another traveler from the Funj region was Ali al\-Qus (b. 1788\), he studied at al\-Azhar, before setting out on his extensive travels, during which he visited Syria, Crete, the Hijaz Yemen and Istanbul, before returning to settle at Dongola shortly after the fall of the Funj kingdom. While the Funj kingdom didn't send envoys directly to Istanbul, its western neighbor, the kingdom of Darfur, sent an embassy directly to the Ottoman sultan after conflicts with the governor of Ottoman\-Egypt. On April 7th, 1792, the Darfur king Abd al\-Rahman (r. 1787–1801\). sent an envoy to Istanbul with gifts for Selim III and letters describing the former's campaigns in the frontiers. The Darfur envoy informed the Ottoman sultan that the latter's officials in Egypt were doing injustice to merchants of Darfur and demanded that the sultan sends an imperial edict against their actions. The sultan likely agreed to the requests of the Darfur king, who was also given the honorific title al\-Rashid (the just), a title that would frequently appear on the royal seals of Darfur. Intellectual and diplomatic exchanges between the Ottomans and the eastern Sudanic kingdoms continued throughout the 19th century, even after the brief French conquest of Egypt (the Darfur king also sent an embassy to Napoleon in 1800\), and the Egyptian conquest of Sennar in the 1821\. --- Ottoman links with the western\-Sudanic kingdoms: A traveling scholar from Massina in Istanbul Unlike the central and eastern Sudan which bordered Ottoman provinces, the western Sudanic states had little diplomatic contact with the Ottomans outside Egypt and the Hejaz, nor was the empire recognized as a major Muslim power before the 18th century. When a in 1480s, the Mali ruler mentioned that he hadn't received a Christian envoy before, and the only major powers he recognized were the King of Yemen, the king of Baghdad, the King of Cairo and the King of Mali. Similary, the Ottomans don't appear in the 17th century Timbuktu chronicles despite the empire having seized control of Egypt and the Hejaz more than a century before and many west\-African scholars having travelled through Ottoman domains. While the Ottomans didn't frequently appear in early west\-African writings, they are increasingly mentioned in the 18th and 19th century centuries. The 19th century chronicle Ta'rikh al\-fattash, which is mostly based on the 17th century Timbuktu chronicles, mentions that: "We have heard the common people of our time say that there are four sultans in the world, not counting the supreme sultan, and they are the Sultan of Baghdad, the Sultan of Egypt, the Sultan of Bornu, and the Sultan of Mali." The chronicler added a gloss which reads 'this is the sultan of Istanbul' in place of the 'supreme sultan'. The chronicler of the Ta'rikh al\-fattash was writing from the , and its from here that atleast one western Sudanic scholar is known to have travelled to Istanbul in the mid 19th century. The scholar Muhammad Salma al\-Zurruq (b. 1845\) was born in the city of Djenne (Mali) into a chiefly family. He set off for pilgrimage early in his youth afterwhich he visited Istanbul, where he stayed for some time and met Muhammad Zhafir al\-Madani, son of the founder of the Madaniyya order, Zhafir al\-Madani, who acted as an agent of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876\-1909\), with the Sufi orders in Ottoman north\-Africa. Muhammad Salma was able to establish an excellent rapport with the sultan who supplied him with documents guaranteeing his safe travel through Ottoman territories. Muhammad Salma travelled extensively in Ottoman territories and finally arrived in the Moroccan capital of Fez in 1888, later returning to Mali in 1890 on the eve of the French conquest. Sultan Abdul Hamid greatly transformed ottoman relations with Sudanic Africa, set in the context of the colonial scramble. But lacking the capacity to undertake distant military campaigns into the region, the Ottomans relied on religious orders to assert its political claims over parts of Africa which it never formally controlled. Relying on its alliances with the Sanusi order that was active in the Fezzan and the kingdoms of Wadai and Bornu, Ottoman agents travelled to parts of the region to initiate a new (albeit brief) era of diplomatic exchange with the central Sudan. Ottoman agents also travelled beyond the Sudanic regions to Lagos (Nigeria), Cape colony, Zanzibar, Ethiopia and even to the African Muslim community in Brazil. Similary, African kingdoms sent envoys and scholars to the Ottoman capital to forge anti\-colonial alliances. The diplomatic ties between the Ottomans and African kingdoms such as Darfur under Ali Dinar, lasted until the collapse of the Ottoman empire after the first world war. This late phase of African\-Ottoman links is a fascinating topic that will be explored later, covering the international diplomatic strategies African states used to resist the colonial expansion. --- In the 9th century, Italy was home to the only independent Muslim state in Europe that was ruled by Berbers and West\-Africans, read more about the kingdom of Bari on my latest Patreon post: --- Mohammed Shitta Bey was one of several descendants of freed\-slaves who settled on the west\-African coast and made a significant contribution to the region’s economic development and modernization during the 19th century. Read more about it here; --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribeadopted from Rémi Dewière Mai Idris of Bornu and the Ottoman Turks by BG Martin pg 472\-473, Du lac Tchad à la Mecque: Le sultanat du Borno by Rémi Dewière pg 29\-30\) The relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Kanem\-Bornu During the reign of Sultan Murad III by Sebastian Flynn pg 113\-118 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque: Le sultanat du Borno by Rémi Dewière pg 34\-35, 159 The Slave and the Scholar: Representing Africa in the World from Early Modern Tripoli to Borno by Rémi Dewière pg 52\-53\) Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen pg 36 The Ottomans and the Funj sultanate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by A.C.S. Peacock pg 92\-94 Kingdoms of the Sudan By R.S. O'Fahey, J.L. Spaulding pg 35\) Nil Yolculuğu: Mısır, Sudan, Habeşistan by Nuran Tezcan Ottoman Explorations of the Nile by Robert Dankoff pg 251\-256\) Ottoman Explorations of the Nile by Robert Dankoff pg 257\-301\) Ottoman Explorations of the Nile by Robert Dankoff pg 361\) image by sudanheritageproject The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa by Scott Reese pg 146, Arabic Literature of Africa Vol1 by John O. Hunwick pg 146, An Embassy from the Sultan of Darfur to the Sublime Porte in 1791 by A.C.S. Peacock , Black Pearl and White Tulip: A History of Ottoman Africa by Şakir Batmaz pg 42, Kingdoms of the Sudan By R.S. O'Fahey, J.L. Spaulding pg 162\) Wangara, Akan and Portuguese 1 by Ivor Wilks pg 339\) Wangara, Akan and Portuguese 1 by Ivor Wilks pg 339 n. 36\) La Tijâniyya. Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l'Afrique by Jean\-Louis Triaud pg 397\-398\) The Ottoman Scramble for Africa By Mostafa Minawi Osmanlı\-Afrika İlişkileri by Ahmet Kavas, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State by Kemal H. Karpat, Illuminating the Blackness: Blacks and African Muslims in Brazil By Habeeb Akande An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906\-1916 By Jay Spaulding 11 4)

a brief note on the role of Africans in the early Islamic expansion in a brief note on the role of Africans in the early Islamic expansion an African kingdom in southern Italy. )The early period of Islamic expansion resulted in the creation of what was until then the largest empire in human history. In less than a century, the Rashidun caliphate and the suceeding Umayyad caliphate created a large empire that stretched from Spain to Central Asia, covering a vast territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China. Yet despite their rapid success, the Islamic advance was halted in and Ethiopia where their armies suffered rare defeats and were forced to withdraw. A similar advance into west Africa through the oases of the Fezzan and was equally unsuccessful as local polities remained largely in control of the region. Overextended and outnumbered, the Ummayad Arabs begun recruiting north\-African Berbers to bolster their scattered armies. The addition of both free and enslaved Berber soldiers in the Ummayad forces proved decisive in the conquest and control of the empire's most distant provinces, especially in Spain. As the pace of expansion begun to decline in the 8th and 9th century, more soldiers were recruited from outlying regions like west\-Africa and Europe. With these armies, the Ummayads and their sucessors expanded their campaigns into southern Europe, beginning with the islands of Crete and Sicily, and eventually making landfall on southern Italy. The Muslim kingdom in southern Italy was the furthest expansion of the early Islamic empires in mainland Europe outside Spain. In the 9th century, Italy was home to the only independent Muslim state in Europe that was ruled not by Arabs but by the contigents of Berbers and west\-Africans whom they had recruited. The kingdom of Bari is the subject of my latest Patreon article, exploring the history of this African kingdom in Italy, and its complex relationship with the neighboring Christian states. Read about it here: --- \<Next week’s article will explore the historic links between Ottoman empire and Africa from the 16th century to the 19th century, focusing on diplomatic ties and intellectual exchanges of Africans in Ottoman Europe and Ottomans in Africa outside north\-Africa.\> --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe14 )

A complete history of Madagascar and the island kingdom of Merina. in A complete history of Madagascar and the island kingdom of Merina. State and society on Africa's largest island. )Lying about 400km off the coast of east Africa, the island of Madagascar has a remarkable history of human settlement and state formation. A few centuries after the beginning of the common era, a syncretized Afro\-Asian society emerged on Madagascar, populating the island with plants and animals from both east Africa and south\-east Asia, and creating its first centralized states. From a cluster of small chiefdoms centered on hilltop fortresses, the powerful kingdom of Merina emerged at the end of the 18th century after developing and strengthening its social and political institutions. The Merina state succeeded in establishing its hegemony over the neighboring states, creating a vast empire which united most of the island. This article outlines the history of Madagascar and the Merina kingdom, from the island's earliest settlement to the fall of the Merina kingdom in the late 19th century. the nineteenth century Merina empire, map by G. Campbell. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and to keep this blog free for all: --- Background on the human settlement of Madagascar. The island of Madagascar is likely to have been first settled intermittently by groups of foragers from the African mainland who reached the northern coast during the 2nd to 1st millennium BC. Permanent settlement on Madagascar first appears in archeological record during the second half of the 1st millennium, and was associated with the simultaneous expansion of the Bantu\-speaking groups from the mainland east Africa and its offshore islands, as well as the arrival of Austonesian\-speaking groups from south\-east Asia. Linguistic evidence suggests that nearly all domesticates on Madagascar were primarily introduced from the African mainland, while crops came from both Africa and south\-east Asia. There were significant exchanges between the northern coastal settlements of Madagascar and the Comoros archipelago, with chlorite schist vessels and rice from the former being exchanged for imported ceramics and glass\-beads from the latter. These exchanges were associated with the expansion of the Swahili world along the east African coast and the Comoros islands, of which northern Madagascar was included, especially the city\-state of Mahilaka in the 9th\-16th century. Other significant towns emerged all along the island's coast at Vohemar, Talaky, Ambodisiny, and in the Anosy region, although these were not as engaged in maritime trade as Mahilaka. It was during this early period of permanent settlement that the Malagasy culture emerged with its combined Austronesian and Bantu influences. The Malagasy language belongs to the South\-East Barito subgroup of Austronesian languages in Borneo but its vocabulary contains a significant percentage of loanwords from the Sabaki subgroup of Bantu languages (primarily Comorian and Swahili) as well as other languages such as other Austronesian languages like Malay and Javanese. Genetically, the modern coastal populations of Madagascar have about about 65% east\-African ancestry with the rest coming from groups closely related to modern Cambodians, while the highland populations have about 47% east\-African ancestry with a similar ancestral source in south\-east Asia as the coastal groups. More significantly however, is that this Bantu\-Austronesian admixture occurred more the 600\-960 years ago at its most recent, and most scholars suggest that the admixture occurred much earlier during the 1st millennium, with some postulating that it occurred on the Comoros archipelago before the already admixed group migrated to Madagascar. This combined evidence indicates that the population of Madagascar was thoroughly admixed well before the emergence of the earliest states in the interior and the dispersion of the dialects which make up the modern Malagasy language such as the Merina, Sakalava, Betsileo, etc. The creation of ethnonyms such as “Merina” is itself a very recent phenomenon associated with their kingdom’s 18th\-19th century expansion. --- --- The emergence of kingdoms in Madagascar and the early Merina state from the 16th to the 18th century. The first settlements in the interior highlands appear in the 12th\-13th century at the archeological sites of Ambohimanga and Ankadivory. Similar sites appear across the island, they are characterized by fortified hilltop settlements of stone enclosures, within which were wooden houses and tombs, with inhabitants practicing rice farming and stock\-breeding. Their material culture is predominantly local and unique to the island but also included a significant share of imported wares similar to those imported on the Swahili coast and the Comoros archipelago. These early settlements flourished thanks to the emergence of social hierarchies, continued migration and the island's increasing insertion into regional and international maritime trade. The history of the early Merina polity first appears in external accounts from the 17th century, that are later supplemented by internal traditions recorded later. Prominent among these traditions is Raminia, a person of purportedly Islamized/Indianized Austronesian origin with connections to Arabia and the Swahili coast, whose descendants (the Zafiraminia) settled at the eastern coast of the island. Among these was a woman named Andriandrakova who moved inland and married an autochtonous vazimba chief to produce the royal lineage of merina (Andriana). These traditions were initially interpreted by colonial scholars to have been literal migrations of distinct groups, but such interpretations have since been discredited in research which instead regards the traditions to be personifications of elite interactions between various hybridized groups with syncretic cultures, some of whom had been established on the island while others were recent immigrants. From the 16th century to the early 17th century, Madagascar was a political honeycomb of small polities. The central part of the highlands comprised several chiefdoms divided between the Merina and Betsileo groups, all centered at fortified hilltop sites. Intermittent conflicts between the small polities were resolved with warfare, alliances and diplomacy mediated by local lineage heads and ritual specialists. One of the more significant hilltop centers was Ampandrana, village southwest of the later capital Antananarivo. The elite of at Ampandrana gradually assumed a position of leadership from which came the future dynasty of Andriana, with its first (semi\-legendary) rulers being; king Andriamanelo and his sucessor; king Ralambo. These rulers are credited with several political and cultural institutions of the early Merina state and establishing their authority over the clan heads through warfare and marital alliances. Ralambo's sucessor Andrianjaka would later found Antananarivo as the capital of the Merina state in the early 17th century. Merina then appears in external accounts as the kingdom (s) of the Hova/Hoves/Uva/Vua, and was closely related to the export trade in commodities (mostly cattle and rice) and captives passing through the northwestern port of Mazalagem Nova that ultimately led to the Comoros archipelago, the Swahili coast and Arabian peninsula. The term ‘Hova’ is however not restricted to the Merina and is unlikely to have represented a single state as it was a social rank for the majority of highland Malagasy. Neverthless, its appearance sheds some light on the existence of hierachical polities in the interior. One Portuguese account from 1613 mentions that “Some Buki \ Read more about the history of the Swahili city\-states of Madagascar here: These accounts don't reveal much about the internal processes of the Merina state, save for corroborating internal traditions about the processes of the kingdom's expansion, its agro\-pastoral economy and its gradual integration into maritime trade in the 17th and 18th century. The population growth in central Merina compelled its rulers to expand the irrigated areas, which were mostly farmed by common subjects, while the royal estates were worked by a combination of corvee labour and captives from neighboring states. The most significant ruler of this period was king Andriamasinavalona (ca. 1675\-1710\) who expanded the borders of the kingdom, created more political institutions and increased both regional and coastal trade. He later divided his realm into four parts under the control of one of his sons, but the kingdom fragmented after his death, descending into a ruinous civil war that lasted until the late 18th century. In 1783, the ruler of the most powerful among the four divided kingdoms was Andrianampoinimerina . He negotiated a brief truce of with the other kings, fortified his dependencies, purchased more firearms from the coastal cities, and created more offices of counsellors in his government. In 1796 he recaptured Antananarivo, and after several campaigns, he had seized control of rest of the divided kingdoms, creating a sizeable unified state about 8,000 sqkm in size. It was under the reign of his sucessor Radama (r. 1810\-1828\) that the kingdom greatly expanded to cover nearly 2/3rds of the island (about 350,000\-400,000 sqkm) through a complex process of diplomacy and warfare, conquering the Betsileo states by 1822, the Antsihanaka states in 1823, the sakalava kingdom of Iboina in 1823, and the coastal town of Majunga in 1824\. Radama's rapid expansion brought Merina into close contact with the imperial powers of the western Indian ocean, primarily the French in the Mascarene islands (Mauritius \& Reunion), and the British who ships often stopped by Nzwani island. The intersection of Radama's expansionist interests and British commercial and abolitionist intrests led to the two signing treaties banning the export of slaves from regions under Merina control in exchange for British military and commercial support. Slaves from Madagascar comprised the bulk of captives sent to the Mascarene plantations in the 18th and early 19th century, some of whom would have come from Merina along with the kingdom's staple exports of cattle, rice and other commodities. However, competing imperial interests between the Merina, British and French compelled Radama to adopt autarkic policies meant to decrease his empire's reliance on imported weaponry and shore up his domestic economy. His policies were greatly expanded under his sucessor, Queen Ranavalona (1828\-1861\) and it was during their respective reigns that Merina was at the height of its power. --- State and Society in early 19th century Merina: Politics, Military and the industrial economy. The government in Merina was headed by the king/Queen, who was assisted by a council of seventy which represented every collective within the kingdom, the most powerful councilor being the prime minister. Merina's social hierachy was built over the cultural institutions that pre\-existed the kingdom such as castes and clan groups, with the noble castes (andriana) ruling over the commoner clans (foko) and their composite subjects (Hova), as well as the slaves (andevo). The kinsmen of the King received fiefs (menakely) from which was derived tribute for the capital and labour attached to the court. The subjects often came together in assemblies (fokonolona) to enact regulations, and effect works in common such as embankments and other public constructions, and to mediate disputes. Both the Merina nobility and the subjects attached great importance to their ancestral lands (tanindrazana) controlled by clan founders (tompontany). Links between the ancestral lands and clan are maintained by continued burial within the solidly constructed tombs that are centrally located in the ancestral villages and towns, including the royal capital where the Merina court and King's tombs have a permanent fixture since the 17th century. Additionally, the clan founders and/or elders were appointed as local representatives of the Merina monarchy, in charge of remitting tribute and organizing corvee labour (fanompoana) for public works as well as for the military. Merina armies initially consisted of large units drawn from ancestral land groups and commanded by the clan elders. when assembled, they were led by a commander in chief appointed by the king. After 1820 Radama succeeded in forming a standing army using the fanompoana system, who were supplied with the latest weaponry and stationed in garrisons across the kingdom. Radama's standing force and the traditional army units controlled by elders were both allowed to be engaged in the export trade, sharing their profits with the imperial court and enforcing Merina control over newly conquered regions. Radama's syncretism of Merina and European cultural institutions encouraged the settlement of Christian missionaries and the establishment of a school system whose students were initially drawn from the nobility and military, but later included artisans and other subjects. Merina's economy was predominantly based on intensive riziculture and pastoralism, supplemented by the various handicraft industries such as cloth manufacture, and metal smithing. Merina was at the center of a long\-distance trade network of exchanges that fostered regional specialization, each province had regulated markets, and exchanges utilized imported silver, and commodity currencies. After the breakdown in relations between Merina and the Europeans, which included several wars where the French were expelled from Fort Daughin in 1824, and Tamatave in 1829, king Radama embarked on an ambitious program of industrialization that was subsquently expanded by Queen Ranavalona. Merina's local factories which were staffed by skilled artisans and funded by both the state and foreign entrepenuers (such as Jean Laborde), they produced a broad range of local manufactures including firearms, swords, ammunition, glass, cloth, tiles, processed sugar, soap and tanned leather. read more about it here: --- The Merina state in the late 19th century: stagnation, transformation and collapse. During Queen Ranavalona's reign, increasing conflicts between the court and the religious factions in the capital led to the expulsion of the few remaining missionaries and the expansion of the tangena judicial system to check political and religious rivaries. Ranavalona's reign was characterized by increased Merina campiagns into outlying regions, the corvee labour system which supplied the industrial workforce and military, and the transformation of domestic labour with war captives from neighboring states, as well as imported captives from the Mozambique channel. Merina retained its position as the most powerful state on the island thanks in part to the growing power of the prime minister Rainiharo, its armies managed to repel a major Franco\-British attack on Tamatave in 1845, and to expel French agents from Ambavatobe in 1855\. Rebellions in outlying provinces were crushed, but significant resistance persisted and Merina expansion effectively ground to a halt. After Ranavalona's death in 1861, she was suceeded by Radama II, her chosen heir who undid many of her autarkic policies and re\-established contacts with the Europeans and missionaries who regained their positions in the capital. But internal power struggles between the Merina nobility undermined Radama's ability to maintain his authority, and he was killed in a rebellion led by his prime minister Rainivoninahitriniony in 1863\. The later had Radama's widow, Rasoherina (r. 1863\-1868\), proclaimed as Queen, who inturn replaced him with the commander in chief Rainilaiarivony as prime minister in 1864\. From then, effective government passed on to Rainilaiarivony, who occupied two powerful offices at once, reduced the Queen's executive authority and succeeded in ruling Merina until 1895, in the name of three queens that suceeded Rasoherina as figureheads; Ranavalona II (1868\-1883\), and Ranavalona III (1883\-1897\). Rainilaiarivony radically transformed Merina's political and cultural institutions, accelerating the innovations of the preceeding sovereigns. Merina's administration was restructured with more ministers/councilors under the office of the prime minister rather than the Queen, a code of laws was introduced to reform the Judicial system in 1868 and later in 1881, the military was rapidly modernized, and the collection of tribute became more formalized. Christianity became the court religion, mission schools were centralized, with more than 30,000 students in protestant mission schools alone by 1875\. The increasing syncretism of Merina and European culture could be seen in the adoption of brick architecture in place of timber and stone houses, the uniformed military and the replacement of the sorabe script (an Arabo\-Malagasy writing system) with the latin script as printing presses became ubiquitous. However, the evolution of Merina society was largely determined by internal processes, the court remained at Antananarivo which was the largest city with about 75,000 inhabitants, but besides a few coastal towns like Majunga and Tamatave, most Merina subjects lived in relatively small agricultural settlements under the authority of the clans and feudatories. Regionally, some of the political changes in Merina occurred in the background of the Anglo\-French rivary in the western Indian ocean, which in Merina also played out between the rival Protestant and Catholic missions. As Rainilaiarivony leaned towards the British against the French, the latter were compelled to invade Merina and formally declare it a protectorate. In 1883, an French expedition force attacked Majunga and occupied Tamatave but its advance was checked in the interior forcing it to withdraw. A lengthy period of negotiations between the Merina and the French followed, but would prove futile as the French invaded again in December 1894\. Their advance into the interior was stalled by the expedition's poor planning, only one major engagement was fought with the Merina army as the kingdom had erupted in rebellion. The Merina capital was taken by French forces in September 1895 and the kingdom formally ceased to exist as an independent state in the following month. --- In the early 19th century when the Merina state was home to one of the most remarkable examples of proto\-industrialization in Africa. read more about it on Patreon: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeEarly Exchange Between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World by G Campbell pg 195\-204, A critical review of radiocarbon dates clarifies the human settlement of Madagascar by Kristina Douglass et al. Early Exchange Between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World by G Campbell pg 206\-214, Settling Madagascar: When Did People First Colonize the World’s Largest Island? by Peter Mitchell\- and response: Evidence for Early Human Arrival in Madagascar is Robust: A Response to Mitchell by James P. Hansford et al. The Austronesians in Madagascar and Their Interaction with the Bantu of the East African Coast by Roger Blench, The first migrants to Madagascar and their introduction of plants by Philippe Beaujard pg 174\-185\) Early Exchange Between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World by G Campbell pg 213\-220, The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard pg 374\-378\) loanwords in Malagasy by Alexander Adelaar. Early Exchange Between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World by G Campbell pg 244\-250\) The Mobility Imperative: A Global Evolutionary Perspective of Human Migration By Augustin Holl pg 83\-85, On the Origins and Admixture of Malagasy by Sergio Tofanelli et al pg 2120\-2121, Malagasy Phonological History and Bantu Influence by Alexander Adelaar pg 145\-146\) The first migrants to Madagascar and their introduction of plants by Philippe Beaujard pg 172\-174, The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard pg 372\-373 Desperately Seeking 'the Merina' (Central Madagascar) by Pier M. Larson pg 547\-560 Early State Formation in Central Madagascar by Henry T. Wright et al pg 104\-111, The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard pg 385\-391 The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard pg 402\-412\) The Myth of Racial Strife and Merina Kinglists: The Transformation of Texts by Gerald M. Berg pg 1\-30, The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard pg 414\-421 Unesco General history of Africa vol 5 pg 875\-876, Early State Formation in Central Madagascar by Henry T. Wright et al pg 3\) Unesco General history of Africa vol 5 pg 862\-866\) Desperately Seeking 'the Merina' (Central Madagascar) by Pier M. Larson pg 522\-554 The Worlds of the Indian Ocean Vol. 2 by Philippe Beaujard of 560\-561,615\) Unesco General history of Africa vol 5 877\) Sacred Acquisition: Andrianampoinimerina at Ambohimanga, 1777\-1790 by Gerald M. Berg pg 191\-211 Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 by G. Campbell, pg 215 Unesco General history of Africa vol 5 pg 878 ·July 10, 2022 The Adoption of Autarky in Imperial Madagascar by G Campbell The Cambridge History of Africa \- Volume 5 pg 397\) Early State Formation in Central Madagascar by Henry T. Wright et al pg 12\-14, Ancestors, Power, and History in Madagascar edited by Karen Middleton pg 259\-265\) Radama's Smile: Domestic Challenges to Royal Ideology in Early Nineteenth\-Century Imerina by Gerald M. Berg pg 86\-91\) Of the 500,000 slaves on the eve of colonialism in Madagascar in 1896, more than 90% were Malagasy, while about 48,000 were Makuas from Mozambique; see: The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean edited by Shihan de S. Jayasuriya, pg 96 The Cambridge History of Africa \- Volume 5 pg 407\-412, Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 by G. Campbell pg 215\-216\) The Cambridge History of Africa \- Volume 5 pg 413\-414 The Cambridge History of Africa \- Volume 5 pg 413\-417 Unesco general history of africa\- Volume 6 pg 436\-441\) An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar by G. Campbell pg 322\-339\) 12 )

a brief note on Madagascar's position in African history in a brief note on Madagascar's position in African history plus, early industrialization in the Merina kingdom. )The island of Madagascar has for long languished on the periphery of African historiography. The reluctance of some Africanists to look beyond the east African coast stems partly from the perception of Madagascar as insular and more 'culturally' south\-Asian than African, despite such terms being modern constructs with little historical basis in Madagascar's society. Recent research on the island's history has bridged the chasm between the island and the mainland, revealing their shared political, economic and genetic history that defies simplistic constructs of colonial ethnography. The long chain of islands extending outwards from the east African coast through the Comoros archipelago to northwestern Madagascar comprised a series of stepping stones that formed a dynamic zone of interaction between the African mainland and Madagascar. Its on these stepping stones that African settlers continously travelled to Madagascar, establishing settlements along the northern and western coasts of the island and in parts of the interior, where they were joined by south\-Asian settlers from the eastern coast to create what became the modern Malagasy society. The north\-western coast of Madagascar was part of the 'Swahili world', with its characteristic city\-states, regional maritime trade, and extensive interaction with the hinterland. From these interactions emerged an economic and political alliance which drew the Malagasy and Swahili worlds closer: , Malagasy elites were integrated in Swahili society, and the movement of free and servile Malagasy into the east African coast was mirrored by a similar albeit smaller movement of both free and servile east Africans onto the island. The evolution of states on the island and their complex interactions with their east African neighbors and the later colonial empires, closely resembles that of the kingdoms on the mainland. At the onset of European imperial expansion on the east African coast, the largest power on the island was the kingdom of Merina, which controlled nearly 2/3rds of the Island during the reign of king Radama (r.1810\-28\) and Queen Ranavalona (1828\-1861\). Often characterized as a profoundly sage monarch, king Radama recognized the unique threats and opportunities of the European presence at his doorstep, and , he invited foreign innovations on his own terms, and directed them to his own advantage. After the relationship between Merina and its European neighbors soured, Radama and his successors created local industries to reduce the kingdom's reliance on imported technology, and like Tewodros of Ethiopia, Radama retained foreign artisans inorder to establish an armaments industry. \<Next week's substack article will explore the history of the Merina kingdom from the 16th century to the late 19th century.\> read more about it here: --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe12 )

A history of the Buganda kingdom. \- by isaac Samuel in A history of the Buganda kingdom. government in central Africa. )The land sheltered between the great lakes of east Africa was home to some of the continent's most dynamic kingdoms. Around five centuries ago, the kingdom of Buganda emerged along the northern shores of lake Victoria, growing into one of the region's most dominant political and cultural powers. Buganda was a cosmopolitan kingdom whose political influence extended across much of the region and left a profound legacy in east Africa. Its armies campaigned as far as Rwanda, its commercial reach extended to the Nyamwezi heartland of western Tanzania, and its diplomats travelled to Zanzibar on the Swahili coast This article explores the history of the Buganda kingdom from the 16th century to 1900\. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and to keep this blog free for all: --- Background to the emergence of Buganda: Neolithic cultures and incipient states in the lakes region. The lakes region of east Africa is a historical and cultural area characterized by shared patterns of precolonial political organization. The initial Neolithic iron\-age cultures that emerged across the region from the 1st millennium BC to the middle of the 1st millennium AD, gradually declined before more complex societies re\-emerged in early 2nd millennium the what is now western Uganda, at the proto\-capitals of Ntusi and Bigo. Its these early societies of agro\-pastoral communities that produced a shared cultural milieu in which lineage groups and incipient states would rise. Prior to the founding of Buganda, the region in which the kingdom would later emerge was originally controlled by of several dozen clans (bakata), a broad social institution within which were sub\-clans and lineage groups. These exogamous groups were common across the lakes region, and transcended both ethnic and political boundaries of the later kingdoms. They likely represented an older form of social complexity within which were numerous small states that would be significantly transformed as the kingdoms became larger and more centralized. The core region of Buganda (in Busiro and Kyaddondo) was a land teaming with shrines (masabo), enclosures invested with numinous authority that contained relics of older rulers who were gradually deified and local deities who became influential in the early state. A number of these predated the foundation of the state, and some (on Buddo hill in Busiro) were sacred enough to become grounds for installation of new kings beginning in the 18th century, and would remain under the control of ritual officiants and shrine priests after the kingdom's founding. However, not all deities were historical personalities, nor were all important historical personalities deified, and some among both groups were shared with other kingdoms. The kingdom's legendary founder Kintu and his descendant Kimera are credited with the introduction of several cultural and political institutions to the region that became Buganda, and the creation of the civilization/state itself. various versions of this origin myth exist, combining mythical and historical figures, and collapsing centuries long events into complex stories and geneologies. They contain salient information on the early states of the region that became Buganda, and their relationship to neighboring states particulary Bunyoro where Kimera supposedly resided for some time. While the legendary personalities are wholly mythical, they are representations of particular aspects of kingship as well as political and cultural changes that occurred in the early state, which facilitated their transmission into mythology. Arguably the most recognizable information relates to Kimera’s introduction into Buganda of several elements in the early state's political institutions, regalia and titlelature from Bunyoro. Its evident that the royal genealogists who preserved these faint memories of the early state to add to the better known history of later kings, relied on the great stock of known potencies in the land represented by the numerous shrines, deities, and cultural heroes, some of which also appear in traditions of neighboring states. --- The early state in Buganda from the 16th\-17th century For most of Buganda’s early history, the power of the King (kabaka) was still curbed by the clan\-heads, who controlled the political make\-up of the nascent kingdom. The most notable ruler during this period was Nakibinge, a 16th century king whose reign was beset by rebellion and ended with his defeat at the hands of Bunyoro. The 16th to 17th century was a period of Bunyoro hegemony. The traditions of Rwanda, Nkore, Karagwe and Ihangiro all recall devastating invasions which were repelled by kings who took the title of 'Nyoro\-slayer'. In Buganda, the era of Bunyoro's suzeranity is represented by the traditions on postulated defeat of Nakibinge, all of which collapse a complex period of warfare in which Buganda freed itself of Bunyoro's suzeranity. From the late 17th century to the mid\-18th century, the kingdom built up a position of significant economic and military strength, facilitated by an efficient and centralized socio\-political structure. The 17th century kings Kimbugwe and Kateregga would undertake a few campaigns beyond the core of the early state, while their 18th century sucessors Mutebi and Mawanda raised large armies and subsumed several rival states. Mwanda in particular in credited with creating the offices of the batongole (royally appointed chiefs) thus centralizing power under the King and away from the clans. --- --- Buganda as a regional power in the 18th\-19th century King Mawanda (d. 1740\) presided over the advance of the eastern frontier towards the Nile upto Kyagwe, an important center of trade. Mawanda also campaigned south, bringing his armies into Bundu and Kooki: a rich iron producing region on the south\-western shores of lake Victoria that was home to a powerful chiefdom within Bunyoro’s orbit. Unlike its western neighbors, Buganda didn't posses significant iron deposits within its core provinces. raw iron was thus brought from outlying provinces, to be reworked and smelted across the kingdom. Mawanda's sucessor, Junju, completed the annexation of Buddu following a lengthy war. Buddu was renowned for its production of iron and high quality barkcloth, and its acquisition opened up access to a thriving industry. Junju armies also campaigned as far as the kingdom of Kiziba (in north\-western Tanzania) but was forced to withdraw his overextended armies. Junju's sucessor Semakokiro (r. ca. 1790\-1810\) consolidated the gains of his predecessors, and defended the kingdom against the resurgent Bunyoro whose armies were regaining lost ground in the west. A major rebellion led by Kakungulu, who was one of Semakokiro's sons that had fled to Bunyoro, nearly reached the capital before it was repulsed. Further eastern campaigns to Bulondoganyi at the border of the Bugerere chiefdom near the Nile river were abandoned, as the kingdom's rapid expansion momentarily came to a halt. Semakokiro was suceeded by Kamanya (1810\-1832\) who resumed the expansionist campaigns of his predecessors by advancing his armies east beyond the Nile to the kingdom of Busoga, to the north as Buruuli (near lake Kyoga) and as far west as Busongora, a polity near the Rwenzori mountains that was a dependency of Bunyoro. In retaliation, Bunyoro sent the rebellious prince Kakungulu whose armies raided deep into Buganda's territory including the region around Bulondoganyi. Buganda's initial invasion of Busoga was defeated but another campaign was more sucessful, with Busoga acknowledging Buganda's suzeranity albeit only nominally. The campaigns against Buruuli which involved the use of war canoes, carried overland from lake Victoria, established Buganda's northernmost frontier. Kamanya was suceeded by Ssuuna (1832\-1856\) who consolidated the territorial gains of his predecessors while engaging in a few campaigns beyond the frontiers. Suuna campaigned southwards to the Kagera river, and his navies attacked the islands of Sesse in lake Victoria just prior to the arrival of foreign merchants in Buganda. In 1844, a carravan of Swahili and Arab traders from the east African coast arrived at the capital of Buganda. Snay bin Amir, the head of the carravan was hospitably received by Ssuuna and he would return in 1852, being the first of many foreign traders, explorers, missionaries that would be integrated into Buganda’s cosmopolitan society. --- The government in 19th century Buganda : state and economy. At the highest level of authority in Buganda was the Kabaka whose influence over the government had grown considerably in the 19th century, although his personal authority was more apparent than real. Just below the Kabaka was a large and complex bureaucracy of appointed and hereditary officials (abakungu), ministers, chiefs, clan heads and other titleholders, the most powerful among who were the Katikkiro (vizier/prime\-minister) the Kimbugwe, and the Nnamasole (Queen\-Mother), all of whom oversaw the judicial and taxing functions of the state and formed the innermost council within several concentric circles of power radiating from the capital. They resided in the transient royal capital at Rubaga (and later at Mengo), a large agglomeration with more than 20,000 residents in the mid\-19th century, that was the center of political decision making where public audiences were held, official delegations were hosted and trade was regulated. The kingdom was divided into ten ssaza (provinces/counties), each under an appointed chief (abamasaza), the four most important of which were Buddu, Ssingo, Bulemeezi and Kyaggwe. which inturn had several subdivisions (gombolola) The military was led by Sakibobo (commander\-in\-chief) who was often chosen by the king. Regions within the ssaza system were the basic units of the army, with each chief providing military levies for the kingdom's army. The King had his own standing army at the capital that was likely present since the kingdom's foundation, and would eventually grow into the elite corps of royal riflemen (ekitongole ekijaasi) that was garrisoned in provincial capitals across the kingdom. Below these were the provincial chiefs were lower ranking titleholders and the common subjects/peasants (bakopi) who were mostly comprised of freeborn baGanda as well as a minority of acculturated immigrants and former captives. Freeborn baGanda were not serfs and they could attach themselves to any superior they chose. The Taxes, tributes and tolls collected from the different provinces were determined by local resources. The collection of taxes was undertaken by the hierachical network of officials, all of whom shared a percentage of the levied tribute before it was remitted to the center. Taxes were paid in the form of cowrie shells, barkcloth, trade items, and agricultural produce, with the ultimate tax burden being moderated by the mobility of the peasantry. Corvee labour for public works was organized on a local basis from provincial chiefs, to be employed in the construction and maintenance of the kingdom's extensive road network, the enclosures and residences in the royal palaces, and the Kabaka's lake. The road network of Buganda appears in the earliest description of the kingdom. In 1862, the explorer J. Speke observed that they were found “everywhere” and were "as broad as our coach\-roads". In 1875, Stanley estimated the great highway leading to the capital as measuring 150ft, adding that in the capital were the "Royal Quarters, around which ran several palisades and circular courts, between which and the city was a circular road, ranging from 100 to 200 feet in width, from which radiated six or seven magnificent avenues". Later accounts describe the remarkably straight and broad highways bounded by trees, crossing over rivers with bridges of interlaced palm logs, in a complex network that connected distant towns and villages to the capital. They were as much an expression of grandeur as a means of communication. The mainstay of Buganda’s economy was agriculture, and its location on the fertile shores of lake victoria had given it a unique demographic advantage over most of the neighboring kingdoms. describing a typical estate in 1875, the explorer H.M. Stanley observed that “In it grow large sweet potatoes, yams, green peas, kidney beans, field beans, vetches, and tomatoes. The garden is bordered by castor\-oil, manioc, coffee, and tobacco plants. On either side are small patches of millets, sesamum, and sugar\-cane. Behind the house and courts, and enfolding them, are the more extensive banana and plantain plantations and grain crops. Interspersed among the bananas are the umbrageous fig trees". The manufacture of barkcloth was the most significant craft industry in Buganda. The cloth was derived from the barks of various kinds of fig trees, which were stripped and made flexible using a mallet in a process that took several days. They were then dyed with red and black colorants, patterned and decorated with grooves which made it resemble corduroy textiles. Barkcloth was used as clothing, beddings, packaging, burial shrouds, and wall carpets. It formed the bulk of the kingdom's exports to regional markets in Bunyoro, Nkore and as far as Nywamwezi, and remained popular well into the 1900s despite the increased importation (and later local manufacture) of cotton textiles. --- Subscribe --- Smithing of iron, copper and brass also constituted a significant industry. Unworked iron bought from the frontier was smelted and reworked into implements, jewelry and weapons that were sold in local markets and regionally to neighboring kingdoms. As early as the 1860s, professional smiths attached to the court were making ammunition for imported firearms, and by 1892, a contemporary account observed that local gun\-smiths "will construct you a new stock to a rifle which you will hardly detect from that made by a London gun\-maker". Leatherworking and tanning was an important industry and employed significant numbers of subjects. An account from 1874 describes the tanning of leather by the bakopi who made large sheets of leather than were "beautifully tanned and sewed together". A resident missionary in 1879 reported purchasing dyed leather skins cut in the shape of a hat. Cowhides were fashioned into sandals worn by the elite and priests since before the 18th century, with buffalo hides specifically worn by chiefs and the elite. The main markets in the capital was under the supervision of an appointed officer, who was in charge of collecting taxes in the form of cowrie shells, and oversaw the activities of foreign merchants. Trading centers outside the capital such as Kyagwe, Bagegere, Bale, Nsonga and Masaka were controlled by provincial chiefs, and were sites of significant domestic and export trade by ganda merchants. tobacco and cattle were imported from Nkore, in exchange for Bark cloth, while iron weapons, salt and captives were brought from Bunyoro in exchange for cloth (both cotton and barkcloth), copper, brass and glass beads, the latter coming from coastal traders. Soon after the arrival of coastal traders, Sunna constructed a flotilla of watercraft similar in shape to the Swahili mtepe ship intended to facilitate direct trade with the port town of Kageyi, which was ultimately linked to the town of Ujiji and the coastal cities. In the 1870s and 1880s, the enormous canoes of Buganda measuring 80ft long and 7 ft wide with a capacity to carry 50 people along with their goods and pack animals (or 100 soldiers alone), featured prominently in the organization of long\-distance commerce and warfare, rendering the overland routes marginal in external trade. Most external trade consisted of ivory exports, whose demand was readily met by the established customs of professional hunting guilds, who often traversed the kingdom's frontiers to procure elephant tusks. --- Buganda in the second half of the 19th century: from hegemony to decline. In Buganda, coastal traders, missionaries and other foreign travelers found a complex courtly life in which new technologies were welcomed, new ideas were vigorously debated and alliances with foreign powers were sought where they were deemed to further the strength of the kingdom. Ssuuna’s sucessor Mutesa (r. 1856\-1884\) was a shrewd monarch who readily adopted aspects of coastal culture that he deemed useful, including integrating Swahili technicians into Buganda’s institutions, adopting Islam and transforming some of political institutions of the state into a Muslim kingdom. He acquired the sufficient diplomatic tools (such as Arabic literacy) that enabled him to initiate contacts with foreign states including Zanzibar (where the traders came from) and Anglo\-Egyptian Sudan (which was threatening to invade Buganda and Bunyoro from the north) During the 1850s, Mutesa’s predecessor was reportedly in the habit of sending armed escorts to the southern kingdom of Karagwe when they heard that coastal traders wished to visit them. By 1875, Muteesa had taken his diplomatic initiative further to Sudan, ostensibly sending his emissaries to the Anglo\-Egyptian capital of Khartoum for an alliance against Bunyoro. In 1869 and 1872, Mutesa sent caravans to Zanzibar, and by late 1878 a band of 'Mutesa's soldiers was reported to be returning from a mission to Zanzibar itself. The apparently friendly envoys sent to Khartoum were infact spies dispatched to report on the strength and movements of the enemy. Mutesa had an acute appreciation of the role which diplomacy could play in protecting Buganda's independence, and the king shrewdly confined the Anglo\-Egyptian delegation at his capital, blunting the planned invasion of Bunyoro and Buganda. However, Mutesa registered less military success than his predecessors. Several wars against Bunyoro, Busoga, Buruli, and Bukedi during the 1860s and 1870s often ended with Buganda's defeat. Between 1870\-1871, Mutesa sucessfully intervened in Bunyoro's sucession crisis with the installation of Kabarega, placed a puppet on the breakaway state of Tooro and in the Bunyoro dependency of Busongora but all were quickly lost when Kabarega resumed war with Buganda, Toro’s alliance was unreliable and Busongora expelled ganda armies. Mutesa also lost soldiers in aiding Karagwe's king Rumanika in quelling a rebellion. A massive naval campaign with nearly 10,000 soldiers on 300 war\-canoes was launched against the islands of Buvuma in 1875/7 ended with a pyrrhic victory for Buganda, which suffered several causalities but managed to reduce the island chiefdom to tributary status. In the late 1870s, Buganda mounted a major expedition south against the Nyiginya kingdom of Rwanda but the overextended armies were defeated. --- --- While Mutesa had sucessfully played off the foreign influences to Buganda's advantage the situation became more volatile with the arrival of the Anglican missionaries in 1877, who were quickly followed by the French Catholics in 1879, much to the dismay of the former. As all sects were adopted by different elites and commoners across Buganda, the structures of the kingdom's institutions were complicated by the presence of competing groups. Near the end of his reign , Mutesa increasingly relied on the royal women who played a crucial role at court especially the queen\-mother whose power in the land at least equal to her son. Mutesa was suceeded by Mwanga in 1884, who inaugurated a less austere form of government than his predecessors in response to the growing internal and foreign threats which the kingdom faced. Internal campaigning and plundering increasingly took the place of legitimate collection of tribute, as Mwanga undertook expeditions within the kingdom intended to arbitrarily seize tribute. Besides his shifting policies with regards to the presence of Christian factions at the court, the king begun an ambitious project of creating a royal lake, which required significantly more covee labour than was traditionally accepted. A combination of military losses in Bunyoro in 1887, religious factionalism, and excessive taxation that were borne by both elites and commoners ultimately ended with the brief overthrow of Mwanga in 1888\. The years 1888–93 were a tumultuous period in the history of Buganda during which two kings briefly suceeded Mwanga in 1889 before he returned to the throne in the same year. The beleaguered king had pragmatically chosen to rely on British support represented by Lord Lugard, agreeing to the former’s suzeranity over Buganda. While the Anglo\-Buganda alliance proved sucessful in reversing Bunyoro’s recent gains against Buganda, the political\-religious factionalism back home had grown worse over the early 1890s as the kingdom descended into civil war. Despite the raging conflicts, the capital remained the locus of power, and was described by a British officer as a center of prosperity and industry numbering about 70,000 inhabitants. In 1894, the British forced Mwanga to accept a much reduced status of protectorate, which he lacked the capacity to object to given the ruinous internecine conflicts at the court. By 1897 however, Mwanga ‘rebelled’ against the British and begun a lengthy anti\-colonial war in alliance with Bunyoro that ended with his defeat and exile in 1899\. In the following year, Buganda formally lost its autonomy, ending the kingdom’s four\-century long history. --- In the 18th century, a secret society in the Luba kingdom invented the Lukasa memory board, a sophisticated mnemonic device that encoded and transmitted the history of the Luba. read more about this fascinating device on Patreon: --- support my writing directly via Paypal Map by by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 54\-70\) The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 88\-94, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 64\-65, 166\-168 Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 27\-29, 64, 41 The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 100\-101 The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 111\-112 Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 193\-196 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 31,79, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 29, 55\-56\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 80 Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 159\-163, 199\-200, 204\-206 Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 172\-176 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 186\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 72\-74, 76\-77, 187, The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 156 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 188\-189\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 191\-193\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 196\-197\) Fabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890\-1902 by Anthony Low pg 33\-37 Sources of the African Past By David Robinson pg 80\-85 The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History by Jean\-Pierre Chrétien pg 166\-167\-169 Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 63\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 206\-207, 215\-217\) Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 62\-64\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 99\-102\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 103\-110\) Through the dark continent by H.M.Stanely pg 383 Bark\-cloth of the Baganda people of Southern Uganda by VM Nakazibwe 62\-134 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 83\-85\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 59\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 141\-143\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg pg 30, 52, 117, 139\-140\) Lake Regions of Central Africa by Richard Francis Burton pg 195\-196\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 231\-236\) The Cambridge history of Africa Vol. 5 pg 283 ·May 15, 2022 Unesco general history of Africa Vol 5 pg 370\-371 The Mission of Apolo Kivebulaya by Emma Wild\-Wood pg 64\-65, Fabrication of Empire by Anthony Low pg 52 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 198\-201, 274\) Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty by Christopher Wrigley pg 67 Fabrication of Empire by Anthony Low pg 52\-53, 65\-66 Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 111\-112\) Political Power in Pre\-Colonial Buganda by Richard Reid pg 38\) Fabrication of Empire by Anthony Low pg 124, 197\-210 12 )

A history of Zanzibar before the Omanis (600\-1873\) in A history of Zanzibar before the Omanis (600\-1873\) Journal of African cities chapter 7 )For most of the 19th century, the western Indian ocean was controlled by a vast commercial empire whose capital was on the island of Zanzibar. The history of Zanzibar is often introduced with the shifting of the Omani capital from Muscat to Stone\-town during the 1840s, disregarding most of its earlier history save for a brief focus on the Zanj revolt. Zanzibar was for centuries home to some of Africa's most dynamic urban societies, long before it became the commercial emporium of the 19th century. With over a dozen historical cities and towns, the island played a central role in the political history of east Africa —from sending envoys as far as China, to influencing the activities of foreign powers on the Swahili coast. This article explores the history of Zanzibar, beginning with the island's settlement during late antiquity to the formal end of local autonomy in 1873\. Map of the east African coast showing the location of Zanzibar island --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Zanzibar in the 1st Millennium: From Unguja to China The island of Zanzibar (Unguja) is the largest in the Zanzibar Archipelago, a group of islands that includes Pemba, Mafia and several dozen smaller islands. Zanzibar has a long but fragmentary record of human settlement going back 20,000 years, as shown by recent excavations at Kuumbi Cave. But it wasn’t until the turn of the common era that permanent settlements were established by sections of agro pastoral populations that were part of the wider expansion of Bantu\-speakers. According to the Perilus, a 1st\-century text on the Indian ocean world, the local populations of the east African island of Menouthias (identified as Pemba, Zanzibar or Mafia) used sewn watercraft as well as dugout canoes to travel along the coast, and fished using basket traps. There's unfortunately little archeological evidence for such communities on Zanzibar itself during the 1st century, as occupation is only firmly dated to around the 6th century. Between the late 5th and early 6th century, Zanzibar, like most of the East African coast, was home to communities of ironworking agriculturalists speaking Swahili and other Northeast\-Coast Bantu languages. Two early sites at Fukuchani and Unguja Ukuu represent the earliest evidence for complex settlement on Zanzibar island. The discovery of imported roman wares and south\-asian glass indicates that the island’s population participated in long distance trade with the Indian ocean world, albeit on a modest level . Like most of the early Swahili settlements during the mid\-1st millennium, the communities at Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani constituted small villages of daub houses whose occupants used local pottery (Tana and Kwale wares). Subsistence was based on agriculture (sorghum and finger millet), fishing and a few domesticates. Craft activities included shell bead\-making and iron\-working, as well as reworking of glass. By the late 1st millennium, the Zanzibar sites of Unguja Ukuu, Fukuchani, Mkokotoni, Fumba and Kizimkazi were able to exploit their position to become trade entrepôts. The town of Unguja Ukuu, which covered over 16ha in the 9th century, became the largest settlement on Zanzibar island during this period, and one of the largest along the Swahili coast. The rapid growth of Unguja Ukuu can be mapped through massive quantities of imported material derived from trade. While Ugunja's material culture remained predominantly local in origin, significant amounts of imported wares (about 9%) appear in Unguja's assemblages beginning in the 6th century, that include Indian and Persian wares, as well as Tang\-dynasty stoneware from China, Byzantine glass vessels and glass beads from south Asia. The imports at Unguja would have been derived from its external trade with the African mainland and Indian ocean world, which is also evidenced by its local population's gradual adoption of Islam and their construction of a small mosque around 900\. Additionally, copper and silver coins were minted locally by two named rulers during the 11th century, and the foreign coins from the Abbasids and Song\-dynasty China were used. A similar but better\-preserved mosque was built at Kizimkazi around 1107\. it features early Swahili construction styles where rectilinear timber mosques with rectangular prayer halls were translated into coral\-stone structures. Unguja is one of the earliest Swahili towns mentioned in external accounts, besides its identification as Lunjuya by al\-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868\), its also mentioned in the Arabic Book of Curiosities ca.1020 which contains a map showing the coasts of the Indian Ocean from China to eastern Africa where its included as ‘Unjuwa’ alongside ‘Qanbalu’ (Pemba island). The elites of Unguja were also involved in long distance maritime travel. During Song dynasty china, the african envoy named Zengjiani who came from Zanzibar (rendered Cengtan in Chinese \= Zangistân) and reached Guangzhou in 1071 and 1083, is likely to have come from Unguja. Zengjiani gave a detailed description of his home country including his ruler's dynasty that had been in power for 5 centuries, and the use of copper coins for trade. Despite probably being embellished, this envoy's story indicates that his ruler's dynasty was about as old as Ugunja and may reflect the town's possibly hegemonic relationship with neighboring settlements. Historically, most Swahili city\-states developed as confederations which included a major cultural and trading center like Unguja, surrounded by various less consequential settlements located at a distance on the mainland or on other parts of the island. [![Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar: An Archaeological Study of Early Urbanism by Abdurahman Juma, pg 140]( "Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar: An Archaeological Study of Early Urbanism by Abdurahman Juma, pg 140")]( Ukuu, Local silver coins (1\-11\) and one Chinese bronze coin (11\) Among the local coins are those belonging to an Unguja ruler named Muhammad bn Is\-haq (1\-3\) dated to the 11th century, one belonging to an Unguja ruler named Bahram bn Ali (5\) also dated to the 11th century, and uninscribed local pieces (5\-10\) also dated to the same period, the chinese coin is from the mid\-12th century. --- Unguja Ukuu, the Indian ocean world and the Zanj episode Given the Zanzibar island's central location between the early mainland Swahili settlements such as Kunduchi and Kaole, and the offshore islands such as Pemba, the town of Unguja would have controlled some of the segmented trade between the mainland, the coast and the Indian ocean world. Most of this trade would have been locally confined given the paucity of imported material and the modest size of the settlements, but some would have involved exports. Exported products likely included typical products attested in later accounts such as ivory, mangrove, iron, and possibly captives, although no contemporary account mentions these coming from Zanzibar. Despite Unguja's relatively small size and its modest external trade, the town's importance had been exaggerated by some medievalists as the possible origin of the so\-called Zanj slaves who led a revolt in Abassid Iraq from 869 and 883\. This has however been challenged in recent scholarship, showing that actual Zanj slaves were a minority in the revolt. Not only because the very ambiguous ethnonym of 'Zanj' was applied to a wide variety of people from africa who were in Iraq, but also because most rebel leaders of the Zanj revolt were free and their forces included many non\-africans. Additionally, there's also little mention of slave trade from the Swahili coast before 950 in accounts written during the period just after the revolt (the account of al\-Masudi, who visited Pemba in 916, only mentions ivory trade). There's also little mention of slave trade in the period between 960 and the Portuguese arrival of 1499; (the secondary account of Ibn Shahriyar in 945 which does mention an incident of slave capture was copied by later scholars, but Ibn Batutta's first hand account in the 1330s makes no mention of the trade.) Furthermore, the moderate volumes from the east African coast between the 15th and 18th century were derived from secondary trade in Madagascar prior to the trade's expansion in the 19th century. The Swahili cities were too military weak to obtain captives from war, and their external trade was too dependent on transshipment from other ports (their "exports" were mostly re\-exports). --- Zanzibar between the 12th and 15th century: The rise of Tumbatu Unguja Ukuu gradually declined after 1100 when its last ruler is attested. During this period, the island of Zanzibar appears to have gone through a period of settlement reorganization coinciding with the expansion of other Swahili city\-states along the coast, and the emergence of new settlements on Zanzibar. This includes the town of Tumbatu, which emerged on the small island of Tumbatu around 1100 and remained the largest on the Island until the 14th century, and other settlements, e.g at stone town. By the 13th century, Tumbatu was a relatively large city of large coral houses with associated kiosks and atleast three monumental mosques. The rulers at Tumbatu struck coins of silver and copper between the 12th and 14th century, which share stylistic similarities with those later attested at Kilwa. The mosque at Tumbatu followed the design established at Unguja and kizimkazi with a few additions including the use of floriate Kufic and a trefoil arch. The rise of Tumbatu benefited other towns such as Shangani and Fukuchani which all show significant settlement expansion during the 13th century. Tumbatu declined after 1350 following a sudden and violent abandonment with signs of burning and deliberate destruction of houses and its mosques, and its elites most likely moved to Kilwa. The famous globetrotter Ibn Battua also failed to mention Tumbatu (or even Zanzibar island) during his visit to the Swahili coast, in stark contrast to the city’s prominence one century prior. However, settlements on the island of Zanzibar itself would continue to flourish especially at Shangani and Fukuchani. The discovery of both local and foreign coins at both sites, as well as the continued importation of Islamic glazed wares and Chinese celadon, demonstrates the continuity of Zanzibar's commercial significance. --- --- Zanzibar from the 15th to the 18th century: The Portuguese era More settlements emerged on Zanzibar island at Uroa and Chwaka around the late 14th/early 15th century, and the ruined town of Unguja Ukuu was reoccupied prior to the Portuguese arrival in the 1480s. Like many of its Swahili peers, Zanzibar's encounter with the Portuguese was initially antagonistic. Unguja was sacked by the Portuguese in 1499, with the reported deaths of several hundred and the capture of 4 local ships from its harbour. And in 1503 20 Swahili vessels loaded with food (cereal) were captured by the Portuguese off the coast of Zanzibar. However, some of the states on Zanzibar (presumably those on the western coast of the island) whose political interests were constrained by Mombasa's hegemony would ally with the Portuguese against their old foe. In 1523, emissaries from Zanzibar requested and obtained Portuguese military assistance in re\-taking the Quirimbas Islands (in northern Mozambique) that were under Mombasa's suzerainty. By 1528, Zanzibar's elites welcomed Portuguese fleet and offered it provisions in its fight against Mombasa. And by 1571, a ‘king’ from Zanzibar also obtained Portuguese military assistance in putting down a rebellious mainland town. Like other Swahili city\-states, the political system on Zanzibar island would have been directed by an assembly of representatives of patrician lineage groups, and an elected head of government. The titles of "King" and "Queen" used in Portuguese accounts for the leading elites of Zanzibar were therefore not accurate descriptors of their political power. The pacification of Mombasa in 1589 was followed by the establishment of a Portuguese colonial administration along the Swahili coast that lasted until 1698, within which Zanzibar was included. The colonial authority was represented by the ‘Fort Jesus' at Mombasa, a few garrisons at Malindi, and a few factors in various cities. It was relatively weak, the token annual tribute was rarely submitted, and rebellions marked most of its history. However, the pre\-existing exchanges on Zanzibar \-\- especially its Ivory, cloth and timber trade\-\- were further expanded by the presence of Portuguese traders. The western towns of Shangani and Forodhani emerged around the 16th century, and became the nucleus of Mji Mkongwe (Old Town), later known as 'stone town' . The residence of a Portuguese factor was built near Forodhani in 1528, rebuilt in 1571, and was noted there by an English vessel in 1591\. An Augustinian mission church was also built around 1612 supported by a small Portuguese community. But the northern and southern parts of the Island appear to have remained out of reach for the weak colonial administration at stone\-town. The settlements of Fukuchani and Mvuleni which are dated to the 16th century feature large fortified houses of local construction that were initially thought to be linked to Portuguese agricultural activities. But given the complete absence of the sites in Portuguese accounts and their lack of any Portuguese material, both settlements are largely seen as home to local communities mostly independent of Portuguese control. The growing resistance against the Portuguese presence especially by the northern Swahili city of Pate led to its elite to invite the Alawi family of Hadrami sharifs. Swahili patricians seeking to elevate the prestige of their lineages entered into matrimonial alliances with some of the Alawis, creating new dynastic clans.In stone\-town, the dynastic Mwinyi Mkuu lineage entered matrimonial alliances with the Sayyid Alawi with Hadrami and Pate origins. These Zanzibari elites therefore adopted the nisba of Alawi, but the Alawi themselves had little political influence, as shown by the continued presence of women sovereigns in Zanzibar. By 1650 stone\-town’s queen Mwana Mwema who’d been allied with the Portuguese joined other Swahili elites in rebellion by forming alliances with the Ya'rubid dynasty of Oman. In 1651, Mwana Mwema invited a Ya'rubid fleet which killed and captured 50\-60 Portuguese resident on the island, and she called for further reinforcements by sending two of her ships. However, the reinforcements didn’t arrive, and the elites of Kaole —stone\-town's rival city on the mainland— would ally with the Portuguese to force the Queen out of Zanzibar by 1652\. By the late 1690s, there were further rebellions led by Mombasa and Pate which invited the Ya'rubids to oust the Portuguese, but stone\-town's elites didn't feature in this revolt. Stone\-town’s queen Fatuma Binti Hasan was still a Portuguese ally by the time of the Ya'rubid siege of fort Jesus in 1696\-1698, and her residence was located next to the church at Forodhani. Stone\-town and other allied Swahili cities sent provisions to the besieged Portuguese and allied forces at Fort Jesus, which invited retaliation from the Ya'rubids and allied cities. After expelling the Portuguese, the Ya'rubids imposed their authority on most of the Swahili coast by 1699 by placing armed garrisons in several forts, and deposing non\-allied local elites like Fatuma to Oman. In stone\-town, the church at Forodhani was converted into a small fortress by 1700. But Yaʿrubid control of the Swahili coast was lost during the Omani civil war from 1719 to 1744, during which time stone\-town was ruled by Fatuma's son Hasan. This war was felt in stone\-town in 1726, when a (Mazrui) Omani faction based in Mombasa attacked a rival faction in stone\-town, resulting in a five\-month siege of the Old Fort. The defenders left stone\-town, and the Portuguese briefly used this conflict to reassert their control over Mombasa and stone\-town from 1728 and 1729 but were later driven out. Stone\-town reverted to the authority of the so\-called Mwinyi Mkuu dynasty of local elites. Other towns on the island such as Kizimkazi continued to flourish under local control during the mid to late 18th century. According to traditions, the population of southern Zanzibar extending from Stone\-town to Kizimkazi were called the maKunduchi (kae) while those in the northern section of the island were called the waTumbatu. Kizimikazi's mosque was expanded around the year 1770 and this construction is attributed to a local ruler named Bakari who controlled the southern most section of the island. --- Zanzibar from 1753\-1873: From local autonomy to Oman control. Zanzibar's polities remained autonomous for most of the 18th century despite attracting foreign interest. In 1744, political power in Oman shifted to the Bu’saidi dynasty, who for most of the 18th century, failed to restore any of the Yaʿrubid alliances and possessions on the Swahili coast, except at stone\-town. The Mwinyi Mkuu of stone\-town sought out the protection of the Bu'saidi as a bulwark against Mazrui expansion, and allowed a governor to be installed in the old fort in 1746\. The Mazrui would later besiege stone\-town in 1753 but withdrew after infighting. Despite the alliance between stone\-town's elites and the Busaidi, the latter's control was constrained by internal struggles in Oman and only one brief visit to stone\-town was undertaken in 1784 by the then prince Sultan bin Ahmad. Sultan bin Ahmad later ascended to the Oman throne at Muscat in 1792 but died in 1804 and was succeeded by his son Seyyid Said. Events following the victory of Lamu against Mombasa and Pate around 1813, compelled the Lamu elites to invite Seyyid's forces and stave off a planned reprisal from Mombasa. Seyyid forged more alliances along the coast, garrisoned his soldiers in forts and increasing his authority in stone town. In 1828 Said bin Sultan made the first visit by a reigning Busaid sultan to the Swahili coast, shortly after commissioning the construction of his palace at Mtoni. His visits to Zanzibar became increasingly frequent, and by 1840 stone\-town had become his main residence. Contrary to earlier scholarship, the shift from Muscat to stone\-town was largely because Seyyid's authority was challenged in Oman, while stone\-town offered a relatively secure location for his political and commercial interests. Seyyid's control of stone\-town was largely nominal as it was in Lamu, Pate and Mombasa. Effective control amounted to nothing more than a nominal allegiance by the local elites (like in Tumbatu and stone\-town) who retained near autonomy, they occasionally shared authority with an appointed 'governor' and customs officer assisted by a garrison of soldiers. The Mwinyi Mkuus ruled from their capital at Mbweni during the reign of Seyyid (1840\-1856\) and his successor Majid (1856\-1870\). The most notable among whom was Muhammad bin Ahmed bin Hassan Alawi also known as King Muhamadi (1845\-1865\), he moved his capital from Mbweni to Dunga where he built his palace in 1856\. He held near complete political power until his death in 1865, and was succeeded by his son Ahmed bin Muhammad. The last Mwinyi Mkuu Ahmed died in 1873, and the reigning Sultan Barghash (r. 1870\-1888\) refused to install another Mwinyi Mkuu, formally marking the end of Stone\-town’s autonomy. The gradual expansion of Sultan Barghash's authority followed the abolition of the preexisting administration, and the island was governed directly by himself shortly before most of his domains were in turn taken over by the Germans and the British in 1885. --- Zanzibar was one of several cosmopolitan African states whose envoys traveled more than 7,000 kilometers to initiate contacts with China, Read more about this fascinating history here: --- --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeMap by Ania Kotarba\-Morley Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa, M Prendergast et al The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 107, 138\) The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society pg 50\-51 The Swahili and the Mediterranean worlds by A. Juma pg 148\-153 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 142, 109, 241\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 143, 170\-174\) Unguja Ukwu on Zanzibar by A. Juma pg 19\-20, 62, 73, 137,\-143 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 241, 489\-490\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 170\) Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture by by J. de V. Allen pg 186, 146, The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 372\) Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture \& the Shungwaya Phenomenon By James De Vere Allen pg 146, 186\-188 The Battle of Shela by RL Pouwels pg 381\) Unguja Ukwu on Zanzibar by A. Juma pg 140 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 143\-144, 241\) East Africa in the Early Indian Ocean World Slave Trade by G. Campbell pg 275\-281, The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered by G. H. Talhami (A. Popovic’s critique of Talhami relies solely on medieval texts to estimate the first coastal settlements and their links to the Zanj, this is taken on by M. Horton but the evidence on the ground is lacking as G. Campell argues) Estimates for the population of rebelling slaves in 800\-870 revolt would have required a volume of trade just as high as in the 19th century when the trade was efficiently organized, making them even more unlikely, see “Early exchanges between Africa and the Indian ocean world by G Campbell pg 292\-294, The one contemporary source was al\-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868\), himself a grandson of an ex\-slave, wrote that captives came from “forests and valleys of Qanbuluh” \[Pemba] and they are not genuine/native Zanj but were “our menials, our lower orders” while the native Zanj “are in both Qambalu and Lunjuya \[Unguja—Zanzibar]”, taken from “Early exchanges between Africa and the Indian ocean world by G Campbell pg 290 Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 78 Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast 1500–1750 by Thomas Vernet Unguja Ukwu on Zanzibar by A. Juma pg 84, 154 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 242\) Excavations at the Old Fort of Stone Town, Zanzibar by Timothy power and Mark Horton pg 278\) The Indian Ocean and Swahili Coast coins by John Perkins The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 242, 493\) A Thousand Years of East Africa by JEG Sutton’ The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 242 The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 243\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 69\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 83\-84, 88\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 119\-128, 88\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 243, Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 87, Excavations at the Old Fort of Stone Town, Zanzibar by Timothy power and Mark Horton pg 281, Swahili Culture Knappert pg 144\) ) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 243\) Horn and Crescent by Randall Pouwels pg 39\-43\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 165\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 301\-302, Excavations at the Old Fort of Stone Town, Zanzibar by Timothy power and Mark Horton pg 281\) Les cités \- États swahili de l'archipel de Lamu by Thomas Vernet pg 373, The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 243\) Zanzibar Stone Town: An Architectural Exploration by A. Sheriff pg 8, Excavations at the Old Fort of Stone Town, Zanzibar by Timothy power and Mark Horton pg 284\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 531\) Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar By M. Reda Bhacker pg 80, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar by Abdul Sheriff pg 26\-27\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 295\) The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, pg 247, The African Archaeology Network by J Kinahan pg 110 Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar by Abdul Sheriff pg 20\-21\) Excavations at the Old Fort of Stone Town, Zanzibar by Timothy power and Mark Horton pg 285, The Land of Zinj By C.H. Stigland pg 24\) The Battle of Shela by RL Pouwels, Horn and Crescent by Randall Pouwels pg 99\) Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar By M. Reda Bhacker pg 88\-95, 99\-100\) Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar By M. Reda Bhacker pg 97\) Seyyid Said Bin Sultan by Abdallah Salih Farsy pg 34\-35 Seyyid Said Bin Sultan by Abdallah Salih Farsy pg 35 Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere by Sandy Prita Meier 103\-105 20 )

A complete history of Jenne: 250BC\-1893AD \- by isaac Samuel in A complete history of Jenne: 250BC\-1893AD Journal of African cities chapter 6 )Nested along the banks of the Bani river within the fertile floodplains of central Mali, the city of Jenne has for centuries been at the heart of west Africa's political and cultural landscape. Enframed within towering earthen walls was a cosmopolitan urban settlement intersected by wide allies that were flanked by terraced mansions whose entrances were graced by majestic baobabs. Inside this city, scholars, merchants and craftsmen mingled in a flourishing community that was subsumed by the expansionist vast empires of west Africa. Integrated within the vast social landscape, the city of Jenne would have a profound influence on west Africa's cultural history. Jenne’s commercial significance, its craftsmen's architectural styles and its scholars' literary production would leave a remarkable legacy in African history. This article outlines the complete history of Jenne; including a summary of the city's political history, its scholarly traditions and its architectural styles. Map of west Africa’s empires showing the location of Jenne --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Origins of Jenne: the urban settlement at jenne\-jeno (250BC\-1400AD) The city of Jenne is built on a large river island in the Bani tributary of the Niger river. The original settlement of Jenne was established at the neolithic site of jenne jeno about 2\-3km away, which was occupied from the 3rd century BC to the 15th century AD. Jenne\-jeno has revealed the site of a complex society that developed into a considerable regional center, and is one of west Africa’s oldest urban settlements. Surrounded by over 69 satellite towns, the population of the whole exceeded 42,000 in the mid\-1st millennium. The settlement at Jenne\-jeno, and its urban cluster was part of a broader Neolithic tradition that arose in the region of Mema near Mali’s border with Mauritania, which included the ancient settlement of Dia and several small nucleated settlements of related dates in the 1st millennium BC. The Mema tradition was itself linked to the ancient Neolithic sites of Dhar Tichitt in southern Mauritania where arose a vast number of proto\-urban sites during the 3rd millennium BC. By 800 Jenne\-jeno had developed into as a full and heterogeneous agglomeration inhabited by a population of various specialists, with a surrounding wall 2 kilometers in circumference surrounded by a sprawling urban cluster of satellite settlements. The present settlement at Jenne was itself established during the last phase of jenne\-jeno's occupation around the 12th\-13th century, and its oldest settlement has recently been dated to between 1297–1409\. --- The history of Jenne under the empires of Mali and Songhai (13th\-16th century) From the 9th\-13th century, the hinterland of Jenne fell under the political control of the empires of Ghana and Mali, the latter of which was the first to exercise any real control over the city. Jenne's status under Mali was rather ambiguous. Its immediate hinterland which included the provinces of; Bindugu (along the Bani river between Jenne and Segu); as well as Kala and Sibiridugu (both between the Bani and Niger rivers) were under Malian control by the 13th century. A 14th century account about the Mali emperor Mansa Musa and the 17th century Timbuktu chronicle; tarikh al fattash, both mention that the Mali empire conquered hundreds to cities and towns, “each with its surrounding district with villages and estates”. With Jenne being one of the cities under Mali. However, the city may have maintained a significant degree of autonomy throughout the entire period of Mali empire. According to the 17th century chronicle; Tarikh al\-Sudan "At the height of their power the Malians sought to subject the people of Jenne, but the latter refused to submit. The Malians made numerous expeditions against them, and many terrible, hard\-fought encounters took place\-a total of some ninety\-nine, in each of which the people of Jenne were victorious." While embellished, this story indicates that Jenne didn't willingly submit to Mali's rule if it ever did. The city first appears in external accounts in a description of west Africa by the Genoese traveler Antonio Malfante in 1447 while he was in the southern Sahara region. He mentions the cities of the middle Niger basin then under the (brief) control of the Tuaregs, among which was Jenne (“Geni”). But by the time of the Portuguese account of Alvise Cadamosto who was on the west african coast by 1456, Jenne's ruler was reportedly at war with Sulaymān Dāma, the first Songhai ruler. Sunni Ali, the successor of Sulaymān, besieged Jenne in between the years 1470\-1473 using a flotilla of 400 boats to surround it with his armies. Daily pitched battles ensued for the next 6 months until the city eventually capitulated, allowing Sunni Ali to establish his residence east of the Great Mosque. This siege must have represented a significant political event, since the Tarik al\-sudan noted that "with the exception of Sunni "Ali, no ruler had ever defeated the people of Jenne since the town was founded". Jenne's independence ended with this conquest as successive empires vied for its control. Fatefully, this same conquer of Jenne is reported to have died during another siege of Jenne around 1487\-8 and his death would initiate a series of events that led to the coup of Askiya Muḥammad. The city would then remain under the Songhai administration through the dual administrative offices of the Jenne\-koi (traditional ruler) and Jenne\-mondio (governor). The Jenne\-koi retained some form of symbolic importance and was reportedly exempt from the practice of pouring sand on the head when approaching the Askiya, as a sign of submission, but even this symbolic autonomy could only go so far, since the princes of Jenne\-koi were sent to Gao to be tutored by the Songhai rulers. However, Jenne's neighboring provinces of Kala and Bindugu remained independent, wedged between the expansionist Songhay and the declining Mali empire. Jenne became more prosperous during the Songhai era. According to the tarikh al\-sudan, most of jenne's wealth was derived from its connection to the 'gold mine' of Begho, and it was the gold dust from the latter that Jenne exported through Timbuktu to the Mediterranean. Leo Africanus’ account written in 1550, mentions that the city's merchants made “considerable profit from the trade in cotton cloth which they carry on with the Barbary merchants”. its residents "are very well dressed. They wear a large swathe of cotton, black or blue, with which they cover even the head, though the priests and doctors wear a white one" and use “bald gold coins” as currency. Writing in 1506\-1508 based on secondary accounts, Duarte Pereira describes "the city of Jany, inhabited by negroes and surrounded by a stone wall, where there is great wealth of gold; tin and copper are greatly prized there, likewise red and blue cloths and salt, all except the cloth being sold by weight.. The commerce of this land is very great; every year a million gold ducats go from this country to Tunis, Tripoli of Soria \ --- The scholars of Jenne. Djenne was home to one of the earliest scholarly communities in west Africa. According to the tarikh\-al sudan, Jenne's king Kunburu (ca. 1250\) assembled 4,200 scholars under his domain, made three grants regarding the city's status as a place for refugee, scholarship and trade, and pulled down his palace to build the now\-famous congressional mosque. The city was within the nucleus of the Wangara diaspora prior to their dispersion which spread their Suwarian philosophy and building style across parts of west Africa. The Wangara/Dyula were an important class of Soninke\-speaking merchant\-scholars associated with the ancient urban settlements of the middle Niger region (eg Dia and Kabara), that carried out gold trade with north Africa and established scholarly communities across vast swathes of west Africa from the Senegambia to the Hausalands and the Volta basin. Most of the scholars of Jenne were derived from this group as shown by their nisbas; "al\-Wangari", "Diakhate", "al\-Kabari", and their soninke/Mande clan names etc. The Wangara scholars were also important in the northern scholarly center of Timbuktu as well. Among the prominent scholars in Jenne during the Songhai era was al\-faqīh Muḥammad Sānū al\-Wangarī who was originally born in the town of Bitu (Begho in today's northern Ghana). Al\-Wangarī’s life spanned the period before Sunni ‘Alī’s takeover of Jenne to that of Askiya Muḥammad, who appointed him qāḍī of Jenne after the recommendation of Maḥmūd Aqīt of Timbuktu's Sankore mosque.His appointment in the novel office of qāḍī at Jenne represented a maturation of Islamic scholarship under state patronage and his burial site in the congregational mosque’s courtyard became a site of veneration. He would be succeeded in the office of qadi at Jenne by another Wangara scholar named al\-Abbas Kibi, who died in 1552 and was buried next to the Jenne mosque. Another leading scholar of Jenne was Maḥmūd Baghayughu, who had a rather adversarial relationship with the Songhai emperor Askiya Isḥāq Bēr. When the Askiya requested that the residents of Jenne name the person who had been oppressing them so he may be punished, Baghayughu said it was the Askiya himself and his overreaching laws —in a bold reproach of his ruler. But shortly after the passing of al\-Abbas Kibi (the previous qadi of Jenne), the Askiya coolly repaid Baghayughu's insolence by appointing him as qadi, the overwhelming irony of his unfortunately compromising position drove Baghayughu to his deathbed. Jenne’s scholarly tradition continued long after Songhai’s collapse, as the city became a cosmopolitan center of education. Jenne’s learning system was personalized as in most of west Africa, with day\-to\-day teaching occurring scholar's houses using their own private libraries, while the mosques served as the locus for teaching classes on an adhoc basis. However, the theocratic rulers of Masina would establish a institutionalized public school system in the early 19th century. A recent digitization project catalogued about half of the 4,000 manuscripts they found dating back to 1394\. but , these constituted only a small fraction of the total number of manuscripts. Many were composed and copied in Jenne by local scholars in various languages including Arabic, Songhai, Bozo, Fulfulde and Bamabara, These manuscripts include copies of west African classics such as the the tarikh al\-sudan, but also various works on theology, poetry, history and astronomy. --- Jenne through the Moroccan era and the Timbuktu Pashalik (1591\-1618\-1767\) There was a general state of insecurity after the collapse of Songhai to the Saadian army in March 1591 and Jenne was caught in the maelstrom. The tarikh al\-sudan mentions that the "the land of Jenne was most brutally ravaged, north, south, east, and west, by the Bambara". Jenne's governor sent his oath of allegiance to the Saadian representative (Pasha) in Timbuktu in December 1591\. The Timbuktu pasha then sent 17 musketeers (Arma) to install a new Jenne\-koi after the previous one had passed away. After putting down a brief rebellion in Jenne led by a former Songhai officer, a garrison of 40 musketeers under the authority of Ali al\-Ajam as the first Arma governor of Jenne, alongside the two pre\-existing offices. Saadian control of Jenne remained weak for most of the time, and the last Pasha was appointed in 1618, after which the rump state based at Timbuktu was largely independent of direct Moroccan control. Jenne's immediate hinterland remained largely independent, especially the town of Kala which had several chiefs including Sha Makay, who had briefly submitted to the Arma's authority but later renounced his submission almost immediately after assessing their strength and invaded Jenne. The Arma governor of Jenne sent their forces to attack Kala but were defeated and Makay continued launching attacks against Jenne with his forces, among whom were 'non\-Muslim' soldiers. (most likely Bambara). Jenne also remained a target of the Mali's rulers. In a major attempt at retaking lost territory, the ruler of Mali; Mahmud invaded Jenne in 1599 with a coalition that included the ruler of Masina; Hammad Amina. But Mali's forces were driven back by a coalition of forces led by the Arma and the Jenne\-koi as well as a ruler of Kala, the last of whom spared the Mali ruler’s life. Shortly after this battle, Hammad Amina of Masina would later raise an army that included Bambara forces and decisively defeat the Arma and their Jenne allies at the battle of Tiya in the same year. Describing contemporary circumstances in the 1650s, the tarikh al\-sudan writes that "The Sultan of Jenne has twelve army commanders in the west, in the land of Sana. Their task is to be on the alert for expeditions sent by the Malli\-koi (ruler of Mali), and to engage his army in such cases, without first seeking the sultan's authority." Besides the continued threat from Mali, Jenne itself rebelled several times between 1604 and 1617, often with the support of the deposed Askiyas, who were trying to re\-take the former Songhai territories from their new base at Dendi (along the Benin/Niger border). By 1632, the local Arma garrison was itself rebelling against their overlords in Timbuktu and they were soon joined by the Jenne elite in several successive rebellions in 1643 and 1653 before each Arma garrison (at Jenne and Gao) became effectively independent . More rebellions by the Arma of Jenne against the Pashas at Timbuktu were recorded in 1713, 1732 and 1748, during which time, Jenne was gradually falling under the political sphere of the growing Bambara empire of Segu and the Masina kingdom. The Bambara in the regions of Kala and Bindugu had always been a significant military threat in Djenne's hinterland during the Songhai era when they had remained independent of the Askiyas. During his routine visits to Jenne in the year 1559, the Askiya Dawud chastised his Jenne\-mondio al\-Amin for not campaigning against the Bambara forces that had repeatedly invaded the city. After Songhai's collapse, they always formed part of the forces of the independent rulers in Jenne's hinterland the chiefs at Kala who launched attacks against the Arma garrisons in the city. It's within the regions of Kala and Bindugu that the nucleus of the Segu empire developed. The kingdom of Masina also featured in Jenne's political history during the Songhai era and in the succeeding Pashalik period. Armies from the Masina ruler Fondoko Bubu Maryam reportedly attacked the Askiya’s royal barge in 1582, just as it was leaving Jenne with a consignment destined for Gao, and this attack invited a devastating retaliation from Songhai's armies. In the period following Songhai’s collapse, the rulers of Masina and Segu would in 1739 form a coalition that defeated a planned invasion of Jenne by the king of Kong. While Jenne remained under the nominal suzerainty of the Timbuktu Pashalik until around 1767, it formally came under the rapidly expanding empire of Segu during the reign of N'golo Diara (1766\-1795\). The latter’s reign coincided with the decline of the Pashalik after a series of invasions by the Tuareg forces between the 1730s to 1770s. By the time of Diara’s successor king Mansong (d. 1808\), Jenne and Timbuktu were both under the control of the Segu empire. Describing this empire’s rapid expansion in 1796 the explorer Mungo Park observed that Jenne "was nominally a part of the king of Bambara's dominions" with a governor appointed by Mansong. The kingdom of Masina also paid "an annual tribute to the king of Bambara, for the lands which they occupy". And the same source in 1800 writes that; "The king of Bambara proceeded from Sego to Timbuktu with a numerous army, and took the government entirely into his own hands". --- Jenne through the empires of Segu (1767\-1821\), Masina (1821\-1861\) and Tukulor (1861\-1893\) Like its previous conquerors, Segu's control over Jenne was never completely firm. The city was sacked and occupied by the southern kingdom of Yatenga during the 1790s, and their forces only left after Segu's ruler, King Mansong, had paid a fine for having led an earlier attack on Yatenga. The city also exerted a significant influence on the court of Segu. The scholars of Jenne reportedly took N'golo Diara in as one of their students, and although he'd maintain his traditional beliefs once installed as king, traders and clerics from Jenne would acquire a special position in the Segu empire. They were often called to intervene as arbiters in political matters and their trading interests along the Niger river were protected by the State. The reciprocal relationship between the Jenne elite, the rulers of Segu, and the (subordinate) rulers of Masina, created an unfavorable social and political condition for the Masinanke clerical groups within Masina. By the late 1810s the rising discontent around this unfavorable situation led a large number of followers to rally around a scholar named Ahmadu Lobbo. These forces of Ahmad Lobbo would later invade Jenne after two successful sieges of the city in 1819 and 1821, and Lobbo would occupy it by 1830, after the rulers of Segu had retreated to their capital. Prior to his conquest of Jenne, Lobbo had composed a treatise titled Kitab al\-Idirar that admonished the scholars of Jenne for failing to act as good spiritual guides for the local community. In this text which constituted a political dialectic of legitimization and delegitimization, he directed his criticism against many of the city's institutions as well as the organization of the old mosque. Having earlier clashed with Jenne's elites on numerous occasions at the mosque for occupying seats reserved for the traditional rulers, his criticism was levied against these elites, against the burying of scholars near the mosque, against mosque's columns and against the mosque's height. Lobbo would then allow the old mosque to be destroyed by rain once in power, and it wouldn't be restored until 1907\. Like most of their predecessors, Masina's control over Jenne wasn't firm, neither was its control over the southern frontier where the Futanke leader Umar Tal emerged, nor over the northern frontier where the Kunta group remained a threat. Umar Tal founded his Tukulor empire in the 1840s along the same pretexts as Ahmad Lobbo, and eventually opposed the alliance between preexisting elites of Segu, and the now established Masina rulers who claimed to be theocratic governors.A series of wars were fought between the three forces but the Tukulor armies under Umar Tal often emerged victorious, from the conquest of Segu in 1860\-1 which became Umar Tal's new capital, followed by the surrender of Jenne and the conquest of Hamdullahi in 1862\. The fluid political landscape and warfare had further reduced the fortunes of Jenne in the 19th century, as its merchants moved to the emerging cities of Nyamina and Sinsani. But the city nevertheless retained some commercial significance by the time of Rene Caillie’s visit in 1829, who described it as "full of bustle and animation ; every day numerous caravans of merchants are arriving and departing with all kinds of useful productions", its fixed population of just under 10,000 resided in large two\-story houses. --- The architecture of Jenne The architectural tradition of Jenne begun at Jenne\-jeno where the signature cylindrical mud bricks first appear in the 8th century, followed not long after by rectilinear buildings with an upper story by the 11th century. Given the need for constant repairs and reconstructions, the oldest multi\-story structures in Jenne are difficult to determine, but recent archeological excavations in the old town have dated one to the late 18th century. The architectural style of Jenne is characterized by tall, multistory, terraced buildings, with massive pilasters flanking portals that rise vertically along the height of the façade. The tops of the buildings feature modeled earthen cones, which add to the overall monumentality, the building itself reflecting the owner's status and their ability to hire specialist masons. The largest buildings in Jenne were constructed by a specialist guild of masons which is still renowned throughout west Africa. These masons are hired widely for their skill in building mosques and palatial residences, with the occupation itself reportedly dating back to the eras of imperial Mali and Songhai. The Askiyas are said to have employed 500 masons from Jenne in the construction of their provincial capital at Tendirma, and the rulers of Segu employed masons from Jenne to construct their palaces (such as the one shown in the photo above). While the building’s construction plans are determined by the its functions, the exterior designs of the buildings often carry a more symbolic purpose. The basic design of traditional façade and portal of Jenne's houses and mosques consists of large buttresses (sarafa) on which were placed a component surmounted by conical pinnacles decorated with projecting beams (toron). The whole was modeled after the traditional 'ancestral shrines' and their phallic pillars seen among the Bozo. Jenne’s two main exterior designs; Façade Toucouleur (with a sheltered portal called gum hu) and Façade Marocaine (with an open portal) are based on recent traditions rather than on stylistic introductions of the Tukolor or Arma era, especially considering that the Façade Toucouleur is infact the older of the two; being popular until the 1910s. The mosque of Jenne is the most recognizable architectural monument built by the city’s masons guild. After a century of destruction, it was rebuilt by the masons in 1907 under the direction of their chief, Ismaila Traoré, and its architectural features reproduce many of those found on Jenné’s extant multi\-story houses from the 18th\-19th century. Its foreboding walls are buttressed by rhythmically spaced sarafar and pierced by hundreds of protruding torons, with three towers along the qibla wall containing a deep mihrāb niche. The emphasis on the height of the mihrab, the front of which used to contain the mausoleums of prominent scholars/saints, exemplifies Jenne's architectural and cultural syncretism and may explain why Jenne\-style mosques in west Africa pay special attention to the mihrab rather than the minaret. Jenne's masons also preserve aspects of the city's pre\-Islamic past, their profession being rooted in traditional cultural practices. Among their customs are syncretic rites which performed after construction inorder to protect the houses, which utilize both amulets and grains that are buried in the foundations.craftspeople like masons invoke powerful trade “secrets” (sirri) that blend Qur’anic knowledge (bey\-koray) with traditional knowledge (bey\-bibi), and many people don protective devices beneath clothing and wear blessed korbo rings on their fingers to defend against malevolent djinn. --- The decline of Jenne The Tukulor state's control over Jenne was as weak as its control over most of its provinces, especially following the death of Umar Tal and the resurgence of the Masinanke and Kunta attacks and their unsuccessful a 6\-month siege of jenne in 1866\. Jenne fell under the one half of the Tukulor empire led by Amadu Tal at his capital Segu, while the other half led by Tijani Tal was based in Bandiagara. During this time, the office of the Jenne ruler was occupied by Ismaïl Maïga (d. 1888\) whose family was previously chief of the Songhai quarter during the Masina era, he would be succeeded by his brother Hasey Ahmadou who would remain in power during the transition from the Tukulor to the French. In 1893, Jenne fell to the French forces of Archinard after three days of bombardment and vicious street fighting.Under their aegis, the bulk of Djenne's trade was transferred to the rising urban commune of Mopti, and Djenné’s prominence slowly waned, transforming a once\-thriving center into a marginal town, albeit one of important historical significance. --- Like many of the old cities of west Africa, Jenne owed much of its success to the Niger river which provided a navigable waterway where massive cargo barges moved people and their merchandise from as far as Guniea to the southern coast of Nigeria. read about the history of the world’s longest navigable river --- If like this article, or would like to contribute to my African history website project; please support my writing via Paypal --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeTaken from Alisa LaGamma "Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara Exchange and Urban Trajectories. Middle Niger and Middle Senegal by Susan Keech McIntosh pg 527\-536, Africa's Urban Past By R. J. A R. Rathbone pg 19\-26 Betwixt Tichitt and the IND: the pottery of the Faïta Facies, Tichitt Tradition by K.C. MacDonald African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa by Michael A. Gomez pg 17\-18\) Urbanisation and State Formation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond by D. Mattingly pg 533, Africa's Urban Past By R. J. A R. Rathbone pg 26\. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa by Michael A. Gomez pg 127, 137\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 16\) African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa by Michael A. Gomez pg 151\-153\). African dominion by Michael A. Gomez pg 187\-188, 205, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 20\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg xli,xlviii. African dominion by Michael A. Gomez pg 265\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 171\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 18\-19 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 277\-278\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 17, n2\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 18\-19, The History of the Great Mosques of Djenné by Jean\-Louis Bourgeois pg 54 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg xxviii\-xxix) African dominion by Michael A. Gomez pg 213\-214, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 24\-26\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 26\) African dominion by Michael A. Gomez pg 273\-275\) In the shadow of Timbuktu: the manuscripts of Djenné by Sophie Sarin pg 176 Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo by René Caillié pg 461 From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, 2015, pg 173\-188 The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 161, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 193, 207\-214\) Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century by Unesco pg 157 Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 231\-232\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 234\-236\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 20\) Muslim traders, Songhai warriors, and the Arma pg 76\-77, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 250\-256\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 162, sultan caliph pg 8\-9\.) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 149\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 171\-174\) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire by John Hunwick pg 158, The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 184\) Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century by Unesco pg 158 Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith by Mauro Nobili pg 128\) The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 177\-178\) Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves by Richard L. Roberts pg 42 The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 186\) Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith by Mauro Nobili pg 129\) Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith by Mauro Nobili pg 9\-11, 161, 140, The Bandiagara emirate by Joseph M. Bradshaw pg 42\) Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith by Mauro Nobili pg 137\-141\) The Bandiagara emirate by Joseph M. Bradshaw pg 37\-39, 47\-49,) Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves by Richard L. Roberts pg 83 Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo by René Caillié pg 459, 454\. Excavations at Jenné\-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana by S.Mcintosh pg 65\) Ancient Middle Niger by Roderick J. McIntosh pg 158, Tobacco pipes from excavations at the Museum site by S. Mcintosh pg 178\) Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa By James Morris, Suzanne Preston Blier 196, The Masons of Djenné by Trevor Hugh James Marchand pg 16\) Historic mosques in Sub saharan by Stéphane Pradines pg 101, Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa By James Morris, Suzanne Preston Blier pg 194\) Historic mosques in Sub saharan by Stéphane Pradines pg 101, The Masons of Djenné by Trevor Hugh James Marchand pg 88\) The History of the Great Mosques of Djenné by Jean\-Louis Bourgeois Religious architecture: anthropological perspectives by Oskar Verkaaik pg 124\-127 Historic mosques in Sub saharan by Stéphane Pradines pg 102 The Politics of heritage management in Mali by CL Joy pg 59\-60 Negotiating Licence and Limits by THJ Marchand pg 74\-75, Masons of djenne by THJ Marchand pg 219\) Masons of djenne by THJ Marchand pg 8, 90\-91, 152\-153, 168, 171, 288\-289, Negotiating Licence and Limits by THJ Marchand pg 78\-79\) Religious architecture: anthropological perspectives by Oskar Verkaaik pg 121 The Bandiagara emirate by Joseph M. Bradshaw pg 77, Djenné: d'hier à demain by J. Brunet\-Jailly pg 9\-41 Conflicts of Colonialism By Richard L. Roberts pg 110\) 13 )

The stone ruins of Bokoni: egalitarian systems and agricultural technology in pre\-colonial South Africa. (16th\-19th century) in The stone ruins of Bokoni: egalitarian systems and agricultural technology in pre\-colonial South Africa. (16th\-19th century) challenging conventional narratives on pre\-colonial Africa's social order and agricultural practices. )The ruins of Bokoni in South Africa are some of the most spectacular remains of pre\-colonial agricultural societies on the African continent. Extending over an area of 10,000 square kilometers are circular mazes of stone\-built homesteads and towns linked by walled roads that are interspersed among spreads of agricultural terraces traversing the escarpments of Mpumalanga. While this dramatic landscape has become a magnet for exotic pseudohistorical theories ranging from ancient aliens to foreign builders, Its construction and settlement by various local African groups has been known since the work of professional archeologists in the 1930s who dated its establishment to the late 16th/early 17th century. Bokoni’s relatively unique form of political organization and agricultural specialization greatly transformed conventional understanding of African history. This article explores the history of the Bokoni settlements over the past 400 years, including an overview of their political organization and intensive agricultural practices. Map showing the Location of the Bokoni area in Mpumalanga, South Africa --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- A brief history of Southern Africa until the early settlement at Bokoni in the 16th/17th century In the period preceding the establishment of Bokoni, the province of Mpumalanga (located in the north\-east of modern South Africa) was settled by various agro\-pastoral and foraging communities, the former of whom were part of the wider population drift of Bantu\-speaking groups that arrived in the region around the turn of the common era. These groups gradually established various polities in the region, and are credited with producing the Lydenburg terracotta heads that are dated to the 5th century, and were found in the area that would (much) later become the Bokoni heartland Larger, and more complex states emerged across the region of Mpumalanga by the late 16th to early 17th century around the time when Bokoni was flourishing, these included the neighboring states of Pedi and Ndunduza among others. Contrary to its more centralized neighbors, Bokoni's political structures were likely characterized by competing nodes of power in which political and ritual paramountcy was exercised by dominant lineages over diverse populations. And like the heterarchical forms of political organization recently suggested for the better known kingdoms based at Great Zimbabwe and Khami, there is little archeological evidence in the homestead complexes of Bokoni, for a sharp overarching hierarchy dividing elites and commoners. The Bokoni settlements weren't occupied simultaneously but in stages, with the southern sites constituting the earliest phases of settlement, which progressively moved northwards likely in response to external threats. The core settlement of Bokoni was occupied by heterogeneous groups of Sotho\-Tswana and Nguni\-speakers who were referred to as "Koni" (ie; ba\-Koni 'people of koni'); an exonymous term used by their neighbors (especially the baPedi) to describe the people who they found living in the escarpments when the baPedi arrived after the baKoni in 1650\. The term was later adopted by the inhabitants of Bokoni as a form of self\-identification, along with the development of the Sekoni language. (archeologists use the term Bokoni for the ruined settlements and baKoni/ Koni for the people who built them) The inhabitants of Bokoni were engaged in regional trade, and much of it was based on exchanging their surplus cereal and cattle products for iron goods and textiles in the regional trade networks, as well as ivory for the long\-distance trade terminating at Delagoa Bay. Despite Iron's widespread use in Bokoni for making weapons as well as domestic and agricultural tools, there is limited evidence of its production within the settlement, and its likely to have been obtained through trade with the Pedi kingdom and other neighboring groups. --- Description of the settlement at Bokoni: Homesteads, Roads and Terraces. The architectural constructions of Bokoni comprise three main elements; the homestead complexes, the terraced fields and the road networks. The largest settlements such as Komati Gorge, Moxomatsi and Khutwaneng (see map above) are considered towns/capitals and they're primarily comprised of aggregations of homesteads marked by intensive residential terracing and road networks. The general layout took on the form of a circular structures beginning with a central cattle pen that was accessed using passages, and was inturn surrounded by clusters of homes and granaries divided into different domestic compartments accessed through separate passages leading into outside roads, that were all enclosed within a wall, and together constituted a homestead complex. The largest single complexes extend up to 5 km, they contain domestic units that range from large enclosures and compounds with well\-developed roads and terraces to small enclosures of newly established homesteads. The stone\-walled roads of Bokoni were constructed between the homestead complexes to link other parts of the settlements, and they were also constructed in parallel lines down\-slope, to move people and their livestock through the agricultural terraces on the slopes of the hill to the grazing and watering areas in the the valley. The roads were built according to the contours of the hill slope rather than cutting through underlying rock to follow a defined trajectory, and they served a wider range of functions including the delineation of livestock roads through cultivated areas, and the separation of cultivation from grazing areas. Most of the homestead complexes are surrounded by walled terraces of agricultural land that extended for several kilometers on the slopes of the hills. The terracing walls rise to a height of 2 meters, are built with undressed stone they often consist of two outer layers constructed using large rocks, and an inner layer comprised of small coursing of flat slabs of slate placed on top of one another in a single Line, while others are filled with small rocks. Terracing as a form of intensive agriculture, was the most distinctive feature of Bokoni's agro\-pastoral economy. After selecting slopes with the most fertile soil, stone terraces were constructed in stages with rows of rocks set into the sloping ground until the accumulation of weight from rainwash and cultivation uphill necessitated further support. This significantly reduced soil erosion and increased the percolation of water through the soil, which, considering the additional fertility provided by the manure, greatly increased the agricultural yield needed to sustain Bokoni's fairly large population. While the terraces were likely built communally and incrementally over a long period of time without the need for a hierarchical organization of labour in a short period of time (associated with its more centralized neighbors), the rows of stones laid downslope through the terraces doubtlessly represent boundaries of individual plots of extended families and appear even in isolated homesteads. There's engraved and painted art on the rocks within Bokoni depicting the settlement patterns of the homestead complexes, terraces and roads, using a stylized design. The engravings, which weren't a reproduction of an actual settlement but show how it may have looked had it been built on the boulder. --- From zenith to decline and abandonment of Bokoni (18th century\-1840\) Beginning in the mid\-18th century, the Bakoni played a role in the expanding process of state centralization that was spreading across the region. The expansionist state of Pedi begun clashing with the northernmost Bokoni polities of Kgomane and Kutoane, which loosely came under Pedi political control in a tributary relationship, and as allies of competing Pedi factions, these Bokoni polities later became the base for Makopole, one of the princes of the Pedi king Thulare in 1810s. By the early 19th century, the formation of larger expansionist states to the south of Bokoni furthered altered the political landscape of southern Africa, and both the Pedi and Bokoni became causalities of these changes. While there's less information about the exact circumstances of Bokoni's abandonment, it likely coincided with the defeat of the Pedi by the armies of Ndwandwe sometime between 1823\-1825, a few years before the latter's defeat by the Zulu in 1826. The inhabitants of Bokoni thereafter migrated to more fortified and safer areas while others were dispersed across the region eventually forming rump states, with one reoccupying Khutwaneng and battling with a reestablished Pedi state. By this time, the majority of the Bokoni settlements had been abandoned but the population was settled all across the immediate region eg at Kopa hill, Mafolofolo and Boomplats (see the settlement sequence map above in introduction), just prior to the arrival of the Boer 'trekkers' in the 1840s and the latter’s establishment of the Transvaal republic, a precursor to the British colonization of south Africa. --- Bokoni’s place in African history; On heterachical states and intensive agriculture. The 400 year old settlement at Bokoni was one of several examples of highly innovative pre\-colonial African societies that utilized intensive agricultural techniques, greatly challenging the Eurocentric conception of African agriculture as “rudimentary” —A misconception that is particularly important in Southern Africa given the region's history with colonial settler farming predicated on the myth of "empty, underutilized land". The heterarchical organization of Bokoni society with its extensive construction of road networks, terraces and densely settled towns following a defined pattern without the need for hierarchical political structures with kings and armies, is more evidence of the diverse nature of social structures in pre\-colonial Africa, that is better known in ancient urban complex of Djenne\-jano, as well as in the monumental cities of Great Zimbabwe and Khami. And while this form of political organization was ultimately abandoned in the political revolutions of 19th century southern Africa, its accomplishments nevertheless undermine the conventional narratives of human progress from relatively egalitarian heterarchical systems to stratified and "despotic" centralized hierarchies of the post\-neolithic era that became the foundation of modern states. --- Like Bokoni, the UNESCO world heritage site of Khami in Zimbabwe is a monumental construction built by a relatively egalitarian society, read about its history on Patreon --- If you like this article, or would like to contribute to my African history website project; please support my writing via Paypal/Ko\-fi --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeKingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 8 Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius et.al pg 33\-34\) Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius et.al pg 43\-47\) No Big Brother Here by Shadreck Chirikure, Tawanda Mukwende et. al pg 18\-19 Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 406, 412\) Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 405\) Five Hundred Years Rediscovered: Southern African Precedents and Prospects pg 143\-144 Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 411, Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 12\-24\) many of the images (photos and maps) shown were taken from; Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius Precolonial agricultural terracing in Bokoni, South Africa by W. Maggs pg 3 Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 11\-12, 55\-80\) Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg pg 402\) Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 13\-14 Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 402\) Precolonial agricultural terracing in Bokoni, South Africa by W. Maggs pg 15 Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 401\) Precolonial agricultural terracing in Bokoni, South Africa by Mats Widgren pg 19\-21 Precolonial agricultural terracing in Bokoni, South Africa by Mats Widgren pg 18, Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 409 Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 29\-31\) Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 49\-58, 155\-157\) Five Hundred Years Rediscovered: Southern African Precedents and Prospects pg 150\-151 Forgotten World: The Stone\-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment by Peter Delius pg 115\-127 Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms by P Delius, T. Maggs, A. Schoeman pg 406\-407,) Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self\-organizing Landscape By Roderick J. McIntosh Great Zimbabwe: Reclaiming a ‘Confiscated’ Past by Shadreck Chirikure The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and ‎David Wengrow 14 )

The desert kingdom of Africa: A complete history of Wadai (1611\-1912\) in The desert kingdom of Africa: A complete history of Wadai (1611\-1912\) On the Myths and Misconceptions of Trans\-Saharan trade. )Tucked along the southern edge of the central Sahara was one of Africa's most dynamic states. The kingdom of Wadai established a centralized political order across a diverse geographic and ecological space straddling the arid Sahara and the rich agricultural lands of the lake chad basin, creating one of the largest states in African history that at its height covered nearly 1/3rd of modern Chad. The emergence of the Wadai kingdom in eastern Chad was part of the dramatic political renaissance that swept across the region following the collapse of the kingdoms of Christian Nubia at the close of the middle ages, and created the cultural characteristics of the societies which now dominate the region. The kingdom’s history features prominently in debates about the role of Trans\-Saharan trade in state formation and the economies of pre\-colonial west\-African societies. This article outlines the history of Wadai from the kingdom's establishment in the early 17th century to its fall in 1912 as west Africa's last independent kingdom, exploring the role of Trans\-Saharan trade in Wadai’s society. Map showing the kingdom of Wadai in the 19th century --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early history of Wadai: The period preceding the establishment of Wadai was characterized by the upheaval following the collapse of the medieval kingdoms of Nubia in the 15th century, the gradual adoption of Islam, and the establishment of the enigmatic kingdom of Tunjur in the 16th century by islamized Nubian kings in the region between eastern chad and western Sudan with its capital at Uri and later at Ain Farrah. Wadai’s traditions retain memories of Tunjur's legacy which they often cast in unfavorable light (to legitimize Wadai's deposition of its dynasty), but nevertheless contend that the kingdom's founder Abd al\-Karim was associated with the Jawama’a sect of teachers from the Tunjur era who were analogous to west Africa's malams/marabouts. Following the breakup of the Tunjur state and deposition of its ruling dynasty by local elites in Wadai (as well as Dar Fur), the latter begun to create their own imperial and commercial networks that took over much of the Tunjur polity and adopted many of its institutions. Wadai's first king Abd al\-Karim is the subject of numerous traditions that link him to both the eastern and western societies of the “central Sudan” (roughly the region between Timbuktu and the Nile), with some linking him to the Ja’aliyyin community of the Funj kingdom’s Dongola region, others to the town of Bidderi (an important learning center in Bagirmi kingdom), and others identify him as a student (or companion) of the prominent scholar al\-Jarmiyu (d. 1591\) from the Bornu empire. Abd al\-Karim is then claimed to have overthrown the last Tunjur king Dawud and established Darfur as an independent kingdom in the years between 1611\-1635 at his capital Wara. --- Wadai government and society The Wadai administration that developed over the 17th\-19th century was largely dominated by the Maba ethnic group, who are speakers Nilo\-Saharan language of eastern chad and from whom Abd al\-Karim hailed, but the kingdom was a multiethnic affair comprised of dozens of other ethnicities, many of whom migrated into the kingdoms' center, some of whom were part of smaller states that had been subsumed by Wadai, while others were former prisoners of war that were assimilated into the Wadai social structure and settled in provinces as subjects. At its height in the 18th century, the kingdom's territory constituted nearly 1/3rd of modern chad including the modern north\-eastern chad’s Borkou\-Ennedi\-Tibesti region, as well as the old states of Kanem and Bagirmi in south\-western chad, which were under its political influence. The kingdom was subdivided into provinces headed by governors of various ranks (Kemakil, and aguids/aqids) who collected tribute/taxes and raised armies from the various sedentary agricultural groups at the core (eg the Maba, Kodoi, etc), as well as the nomadic Arab groups in its peripheries (although the Arabs occupied a rather degraded position relative to the rest of the subjects). The king was assisted by a council of advisors (Djarma/Jerma) that were responsible for major decisions such as justice (a judge was Faqih), administration of vassals, declaration of war, foreign policy, and an imam to head the religious administration and the scholarly community (Ulema). Below the councilors were the second ranking dignitaries such as the Adjawid (knights), the market administrators, head of craftsmen (sultan el\-haddadin) and other officials who implemented the decisions of the court. At the center of the capital Wara is a large palace complex enclosed within a 24\-acre fortress. The ruins comprise an audience chamber, the sultan’s palace, the palaces of the king’s wives, the main mosque, the so\-called house of the marabout, all of which are relatively well preserved within a 4m high, 3m thick defensive wall. Next to these are several building annexes for guards and the king’s courtiers, and a large royal cemetery, that are less well preserved. Most of the constructions were completed by Abd al\-Karim’s successor king Kharūt, except the mosque and its originally 12\-meter high minaret, that was built in late 18th century. Wadai was from its early establishment a major center of learning in the central Sudan and was part of the intellectual network linking scholars from Bornu and Bagirmi with those from Ottoman\-Egypt. In the 1830s, the Tunisian traveler al\- Tūnisī, noted that the most lucrative imports to Waddaï and DarFur were gold coins, writing paper, and books of jurisprudence, adding that he knew of no country where Islam was as thoroughly adhered to as in Waddaï. The German traveler Gustav Nachtigal, in his 1874 account of his visit to Wadai, also claimed that there was a primary school in every village, and 30 schools of higher learning, and that ‘compulsory school attendance’ was on a par with that of his country (Prussia). --- Political history of Wadai from 1655 to 1898 Abd al\-Karim was succeeded by his son, king Kharūt (r. 1655\-1681\) who presided over a relatively prosperous period and is credited in some accounts with the founding of the capital Wara, while other accounts state that he only expanded it. He was succeed by his son Kharif (r1678\-1681\) who ruled briefly and was killed in a war with a neighboring south\-eastern chiefdom of Dar Tama after a long campaign led his soldiers to mutiny, and he was thus succeeded by Ya'qub 'Arūs (r. 1681\-1707\) who is credited with ending Wadai’s suzerainty to the eastern neighboring kingdom of Darfur. Much of the history of Wadai during the 17th century and early 18th century was dominated the relationship with its nominal suzerain the Darfur kingdom whose authority it repeatedly challenged. Wadai had continued to pay tribute to kings of Dar fur during the reign of Darfur king Sulayman, but repeated invasions on the frontier by his successor Ahmad Bukr prompted an invasion of the latter by the Wadai king Ya'qub, whose rapid advance into the center of Darfur was only stopped by Bukr's alliance with Wadai’s southern neighbor, the Bagirmi kingdom as well as the timely procurement of ottoman\-Egyptian firearms. Wadai continued its expansion under powerful rulers including king Kharüt alşaghir (r. 1707\-1747\), and his successor Muhammad Djawda Kharif al\-Timām (r. 1747\-95\) who extended Wadai's influenced into the Kanem region, that was taken from the declining empire of Bornu, and the Wadai kings also installed a ruler on the throne of the south\-western kingdom of Fitri, which was brought under Wadai's political sphere as a tributary state. Darfur invaded Wadai again in retaliation for supporting a rebel prince, but the long war ended with the capture of the Darfur sultan Umar Lel who was confined to the Wadai capital where he later died. Djawda is credited with a number of conquests to the south and a period of relative stability in Wadai, when the Darfur king Abu'l\-Qasim invaded Wadai in pretext to bury his predecessor, the latter was defeated by Djawda's army and internally deposed in favor of Tayrab, who made a formal peace treaty with Wadai, and created a formal border (tirja) between Wadai and Darfur marked by stone cairns, large iron spikes and walls that ensured peace between the two states for nearly a century. Djawda was succeeded by Şallı Darrit (r 1795\-1803\) who was relatively weak and his death left as brief succession struggle in Wadai that was won by his son Muhammad Sābūn ibn Saleh. Internal conflicts plagued the reign of Sabun's successors, beginning with the short reign of Busata (r. 1813\), who was then succeeded by Yûsuf (1813\-1829\), whose campaigns ended in his defeat and brief evacuation of Wara, and his reign was considered tyrannical such that members of the state council assassinated him and installed his son Rāqib (r. 1829\) who reigned for only a year but died, and was succeeded by Abd al\-Aziz (r. 1829/30\-1834\) who spent much of his brief reign crushing rebellions including retaking Wara from the rebellious councilors. Upon Aziz's death in 1834, his infant son Adam was installed, but the Dafur sultan al\-Fadl took advantage of the succession struggles to mount an ambitious expedition in 1835 to install the exiled brother of Sabun; Muhammad al\-Sharif to the throne in exchange for recognition of Darfur's suzerainty over wadai. Upon his installation, al\-Sharif immediately turned against his patron, repudiating the agreement he had made to pay tribute to Darfur, he launched his own campaigns including against Bornu, and shifted his capital from Wara to Abeche in 1850, which later became an important trading city with a population of around 28,000 by 1900\. Sharif was succeeded by Ali (r. 1858\-1874\) and Yusuf (r. 1874\-1898\), both of whose reigns were relatively stable and who undertook a modest transformation of Wadai to consolidate its status as a regional power in response to the declining power of Bornu, the fall of Darfur in 1874, and its growing foreign contacts with the Sanussiya brotherhood in Libya, as well as the French who had arrived in the region in 1897\. --- Regional and External trade in Wadai’s history, and the kingdom’s relations with North\-Africa’s Sanussiya. The kingdom's regional and domestic trade was largely based on the region's characteristic farmer\-herder exchanges based on ecological variations; with the agricultural products of the Sahel trade for the pastoral products of the Sahara, and supplemented by local specializations in the produce of cloth, leather, iron and copper. During the mid\-19th century, the Kano market of the Hausalands, was partly supplied by copper from mines south of Darfur, carried west by traders from Wadai. Wadai had a significant crafts industry comprised of local metal\-smiths and tailors, as well as Hausa leatherworkers and Bagirmi craftsmen, its for this reason that most of Wadai's textiles; their accompanying ivory and copper ornaments; leather footwear and horse equipment; weaponry and other implements were made locally, although some was imported west from the Hausalands and Bornu, and north from Tripoli and Egypt. Internal trade in Wadai was confined to the main markets held in the capital Abeche and about half a dozen commercial towns across the kingdom, the items sold were mostly agro\-pastoral products, as well as locally made textiles and crafts, some regional imports and even fewer Mediterranean imports (less than its neighbors Darfur and Bornu). The bulk of Wadai's agro\-pastoral trade between the Sahel and Sahara ecological zones that formed the kingdom's main economy, can be gleaned from the various taxes obtained from different provinces which collectively made up the bulk of the state's revenue. With cotton cloths, and riverine produce coming from the south\-western provinces, 100\-200 loads of ivory and various pastoral products from the southern Arab groups; with horses, camels and grain from the Maba and other groups in the central region of the kingdom; with thousands of head of cattle from the northern Arab groups (cattle, horses and camels appear to have been the most valuable tribute across the region besides grain and formed the bulk of Wadai's external trade to/through DarFur before the 1860s); with 100 slaves from various southern vassal states including Bagirmi; and other items including salt, weapons, leather\-skins, etc. Wadai's limited external trade to the Mediterranean markets had for long been directed through DarFur's capital el\-Fasher, as Wadai's own northern routes were constrained by its inability to extend firm authority northwards, this challenge which was briefly overcame when a northern merchant stumbled upon Sabun's capital at Wara in 1810, and enabled Sabun to establish a trade route that terminated at the Ottoman\-Libyan port city of Benghazi, with trade continuing for about a decade. But this trade later collapsed for extend periods between 1820\-1835 as a result of the internal conflicts in Wadai as well as external conflicts with the Ottoman\-Fezzan governor of central Libya whose merchants were competing with Wadai, forcing the latter to imprison and/or execute leaders of northern caravans in Wara, confiscate their goods and ban any travelers from the north. It was only after the establishment of the Sanūssiyya politico\-religious order during the mid\-19th century in the region of eastern Libya, and their setting up of well\-regulated trade system of trade that the constraints of the Wadai's trade with the northern markets through Beghanzi were removed. The Sanussiya invited many of the nomadic groups north of Wadai into their order; including all kings of Wadai beginning with al\-Sharif in 1835, and gradually increased security in the region by mediating merchant disputes. The Wadai king Sabun is said to have met with the Sanussiya founder Mohammed ibn al\-Sanuss while on pilgrimage to mecca in 1835\. From 1836, northern trade was re\-established, and every two to three years, a caravan with about 200–300 camel loads of ivory, leather\-skins, and some slaves reached the port of Benghazi. But external threats to Wadai primarily from as a result of raids on its caravans from northern nomadic groups such as the Tubu and Fezzan\-Arab groups who blocked northern routes beginning in 1842, an action that likely involved the Jallaba trading diaspora, forcing al\-Sharif to reinstate the anti\-northern policies of his predecessors by imprisoning and executing northern caravan traders, such that Wadai was effectively cut off from the northern markets. (explaining the "xenophobic" reputation of the kingdom which Nachtigal claimed characterized al\-Sharif's reign) Trade was gradually revived under Mohammed al\-Sharif's successor king Ali who encouraged Kanuri and Hausa merchants from the west to trade with Wadai, and was also closely associated with the Jallaba traders from the east through his wife. Despite king Ali's best efforts however, Wadai's northern route wouldn't be re\-opened until 1873 when the first caravan arrived, and it wasn't until the 1890s that northern trade reached its apogee with 17 caravans with 548 tonnes of merchandise departing for Abeche in 1893\-1894, and a Sanussi representative named Mohammed al\-Sunni, being permanently stationed at the Wadai court to handle the Sanussiya's trade with Wadai. By 1907, 20% of Benghazi's ,£240,000 imports and 33% of its £304,000 of exports were for Wadai, an earlier estimate in 1873 placed the value of Wadai's trade with Benghazi at 16,700 MTT (less than £1,000\) showing its dramatic rise. The bulk of this trade was in ostrich feathers, ivory, indigo\-dyed cloth, leather\-skins, and slaves, the latter of whose share of trade was declining as their demand had all but ended by their ban in most of the Ottoman markets by then. In the late 19th century, Benghazi was exporting 700 slaves a year and retained 200 locally, all of whom were obtained from the routes through Wadai and the Fezzan, (which was a relative small trade at the time compared to the Atlantic slave ports). Given the highly irregular nature of the Wadai\-Benghazi route, its status as the only remaining route after the 1870s in which all the northern\-directed slave export trade was confined (after the closure of both the Bornu route through Tripoli, and the Mahdist\-Sudan trade to Ottoman\-Egypt), and considering the tribute of slaves that Wadai collected form vassals like Bagirmi, it's unlikely that any significant fraction of the export traffic came from Wadai itself. The majority of captives (who were a secondary effect of war) were likely retained locally, as there are several slave officials who appear within the Wadai administration in the 19th century where they held positions of influence, as well as in the military as soldiers directly under the King. --- The fall of Wadai (1898\-1912\) The last decades of Wadai's history were spent in the shadow of the looming threat from the advancing French colonial forces that had colonized Bagirmi in 1898, and Kanem in 1901, chipping away Wadai's power. Before the appearence of the French, Wadai's King Yusuf (r. 1874\-1898\) had managed to preserve the kingdom's influence in its eastern frontier throughout several upheavals in which DarFur was conquered by the Ottoman\-Egyptians (1874\), who were inturn overthrown by the Mahdists (1881\) that were inturn overthrown by the reestablished kingdom of DarFur (1898\) just before his death. Yusuf's foreign policy with the Mahdi was particularly antagonistic, and culminated with Wadai’s conquest of several former Mahdist vassals in the south\-east Yusuf's son Ibrāhim (r. 1898\-1900\) was installed by the royal council that had initially considered him the easiest of the candidates to control, until he turned against them and in the ensuing revolt with the nobility, he was deposed by internal factions backed by the re\-instated king of DarFur Ali Dinar, and replaced by Ahmad Abu Ghazali (r. 1900\-1901\) who was also eventually caught up in internal strife, that ended with the ascendance of Muhammad sālih (known as Dud Murra), the last king of Wadai (r. 1901\-1911\). Dud Murra restored central control in Wadai and revived its regional trade with Darfur kingdom until relations with the latter deteriorated in 1904\-5, Dud Murra expanded his arsenal of firearms through his Sanussiya connections and ivory trade, in preparation for the inevitable war with the French. Initial attempts by Wadai to take back its southern territories of Kanem and Bagirmi from the French in 1904\-5 were reversed, and the French then went on the offensive in 1906\-7 using the pretext of installing a pretender named Asil in favor of Dud Murra, they skirmished with the latter’s provincial forces but didn't face the bulk of army that was concentrated in the south\-eastern regions. After two battles in 1908\-9 however, the French captain Fiegenschuh defeated Wadai's provincial forces and entered Abeche, but Dud Murra had fled the capital, meeting Fiegenschuh's forces outside in Jan 1910 where he annihilated them and killed their captain. This forced Fiegenschuh's commander; colonel Maillard, to attack with his own men in November 1910, but they too were defeated by Dud Murrah's cavalry forces and all were killed \-making Dud Murrah a widely disdained figure in the French press. It wasn't until October 1911 that another French force managed to force Dud Murrah to surrender, and permanently occupied Wadai in 1912, marking the end of west Africa's last independent kingdom. --- Conclusion: the view of Trans\-Saharan trade from Wadai The history of Wadai allows us to better understand pre\-colonial African societies within their context. Despite Wadai’s prominent position in the discourses which overstate the role of external trade in the formation of African states, the available research on the kingdom’s history overturns these simplistic causative arguments. The growth of Wadai, and its peers in the eastern Sudan "was not dictated by the exigencies of long\-distance trade"; Wadai had reached its apogee long before king Sabun pioneered the kingdom’s direct access to Mediterranean markets, but even this access was never consistently maintained, as it was routinely closed due to internal factors in Wadai and because external trade was relatively trivial to Wadai's economy which was primarily dominated by domestic exchanges between its Sahelian and Saharan groups. Rather than ‘living and dying’ by Trans\-Saharan trade, Wadai flourished by exploiting the diverse geographic and ecological environment in which it was established. In contrast to its peers who were marginally engaged in long\-distance trade, Wadai was firmly situated within its local geographic context at the edge of the Sahara; the desert kingdom of Africa. --- Despite its reputation as the world’s most inhospitable region, the Sahara desert was not a formidable barrier between North\-Africa and “Sub\-Saharan” Africa as its often presented. Read about the history of the Kanem\-Bornu empire’s conquest of southern Libya on Patreon \<subscribe to my Patreon for this and more indepth research on African history\> --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia By Bruce Williams pg 895, 900\-901 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia By Bruce Williams pg 902\-903 Kingdoms of the Sudan by RS O'Fahey pg 115\-116 The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 137\-138, UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. V pg 511 Sahara and Sudan by Gustav Nachtigal pg 165\-171 Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet 109\-112\) Sahara and Sudan by Gustav Nachtigal pg 180 Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet 81\-84, for a similar position of ‘Arabs’ in various parts of the central and eastern sudan see; Ethnoarchaeology of Shuwa\-Arab settlements by Augustin Holl. Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet pg 75\-79, Conservation et valorisation du patrimoine bâti au Tchad : cas des ruines de Ouara by Eric Bouba Deudjambé pg 28\-37, Travels of an Arab merchant in Soudan by al\-Tunusi 1954, pg 126\-129 Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 2\. pg 426\-432 Travels of an Arab Merchant in Soudan pg 250 Sahara and Sudan IV by Gustav Nachtigal pg 189 A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 15\-16\) Kingdoms of the Sudan by RS O'Fahey pg 128\) A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 16, 69, Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet pg 120\-122\) A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 16, State and Society in Dār Fūr By Rex S. O'Fahey pg 78\) Society in Dār Fūr By Rex S. O'Fahey pg 82, A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 17 The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 141\) State and Society in Dār Fūr by Rex S. O'Fahey pg 85\) Sahara and Sudan IV by G. Nachtigal pg 216\-217, A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 23\-25\) Sahara and Sudan IV by G. Nachtigal pg 220\-226, A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 30\-39 ) State and Society in Dār Fūr by Rex S. O'Fahey pg 147, Cows and the sharīʿah in the Abéché Customary Court by Judith Scheele pg 31 The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 pg 141\) A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 39 Sahara and Sudan by Gustav Nachtigal pg 195\-196 Sahara and Sudan IV by Gustav Nachtigal pg 119 Mahdish Faith \& Sudanic Traditio By Kapteijns pg 199,173 Sahara and Sudan IV By Gustav Nachtigal pg 214 n3, but other dependencies were likely no more than a few dozen, Mahdish Faith \& Sudanic Tradition By Kapteijns pg 111\-112 Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet pg 81\-88, Sahara and Sudan by Gustav Nachtigal pg 182 Eastern Libya, Wadai and the Sanūsīya by Dennis D. Cordell pg 22\-23\) Eastern Libya, Wadai and the Sanūsīya by Dennis D. Cordell pg 29\) Across the Sahara by Klaus Braun pg 156, Eastern Libya, Wadai and the Sanūsīya by Dennis D. Cordell pg 24, Sahara and Sudan IV by G. Nachtigal 43, 49, 136\) Eastern Libya, Wadai and the Sanūsīya by Dennis D. Cordell pg 21,30 Across the Sahara by Klaus Braun pg 158\-160\) The Trans\-Saharan Slave Trade by John Wright pg 111\-112 Slave Traders by Invitation by Finn Fuglestad pg 96 The Trans\-Saharan Slave Trade by John Wright pg 105, 124 Across the Sahara by Klaus Braun pg 229 A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai pg 84, Des pasteurs transhumants entre alliances et conflits au Tchad by Dangbet Zakinet pg 76\-77 Across the Sahara by Klaus Braun pg 52 Mahdish Faith \& Sudanic Traditio By Kapteijns pg 107\-113 An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906\-1916 By Jay Spaulding pg 12\-13 An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906\-1916 By Jay Spaulding pg 20\-21 A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 39\-41 A Political History of the Maba Sultanate of Wadai by Jeffrey Edward Hayer pg 42\-43 The Roots of Violence: A History of War in Chad By M. J. Azevedo pg 51\-52 State and Society in Dār Fūr By Rex S. O'Fahey pg 147 12 )

Maritime trade, Shipbuilding and African sailors in the indian ocean: a complete history of East African seafaring in Maritime trade, Shipbuilding and African sailors in the indian ocean: a complete history of East African seafaring from Aksum to the Swahili coast )The Indian ocean world was the largest zone of cultural exchange and trade in the old world. Ancient maritime societies from south\-china sea to the southeastern coast of Africa established a long chain of urban emporia that were closely linked through long\-distance oceanic trade at their open ports, enabling the exchange of goods, ideas and people over a vast geographic space. The eastern coast of Africa was intrinsically connected to the Indian ocean world, not just as the supplier of commodities but as the home of some of the world's most dynamic maritime societies. From the merchant\-sailors from Aksum who played a significant role in the linking of the Mediterranean to the Indian ocean world, to the Swahili city\-states which developed a maritime society with shipbuilding and voyages that directly linked the emporiums of southern Asia to the trading cities of east Africa. This article explores the commercial history of the maritime societies along Africa's eastern coast from Sudan to Mozambique, including long distance voyages undertaken by African sailors, and shipbuilding in African coastal cities. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Maritime trade in the northern half of the coast of Eastern\-Africa From Aksum to Sri Lanka: 1st\-7th century One of the most invaluable sources of Eastern Africa’s maritime history during the 1st century, was the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an anonymously authored work composed between 40\-50 CE. In its description of maritime activities within the redsea region, the Periplus mentions a vibrant regional trade between the port city of Adulis and the inhabitants of the Alalaiou islands (Dahlak Islands), as well as trade between the port city of Adulis and the Roman\-Egyptian port of Berenike/Berenice. While the latter trade appears to have been largely undertaken by foreign sailors, there’s strong evidence that African merchants participated in it, if we take into account the archeological discoveries of a large Aksumite quarter at Berenice with Ge’ez inscriptions and Aksumite coins, that was very likely inhabited by wealthy Aksumite merchants. The involvement of African sailors in the red sea and Indian ocean trade received a further impetus after the replacement of direct navigation route from Roman\-Egypt to India, with a multistage, transshipment route that stopped at Adulis beginning in the 2nd century, this often involved the transfer and/or exchange of Indian\-derived cargo with African cargo and was mostly done by locally\-owned ships and sailors. More impetus for Aksumite maritime activity was provided by the Aksumite conquest of Yemen in the 3rd century, which brought the competitors of Adulis under Aksumite control as well. The monumental royal inscription of the Aksumite king GDR in 200AD which mentions him sending “a fleet and land forces against the Arabitae and Cinaedocolpitae who dwelt on the other side of the Red Sea, and having reduced the sovereigns of both, I imposed on them a land tribute and charged them to make travelling safe both by sea and by land. I thus subdued the whole coast from Leuke Kome to the country of the Sabaean.” lends further support to the existence of a well developed maritime tradition in Aksum that was likely conducted through Adulis. It was during the height of the Aksumite empire that we find some of the most detailed description of of Aksumite merchants sailing in their own ships to Sri Lanka and the Persian gulf. A 6th century account by Cosmas Indicopleustes mentions that the roman sailor Sopatrus was travelling aboard a ship owned by "men from Adulis" who were Aksumite merchants most likely involved in the transshipment of Chinese silk and Indian pepper. Such commodities are described in other accounts of Aksumite maritime trade as being transshipped to the Jordanian port of Aila where 6th century writer Antoninus of Piacenza wrote that all the "shipping from Aksum and Yemen comes into the port at Aila, bringing a variety of spices". --- The African ports of the Red sea and Somaliland: 8th\-19th century Adulis and Aksum’s maritime activities vanish from external texts after the 7th century. Focus shifts to the cities of the southern red\-sea cities of Zayla/Zeila (said to be under the control of Abyssinian Christians in 988\) and the Dahlak archipelago, according to Al\-Masudi's account from 935, which also describes a flourishing trade between the Aksumite state and Yemen although now almost entirely conducted by Yemeni merchants. The Dahlak archipelago, which had been settled by the Aksumites in the centuries prior to Aksum's decline, appears to have been the only large African polity in the red\-sea region whose merchants were actively engaged in undertaking long distance voyages, and was important in the trade between Fatimid Egypt and India. There's however little documentation of direct voyages undertaken by Dhalak\-based merchants outside the red sea, with one exceptional case about the exile to India of the Najahid sultan Jayyash (an Abyssinian of the Dahlak sultanate). After Dhalak’s decline in the 15th\-16th century, African maritime trade was dominated by the red\-sea port cities of Suakin and Massawa, and the city of Zeila in northern Somalia, especially the latter, whose merchants were actively involved in the western Indian ocean trade. Most long distance trade appears to have been in the hands of foreign merchants, with local vessels confined to regional trade and pearl diving, as one account describing the residents of suakin in the late 19th century noted that "they are skillful sailors, but very rarely go with the Arabians away from their own coast". --- Shipbuilding in the northern half of the coast of Eastern\-Africa Some information about shipbuilding during the Aksumite era is provided by 6th century external accounts. In a passage describing the Aksumite fleet of king Kaleb, the 6th century historian Procopius mentions that Aksumite ships "are not made in the same manner as are other ships (ie: from the Mediterranean). For neither are they smeared with pitch, nor with any other substance, nor indeed are the planks fastened together by iron nails going through and through, but they are bound together by a kind of cording" There’s evidence of the extensive use of sewn ships across the Indian ocean world in general and the African coastal societies in particular. The Blemmeye nomads on the frontier between Rome and Kush in southeastern Egypt were described as possessing a navy consisting of sewn ships, which was placed under a navarchos (admiral) . Shipbuilding on the Afrian half of the red\-sea coast appears to have declined after the fall of Aksum, as none of the major port cities of Badi, Aydhab, Suakin, and Dahlak, are known to have been engaged in shipbuilding, despite Aydhab being described as "one of the most frequented ports of the world," by Ibn Jubayr (d.1217\). In the account of his visit of Ethiopia in 1789, Jerónimo Lobbo mentions that the most common ships in the red sea were called 'Gelves', another type of medium sized sewn ship that was built locally using timber and other materials from the coconut\-palm tree, but doesn't specify the main ports of its construction. Few descriptions of boat\-building in Suakin and Massawa carried out along sections of beaches near the cities, using imported materials and expatriate craftsmen (gehanis) hired by local merchants. Most of the African\-controlled long\-distance maritime trade and shipbuilding activities along the Eastern African coast therefore appear to have been confined to its southern half; the Swahili coast. --- Long\-distance maritime trade along the southern coast of Eastern Africa The "shore\-folk" of the Swahili coast had for long been extensively involved in long\-distance maritime trade since the emergence of the Swahili and Comorian city\-states in the late 1st millennium. Wealthy patricians in city\-states had financial interests in sea voyages beyond the East African waters, and some owned ships big enough to sail to the Arabian Sea and Southern Arabia. The ability of the Swahili to sail across the "Swahili corridor", transshipping trade goods from southern Mozambique to Southern Somalia, was one of the main features of the extensive maritime trading system that characterized the Swahili civilization. The indigenous innovation of sewn boats on the Swahili coast, which occurred largely within its local context without significant external influence, was central to the expansion of the Bantu\-speaking groups of the Swahili and Comorian speakers across the east African coast and its offshore islands during the 1st millennium. One of the earliest mentions of watercraft along the southern half of the East\-African coast comes from the Periplus of the Eythrueun Sea, which describes the the island of Menuthias (possibly Pemba or Unguja, or Mafa) that has “has sewn boats and dugout canoes that are used for fishing", it also describes similar vessels in the southernmost coastal town; Rhapta, whose name is derived from the name of the sewn boats (rhupton ploiurion). Evidence of regional maritime activity, which had been established around the turn of the common era, gradually increases in the late 1st millennium, and provided the impetus for long\-distance maritime activities by the Swahili in the succeeding era. Long\-distance maritime trade was thus an extension of the more robust regional transshipment trade between Swahili cities which dominated the region's maritime traffic as late as the 19th century. An account written in Mombasa in 1824\-1826, which calculated the annual traffic of ships entering the Mombasa harbor, reveals that more than half of all ships (155 of 250\) were locally built vessels confined to regional trade between the cities, and given their estimated capacity of 7,000 tonnes, compare favorably with the 600 tonnes of goods recorded to have been imported to Mombasa from Gujarat in 1776\. External accounts from Yemen indicate that, ships from Mogadishu made annual trips to the Hadrami ports of Aden, al\-Shihr, among others, carrying various commodities such as ivory, grain, ambergris, wood, and gum copal that had been transshipped to Mogadishu or Barawa by local ships sent from southern Swahili port\-cities, and another account from 1336, records the arrival of a a ship “from Kilwa,” loaded with rice, at the Hadrami city of Aden. In a 1441 account by al\-Samarqandī, the scholar mentions that the trade of Hormuz involved merchants from Abyssinia, Socotra and the Land of the Zanj who sent their own traders and products to the city. Another account from 1341 by Ibn Batutta in Madayi ( northern Malabar) in 1341, mentions a “virtuous ulama” from Mogadishu named Saʿīd, who had travelled to india and china. Direct Swahili voyages to India would have begun not long after voyages to southern Arabia had been accomplished. In 1505, Tome Pires noted the presence of several eastern African merchants from Ethiopia, Mogadishu, Kilwa, Mombasa and Malindi in port of Malacca in Indonesia, although its unclear whether they had arrived aboard their own ships. In 1517, the Malindi sultan sent a letter to his suzerain the king of Portugal, requesting a letter of protection from the latter to allow him free travel throughout the Portuguese possessions from Goa to Mozambique, In 1586 the sultan of Malindi sent a ship to the Portuguese settlement of Bassein (India), and in the 1590s, the same sultan requested to acquire ships for trade to India and China and to ferry Swahili pilgrims to mecca, which were accepted. A 1619 account mentions traders from the Malindi coast visiting Goa, including one named Muhammad Mshuti Mapengo who was “well\-known in Goa, where he often goes.” In 1631, the sultan of Pate sent a ship to Goa, and by the 1720s, the ivory trade was very active between the northern Swahili coast and Gujarat, with shipowners from Barawa/Brava used to send a shipment of ivory to Surat (India), and the sultan of Pate asked of the Portuguese the right to send “one of his ships” loaded with ivory to Diu, and asked for free circulation of their ships to “all the ports of Asia. In 1726, a letter from the king of Pate mentions a locally\-born merchant named Bwana Madi bin Mwalimu Bakar from Pate “who goes each year to Surat where he is married.” In 1763, Carsten Niebuhr met in Bombay a “Sheikh” of the Lamu Archipelago, who had come to propose the British to buy cowry shells in “his small island.” Direct voyages by the Swahili to India had likely declined by the late 18th century as an account by Jean\-Vincent Morice in 1777 observed that the Swahili were then not rich enough to own ships made for trips to Gujarat; but that they still built large ships to sail as far as Muscat (Oman), and according to Morice in the 1770s, the Swahili would also board with their own cargoes onto Arab or Gujarati ships to reach Surat. Direct trade by local sailors from the east African coast to southern Arabia on locally\-owned ships continued in the 18th and 19th century, especially from the city of Mogadishu, which was the primary outlet for the extensive grain trade from plantations based on the hinterland. Mogadishu's grain exports, which were estimated at over 3,000 tonnes in the 1870s, were carried in locally\-built ships with a capacity of 50\-200 tonnes, that according to an 1875 account by John Kirk were "all filled with or taking in native grain". The Swahili ship captain (and owner) was called nahodha, while the pilot was called mwalimu. East African waalimu and nahodha were often respected and learned men, whose nautical knowledge was based on extensive training and experience, which foreign crews entering East African waters were highly dependent on. In 1606, the Franciscan friars met a mwalimu from Pemba described explicitly as a Swahili "old Muslim negro", who in 1597 had guided the ship of Francisco da Gama, the future viceroy of India, from Mombasa to Goa. In 1615, Thomas Roe met in Nzwani a Mogadishu\-born Mwalimu (pilot) named Ibrahim who is described as an expert in navigation from “Mogadishu” to the Gulf of Cambay, he also owned an elaborate nautical chart of the western Indian ocean “lined and graduated orderly” and was able to correct the map used by the English. While in the Kerimba islands in 1787, Saulnier de Mondevit took on board a Swahili pilot named Bwana Madi “who spoke French well and very much learned, as a pilot, of the African coast from Mozambique to Muscat.” Bwana Madi made a very precise map of the coast up to Zanzibar. In 1783, a prince of Nzwani described the island merchants’ circular trade which they carried out in “their own vessels” for raw cotton and firearms from Bombay (British India), which they then trade with other merchants in Madagascar, Mozambique and neighboring Comoros island, most of this trade continued relatively uninterrupted well into the 19th century. --- Swahili Ship types and Ship construction. The mtepe and dau la mtepe, both of which were of sewn construction, were the characteristic vessel of the East African coast that was almost exclusively owned by the local inhabitants of the coast. The mtepe’s versatility was poetically described by Burton in 1872 that it “swims the tide buoyantly as a sea\-bird…and can go to windward of everything propelled by wind”. Despite their undifferentiated description in external accounts, these ships were of multiple varieties and their construction kept changing overtime. The mtepe, which is described in early accounts as mutepis, was a relatively old watercraft of local manufacture, its name likely derived from the itepe word for the coconut\-palm cording that it uses. It had a square sail made of matting, and a prominent long curved prow, and a square transom at the stern. The dau la mtepe , which is described in early accounts as a dallos/dalles or a "real dhow". Despite earlier claims that the Swahili name for this ship; dau/įdalu, was a borrowed term acquired from the Arab\-Indian dhow (dāw/ḍāu), the Swahili dau was infact a local derivation from the Proto\-Swahili word ndalu that refers to water\-bailers, and it was the Swahili dau which was the origin of the Arab\-Indian dhow, the latter name being mostly used in external European accounts instead of the more accurate local names for Arab and Indian vessels. The dau la mtepe is slightly smaller than the mtepe, it has a normal type of raking stern, and the bow is straight and more angled than that of the mtepe with a thin bowsprit. The stern and stem were built up with a series of V\-shaped hooks and, the ship was also steered using 16 oars and used a large wooden anchor. The majority of Swahili ships had a tonnage of 30\-60 tons, with an average length of around 12\-30 meters, an average width of 8m, a depth of 3m, a mast\-height of 15\-20 meters, and a combined passenger and crew total of 40\-60 people, and its crewmen possessed compasses, quadrants, and maritime charts. . At low tide, ships could rest on the beach, supported by the keel and side stakes. They were of shallow draft and could navigate in extremely shallow waters. Both Mtepes were primarily built in the Lamu archipelago, especially in the cities of Faza, Tikuni and Siyu. In Faza, 20 mitepe were made annually, possibly a total of about 100 a year for the whole archipelago not including other types of ships, this region is also where we first find the description of “mutepis” in an external account from 1661\. The ability to build and to maintain large ships (which were repaired every four years), and to support their crew, was limited to the minority of the wealthy patricians. In Nzwani, the largest ships belonged to the governor and a captain named, Boomoodoy, the latter being described as an enterprising local trader who had financed their construction and had “knowledge in Oriental navigation", according to a 1704 account by John Pike. The last of the classic ocean\-going Mtepe was built in Lamu during the 1930s before it was wrecked off the Kenyan coast in 1935, its skipper passed on in 1968, closing the chapter on an ancient tradition --- Did WEST AFRICAN SAILORS discover the Americas before Columbus? Read about Mansa Muhammad's journey across the Atlantic in the 14th century, and an exploration of West Africa's maritime culture on Patreon --- If you liked this article, or would like to contribute to my African history website project; please support my writing via Paypal/Ko\-fi --- for free to receive new posts you can reach me at: [email protected]. twitter: @rhaplord. SubscribeThe foreign trade of the Aksumite port of Adulis by Stuart Munro\-Hay pg 109\) The Indo\-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus by Federico De Romanis pg 55, The Red Sea during the 'Long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 61\) The Indo\-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus by Federico De Romanis pg 67\-75\) The Red Sea during the 'Long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 31\) The foreign trade of the Aksumite port of Adulis by Stuart Munro\-Hay pg 115\) The Red Sea during the 'Long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 125\-128, 45\-47\) The foreign trade of the Aksumite port of Adulis by Stuart Munro\-Hay pg 120\) The Red Sea during the 'Long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 75, 296\-297, ) A History of Chess: The Original 1913 Edition By H. J. R. Murray pg v Desert and Water Gardens of the Red Sea by Cyril Crossland pg 59\-65\) Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 220\-222\) Military History of Late Rome Ilkka Syvänne pg 64 The Rashayda: Ethnic Identity and Dhow Activity in Suakin on the Red Sea Coast by Dionisius A. Agius pg 195\-196 A Voyage to Abyssinia By Jerónimo Lobo pg 46\-47 Africa and the Sea by Jeffrey C. Stone pg 111 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet 169\-170\) From dugouts to double outriggers by Martin Walsh pg 286\) The Mtepe: regional trade and the late survival of sewn ships in East African waters by Erik Gilbert pg 297, From dugouts to double outriggers by Martin Walsh pg 260\) When Did the Swahili Become Maritime? A Reply by Elgidius B. Ichumbaki The Mtepe of Lamu, Mombasa and the Zanzibar Sea by AHJ Prins pg 88\-89, East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 187 When Did the Swahili Become Maritime by J. Fleisher pg 107 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 188\) The Suma oriental of Tome Pires by Tomé Pires pg 46 A Handful of Swahili Coast Letters, 1500–1520 by Sanjay Subrahmanyam pg 270\-271 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 185 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet 185, 188 ) East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet 183, 187\) Exploring the Old Stone Town of Mogadishu pg 8\-9 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 184\) L’Afrique orientale et l’océan Indien by Thomas Vernet and Philippe Beaujard pg 178 East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 178\) The Comoro Islands by Malyn D Newitt pg 20 The Mtepe of Lamu, Mombasa and the Zanzibar Sea by AHJ Prins pg 88\) From dugouts to double outriggers by Martin Walsh pg 268, The Mtepe: regional trade and the late survival of sewn ships in East African waters by Erik Gilbert pg 276\) From dugouts to double outriggers by Martin Walsh pg 265\-266\) The Mtepe: regional trade and the late survival of sewn ships in East African waters by Erik Gilbert pg 297, The Mtepe of Lamu, Mombasa and the Zanzibar Sea by AHJ Prins pg 89\) The Mtepe of Lamu, Mombasa and the Zanzibar Sea by AHJ Prins , East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 176\-177\) East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 175\-176, Seascape and Sailing Ships of the Swahili Shores by R de Leeuwe pg 11\) The Mtepe: regional trade and the late survival of sewn ships in East African waters by Erik Gilbert pg 298, Seascape and Sailing Ships of the Swahili Shores by R de Leeuwe pg 11\) East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean by Thomas Vernet pg 186\) 14 )

An African\-centered intellectual world; the scholarly traditions and literary production of the Bornu empire (11th\-19th century) in An African\-centered intellectual world; the scholarly traditions and literary production of the Bornu empire (11th\-19th century) A 16th century African scholar's view of his world. )Studies of African scholarship in general, and west African scholarship in particular, are often framed within diffusionist discourses, in which African intellectual traditions are "received” from outside and are positioned on the periphery of a greater system beyond the continent. But this conceptual framework isn't grounded in any evidence from studies of African history, where African scholars —such as those in west\-Africa's Bornu empire— situated themselves firmly within their own environment, and perceived the rest of the world as located on the margins of their African society. From its inception, the Bornu empire's ruling dynasty was closely associated with its scholarly community, encouraging the latter's growth through patronage and privileges in order to legitimate and exercise its own power. The influence of Bornu's scholars spread from Egypt to the Hausalands, and from Morocco to Sudan and its intellectual production and diasporic communities greatly shaped the education networks of West Africa. This article explores the intellectual history of Bornu, including its 16th century chronicles in which the world was perceived as anchored in west Africa with Bornu at its center. Map of the Bornu empire in the 17th\-18th century. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The political and intellectual history of Bornu The empire of Bornu was originally established in the 9th century in the northeast region of Lake Chad of Kanem, and was the most dominant political power in the region of west Africa historically referred to as the “central Sudan”. Kanem's ruling Seyfuwa ruling dynasty adopted Islam, and quickly transformed their state into a major center of learning. By the late 14th century, the kings (titled Mai) moved to the Bornu province on the western edge of Lake Chad after being forced out of Kanem by a rival power, and Bornu soon become the heir to the scholarly traditions of Kanem. At the height of Bornu's power in the 16th and 17th century when it reconquered Kanem (hence Kanem\-Bornu), the state's administration included scholars who were employed as judges, minsters and members of the powerful advisory council to the King, such that even the position of the imam of the main mosque was a state office. Beginning in the reign of 'Alī b. Dūnama (1465\-1497\), many schools were built in the new capital Birni Ngazagamu. The city quickly became a center of Islamic education under Dūnama's successors, who encouraged the growth of its scholarly community and funded the activities of the scholars, a tradition that would be maintained through the 19th century. Bornu's rulers actively encouraged the spread of scholarship across the provinces by granting scholars mahrams (charters of privilege) of lands and permission to levy taxes from their lands and be exempted from civic duties. These scholars, called mallemtis became influential and their towns grew into important centers of learning. From the capital came a wave of migration of Bornuan scholars, traders and craftsmen across west Africa, following a voluntary policy on the part of the Bornu rulers, to extend their influence over the administrative structures and cultural practices of Bornu's neighbors. Some of the most notable Bornu scholars include the 17th century scholar Abd al\-ʿAzīz al\-Burnāwī (d.1667\), that was active in the northern fringes of Bornu at the town of Kulumbardo, from where his students carried his teachings to north Africa especially morocco. His disciples such as the Funj scholar Aḥmad al\- Yamanī (d. 1712\) from Sennar (in modern Sudan) who'd been to Bornu and was active in the moroccan city of Fez, where he influenced the prominent sufi scholar al\-Dabbāgh (d.1719\). Through his influence on sufism, al\-Burnāwī was considered an axial scholar by his peers; “the master of his time” and the “wonder of his age.” Another is Hajrami al\-Burnāwī (d. 1746\), who was born and studied in Ngazargamu, and wrote several works on various subjects, including a famous critique of Bornu's rulers and elites titled Shurb al\-zulal, in which he castigated them for their corruption, the unfairness of the judges and the selfishness of the wealthy merchants. This work was copied across west Africa where it was highly influential to later scholars such as the Sokoto founder Uthman Fodio (d.1817\), and was also copied in Egypt's Al\-Azhar University by the Egyptian scholar Hasan al\-Quwaysini (d. 1839\). --- Bornu and West Africa: an intellectual diaspora. Groups of scholars and pilgrims from across west Africa were attracted to Ngazargamu and encouraged to settle in the city, especially the Fulani diaspora which was to become prominent in the central sudan’s scholarly communities and networks during this time. Among these was the 17th century scholar Muḥammad al\-Walī al\-Burnāwī al\-Fulānī. His family was originally from Kebbi studied in Bornu and eventually settled in its vassal state of Bagirmi. He was a prominent scholar who composed several works across various subjects, he was also the teacher of the Katsina mathematician Al\-Kashnāwī (d. 1741\), and both were well\-know in Egypt where they travelled in later years. Another was al\-Tahir al\-Barnawi al\-Fullani (d. 1771\), who studied and taught in Ngazargamu and served as one of the advisors to the Bornu rulers Mai Muhammad al\-Hajj (r. 1729\-44\) and Mai Ali Dunama (r. 1747\-92\) for whom he composed two chronicles. Some of his compositions were included in the west African curriculum and were also copied in Egypt. Bornu scholars also travelled to other learning centers across west Africa and were especially active in the Hausa city\-states of Katsina and Kano, as well as in the kingdoms of Bagirmi, Wadai and Nupe. --- Bornu and the wider Muslim world: pilgrimage and international scholarship Bornu's scholarship was distantly associated with Mamluk Egypt, where Bornu teachers had the most visible influence outside west Africa. This connection was a product of the deliberate policy by the Seyfuwa rulers who financed the establishment of infrastructure to house pilgrims from Kanem\-Bornu in Cairo and Mecca, as well as to elevate their prestige across the Islamic world. The 11th century Mai Ḥummay reportedly built a mosque in Cairo, and several external accounts mention the construction of a school by pilgrims from Kanem to Cairo in 1242 during the reign of Mai Dūnama b. Salma (1210\-1248\), other internal documents from 1576, the 17th century and external accounts reveal that many Bornu\-educated scholars also taught and studied at the al\-Azhar university in Cairo. Bornu's rulers also legitimized their power by performing the Hajj pilgrimage, demonstrating the remarkable stability of power in Bornu whose institutions allowed for the absence of their King, especially in the 16th\- 18th century when 9 out of 15 rulers made the pilgrimage with some travelling as frequently as 5 times. While the obligatory pilgrimage was only rarely undertaken by most Muslim rulers in the wider Islamic world, the Hajj in Bornu had been transformed into a uniquely local legitimating tool as early as the 11th century when the first Seyfuwa ruler travelled to mecca. The pilgrimage later lost its power as a legitimating tool in the 18th and 19th century when the 'Hajj\-King' figure was displaced by the Scholar\-King figure. The pilgrimage served other functions besides enhancing the ruler's legitimacy, the retinue of the ruler which attimes numbered several hundred, also included scholars and traders from the empire, which served to augment Bornu's scholarship and trade, and maintain the chain of schools and lodges used by the Bornu diaspora across the Islamic world. Mai Idris b. 'Alī (1564\-1596\) is said to have spent a tonne of gold in cairo (a sum only rivaled by the Mali emperor Mansa Musa's famous pilgrimage in which the latter spent 12 tonnes in 1324\). Some of this money was likely spent on maintaining Bornu's foreign housing facilities as such were usually the first order of business in the Mai's correspondence with the Mamluk rulers. As the Mamluk\-Egypt historian al\-Maqrīzī (d. 1442\) writes; "This madrasa is for the Malikites. It is in the Hamam al Rish district in the medina of Cairo. It is for the Kanem, tribe of Takrur. When they came to Cairo around the years 640 (1242 AD) for the pilgrimage, they handed over a sum of money to the cadi 'Ilm al\-Din b. Rashik. He built the madrasa and taught there; it has since been known by his name. Great fame was made in Takrur at this madrasa. Money was sent there almost every year" --- Bornu’s intellectual production: calligraphy and competing scholarly communities The scholarly production of Bornu was fairly extensive. A specialist community of calligraphers and copyists emerged at Ngazargamu where they were engaged in the production of beautifully illuminated Qurans, with a unique form of calligraphy, that were sold across north Africa for 50 MTT, some of which ultimately ended up in western collections. Bornu's scholars innovated a unite form of calligraphy called barnāwī characterized by heavy and angular strokes, and by distinctive letter\-shapes and pointing, it inturn influenced related forms of calligraphic styles in the central Sudan such as the kanawī used by Kano's scholars. The barnāwī calligraphic style was distinctive from the maghribī style of north africa and its derivatives across west africa, It was created during the early period of Islam's adoption in Bornu between the 11th and 13th century, and is alrgely based on older calligraphic styles used during the abassid era including Kufic. Despite the mostly royal patronage of Bornu's scholarship, the scholarly community of Ngazargamu and across the kingdom was divided between those who were active in the political centers and rendered their services to the royal class, versus those who functioned independently of the royal court and derived their income from commerce and teaching. It was the latter group that maintained a rather antagonistic relationship with the royal court, and acted as a check on the powers of Bornu's rulers by criticizing the excesses of the royal court. In two notable incidents, the scholars at the capital influenced the Bornu King Umar Idriss to get rid of two "troublesome" scholars in 1667 by exiling one named al\-Waldede to Baghirmi and allowing the execution of another named al\-Jirmi during an inavsion. --- A monumental work of African intellectual history; The 16th century Bornu chronicles From the 16th century, Bornu's rulers developed a discourse of legitimacy, the main objective of which was to assert the political and religious superiority of the Seyfuwa rulers in the central Sudan and in the wider Islamic world. The writing of history was closely associated with the need to legitimize all political power and It was this question of legitimacy of Mai Idrīs b. 'Alī that was the most likely the origin of the two Bornu chronicles. The years of their composition in 1576 and 1578 were a turning point in Idrīs’ reign and for the Seyfuwa dynasty, as he definitively imposed himself against the previous dynastic branch and consolidated his military power on the fringes of the Bornu state. He thus commissioned a prominent Ngazargamu scholar; Aḥmad Furṭū, to write an account of his accomplishments. Aḥmad Furṭū was a Kanuri scholar born and educated in Bornu into a prominent scholarly family who were the beneficiaries of an 11th century charter granted by the first Seyfuwa ruler Mai Ḥummay (r. 1075\-1086\) to their ancestor Muḥammad Mānī and to a 15th century Bornu chronicler named Masbarma Uṯmān. Furṭū was considered a "man of letters" and had mastered various disciplines including law, theology, sufism and grammar, as reflected in the works he cited as well as his position as Imam of the main mosque at Ngazargamu. Despite never having left the central Sudan (not even for the Hajj) Furṭū was proficient in classical arabic philology and grammar, and cites several "classical" Muslim authors of the 7th\-15th century including Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328\) and al\-Fīrūzābādī (d. 1414\), his education reflects the high standard of learning present in Bornu and west Africa at the time. Furṭū accompanied his patron Mai Idrīs b. 'Alī during the latter's military campaigns and ceremonial visits to provinces, he was also present at the reception of diplomats at Idrīs' court from across the region as well as from the Ottomans, and therefore recorded first\-hand accounts of Bornu's politics in the late 16th century. The two chronicles are essentially political works, and are the products of an established tradition which begun with Masbarma Uṯmān’s now lost chronicle for Idrīs' predecessor Mai Alī b. Dūnama (r.1465\-1497\). The Kitāb ġazawāt Barnū (written in 1576\) constituting a legitimation of Idrīs' political and military actions in Bornu during a time of contested power between rival branches of the Seyfuwa dynasty at the capital, while the Kitāb ġazawāt Kānim (written in 1578\) details the progress of his expeditions into the region of Kanem, and the province's itineraries, alliances and peace agreement. All of the extant manuscripts of these two chronicles are copies made in the 19th century from an older 17th century copy owned by al\-Ḥāǧǧ Bašīr, the vizier of Bornu in 1853; the 19th century copies were further reproduced in 1921 and are currently stored at the SOAS. The frequent copying of old texts isn't unusual in the region, because paper produced before the 18th century had a life span of only 150–200 years in West Africa, making it necessary to recopy a work at least every two centuries. The chronicles elevate the evolving genealogical and religious legitimacy of the Bornu rulers, by assuming the title of caliph and tracing the (superficial) origin of his Sefuwa dynasty to the Islamic heartland (initially the Yemeni Hymarites and later, the Meccan Qurayš), inorder to position him at the top of the hierarchy among the sovereigns of west Africa and the Muslim world, whose competitive ideological landscape was contested between the sovereigns of Morocco, Songhai and the Ottomans; read: But just like similar mythmaking attempts across the Muslim world however, such bold genealogical claims received a mixed reception in both the domestic and international scholarly community of the time, with just as many scholars refuting them as those accepting them, and they remained a subject of heated debate in the Bornu capital itself. But this eastern\-origin myth created at Bornu was nevertheless very influential in the myths of origin used by the ruling dynasties of the central Sudan region especially among the Hausa city\-states. The majority of the expeditions recorded in the two chronicles were largely political in character, to pacify rebellious regions and to affirm Bornu's authority; but some had a commercial character tied to the salt oases. These were especially important as the taxes and other revenues from the regional salt and natron trade comprised the bulk of Bornu's state revenues. While the primarily military account of the texts has led historians to see Idrīs' reign as an unbroken succession of wars, this is only an impressionistic reading, as the records of foreign embassies, the inclusion of peace agreements and trade caravans shows that the campaigns were only one among several facets of the exchanges between Bornu and its neighbors Importantly, the two chronicles present a very Bornu\-centric conception of the world, highlighting the importance of regional relations over long distance contacts. In the world centered at Bornu, the wider Muslim world of North Africa and the Ottomans is only a marginal player in Bornu's politics and trade, the modesty of its presence in the narrative of Aḥmad Furṭū relativizes its place in relation to the relations that Bornu maintains with its closer neighbors. From his point of observation, Aḥmad Furṭū invites us to discover his world from a more accurately contextualized, African point of view: a Bornu\-centric world, shaped by its own interests but open to the outside world, overturning the modern academic construct which perceives Bornu and other West African states as culturally and commercially oriented towards North Africa. Rather than straddling the long\-distance routes crisscrossing western Africa and North Africa, Bornu was at the center of its world, from where all roads radiated. --- Conclusion: Bornu’s place in African history. Bornu's intellectual traditions resituate the legacy of African scholarship with its environment, placing Africa at the center of its own intellectual production. While the old libraries of Ngazargamu were mostly destroyed during the course of the Bornu\-Sokoto wars in the early 19th century and the internal conflicts which heralded the ascendance of the Kanemi dynasty, Bornu's scholarship survived the political turmoil. Many cities across the region became home to a vibrant scholarly diaspora from Bornu with some scholars travelling as far as Ethiopia; greatly contributing to the vast corpus of African literature now housed in dozens of archives across west Africa, waiting to be translated and studied. --- NSIBIDI is West\-Africa’s oldest indigenous writing system, read about its history on our Patreon --- and Subscribe see Rudolph Ware’s discussion of ‘Isalm Noir’ in The Walking Qur'an mapmaker; twitter handle @Gargaristan Doubt, Scholap and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen pg 32\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 214, The Tradition of Qur'anic Learning in Borno by Yahya Oyewole Imam pg 98\) Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen pg 37 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 192\-193\) Realizing Islam by Zachary Valentine Wright pg 24\-25, The African Roots of a Global Eighteenth\-Century Islamic Scholarly Renewal by Zachary Wright pg 34\-35 Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 2 pg 39\-41, The Kanuri in Diaspora by Kalli Alkali pg 43 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 230\) Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 2 pg 42\-43 The Kanuri in Diaspora: The Contributions of the Ulama of Kanem Borno to Islamic Education in Nupe and Yorubalands by Kalli Alkali Yusuf Gazali Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 249\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière 228\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 220\-226, 246, 340\-341 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 250\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 247\-248,252\) Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen pg 33\) Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (Part 2\) by Andrea Brigaglia, Mauro Nobili pg 221\-223 ) Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th\-Century Central Sudanic Africa By Dorrit van Dalen pg 38\-40\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 71\-72\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 54\- 58\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 67 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 71\-72, 329\) mapmaker; twitter handle @Gargaristan Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 45\-50\) The Trans\-Saharan Book Trade by Graziano Krätli pg 149\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 314\-319 Some considerations relating to the formation of states in Hausaland by A Smith pg 336 Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 275\-277, also see; Salt of the desert sun by Paul Lovejoy, and The Oasis of Salt by Knut S. Vikør Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière 306\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière pg 93\-94\) Du lac Tchad à la Mecque by Rémi Dewière 329\-330\) 17 )

Kilwa, the complete chronological history of an East\-African emporium: 800\-1842\. in Kilwa, the complete chronological history of an East\-African emporium: 800\-1842\. Journal of African Cities chapter\-2 )The small island of Kilwa kisiwani, located off the coast of southern Tanzania, was once home to one of the grandest cities of medieval Africa and the Indian ocean world. The city\-state of Kilwa was one of several hundred monumental, cosmopolitan urban settlements along the East African coast collectively known as the Swahili civilization. Kilwa's historiography is often organized in a fragmentary way, with different studies focusing on specific eras in its history, leaving an incomplete picture about the city\-state's history from its earliest settlement to the modern era. This article outlines the entire history of Kilwa, chronologically ordered from its oldest settlement in 7th century to its abandonment in 1842\. It includes all archeological and textual information on Kilwa's political history, its major landmarks, its material culture, its economic history, and its intellectual production. Map showing some of the Swahili cities of the east African coast, the red circle includes the archipelagos of Kilwa and Mafia which were under the control of Kilwa's rulers. --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early Kilwa (7th\-11th century) The site of Kilwa kisiwani was first settled between the 7th\-9th century by the Swahili; a north\-east coastal Bantu\-speaking group which was part of a larger population drift from the African mainland which had arrived on the east African coast at the turn of the common era. Their establishment at Kilwa occurred slightly later than the earlier Swahili settlement at Unguja, but was contemporaneous with other early settlements at Manda, Tumbe and Shanga (7th\-8th century). The early settlement at Kilwa was a fishing and farming community, consisting of a few earthen houses, with little imported ceramics (about 0\.7%) compared to the locally produced wares. While the exact nature of the early settlement is still uncertain, it was largely similar with other Swahili settlements especially in its marginal participation in maritime trade and gradual adoption of Islam. Its material culture includes the ubiquitous early\-tana\-tradition ceramics which are attested across the entire coast, and a relative large amount of iron slag from local smelting activities. Iron made in Kilwa (and the Swahili cities in general) is likely to have been exported in exchange for the foreign goods, as it was considered a highly valued commodity in Indian ocean trade. --- Classical Kilwa (12th\-15th century) Like most of its Swahili peers, Kilwa underwent a political and economic fluorescence during the 11th century, with increased maritime trade and importation of foreign (Chinese and Islamic) ceramics, local crafts production especially in textiles, and the advent of substantial construction in coral; which at Kilwa was mostly confined to the reconstruction of the (formerly wooden) Great mosque as well as the construction of coral tombs. This transformation heralded the ascendance of Kilwa's first attested ruler (sultan) named Ali bin al\-Hassan, whose reign is mostly known from his silver coins, tentatively dated to the late 11th century. Al\-Hassan is identified in latter accounts as one of the "shirazi" sultans of Kilwa. The ubiquitous "shirazi" epithet in Swahili social history, is now understood as an endonymous identification that means "the Swahili par excellence" in opposition to the later, foreign newcomers; against whom the Swahili asserted their ancient claims of residence in the cities, and enhanced their Islamic pedigree through superficial connections to the famous ancient Persian city of shiraz that is located in the Muslim heartlands. Kilwa first appears in external accounts around the early 13th century, in which the city is referred to simply as "a town in the country of the Zanj" in the account of Yaqut written in 1222\. . In the late 13th and early 14th century, Kilwa extended its control to the neighboring islands of the Mafia archipelago including the towns of Kisimani mafia and Kua, becoming the dominant power over much of the southern Swahili coast. Kilwa also seized sofala from Mogadishu in the late 13th century and prospered on re\-exporting gold that was ultimately derived form the Zimbabwe plateau. During the late 13th century, Kilwa’s first dynasty was deposed by the a new dynasty from the nearby Swahili city of Tumbatu led by al\-Hassan Ibn Talut, who founded the "Mahdali" dynasty of Kilwa. Tumbatu had been a major urban settlement on the Zanzibar island, its extensive ruins of houses and mosques are dated to the 12th and 13th century, and it appears in Yaqut's 1220 account as the seat of the Zanj. The city was later abandoned after a violent episode around 1350\. The new dynasty of Kilwa may have had commercial ties with the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen although this connection would have been distant as Mahdali, who were most likely Swahili in origin, would have been established on Tumbatu and Mafia centuries prior to their takeover of Kilwa. The most illustrious ruler of this line was the sultan al\-Hassan bin sulayman who reigned in the early 14th century (between 1315\-1355\). Sulayman was a pious ruler who sought to integrate Kilwa into the mainstream Islamic world, prior to his ascendance to the throne, he had embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1331 and spent some time studying in the city of Aden. Sulayman issued trimetallic coinage (with the only gold coins struck along the coast), he built the gigantic ornate palatial edifice of Husuni Kubwa that remained incomplete, expanded the great mosque, and hosted the famous Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta. In his description of Kilwa, Ibn Battuta writes that; "After one night in Mombasa, we sailed on to Kilwa, a large city on the coast whose inhabitants are black A merchant told me that a fortnight's sail beyond Kilwa lies Sofala, where gold is brought from a place a month's journey inland called yufi" Battuta adds that Kilwa was elegantly built entirely with timber and the inhabitants were Zanj (Swahili), some of whom had facial scarifications. Kilwa declined in the second half of the 14th century, possibly due to the collapsing gold prices on the world market as well as the bubonic plague that was spreading across the Indian ocean littoral at the time. This coincided with the collapse of the recently built domed extension of the Great Mosque late in sulayman's reign (or shortly after) and the mosque wasn't rebuilt until the early 15th century. The decline of Kilwa may only be apparent, as it was during the late 14th century when the settlement on the nearby island of Songo Mnara was established. Songo Mnara was constructed over a short period of time, on a site with no evidence of prior settlement, its occupation was immediately followed by an intense period of building activity that surpassed Kilwa in quality of domestic architecture. The ruins of more than forty houses, six mosques and hundreds of graves and tombs are well preserved and were likely built during a short period perhaps lasting less than half a century. Kilwa recovered in the early 15th century with heavy investment in coral building around the city as well as the restoration of the Great mosque. This recovery coincides with accounts documented later in the 16th century Kilwa chronicle, in which political power and wealth in early 15th century Kilwa became increasingly decentralized with the emergence of an oligarchic council made up of both non\-royal patricians and lesser royals, as well as the 'amir' (a governor with both administrative and military power) who wrestled power away from the sultan. By the late 15th century, the amir was Kiwab bin Muhammad, he installed a puppet sultan and centralized power around his own office, but his rule was challenged by the other patricians including a non\-royal figure named Mohamed Ancony who was likely the treasurer. Kiwab was succeeded by his son Ibrāhīm Sulaymān who appears as the 'king of kilwa' in external accounts, and was in power when the Portuguese fleet of Vasco Da Gama arrived in 1502, although his actual power was much less than the title suggested. --- Architectural landmarks from the classical Kilwa The Great mosque of Kilwa. The main Friday mosque of Kilwa is the largest among its Swahili peers. The original mosque was a daub and timber structure constructed in the late 1st millennium, and modified on several occasions. In the 11th century, flat\-roofed (porites) coral mosque supported by polygonal wooden pillars, was constructed over the first mosque, and was occasionally repaired and its walls modified to maintain its structural soundness. During the early 14th century, the mosque was greatly extended and a new roof was constructed, supported by monolithic (porites) coral pillars, as well as by a series of domes and barrel\-vaults, but these proved structurally unsound and collapsed. In the early 15th century, the pillars were constructed using octagonal coral\-rag pillars, that were bounded with lime (already in use since the earliest constructions). Just south of the mosque is the Great House, a complex of three houses that were built in the 15th century and likely served as the new palace of the sultan after the abandonment of Husuni Kubwa. This house contained several courtyards, and a number of ornamental features such as niches and inlaid bowls in the plasterwork. A similarly\-built "house of the mosque" was constructed nearby, as well as a small domed mosque, all of which are dated to the 15th century. Husuni Ndogo fortress. This defensive construction was built in the 13th century, it is flanked by several polygonal and circular towers, the walls are currently 2m high and 1\.2m thick with many buttresses about 1\.8m long. The creation of a fortified palace serving as a caravanserai was likely associated with the increasing trade, around the time Kilwa had seized control of Sofala. Husuni Ndogo was abandoned following the construction of Husuni Kubwa. Husuni Kubwa The palace of Husuni Kubwa was built in the early 14th century over a relatively short period and wasn't completed. The grand architectural complex consists of two main sections, the first of which is the palace itself which features the characteristic sunken courtyards and niched walls of Swahili architecture, as well as novel features such as arcaded aisles and an ornate octagonal pool. The Place roof was adorned with a series of fluted cones and barrel vaults built in the same style as the Great mosque. The second section of the complex was attached to the southern end of the palace, its essentially an open\-air yard with dozens of rooms along its sides. Artificial causeway platforms built with cemented pieces of reef coral and limestone were constructed near the entrance to the Kilwa harbor between the 13th and 16th centuries. These served several functions including aiding navigation by limiting risk of shipwrecks, as walkways for fishing activities in the lagoons, and for ceremonial and ostentatious purposes that enhanced the city's status as a maritime trade hub. Songo Mnara was built on an island less than 20km away from Kilwa. Its occupation is dated between 1375 and 1500, with most of the construction occurring in the last quarter of the 14th century. The ruins comprise of several coral houses and mosques organized with a form of city plan that is flanked by open spaces and confined within a city wall. The two large structures sometimes referred to as ‘palaces,’ are actually sprawling composite buildings of multiple houses, and likely represent the wealthiest patricians/families in the town, which is unlikely to have had a single ruler. --- Kilwa coinage from the classical era. Coins had been minted on the Swahili coast since the 8th century at Shanga, and coin mints continued to flourish during the classical Swahili era across several cities including at Unguja, Tumbatu, Pemba and Manda, but it was at Kilwa was minting was carried out on a monumental scale. Kilwa's locally minted coinage was made primarily of copper, with occasional issues in gold and silver. The coins were marked with the names of the Kilwa sultans, and decorated with rhyming couplets in Arabic script. The coins are variably distributed reflecting their different uses in local and regional contexts, with the majority copper coins being found in the immediate vicinity of Kilwa, Songo Mnara, Mafia, (and Great Zimbabwe), while the silver coins found on Pemba Island, and the gold coins were found in Zanzibar. Despite the dynastic changes recounted in Kilwa's history, no coins were withdrawn from circulation before the early 16th century, and the coins of earlier sultans are as likely to be attested across all hoards as those of the later sultans; likely because the latter sultans attimes continued to issue new coins with names of earlier sultans as well as their own, which may complicate dating. Kilwa's coinage was mostly local in its realization and differed from the Indian ocean coinage in a number of aspects. The copper coins of Kilwa weren't standardized by weight nor did they derive most of their value from a conversion value to other "higher metals" of gold and silver, but derived their value from their symbolic legitimating aspects associated with each ruler, as well as functional purposes as currency in local and regional trade. --- The Portuguese episode in Kilwa’s history; documenting a crisis of legitimacy. In 1505 Kilwa was sacked by the Portuguese fleet of Francisco de Almeida who invaded the city with 200 soldiers in order to enforce a botched treaty, signed between the reigning sultan Ibrāhīm Sulaymān and an earlier Portuguese fleet led by Vasco Da Gama in 1502\. This invasion ended with the installation of a puppet sultan Mohamed Ancony who was quickly deposed due to local rebellion and for the succeeding 7 years the Portuguese struggled to maintain their occupation of the city, installing Ancony’s son (Haj Hassan) and later deposing him in favor of another figure, until 1512 when they conceded to leave sultan Ibrahim in charge. It was within the context of this succession crisis that the two chronicles of Kilwa's history were rendered into writing; both the Crônica de Kilwa and the Kitab al\-Sulwa ft akhbar Kilwa, both written in the mid\-16th century. Atleast two letters addressed to the Portuguese were written by two of the important Kilwa elites who were involved in this conflict and are inlcuded below. The Chronicles recount the dynastic succession of a series of Shirazi and later Mahdali sultans in relation to the rise and fall of the city’s fortunes prior to, and leading upto the Portuguese episode. The Chronicles don't relate the true course of events in the settlement and political history of the city\-state, they instead describe the urban and Islamic character of the settlement in relation to (and opposition against) its hinterland at the time when they were written. --- Kilwa in decline; reorientation of trade and the Portuguese colonial era. (1505\-1698\) After their occupation of Sofala in 1505 and meddling in Kilwa's politics, the Portuguese interlopers had effectively broken the commercial circuit established by Kilwa which funneled the gold purchased from Sofala into the Indian Ocean world. Kilwa tried to salvage its fortunes in the mid\-16th century by reorienting its trade towards its own hinterland, from where it derived ivory which it then sold to the Portuguese and other Indian ocean buyers in lieu of gold, and the city was reportedly still in control of the Mafia islands in 1571\. In 1588, Kilwa was attacked by the enigmatic Zimba forces, an offshoot of the Maravi kingdom from northern Mozambique that had been active in the gold and ivory trade which had since been taken over by the Portuguese. The city had gradually recovered from this devastation by the 1590s as the Yao; new group of Ivory traders from the mainland, created a direct route to Kilwa from the region north of Lake Malawi. Succession crises plagued Kilwa's throne in the 1610s; and were instigated largely by interventions of the Portuguese, who had effectively colonized the Swahili coast by then and had re\-occupied a small fort they constructed in Kilwa in 1505\. The Portuguese eventually managed to placate the rivaling factions by channeling the ivory trade exclusively through Kilwa's merchants by 1635, thus maintaining their control of the city despite an Omani attack in 1652, as the city wouldn't revert to local authority until 1698 when the Portuguese were finally expelled from Mombasa. --- Recovery in the 18th century and Omani occupation in the 19th century. Despite the reorientation of trade, Kilwa was impoverished under Portuguese rule and no buildings were constructed throughout the 17th century. The city's prosperity was restored in the early 18th century, under sultan Alawi and the queen (regent) Fatima bint Muhammad's reign, largely due to the expanding ivory trade with the Yao that had been redirected from the Portuguese at Mozambique island. This Kilwa dynasty with its characteristic ‘al\-shiraz’ nisba like the classical rulers, frequently traded and corresponded with the Portuguese to form an alliance against the Omani Arabs, the latter of whose rule they were strongly against. In the early 18th century, Kilwa's rulers built a large, fortified palace known as Makutani, it engulfed the earlier ruins of the “House of the Mosque”, they also repaired parts of the Great Mosque. Kilwa’s influence also included towns on Mafia island especially at Kua where a large palace was built by a local ruler around the same time. They also reconstructed the 'Malindi mosque' which had been built in the 15th century, this mosque is associated with a prominent family from the city of Malindi (in Kenya) which rose to prominence at the court of Kilwa in the 15th century. An 18th century inscription taken from the nearby tombs commemorates a member of the Malindi family. --- Epilogue: Omani influence from 1800\-1842\. Kilwa increasingly came under Omani suzerainty in the early 19th century as succession crises and a conflict with the neighboring town of Kilwa Kivinje provided an opportunity for Sayyid Sa‘id to intervene in local politics. The Gereza fort built by the Omanis in 1800 is the only surviving foreign construction among the Kilwa ruins, the imposing fort had two round towers at diagonally opposed corners serving as platforms for cannons, its interior has a central courtyard with buildings around three sides.This fort's construction heralded the end of Kilwa kisiwani as an independent city\-state. In the early 19th century, the center of trade in the Kilwa and Mafia archipelagos shifted to the mainland town of Kilwa Kivinje. Kilwa’s last ruler, sultan Hassan, was exiled by the Omani rulers of Zanzibar in 1842, and the once sprawling urban settlement was reduced to a small village. --- The city of TIMBUKTU was once one of the intellectual capitals of medieval Africa. Read about its complete history on Patreon; from its oldest iron age settlement in 500BC until its occupation by the French in 1893. Included are its landmarks, its scholarly families, its economic history and its intellectual production. --- if you liked this Article and would like to contribute to my African History website project, please donate to my paypal --- for free to receive new posts and support my work. SubscribeThe Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800\-1500 by Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 24\-34, 23\) Ceramics and the Early Swahili: Deconstructing the Early Tana Tradition by Jeffrey Fleisher \& Stephanie Wynne\-Jones A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 60\-61\) Horn and Crescent by Randall Pouwels pg 21\) A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 71 A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 61\-65\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 42 Horn and cresecnt by R. Pouwels pg 34\-37, Swahili Origins by James de Vere Allen pg 200\-215 A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 55\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 245\-252 Horn and cresecnt by R. Pouwels pg 25\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 242, The Archaeology of Islam in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Timothy Insoll pg 186\) the pre\-Kilwa origins of the Mahdali is given as Mafia in the kilwa chronicle and possibly tumbatu, but Sutton made a convincing hypothesis based on archeological finds of gold coins at tumbatu. see ‘A Thousand Years of East Africa by JEG Sutton’ The African Lords of the Intercontinental Gold Trade Before the Black Death by JEG Sutton pg 228\-234\) A Thousand Years of East Africa by JEG Sutton pg 81\-82\) The Swahili World by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 56\) A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 73\-74\) Kilwa Dynastic Historiography: A Critical Study by Elias Saad pg 184\-193 A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 66 Kilwa a history by J.E.G sutton pg 135\-139\) A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 65\-68\) This and similar plans are taken from J.E.G sutton Swahili pre\-modern warfare and violence in the Indian Ocean by Stephane Pradines pg 15\-16 ) Kilwa a history by J.E.G sutton pg 150\-156\) Inter\-Tidal Causeways and Platforms of the 13th\- to 16th\-Century City\-State of Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania by Edward Pollard pg 106\-113 credit; Edward Pollard The complexity of public space at the Swahili town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania by Jeffrey Fleisher, pg 4\-6 Kilwa a history by J.E.G sutton pg 145 A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 49\-50\) Coins in Context: Local Economy, Value and Practice on the East African Swahili Coast by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 23\-24\) Kilwa\-type coins from Songo Mnara, Tanzania by J. Fisher pg 112\) Coins in Context: Local Economy, Value and Practice on the East African Swahili Coast by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones 31\-34\) The Arts and Crafts of Literacy by Andrea Brigaglia, ‎Mauro Nobili pg 181\-203\) International Journal of African Historical Studies" Vol. "52", No. 2, pg 263\-268 A Material Culture by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones pg 58 Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa by Edward A. Alpers pg 42\-46\) The Role of the Yao in the Development of Trade in East\-Central Africa pg 60\-72 Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa by Edward A. Alpers pg 50, 59\-62\) A Revised Chronology of the Sultans of Kilwa in the 18th and 19th Centuries by Edward A. Alpers pg 156\-159 Kilwa a history by J.E.G sutton pg 142 Kilwa a history by J.E.G sutton pg 149 A Revised Chronology of the Sultans of Kilwa in the 18th and 19th Centuries by Edward A. Alpers pg 160 11 )

The kingdom of Mutapa and the Portuguese: on the failure of conquistadors in Africa (1571\-1695\) in The kingdom of Mutapa and the Portuguese: on the failure of conquistadors in Africa (1571\-1695\) African military history and an ephemeral colonial project. )Among the most puzzling questions of world history is why most of Africa wasn’t overrun by colonial powers in the 16th and 17th century when large parts of the Americas and south\-east Asia were falling under the influence of European empires. While a number of rather unsatisfactory answers have been offered, most of which posit the so\-called “disease barrier” theory, an often overlooked reality is that European settler colonies were successfully established over fairly large parts of sub\-equatorial Africa during this period. In the 16th and 17th century, the kingdom of Mutapa in south\-east Africa, which was once one of the largest exporters of gold in the Indian ocean world, fell under the influence of the Portuguese empire as its largest African colony. Mutapa’s political history between its conquest and the ultimate expulsion of the Portuguese, is instructive in solving the puzzle of why most of Africa retained its politically autonomy during the initial wave of colonialism. This article explores the history of Mutapa kingdom through its encounters with the Portuguese, from the triumphant march of the conquistadors in 1571, to their defeat and expulsion in 1695\. Map of the Mutapa kingdom (green) and neighboring states --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Early Mutapa: Politics and Trade in the 16th century. Beginning in the 10th century, the region of south\-East Africa was dominated by several large territorial states that were primarily settled by shona speakers, whose ruler’s resided in large, elaborately built dry\-stone capitals called zimbabwes the most famous of which is Great Zimbabwe. The northernmost attestation of this “zimbabwe culture” is associated with the Mutapa kingdom which was established in the mid 15th century by prince Mtotoa, after breaking away from Great Zimbabwe. Mtotoa’s successors were based in multiple capitals following shona traditions in which power rotated among the different lines of succession. They established paramountcy over territorial chiefs whose power was based on the control over subsistence agricultural produce, trade and religion. This paramountcy was exercised through the appointment of the territorial chiefs from important positions within the monarchy, and by a control over the coastal traders (Swahili, and later Portuguese), who were symbolically accommodated into the Mutapa political structure as the kings' wives. The economy of Mutapa was largely agro\-pastoralist in nature, primarily concerned with the cultivation of local cereals and the herding of cattle, both of which formed the bulk of tribute. Long\-distance trade and mining were mostly seasonal activities, the gold dust obtained through panning and digging shallow mines was traded at various markets and ultimately exported through the Swahili cities such as Sofala and Kilwa. Other metals such as iron and copper were smelted and worked locally, alongside other crafts industries including textiles and soapstone carving, all of which occurred in dispersed rather than concentrated centers of production. Gold mining was nevertheless substantial enough as to produce the approximately 8\.5 tonnes of gold a year which passed through Sofala in 1506\. The Mutapa kings didn’t monopolise all trade activities in Mutapa's dominions, and long\-distance trade was decentralized, the production and distribution of commodities destined for international markets in their dominions wasn't closely regulated but traders were nevertheless subject to certain taxes and tariffs. The main tax being the Kuruva which was originally paid by the Swahili traders in order to conduct trade in the state, and was later paid by the Portuguese after they took over the Swahili trading system. --- The first Portuguese invasion of Mutapa; from conquistadors to “King’s wives” Beginning in the 1530s, a steady trickle of Portuguese traders begun settling in the interior trading towns and in 1560, an ambitious Jesuit priest travelled to the Mutapa capital to convert the ruler. His attempt to convert the king Mupunzagutu failed and the latter reportedly executed the priest, having received the advice of his Swahili courtiers about the Portuguese who'd by then already colonized most of the east African coast following their bombardment of Kilwa, Mombasa and Mozambique, the last of which was by then their base of operation. Long after the news about the priest's execution had spread to Portugal, a large expedition force was sent to conquer Mutapa ostensibly to avenge the execution, but mostly to seize its gold mines and its rumored stores of silver. An army of 1,000 Portuguese soldiers \-\-five times larger than Pizarro's force that conquered the Inca empire\-\- landed in Sofala in 1571, it was armed with musketeers led by Francisco Barreto , and was supported by a cavalry unit. It advanced up to Sena but it was ground to a halt as it approached the forces of Maravi (Mutapa's neighbor), and while they defeated the Maravi in pitched battle, the latter fortified themselves, and the most that the Portuguese captured were a few cows. Another expedition was organized with 700 musketeers in 1573, supported by even more African auxiliaries and cavalry, and it managed to score a major victory in the kingdom of Manica but eventually retreated. A final expedition with 200 musketeers was sent up the Zambezi river but was massacred by an interior force (likely the Maravi). By 1576, the last remaining Portuguese soldier from this expedition had left. Following these failed incursions, the Portuguese set up small captaincies at the towns of Tete and Sena and formed alliances with their surrounding chieftaincies controlling the narrow length of territory along the banks of the Zambezi. Like the Swahili traders whom they had supplanted, the Portuguese traders were reduced to paying annual tax to Mutapa, and were turned into the 'king's wives'. --- Deception and Mortgaging gold mines for power: rebellions in Mutapa After surviving the Portuguese threat, the Mutapa king Gatsi had to contend with new challenges to his power, which included multiple rebellions led by his vassals. In 1589 a Mutapa vassal named Chunzo rebelled and attacked the gold\-mines in the region of chironga and killed Gatsi's captain, but his rebellion was eventually crushed. During the course of this rebellion, a Mutapa general named Chicanda rebelled and invaded Gatsi's capital, but was later pardoned and permitted to stay as a vassal. He rebelled again in 1599 \-\-ostensibly after Gatsi had one of his generals executed for not fighting Chunzo\-\-, and this time Gatsi called on the Portuguese stationed at TeTe for assistance and the latter sent an army of 2,000 with 75 musketeers to crush Chicanda's rebellion. A successor of Chunzo named Matuzianhe rose up against Gatsi and drove the king out of his capital, reduced to desperation, Mutapa Gatsi mortgaged his kingdom's mines to the Portuguese at Tete in exchange for the throne. By then, the former vassal chiefdoms of Mutapa in the east such as Manyika, Barwe and Danda, broke away from the central control in order to wrestle control of the gold trade and gain direct access to the imported wealth. The Portuguese would later came to Gatsi's aid after Matuzianhe had attacked Tete, they drove off the rebel vassal, defeated many of his well\-armed rebellious vassals from 1607\-1609 by constructing fortifications, and constructed a permanent for with a garrison of soldiers at Massapa in 1610\. After he was reinstalled in the capital, Gatsi quickly weaned himself off Portuguese control, he deceptively buried silver ores in his territory to lure his Portuguese allies, and exploited the divisions among the latter (whose stations at Tete, Mozambique and Goa were in competition), to expel them from the goldmines. After Gatsi demanded the kuruza annual tax from the very Portuguese who'd reinstalled him, the latter then turned to support his rivals, and in 1614, they mounted a failed attack on Mussapa. Gatsi had regained all the territories that Mutapa had lost and was in firm control of the state by the time of his death in 1623\. --- From the “king’s wives” to Conquistadors: the Portuguese conquest of Mutapa king Gatsi had allowed Portuguese traders to establish several trading posts in the heartland of the Mutapa state called feiras, or trading markets, such as Dambarare, Luanze and Massapa. Most of them were built in areas under the control or influence of local rulers who had a stake in the trade and the Mutapa king could closely monitor the Portuguese' activities, as well as leverage the allied Portuguese in the feiras, against potential Portuguese invaders in TeTe and Mozambique island. Following the death of king Gatsi in 1624, his son Kapararidze ascended to the throne, but his legitimacy was challenged by Mavhura (the son of Gatsi's predecessor) and this dispute was quickly exploited by the Portuguese who supported the latter over the former. When Kapararidze ordered the execution of a Portuguese envoy for breaching protocol on travelling to the kingdom in 1628, the Portuguese retaliated with a massive invasion force of 15\-30,000 soldiers and 250 musketeers in May 1629 that drove off Kapararidze and installed Mahvura. Mahvura was forced to sign a humiliating treaty of vassalage to the King of Portugal that effectively made Mutapa its colony on March 1629\. The treaty allowed the Portuguese traders and missionaries complete freedom of activity without having to pay taxes, giving them exclusive rights over all the gold and (potential) silver mines in Mutapa, permanently expelling the Swahili traders who were competing with the Portuguese, and converting the entire court to Catholicism by the Dominican priests —the last of which was received with great enthusiasm by the papacy in Rome. The general population of Mutapa was strongly opposed to this, they rallied behind Kapararidze in a massive anti\-colonial revolt, that attacked nearly all Portuguese settlements across the kingdom between 1630\-1631, killing 300\-400 armed settlers and their followers with only a few dozen surviving in Tete and Sena, and spreading into the neighboring regions of Manica and Maravi upto the coastal town of Ouelimane, which was besieged, driving the survivors back to the coast. They also captured and executed the Dominican priests who had converted Mavhura, an act that outraged the Portuguese colonial governor of Mozambique island. In response to this challenge of their authority, the Portuguese sent a massive army in 1632 under Diogo Meneses comprising of 200\-300 Portuguese musketeers and 12,000 African auxiliaries, the invading force quickly reestablished Portuguese control over Quelimane and Manica, and marched into Mutapa, it succeed in defeating Kaparidze’s forces and reinstalling Mavura. --- The Portuguese colonial era in Mutapa. The half\-century that followed Meneses' campaign was the height of Portuguese authority in Mutapa and central Africa, with hundreds of traders across the various mining towns, and dozens of Dominican priests with missions spread across Mutapa and neighboring kingdoms, sending Mutapa princes to Goa and Portugal (some of whom married locally and settled in Lisbon). The Portuguese also made a bold attempt to traverse central Africa with the goal of uniting their colonies that now included coastal Angola, coastal east Africa and most of north\-eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique. When Mavhura passed on in 1652, the priests installed king Siti as their puppet. Their power in royal succession remained unchallenged in 1655 with the ascendance of Siti's successor king Kupisa, who reigned until 1663 until he was assassinated, likely by an anti\-Portuguese faction at the Mutapa court associated with his successor Mukombwe —a shrewd ruler increasingly behaved less like a vassal. Mukombwe recovered some of the lands and mines that his predecessors had handed over to the Portuguese, he invited Jesuit priests to counter the Dominicans, and threatened the Portuguese position in Mutapa so much that the governor of Mozambique island planned to invade Mutapa and depose him. But Mukombwe's shrewdness couldn't tame the decline of Mutapa. Like his predecessors, he failed to confine the Portuguese traders to the feiras, and the Portuguese settlers and traders are said to have devastated the Mutapa interior searching for slave labour to mine the goldfields and guard their settlements, as well as raiding the vassal chief's cattle herds for regional trade and to acquire more land and followers. .Catastrophic droughts are reported to have occurred in the mid 17th century accompanied by other natural disasters which depopulated north\-eastern Zimbabwe and further undermined Mukombwe's position relative to his vassals. One Portuguese writer in 1683 described the sorry state of Mutapa during this period; “Mocaranga (Mutapa) has very rich mines, but the little government, and the great domination of the Portuguese with whom the natives used to live together, has brought it to such an end, that it is depopulated today and consequently without mines. Its residents ran away, and the king appointed them other lands for them to live as it pleased him. The larger part of this kingdom remained without more people than the Portuguese and their dependents and slaves. It now looks the same that Lisbon will look with three men, but not to look completely deserted: the wild animals came in instead of the residents, and it has so many that even inside the houses the lions come to eat people.” --- Decline of Mutapa and Changamire Dombo ‘s expulsion of the Portuguese. In response to the political upheavals of the Portuguese era, several Mutapa vassals rebelled, one of these was Changamire Dombo, who had been granted lands and wealth by the king Mukombwe in the 1670s likely to pacify him. Changamire used the wealth to attract a large following and raise his own army primarily comprised of archers unlike most rebels of the time who were keen to acquire muskets. Mukombwe sent Mutapa's army to crush his rebellion but Dombo defeated them. In 1684, the emerging Rozvi kingdom's ruler Changamire managed to score a major victory against the Portuguese musketeers at Maungwe. Facing an army of hundreds of Portuguese musketeers and thousands of African auxiliaries, Dombo’s archers withstood the firepower in pitched battle, they crushed the Portuguese force and seized their firearms and trade goods. Dombo then moved south to conquer the cities of Naletale and Danangombe, the latter of which became his capital the Rozvi kingdom. When king Mkombwe died in 1692, the Portuguese pushed to install their preferred catholic candidate named Mhande to the throne of Mutapa, instead of Mukombwe's brother Nyakunembire who was the more legitimate choice. The latter prevailed and his fist move was to appeal to Dombo for military aid to punish the insolate priests and traders. In 1693, Dombo's armies descended upon the Portuguese settlements of Dambarare whose destruction was so total, that the rest of the Portuguese who weren't captured by Dombo, and their peers across the kingdom, fled to Tete and Sena. Mhande later received Portuguese assistance in 1694 and managed to drive off Nyakunembire, who was instead installed as king of Manyika by Dombo. As the Portuguese were trying to re\-establish their position in the interior, Dombo's forces descended on Manica in 1695 and sacked the Portuguese settlements there, sending refugees scurrying back to Sena. While Portuguese priests would continue attempting to influence the succession of Mutapa's rulers, the once large kingdom had been reduced to a minor chiefdom on the fringes of the vast Rozvi state, the latter would then assumed the role of Mutapa as the preeminent regional power in the interior and competed with the Portuguese to install puppets on Mutapa’s throne. In 1702 and 1712, the Rozvi deposed Portuguese\-backed kings and installed their own candidates, this pattern continued until the Portuguese formally pulled out of Mutapa's politics in 1760, but Mutapa survived and recovered some of its power in the early 19th century. The Rozvi instituted a policy against Portuguese interference in regional politics including within their vassal chiefdoms. Their Portuguese captives from the 1695 wars were permanently settled in the interior and were to have no contact with the coast, despite repeated attempts to ransom them. The Rozvi continued gold trade with the Portuguese traders, but confined the latter's activities to the feiras, enforcing this policy strictly using its fierce armies in I743, I772, and I78I by protecting the towns, greatly reversing the balance of power in the region. In the Rozvi's neighboring kingdom of Kiteve, Portuguese traders were expelled and their puppet king deposed in the early 18th century after rumors that he was planning to hand over its gold mines to them. The last of the Portuguese trading towns in the kingdom of Manica would later be razed in the early 19th century, and it would be nearly 60 years before the Portuguese resumed colonializing the region and finally completed their occupation of Mutapa in 1884\. --- Conclusion: The military factor in African history. It's difficult to overstate the formidable challenge that early conquistadors encountered on the African battlefield. While the initial losses of 1571 invasion force could be put down to their inexperience, which they made up for by recruiting African auxiliaries, their defeat by Changamire's forces in the 1690s and his destruction of Portuguese settlements in the region comprised the largest loss of European life in African war until the Italian loss in Ethiopia. While disease may have presented a challenge to the Portuguese in Mutapa, it was never a sufficient barrier to prevent the kingdom's conquest; nor the permanent stationing of Portuguese garrisons in Tete; nor the unrestrained activities of Portuguese settlers in various mining towns deep in the interior of Africa. The principal factor behind the European retreat from south\-east Africa was their military defeat \-\-the same factor that had enabled their initial establishment. --- Is Jared Diamond’s “GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL” a work of monumental ambition? or a collection of speculative conjecture and unremarkable insights. My review Jared Diamond myths about Africa history on Patreon --- if you liked this Article and would like to contribute to African History, please donate to my paypal --- for free to receive new posts and CONTACT ME via [email protected] SubscribeA Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S Mudenge pg 37\-38 When science alone is not enough: Radiocarbon timescales, history, ethnography and elite settlements in southern Africa by Shadreck Chirikure, pg 365 A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 80 New Perspectives on the Political Economy of Great Zimbabwe by Shadreck Chirikure pg 25\-30 Port cities and intruders by Michael Pearson pg 49 A Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S. Mudenge, pg 182 Excavations at the Nhunguza and Ruanga Ruins in Northern Mashonaland by P.S. Garlake Chisvingo Hill Furnace Site, Northern Mashonaland by M.D. Prendergast A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 55\) Portuguese Musketeers by Richard Gray, pg 534 A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt , pg 57\-58\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 59\-60\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 81\) The Zimbabwe Culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 187\) Palaces, Feiras and Prazos by Innocent Pikirayi pg 165 The Zimbabwe Culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 189\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 85\-88\) New Perspectives on the Political Economy of Great Zimbabwe by Shadreck Chirikure Palaces, Feiras and Prazos by Innocent Pikirayi pg 175 Palaces, Feiras and Prazos by Innocent Pikirayi pg 166, A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 99\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa by Philippe Denis pg 26\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa by Philippe Denis pg 27\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 90, Portuguese Musketeers on the Zambezi by Richard Gray pg 532\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 91\-92\) A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 95\) A Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S. Mudenge pg 274\) The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa by Philippe Denis 35, A Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S. Mudenge pg 275\-277\) Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi: Exploration, Land Tenure and Colonial Rule in East Africa by Malyn Newitt pg 62\) A Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S. Mudenge pg 277\) The Shona and the Portuguese 1575–1890\. Volume I: 1570–1700, by David Beach pg 162 National Galleries of The Zimbabwe Culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 210\) Portuguese Musketeers by Richard Gray, pg 533, A Political History of Munhumutapa, C1400\-1902 by S. Mudenge pg 286 The Zimbabwe culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 212\-214, 205\-208 The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa by Philippe Denis pg 36 The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa by Philippe Denis pg 38, A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 104\) Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi: Exploration, Land Tenure and Colonial Rule in East Africa by Malyn Newitt pg 72\) The Zimbabwe culture by Innocent Pikirayi pg 193 The Role of Foreign Trade in the Rozvi Empire: A Reappraisal by Mudenge pg 387 A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt pg 201 Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi: Exploration, Land Tenure and Colonial Rule in East Africa by Malyn Newitt pg 72\-75\) 15 )

Creating an African writing system: the Vai script of Liberia (1833\-present) in Creating an African writing system: the Vai script of Liberia (1833\-present) “There are three books in this world—the European book, the Arabic book, and the Vai book” )A small West\-African town located a short distance from the coast of Liberia, was the site of one of the most intriguing episodes of Africa's literary history. Inspired by a dream, a group of Vai speakers had invented a unique script and spread it across their community so fast that it attracted the attention many inquisitive visitors from around the world, and has since continued to be the subject of studies about the invention of writing systems. The Vai script is one of the oldest indigenous west African writing systems and arguably the most successful. Despite the script's relative marginalization by the Liberian state (in favour of the roman script), and the Vai's adherence to Islam (which uses the Arabic script), the Vai script has not only retained its importance among the approximately 200,000 Vai speakers who are more literate in Vai than Arabic and English, but the script has also retained its relevance within modern systems of education. This article traces the history of the Vai script from its creation in 1833, exploring the political and cultural context in which the script was invented and propagated in 19th century Liberia. Map showing the present territory of the Vai people and the town of Jondu where the Vai script was invented --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The Vai in the political history of Liberia: trade, warfare and colonialism. From the 14th\-17th century, various groups of Mande\-speakers who included the vai arrived and settled in the coastal hinterlands of what later came to be Liberia, as a part of a southward extension of trading networks that reached from the west African interior. Over the the 18th and 19th century, the Vai and their neighbors had established various forms of state\-level societies often called confederacies in external sources. These states had primarily agro\-pastoral economies, their populations were partially Islamized, and were also engaged in long distance trade with the interior states and the coastal settlements; exchanging commodities such as salt, kola, ivory, slaves, iron, palm oil and cotton. The salt trade in particular, had served as an impetus for the Vai’s gradual migration southwards. In the early 19th century, the Vai and other African groups near what would later become the city of Monrovia, underwent a period of political upheaval as the area became the target of foreign settlers comprised mostly of freed\-slaves from the U.S. The establishment of a colony at Monrovia, was response to the growing abolitionist movement in the U.S, that was exploited by the “American Colonization Society” company, which undertook a largely unpopular resettlement program by moving a very small fraction of freed slaves to Liberia. Beginning in 1822, a tiny colony —which eventually numbered just over 3,000 people by 1847— was established at Monrovia and other coastal cities by the society using a combination force, barter and diplomacy to subsume and displace the autochthonous populations. Mortality for the settlers was as high as 50%, and by first decade of the 1900s, more than 80% of the coastal population was made up of acculturated Africans. --- The cultural environment of Cape mount county, Liberia: home of the Vai script’s inventor. While there was a significant degree of "mutual acculturation" between the freed slaves and the African groups due to trade, intermarriage and cultural exchanges, as observed by one writer in 1880, that "along the Liberian coast the towns of the colonists and the natives are intermingled, and are often quite near to each other.", the relationship between the two groups was also marked by ideological competition and warfare. This was especially evident as the Liberian colony expanded into cape mount county of the Vai in the 1850s, ostensibly to mediate the interstate wars between the Vai and neighboring groups It's within this context that a Vai man named Duwalu Bukele Momulu Kpolo, and his associates invented a script for the Vai language. Bukele originally lived in the town of Jondu where he created and taught the script, before he moved to the town of Bandakoro, both towns were located in the modern Garwula District of Cape\-mount county, Liberia. Bukele wasn’t literate in any script prior to the invention of Vai, and most accounts recorded by internal and external writers mention that he was barely able to speak English and wasn't familiar with writing it. While the Americo\-Liberian settlers had established Christian mission schools at the coast, neither Bukele nor his associates were Christian. Although Bukele later became Muslim around 1842 (Momulu is Vai for Muhammad), This conversion occurred nearly a decade after the script's invention in 1832/1833\. --- The origin myth of the Vai script: Visions of people from afar. An early account about the script’s invention approximately one year after its creation was recorded by a Christian missionary in march 1834; "An old man dreamed that he must immediately begin to make characters for his language, that his people might write letters as they did at Monrovia. He communicated his dream and plan to some others, and they began the work." In March 1849, another missionary named Sigismund Koelle met the script's inventor Bukele and his cousin Kali Bara, from whom he recorded a lengthy account of the script's invention. In a story recorded by Koelle by the inventor Bukele, the latter recounts a dream in which a "poro" man (poro \= 'people from afar' in Vai which includes both Americo\-Liberians and Europeans) showed him the script in the form of a book, with instructions for those who used the script to abstain from eating certain animals and plants, and not to touch the “book” when they are ritually unclean. Kali Bara on the other hand recounts a slightly different tradition, writing in his Vai book, he mentions that the script was invented after 6 Vai men (including himself and Bukele) had challenged themselves to write letters as good as the intelligent "poro". Later recollections recorded in 1911 about the scripts’ invention provide a slightly different version; that Bukele received the Vai “book” from a Spirit, and was instructed to tell Vai teachers that their only tuition should be palm wine, that would be ritually spilled before studies. Interpreting the exact circumstances of the script's invention as related in these accounts has been a subject of considerable debate. While the majority of the world's writing systems didn’t spontaneously materialize, a given society’s exposure to a writing system is by itself not a sufficient impetus for inventing a script. The vai had been familiar with the Arabic script used by their west African peers and immediate neighbors since the 10th century, and had been in contact with the European coastal traders with their Latin script, since the 16th century. However, the Vai writing system is a syllabary script (like the Japanese kana and Cherokee scripts) that is wholly unlike the consonantal Arabic script nor the alphabetic Latin script. Some scholars have explored the possible relationship between Vai and the contemporaneous Cherokee script as well as the identity of the “poro” man in tradition. Their show that there’s scant evidence that the most likely “poro” candidates; John Revey (an Americo\-Liberian missionary active in the region in 1827\) and Austin Curtis (a mixed native\-American coastal trader), provided any stimulus for the invention of the script. The purported connection that these two men had with Bukele isn’t recorded in any contemporary account; its absent in Kali Bara’s lengthy Vai book, and it isn’t mentioned by John and Curtis themselves (despite both leaving records), nor is the connection made by any missionary of which more than a dozen wrote about the script. The scholars therefore conclude that any link between Cherokee and Vai scripts "remains conjectural because the evidence is only circumstantial, with no conclusive direct link between the two scripts" and the “We have no doubt that Doalu Bukele was the "proper inventor" of the Vai script”. --- The role of the Vai king Goturu: Legitimating an invention According to the account narrated by Bukele, he and his associates took their invention to the Vai king Goturu, and the latter he was impressed with it, declaring that the "this (Vai script) was most likely the book, of which the Mandingos (his Muslim neighbors) say, that it is with God in heaven, and will one day be sent down upon Earth", and that it "would soon raise his people (the Vai) upon a level with the Poros and Mandingos" Goturu later composed a manuscript in Vai containing descriptions of his wars, as well as moral apothegms with Islamic themes, he also played an important role in the script’s early adoption by greatly encouraging the construction of schools to teach the Vai script. This leaves little doubt that the vision origin\-myth of the Vai script, with its recognizable Islamic themes — from Muhammad’s divine revelation of the Koran, to the wudu purification ritual before touching it—, as well as the "poro" figure, were post\-facto creations by the script's inventors and their king, to legitimate their innovation through divine revelation, as well as to enhance the prestige and political autonomy of king Goturu's state especially in relation to their “poro” neighbours. As in many cultures around the world, visionary rituals are part of the spiritual repertoire of West African tradition and belief systems, they lend "divine" authority to an invention and legitimate it, while enabling the inventors of the new tradition to deny its original authorship by attributing it to otherworldly beings, as a way of persuading potential adopters to accept it. --- Preexisting “archaic” writing systems and ideological competition in 19th century Liberia Prior to the invention of the Vai script, there were preexisting graphic systems of “archaic”/proto writing used by the Vai and their neighbors, that was expressed in interpersonal communication, war, and divination rituals.This preexisting corpus of logograms was drawn upon by Bukele for the creation of Vai characters, and is included in early accounts about the script which referred to these Vai logograms as “hieroglyphs” (discussed below), but they were gradually discarded as the Vai syllabary was standardized and acquired its fully phonetic character. There is evidence that the degree of intellectual ferment in Vai territory at the time that the script was invented —stimulated by coastal and interior contacts (Americo\-Liberian colonists with the Latin script, and Muslim teachers with the Arabic script)— is in line with most of the accounts about the invention of the script and pride that the Vai people have of it. A teacher of Vai in 1911 wrote about the script that “the Vais believe was taught them by the great Spirit whose favourites they are” ; and a researcher in the 1970s was told that; "There are three books in this world—the European book, the Arabic book, and the Vai book; God gave us, the Vai people, the Vai book because we have sense." Both of these statements echo the competitive ideological and intellectual milieu of 19th century Liberia that was remarked upon by external writers, and reveal the circumstances which compelled the Vai script's creators to demonstrate their sophistication and assert their political autonomy in relation to their literate neighbors; the ‘poro’ colonists and the Muslim scholars, to show them that the Vai were “book\-people” as well. (Bukele's other name; ‘Kpolo’, means book in Vai) Bukele’s vision origin\-myth also created an association between the Vai education with religious experience, and was strikingly similar to the kind of Muslim (and Christian) religious education which the Vai were familiar with from their neighbours. The vision’s inclusion of a “divinely” received book, the dietary taboos, and instructions against sacrilege/desecration of the Vai “book”, would have resonated among both Muslims and Christians in 19th century Liberia. While the traditions of ritually spilling palm wine before teaching the script were rooted in the Vai’s indigenous belief systems. --- The Vai writing system: the standardized and pre\-standardized characters. The Vai script is a syllabary script (ie: a writing system whose characters represent syllables), that contains 211 signs according to the standardized version completed in 1899 and 1962\. The characters represent all possible combination of consonants and vowels in the Vai language, as well as seven individual oral vowels, two independent nasals \ Before its standardization, the Vai script also contained approximately 21 logograms (ie; characters that represent complete words) , derived from an prexisting “pictorial code” used by the Vai to spell whole words and to represent discrete syllables(hence; Logo\-Syllabograms). Between the 1840s and 1960s, these symbols, which were recorded in various accounts of atleast 15 different writers, had mostly been discarded in the process of standardizing the script. As one writer observed in 1933, the Vai script was by then "a purely phonetic syllabic script” even though "signs are occasionally found in Vai manuscripts which embody not a phonetic sound\-sequence but a definite concept”. --- Teaching the script: Vai education systems from 1833 to the present day The teaching of the Vai script was conducted in purpose\-built schools constructed by Bukelele and his associates in the town of Jondu by the year 1834\. "They erected a large house in Dshondu (Jondu), provided it with benches and wooden tablets, instead of slates, for the scholars, and then kept a regular day\-school ; in which not only boys and girls, but also men, and even some women learnt to write and read their own language. So they went on prosperously for about eighteenth months, and even people from other towns came to Dshondu, to make themselves acquainted with this "new book". Vai characters were written on paper, cloth, walls, furniture and other mediums primarily using dyes made from local plants. While Koelle’s account doesn't include exactly what was taught in the Vai schools, it's very likely that elementary education in the Vai script during the early 19th century was primarily acquired by letter writing and correspondence. Bukele and his associates had been impressed with the ability of their literate neighbors (especially the “poro”) to communicate over long distances, and according to Kali Bara's account, the Vai script came about after they had challenged themselves to write letters to each other like the poro. Early missionary accounts that were recorded less than a year after the Vai script's invention also mention that the Vai "write letters and books". In modern times, the elementary teaching of the Vai script primarily involves letter writing especially for trade and interpersonal communication, with classes taking place about 5 days a week over a few months, this time period being enough for a student to acquire a functional level of literacy. Depending on the occupation of the teacher and their student, other forms of teaching include record keeping (especially in long\-distance trade and crafts like carpentry and construction), as well as in documenting history and composing religious literature. --- Vai Manuscripts: One of the oldest documents written in the Vai script is "Book of Ndole," composed by Bukele's cousin, Kali Bara before 1849\. Its an autobiographical account of his life, and also contains lengthy accounts of national and international events in the Cape mount region that are of historiographical nature (several copies were printed in the 1850s and one is currently at the Houghton Library of Harvard University). However, most written works of Vai are private compositions (such as the personal diary included below) and there are thus few works in the Vai script available publically that are reproduced in significant quantity, save for translations of religious stories and texts, as well as other forms of wall inscriptions and the occasional government posters. --- The Vai education system: between the Muslim interior and Christian coast. Aspects of Vai teaching in the 19th century could’ve been borrowed from the established Islamic education system of west Africa. The Liberian hinterland, like much of west Africa, was well integrated into the extensive scholarly networks, particularly of old Jakhanke diaspora. Local scholars based in towns such as Musadu, Vonsua, Bopolu, and Bakedu (all in western Liberia) provided much of the elementary education, and students moved for higher learning at Musadu as well as further north to Jenne and Timbuktu (in Mali), as well as to Timbo and Kankan (in Guinea). One scholar from Musadu in the 19th century was Ibrahima Kabawee who'd visited all the above mentioned towns. Atleast 25% of the Vai that Sigismund Koelle met in the 1849 were Muslims, a figure has since risen to 90%, and while Bukele only converted to the religion at a later date, and even had a personal teacher (Malam) who engaged in a fierce religious debate with Koelle, he and his peers would have been familiar with the Islamic education beforehand. As one external writer noted in 1827 that "every village" in the Cape Mount district had its Islamic teacher, with children being taught to read in Arabic script, and another writer noted in 1834 that "the zeal which the (Islamic) teachers manifest in extending it, and the diligence with which it is studied, exhibit a most encouraging aptitude for learning". While an Americo\-Liberian missionary named John Revey had succeeded in establishing a short\-lived Christian school in the cape mount region in 1827 that lasted about a year, and a few Vai men would had travelled to Monrovia and Freetown (in Sierra Leone) and exposed to similar church\-schools, there was no Vai in the cape\-mount interior who had been converted to Christianity by the 1840s, and the only known Vai student from the region briefly attended a coastal school in a rather opportunistic fashion. The Christian form of education is therefore unlikely to have influenced Vai education during the early 19th century. --- The Spread of Vai literacy: Formal and informal channels of learning The early success of Bukele's schools was in part due to the support of a prestigious patron. In Bukele’s account, the inventors approached the Vai King Goturu with a gift of 100 parcels of salt each about 3\-4ft long in order for him to support for their initiative (Bukele was part of an important trading family). The king then requested Bukele and his associates to teach the Vai script in Jondu "and to make known his will, that all his subjects should be instructed by them". But after about 18 months (around 1835\), Jondu was sacked in a war with a neighboring state, and the students and their teachers moved to other regions. Jondu was resettled shortly after to become the modern town, but the Vai teachers resumed their activities in 1844 at a nearby town of Bandakolo. And by 1849 "all grown\-up people of the male sex are more or less able to read and to write, and that in all other Vei towns there are at least some men who can likewise spell their "country\-book." While the area around Bandakolo was again affected by war, the region’s intermittent conflicts are unlikely to have significantly affected the spread of Vai literacy, which continued to be attested in the late 19th and early 20th century and was increasingly propagated through less institutionalized methods. A remarkable example was a Vai ruler of a small state near the coast in 1911, who was unfamiliar with English, but could read and comment on Homer’s Iliad translated in the Vai script. A study in the early 1970s in the Cape Mount County found that among the literate Vai men, 58% were literate in Vai script and other scripts, compared to 50% in Arabic script and 27% in the English. Making Vai the most successful indigenous script in West Africa. --- Conclusion: the Vai writing system in Liberian history. The Vai script was the product of the exigencies of political and ideological competition in early 19th century Liberia, as well as the inventiveness of Bukele and his associates, who drew inspiration from known writing systems and the preexisting pictorial culture to develop their own unique script. Once established, the Vai writing system met practical record keeping and communication needs but also allowed its users to to circumscribe alternative politico\-religious formations in opposition to the discourses of Liberian colonial administrations. The Vai script served ideological values in traditional activities, functional values in long\-distance trade, and political values in maintaining the Vai’s autonomy in a region at the nexus of foreign colonization and local resistance. The Vai insisted on acquiring literacy in their own script, and accomplished this despite the volatile political landscape of 19th century Liberia, enabling them to attain the highest rate of literacy of any indigenous West\-African script. --- NSIBIDI is West\-Africa’s oldest indigenous writing system, read about its history on our Patreon --- for free to receive new posts. SubscribeThe Mane, the Decline of Malnd Mandinka Expansion towards the South Windward Coast by AW Massing pg 45, 43\-44 African\-American Exploration in West Africa by James Fairhead pg 306\-331\) Liberia and the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century by W.E Allen pg 21\-22, 31\) African\-American Exploration in West Africa by James Fairhead pg 13\-14\) Liberia and the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century by W.E Allen pg pg 31\) African\-American Exploration in West Africa by James Fairhead pg pg 285\-286\) African Resistance in Liberia: The Vai and the Gola\-Bandi by Monday B. Abasiattai, pg 48 Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer 441\-442\) Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 448\) Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by by Sigismund Koelle pg 23, 26\) Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 438 Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 438\) Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 444\-445,449\) The Vai people and their syllabic writing by Massaquoi pg 465 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 32, Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 458\) only a single anonymous source makes a claim —25 years after the script’s invention— that it was Revey who inspired it and taught Bukele, but this was a mere supposition as Revey didn’t teach Bukele, neither did he mention anywhere in his accounts about introducing a new script, a project that was infact tried by one of his peers in 1835, see; Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 474\. Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 483\- 484, 452\. Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 24\) Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 449 n. 61\) Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 24 Dreams of scripts: Writing systems as gifts of God by Robert L. Cooper pg 223, The invention, transmission and evolution of writing: Insights from the new scripts of West Africa by Piers Kelly pg 202\) Dreams of scripts: Writing systems as gifts of God by Robert L. Cooper pg 223, The invention, transmission and evolution of writing by Piers Kelly pg 204 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 266 The invention, transmission and evolution of writing by Piers Kelly pg 204, The Vai people and their syllabic writing by Massaquoi pg 465 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 265 The Vai People and Their Syllabic Writing by Momolu Massaquoi pg 459 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 31\) the term 'book\-people’, ‘book\-person’ and ‘book\-palaver’ is encountered alot in west African accounts and local languages and it generally refers to literate people; initially Muslim Africans but also Christian Europeans, see: African\-American Exploration in West Africa by James Fairhead pg 316, Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 445, Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country by Sigismund Koelle pg 26 Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 451, The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 317 invention, transmission and evolution of writing: Insights from the new scripts of West Africa by Piers Kelly pg 193\) Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 25 Distribution of complexities in the Vai script by Andrij Rovenchak pg 3, The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 32\) The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 265\-266 invention, transmission and evolution of writing: Insights from the new scripts of West Africa by Piers Kelly pg 193, The fate of logosyllabograms in the Vai script by Piers Kelly, 1834\-2005 Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 24 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 240 Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 23 Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 448\-445\) The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 65\-66, 71\-82\) A Study of Two 19th Century Vai Texts by T. V. Sherman, C. L. Riley The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 78 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 79 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 78\-82\) digitized with rough translation digitized on this , translation; “The Diary of Boima Kiakpomgbo from Mando Town (Liberia)” by Andrij Rovenchak African\-American Exploration in West Africa by James Fairhead pg pg 314\-318\) Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 25\) Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross\-Cultural Aspects of Second Language Writing By Ulla Connor pg 103 Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 27\) Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 454\-455\) Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 457\). Cherokee and West Africa by Konrad Tuchscherer pg 447 Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 24\) Narrative of an Expedition Into the Vy Country of West Africa by Sigismund Koelle pg 24\-25\) The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 267 The Vai People and Their Syllabic Writing by Momolu Massaquoi pg 462\-467 The psychology of literacy by Sylvia Scribner pg 63\-64\) 14 )

Revolution and Upheaval in pre\-colonial southern Africa: the view from Kaditshwene. in Revolution and Upheaval in pre\-colonial southern Africa: the view from Kaditshwene. On the myth of "mfecane" )Historical scholarship about 19th century southern africa has long been centered on the notion of the so\-called mfecane, a term that emerged from colonial era notions that implicate King Shaka and the rise of the Zulu kingdom as the cause of unprecedented upheaval, political transformation, and intensified conflict across the region between the 1810s\-1830s. As a cape colonist wrote: "the direful war\-wave first set in motion by the insatiable ambition of the great Zulu conqueror rolled onward until it reached the far interior, affecting every nation with which it came in contact". One of the nations supposedly engulfed in the maelstrom was the Harutshe capital of Kaditshwene, the largest urban settlement in southern Africa of the early 19th century. Research over the last two decades has however convincingly shown that the “mfecane” is a false periodization not grounded in local understanding of history, but is instead a scholarly construct whose claims of unprecedented violence, depopulation and famine have since been discredited. This article explores the history of the Tswana capital of Kaditshwene from its growth in the 18th century to its abandonment in 1823, showing that the era of revolution and upheaval in the Tswana states was neither related to, nor instigated by the Zulu emergence of the early 19th century, but was instead part of a similar process of state consolidation and expansion across southern Africa. Map showing some of the major Tswana capitals in the late 18th century including Kaditshwene, and the Hurutshe state (highlighted in green) --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Earliest Tswana communities in southern Africa, and the emergence of social complexity (3rd century \-14th century) There’s now significant archeological evidence of the arrival of sedentary homesteads, iron working, pottery, and plant and animal domesticates into south Africa by bantu\-speaking groups in several waves beginning around 250AD, these groups often travelled along the coast and thus settled near the south African coast to exploit its marine resources and to cultivate the sandy soils adjacent to the sea, the latter soils were often poor and quickly depleted which periodically forced their migration for new fields. The interior of southern Africa was occupied by various pastoral\-forager communities who were among the earliest human ancestors in the world. known in modern times as Khoi and San, they traded and intermixed socially over centuries with bantu\-speaking communities. Both the oral traditions and the reports of European missionaries and travelers confirm that the forager communities and the bantu\-speaking groups often lived on amicable terms near each other but also warred for resources and on occasions of transgression, aspects of San culture were also adopted in Tswana origin myths to affirm the latter's ancestral links with the region. The earliest states in south eastern Africa emerged at Schroda and K2 (south\-africa) around 850AD, at Toutswe (Botswana) in 900AD, at Mapungubwe (south\-Africa) in 1075, at Great Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe) in the 12th century, and at Thulamela south\-Africa) in the 13th century. By the 14th century, complex chiefdoms of lineage groups were spread across most of south\-eastern Africa including in what is now southern Botswana and central south\-Africa, in the heartlands of the Tswana\-speakers (a language\-group in the larger bantu language\-family) from which the Hurutshe state emerged. Early Tswana lineages and states: 14th\-18th century Among the Tswana speakers, states were often identified by the name of the founding ancestor of the ruling chief's line of descent. Across the wider region, submission to authority was prompted by military protection and gaining access to productive resources such as arable land and cattle rather than an acceptance of the legitimizing authority, this preserved the right of expression of open dissent in public forums which became a feature of the region's statecraft. settlements reflecting early Tswana culture in the region are first dated to about 1300 and many of the traditions of the old Tswana ruling lineages date their founding genealogies back to the early second millennium, possibly indicating that these traditions refer to ancestors who headed the descent line and inherited the chieftaincy prior to their arrival. Radiocarbon dates from settlements near Kaditswene confirm that Tswana speakers had settled there as early as the 15th century. The extensive use of stone as a building material started in the late 17th century, and had by the mid 18th century grown into aggregated stonewalled settlements, such as Kaditshwene and several others. The material\-cultural and stratigraphic record of these sites indicate however, that they were not occupied for extended periods, suggesting that Tswana capitals including Kaditshwene were frequently relocated.In the 18th century, a number of Tswana polities emerged central southern Africa. These states came to be known with reference to the ancient lines of descent that had long been in the region such as the BaHurutshe, BaFokeng, BaMokgatla and BaKwena among others (despite the Ba\- prefix, these are Tswana dialects rather than different languages). From lineage segmentation to large chiefdoms: the emergence of Harutshe (1650\-1750\) The historiography of southern Africa contains many records about the separation/segmentation of genealogically linked lines of descent into smaller lineages that eventually founded the early polities of the region. These segmentations occurred from the late 1st/early 2nd millennium upto the early 18th century. The size and complexity of the resulting sociopolitical formations and their interactions, including trade and warfare, reflect development over a long period prior to the earliest written records about them. Several explanations for this segmentation have been offered including; conflicts in authority and succession that were resolved by migration rather than military contest/subordination; ecological stress during periods of scarcity; and social rules prohibiting endogamy. The process of segmentation was in part enabled by the availability of territory relative to the small size of the early states. Among the Tswana lineages, the BaFokeng and the BaHurutshe separated in the 15th century, after a contest over authority forced the former to migrate away eastwards. Of the three remaining lineages, the BaHurutshe cited a great progenitor who predated those of their peers, this progenitor was Malope I whose three sons by order of birth were Mohurutse, Mokwena and Mokgatla. Several versions of this aetiological legend exist in Tswana culture and were employed to endorse the genealogical ranking of the various Tswana lineages, according to which the Hurutshe were “a higher nation” than their peers because they were born first. These three lineages would also split further over the 16th and 17th century. In the early 18th century, the BaHurutshe separated into two lineages with the first establishing Kaditswene and the second at a nearby town called Tswenyane, by the late 18th century however, the ruler of the latter faction, named Senosi, was subject to the authority of the boy\-chief at Kaditswene named Moilwa II and the his regent named Diutlwileng. Across 18th century southern Africa, segmentation of the old lineage groups stopped and reversed in most cases, as powerful states begun to consolidate their authority over smaller states. In the Tswana states, the increasing accumulation of wealth and the centralization of political power by rulers led to the growth of large aggregated capitals of the emerging Tswana states one of which was the Hurutshe capital of Kaditswhene. (and others including the Ngwaketse capital of Pitsa) --- Kadisthwene as the pre\-eminent Tswana capital, and the era of Tswana wars (1750\-1821\) In 1820, a missionary named John Campbell, travelled to Kaditswene. He was known locally as Ramoswaanyane (“Mr Little White One”) and his accounts provide the richest accounts of the city at its height. Campbell estimated the Hurutshe capital’s population at 20,000 shortly after his arrival, but later adjusted the number to 16,000 in his published journal. Both figures compare favorably with the population of cape\-town estimated to be about 15\-16,000 in the early 19th century. Kaditswhene's characteristic dry\-stone walling, like in several other Tswana cities, was used for the construction of assembly areas, residential units —which enclosed houses, kitchens and granaries—, as well as stock enclosures. Campbell described the handicraft manufactures of Kaditshwene that included extensive smelting of iron, copper and tin for making domestic and military tools, leather for making cloaks, sandals, shields, caps; as well as ivory and wood carving for making various ornaments, commenting about the quality of their manufactures that "they have iron, found to be equal to any steel" and that every knife made by their cutlers was worth a sheep both in the local market and among the neighboring groups with whom they traded, selling copper and iron implements for gold and silver. The discovery of several iron furnaces and dozens of slag heaps in the ruins collaborates his observation. Campbell also witnessed one of the proceedings of the assembly of leaders (pitso ya dikgosana) comprising of 300\-400 members, which was held at Diutlwileng’s court on 10 May 1820 on matters of war against a neighboring state (most likely the Kwena) ostensibly for seizing their cattle, as well as to consider the request to establish a mission at the Hurutshe capital. During the mid 18th century, Harutshe enjoyed a form of political and religious dominance over their mostly autonomous neighbors, including the Ngwaketse and the Kwena chiefdoms and in the late 18th/early 19th century, Hurutshe asserted its authority over several of the neighboring chiefdoms, wrestling them away from the neighboring Ngwaketse and Kwena chiefdoms, such as the statelets of Mmanaana and the Lete which were renown for their extensive iron\-working and whose conquest allowed the Hurutshe to control the regional production and distribution of iron and copper. In the 1810s, the Harutshe were at the head of a defensive alliance with several Tswana states that were at war against the resurgent chiefdom of Ngwaketse after loosing its tributary, Mmanaana, to the Ngwaketse in 1808\. By 1818, Kaditswehe had campaigned in Lete, and fully incorporated it into their political orbit with their chief, relocating his capital to Tsweyane. When another missionary named Stephen Kay visited Kaditshwene in August of 1821, the forces of Hurutshe were caught up in a war with the Kwena. The fall of kaditshwene: from Queen Manthatisi to the invasion of Sebetwane. (1821\-1823\) Contemporaneous with the emergence of large Tswana states like Hurutshe was the emergence of Tlokoa state led by the BaTlokoa, the latter were a segment of the earlier mentioned BaKgatla who had split off from their parent lineage around the 17th century and furthermore into the 18th century with the establishment of several small chiefdoms east of Hurutshe. By the early 19th century, several of these small chiefdoms were united under Queen regent Manthatisi's Tlokoa state whose expansionist armies were campaigning throughout the region and incorporating neighboring chiefdoms into her growing state, some of her wars were fought with the Harutshe in 1821, and with several of the emerging BaFokeng chiefdoms including the expansionist armies led by an ambitious ruler named Sebetwane.Sebetwana united several segmentary BaFokeng groups and raised a large army, but rather than settling to fight against the more powerful armies of the Tlokoa, he chose the old response of migration, and thus travelled northwards into what is now modern Zambia, but along the way, his armies faced off with several of the chiefdoms in the region including the Hurutshe. Oral records and contemporary written accounts indicate that the Hurutshe regent Diutlwileng, died in a war with Sebetwane in a battle fought around April 1823\. Diutlwileng had led the Hurutshe armies upon receiving a request for military support from his vassals the Phiring and the Molefe. the Harutshe capital of Kaditshwene was sacked shortly after his defeat. Hurutshe then fell under the suzerainty of the large Ndebele kingdom as a tributary state. The Ndebele kingdom led by Mzilikazi, extended from southern Zimbabwe (where it had subsumed the medieval cities of the Rozvi and Great Zimbabwe) and over parts of northern south\-Africa. Sebetwane on the other hand subsumed the Lozi states of modern Zambia into his large kingdom of Kololo. The protracted process of state consolidation that begun in the late 18th century ended with the emergence of large kingdoms in the mid 19th century, the centuries\-long segmentation of the Tswana and other bantu\-speaking groups of southern Africa was reversed as complex states emerged, expanded and evolved into large Kingdoms such as Ndebele, Kololo and the Zulu, while Kaditshwene fell in the upheaval of the era's political transformations. Similar revolutions and upheavals were observed across the region. The migration of lineages, over short and long distances in south\-eastern Africa dispersed chiefdoms across the regions of; KwaZulu\-Natal, Trans\-Kei, Maputo (Delagoa) Bay, Swaziland, Transvaal, and Lesotho. Over many centuries, the smaller chiefdoms succumbed to sociopolitical domination and incorporation by others as ambitious chiefs (and later; Kings) consolidated their hold over people and territory through diplomacy and war; expanding their influence and control to create large kingdoms in the mid 19th century. Examples include the Mathwena kingdom under king Dingiswayo of (r. 1795\-1817\) who is better known for mentoring Shaka of the Zulu kingdom, he greatly consolidated his rule over surrounding states under his authority (including the zulu), largely through military conquest and diplomacy, achieving the former by introducing a series of military innovations, and the latter through intermarriage. he expanded export trade in ivory, leather, cattle, and other commodities especially with the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay and turned his capital into a major craft manufacturing center, establishing a manufactory of kaross\-fur textiles that employed hundreds of workers. The archetype of this era was undoubtedly the Zulu kingdom under the reign of King Shaka (r. 1816\-1828\). The Zulu were initially under the wing of Dingiswayo's Mathwena kingdom as a tributary state, but later broke off and grew into the preeminent military power in south\-eastern africa. Shaka’s reign was marked by his famous military campaigns, as well as his diplomacy, trade and innovations which resulted in the consolidation of Zulu authority over much of the surrounding states in the Kwazulu\-Natal region. --- Colonial warfare and the invention of “mfecane”. The early 19th century period of political transformation across southern africa was termed mfecane by colonial historians. The term mfecane was purely academic construct coined in the late 19th century by various colonial writers and popularized by Eric Walker's "History of South Africa" written in 1928, but it wasn’t an indigenous periodization used by the southern Africans whose history the adherents of "mfecane" were claiming to tell. Their central claim that mfecane was an unprecedented era of widespread violence, famine and loss of human life that begun with the emergence of the Zulu kingdom has since been thoroughly discredited in recent research since the 1990s, by several historians and other specialists, showing that not only were the political processes in several places (such as the Tswana chiefdoms) outside the sphere of the Zulu’s influence, but also that many of the wars which occurred between the expanding states (such as the Tswana wars of the late 18th century, Manthatisi’s campaigns of the 1810/20s, and Sebetwane's wars with Hurusthe and other groups in early 1820s) were unrelated to —and mostly predated— the Zulu’s emergence . Intertwined with the theories of a Zulu\-induced chain\-reaction of violence, were the old Hamitic\-race theories which had been used in the historiography of Great Zimbabwe to argue for its foreign foundations, but were now repurposed for south\-African historiography. Scholars such as the colonial state ethnologist Paul\-Lenert Breutz, wrote in two widely read publications of Tswana history in 1955 and 1989, that the stone structures of Kaditshwene “were not characteristic of either Bantu or Nilo\-Hamitic peoples" and should "be attributed to some Hamitic or Semitic race" who supposedly built them in ancient times, and that they had been destroyed by the Bantu\-speakers during the mfecane, a pseduo\-historical argument that he maintained despite being aware of campbell’s writings, radiocarbon dating, and the traditions of the BaHurutshe who still lived next to the ruins. The purported loss of life during the mfecane, which colonial scholars such as George McCall Theal (the “father of south\-African history”) advanced based on impressionistic observations made by early 19th century travelers about the ruins of Kaditshwene and other capitals, and the very conjectural claims made by European traders in the Kwazulu\-Natal region —claiming over a million deaths attributed to the Zulu wars—, has been dismissed as "slim or non\-existent" by recent research, which used contemporary literature by 19th century travelers to show that the both the Tswana and Kwazulu\-Natal regions were very densely populated at the time, much to the surprise of the same travelers who had received reports about the regions’ apparent depopulation. While the adoption of maize/corn in the KwaZulu\-Natal region during the late 18th century (but not in the Tswana regions until late 1820s), and its vulnerability to climate extremities compared to indigenous sorghum, did result in famine in parts of Kwazulu\-natal in the mid 1820s, external accounts written by European traders in the region routinely exaggerated accounts of the Zulu's military campaigns for causing them, implicating the Zulu in the destruction of the food systems, and subsequent famine and the "depopulation" of the area, yet droughts were a recurring theme in southern Africa's ecological history including a much larger drought in 1800\-1803 that hit the cape colony as well as the interior. The fact that most of the european traders’ accounts are centered on the notion of the depopulation of the Kwazulu\-Natal area and thus the myth of the “empty land”, raises further suspicion, as the various europeans interests were concerned with bringing the region under colonization. "Claims of the deliberate destruction of food as a cause of widespread famine are thus at best exaggerated to serve as narratives of depopulation, and at worst inextricably tied to narratives of white civilising missions amongst the wars and migrations of savage tribes". --- Conclusion: the view from Kaditshwene "Mfecane" was an academic construct that was weaponised in colonial and apartheid literature to justify European colonization and apartheid rule in southern Africa. As one south African historian observed, the mfecane “is essentially no more than a rhetorical construction \- or, more accurately, an abstraction arising from a rhetoric of violence". As shown in the example of Harutshe’s political history, there's little evidence that a unique wave of internecine violence emerged in the 1820s across a previously tranquil political landscape, and even less evidence that a singular factor such as the Zulu or the Ndebele were responsible for this paticular era's warfare. Rather, southern Africa in the late 18th and early 19th century witnessed the emergence and consolidation of large states from segmentary lineage groups following an in increase in socio\-economic stratification and political amalgamation, and throughout these processes, rulers transformed their scope of authority from heading small chiefdoms in mobile capitals, to controlling diverse groups and vast territories in large kingdoms using innovative and elaborate institutions of governance; in what could be better termed as a “revolution”. While migration and lineage segmentation were in the past the only response to conflicts in authority, the large states of the 18th/early 19th century southern Africa increasingly chose consolidation through both diplomacy and open war, leading to the emergence of states such as Hurutshe, which were eventually subsumed into even larger kingdoms. The view from Kaditshwene is a portrait of the political transformation and upheaval of the south\-eastern Africa in the 19th century, a city that was simultaneously a beneficiary and a causality of the era's political currents. --- Read more about the mfecane, Kaditshwene and south\-African history on my Patreon --- THANKS FOR SUPPORTING MY WRITING, in case you haven’t seen some of my posts in your email inbox, please check your “promotions tab” and click “accept for future messages”. Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 8\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 237\-238\) The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 67 The origin of Zimbabwe Tradition walling by Catrien Van Waarden Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 90\_) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 7\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 239\) A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens 10\-11\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 238\) Modes of Politogenesis among the Tswana of South Africa by Alexander A. Kazankov; pg. 123\-134 Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 240,244\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 244\-245, Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution by Kradin, Nikolay N pg 124\-125 Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 51, 114\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 239\-240\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 245\) A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 13\-14\) A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 23\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge 116\), The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 71\) Reconnecting Tswana Archaeological Sites with their Descendants by Fred Morton A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 19\) A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 5\) Africa's Urban Past By R. J. A R. Rathbone pg 6 The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 69\) Travels in south africa vol. 1 by James Campbell pg 275\-276\) Travels in south africa vol. 1 by James Campbell pg 277, 272\) The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 73\) Travels in south africa vol. 1 by James Campbell pg 259\-265\) The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 70\) Conflict in the Western Highveld/Southern Kalahari c.1750\-1820 by Andrew Manson A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 21\) Conflict in the Western Highveld/Southern Kalahari c.1750\-1820 by Andrew Manson A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 27\-28\) Marothodi: The Historical Archaeology of an African Capital by MS Anderson pg 17\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 247\-8, 259\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 262\-261\) Marothodi: The Historical Archaeology of an African Capital by MS Anderson pg 17\) Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s by J. F. Ade Ajayi pg 115\) Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s by J. F. Ade Ajayi pg 116\) A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico Jan C.A. Boeyens pg 7\-8, ) The Bahurutshe: Historical Events by Heinrich Bammann pg 18\-19\) Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s by J. F. Ade Ajayi pg 116\-117 Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 116\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 171\-173\) Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30 by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 8\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 165\-170\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge 181\-184, ) A Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth\-Century Contests for Land in South Africa's Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane by Norman Etherington pg 204\) Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History by Thomas Dowson, Elizabeth Eldredge, Norman Etherington, Jan\-Bart Gewald, Simon Hall, Guy Hartley, Margaret Kinsman, Andrew Manson, John Omer\-Cooper, Neil Parsons, Jeff Peires, Christopher Saunders, Alan Webster, John Wright, Dan Wylie A Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth\-Century Contests for Land in South Africa's Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane by Norman Etherington pg 204\-5\) In Search of Kaditshwene by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 5 Marothodi: The Historical Archaeology of an African Capital by MS Anderson pg 41\) Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth\-Century Contests for Land in South Africa's Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane by Norman Etherington pg 206\) The Late Iron Age Sequence in the Marico and Early Tswana History by Jan C. A. Boeyens pg 74\) Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30 by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 29\) The Demographics of Empire by Karl Ittmann et al pg 120 Climate, history, society over the last millennium in southeast Africa by Matthew J Hannaford pg 19\) Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History, by various Savage Delights: White Myths of Shaka by Dan Wylie, 19\) Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30 by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 15\) Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30 by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 30\) Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa by Elizabeth A. Eldredge pg 320\) 9 )

What were the effects of the Atlantic slave trade on African societies?: examining research on how the middle passage affected the Population, Politics and Economies of Africa in What were the effects of the Atlantic slave trade on African societies?: examining research on how the middle passage affected the Population, Politics and Economies of Africa The African view of the Atlantic world. )Debates about Africa's role in the Transatlantic slave trade have been ongoing ever\-since the first enslaved person set foot in the Americas, to say that these debates are controversial would be an understatement, the effects of the Atlantic slave trade are afterall central to discourses about what is now globally recognized as one of the history's worst atrocities, involving the forced migration of more than 12\.5 million people from their homes to brutal conditions in slave plantations, to live in societies that excluded their descendants from the fruits of their own labor. Given this context, the climate of discourse on Atlantic history is decidedly against narratives of agency about any group involved in the Atlantic world save for the owners of slave plantations, therefore most scholars of African history are rather uneasy with positions which seem to demonstrate African political and economic autonomy during this era, for fear of blaming the evils of slavery in the Americas on the Africans themselves, despite the common knowledge (and repeated assurances) that the terms "African"/"Black" were modern constructs that were alien to the people whom they described and weren't relevant in determining who was enslaved in Africa (just as they didn't determine who could be enslaved in much of the world outside the Americas). Nevertheless, some scholars advance arguments that reinforce African passivity or apathy without fully grasping the dynamic history of African states and societies, and this may inform their conclusions on the effects of the Atlantic slave trade on pre\-colonial Africa. This article examines the effects of Atlantic slave trade on pre\-colonial African states, population and economies, beginning with an overview of debates on the topic by leading scholars of African history and their recent research. I conclude that, save for some social changes in the coastal societies, the overall effects of the external slave trade in west\-Africa and west\-central Africa have been overstated. Map of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1501–1867 (from Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis) --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Effects of the Atlantic slave trade on African states: the cases of Kongo kingdom and the Lunda empire, and brief notes of the Asante and Dahomey kingdoms. Some scholars have often associated the huge number of slaves sold into the trade with major political developments in the interior of Africa, notably with processes of state formation and imperial expansion. They argue that the enslavement and subsequent sale of slaves required such great resources that only rulers who commanded large followers could undertake such activities. Scholars such as Joseph inikori blame the expansion of slave trading for the collapse of centralized authority in Atlantic Africa; that the "persistent intervention by the European traders, and the vicious cycle of violence from massive slave trading…reproduced fragmentation in many places” and “severely constrained the spread of strong centralized states", citing the case of the Kongo kingdom which he argues had no indigenous institution of slavery prior to the arrival of European traders, and that it was politically "too weak to withstand the onslaught unleashed by Portuguese demand for captives", this he says lead to an internal breakdown of law and order and the kingdom’s collapse. Where centralized states did develop, he attributes their formation to the external slave trade, writing that "no serious attempt to develop centralized states was made until the crisis generated by the slave trade" he cites the cases of Dahomey and Asante, and claims that their "state formation was in part a device for self\-protection by weakly organised communities", further arguing that "had strong centralized states like Asante, Dahomey .. been spread all over sub\-Saharan Africa .. the balance of power among the states, would have raised the political and economic cost of procuring captives to a level that would have made their employment in the Americas less economic." but this didn’t happen because "european traders consciously intervened in the political process in western Africa to prevent the generalized development of relatively strong large states." Others such as Paul Lovejoy, take this argument further by positing a "transformation in slavery" across the African interior as a result of the Atlantic slave trade, which he says resulted in the emergence of African societies ruled by "warlords" perpetuated rivalries that degraded africa’s political development. In west central Africa for example, he argues that the export trade drained population from the productive sectors, concentrating slaves in areas connected with the export trade. The supply mechanism thereby influenced the expansion of a “slave mode of production” across the economy, and that this radical transformation resulted in half the population of Kongo were of servile status. Others, such as Jan Vansina and David Birmingham, in looking at specific cases of African states, argue that the Lunda empire founded by Ruund\-speakers, was established by expatriates who had closely interacted with the Portuguese traders of Angola and thus established a large state which extended military activities in the interior in response to the growing demand of slaves, which resulted in the creation of thousands of war captives who were offloaded to slave traders at the coast. However, recent research by Domingues da Silva shows that most of the west\-central African slaves exported in the late 18th/mid 19th century came from regions and ethnic groups near the coast that were far from the Lunda political orbit which was several hundred kilometers in the interior, and that most of these slaves were kimbundu, kikongo and umbundu speakers coming from the former territories of the then fragmented kingdom of Kongo, as well as the kingdoms of Ngoyo, Kakongo, and Yaka, he thus concludes that the Lunda were responsible for little if any of the external slave trade from west\-central Africa in the late 18th century. His research adds to the observations of other scholars such as David Northrup, Ugo Nwokeji, Walter Hawthorne and Rebecca Shumway who argue that the supply of slaves sold on the coast did not necessarily depend on processes of state formation and expansion in the interior, they cite examples of decentralized societies among the Efik, Igbo, and Ibibio in the “Bight of Biafra”, and similar stateless groups in the “gold coast” and in what is now Guinea Bissau that supplied significant numbers of slaves to the external market. The inaccuracies of “victim” or “collaborator” narratives of Kongo political history As described in the observations by Inikori and Lovejoy, the Kongo Kingdom is often used as a case of the presumed devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, one where Portuguese traders are said to have exploited a weak kingdom, undermined its institutions and led to its collapse and depopulation as its citizens were shipped off to the American slave plantations. The history of the kingdom however, reveals a radically different reality, the Kongo kingdom was a highly centralized state by the late 15th century when the Portuguese encountered it, and the foremost military power in west central Africa with several provincial cities and a large capital. Its complex bureaucracy was headed by a king, and an electoral council that chose the King and checked his powers as well as controlled the kingdom's trade routes. Kongo had a largely agricultural economy as well as a vibrant textile industry and copper mining, which supported the central government and its bureaucracy through tribute collected by tax officials in provinces and sent to the capital by provincial rulers who also provided levees for the military and were appointed for 2\-3 year terms by the King. As a regional power, Kongo’s diplomats were active across west central Africa, western Europe and in the Americas allowing them to influence political and religious events in the Kingdom’s favor, as well as enable it to create military and trade alliances that sustained its wealth and power. All of which paints a radically different picture of the kingdom than the weak, beguiled state that Inikori describes. According to Linda Heywood, Ivana Elbl and John Thornton, the institution of slavery and the trade in slaves was also not unknown to the kingdom of Kongo nor was it introduced by coastal traders, but was part of Kongo’s social structure from its earliest formation. These scholars identified local words for different types of slaves, they also used oral history collected in the 16th century, the large volumes of external trade by the early 16th century and documents made by external writers about Kongo’s earliest slave exports to argue that it was unlikely for the Kingdom’s entire social structure to have been radically transformed on the onset of these external contacts. Slaves in Kongo were settled in their own households, farming their own lands and raising their own families, in a social position akin to medieval European serfs than plantation slaves of the Americas. Internal and external slave trade was conducted under Kongo laws in which the slaves \-who were almost exclusively foreign captives\- were purchased, their prices were fixed and which taxes to be paid on each slave. Kongo’s servile population was a consequence of the nature of the state formation in west central Africa, a region with low population density that necessitated rulers to "concentrate" populations of subjects near their political capitals, these concentrated towns eventually grew into cities with a “scattered” form settlement, and were populated by households of both free and enslaved residents. Kongo’s textile handicraft industries also reveal the flaw in Lovejoy’s “slave mode of production”. Kongo’s cloth production was characterized by subsistence, family labor who worked from their homes or in specialist villages within its eastern provinces. These textiles later became the Kingdom's dominant export in the early 17th century with upto 100,000 meters of cloth were exported to Portuguese Angola each year beginning in 1611, while atleast thrice as much were retained for the local market. As a secondary currency in west central Africa, many of the Kongo textiles bought by the Portuguese and were primarily used to pay of its soldiers (these were mostly African Levées from Ndongo and the Portuguese colony of Angola), as well in the purchase and clothing of slaves bought from various interior states. Its thus unlikely that the export trade in slaves significantly transformed Kongo's social and economic institutions because despite the expansion of textile production and trade in its eastern provinces now, production remained rural based, without the growth of large towns or "slave plantations", and without "draining" the slave population in the provincial cities of the kingdom such nor from the capital Mbanza Kongo which retained the bulk of the Kingdom's population. Kongo had several laws regulating the purchase and use of slaves, with a ban on the capture and sell of Kongo citizens, as well as a ban on the export of female slaves and domestic slaves who were to be retained in the kingdom itself, leaving only a fraction of slaves to be exported. Kongo went to great lengths to enforce this law including two instances in the late 16th century and in 1623 when the Kingdom’s officials repatriated thousands of Kongo citizens from Brazil, these had been illegally enslaved in Kongo’s wars with the Jaga (a foreign enemy) and the Portuguese, both of whom Kongo managed to defeat. Throughout this period, Kongo's slave exports through its port at Mpinda were estimated at just under 3,100 for years between 1526–1641 and 4,000 between 1642–1807, with the bulk of the estimated 3\.9 million slaves coming from the Portuguese controlled ports of Luanda (2\.2 million) and Benguela (400,000\), as well several northern ports controlled by various northern neighbors of Kongo (see map). That fact that the Kongo\-controlled slave port of Mpinda, which was active in the 16th and 17th century, doesn't feature among the 20 African ports which handled 75% of all slave exports, provides further evidence that Kongo wasn't a major slave exporter itself despite being the dominant West\-central African power at a time when over a million slaves were shipped from the region between 1501\-1675, and its further evidence that the internal Kongo society was unlikely to have been affected by the export slave trade. These recent estimates of slave exports from each African port are taken from David Eltis’ comprehensive study of slave origins and destinations, and they will require that scholars greatly revise earlier estimates in which Kongo’s port of Mpinda was thought to have exported about 2,000\-5,000 slaves a year between 1520s and 1570s, (which would have placed its total at around 200,000 in less than half a century and thus exaggerated its contribution to the slave exports). Furthermore, comparing the estimated "floating population" of about 100,000 slaves keep internally in the Kongo interior vs the less than 10,000 sold through Mpinda over a century reveals how marginal the export trade was to Kongo's economy, which nevertheless always had the potential to supply far more slaves to the Atlantic economy than it did. And while a counter argument could be made that some of Kongo’s slaves were sent through the Portuguese\-controlled port of Luanda, this was unlikely as most were documented to have come from the Portuguese colony of Angola itself and several of the neighboring kingdoms such as Ndongo, and as I will explain later in the section below on the demographic effects of slave trade, the Angolan slave exports would result in a stagnated population within the colony at a atime when Kongo and most of the interior experienced a steady increase in population. The internal processes that led to Kongo’s decline. Kongo's fall was largely a result of internal political processes that begun in the mid\-17th century as power struggles between powerful royal houses, each based in a different province, undermined the more equitable electoral system and resulted in the enthronement of three kings to the throne through force rather than election, these were; Ambrósio I (r. 1626\-1631\), Álvaro IV (r. 1631\-1636\) and Garcia II (1641\-1660\). These rulers, who were unelected unlike their predecessors, depended on the military backing of their royal houses based in the different provinces. Their actions weakened the centralizing institutions of Kongo such as its army (which was defeated by the rebellious province of Soyo in several battles), and loosened the central government’s hold over the provinces, as tax revolts and rebellious dukes unleashed centrifugal forces which culminating in the breakaway of Soyo as an independent province. The weakened Kongo army was therefore unsurprisingly defeated in a Portuguese\-Angloan invasion of 1665, but the initial Angolan victory turned out to be inconsequential as the Portuguese army was totally annihilated by the Soyo army in 1670 and permanently ejected from the Kongo interior for nearly three centuries. However, the now autonomous province of Soyo failed to stem the kingdom's gradual descent and further contributed to the turmoil by playing the role of king\-maker in propping up weak candidates to the throne, leading to the eventual abandonment of the capital Sao Salvador by the 1678. Each province of Kongo then became an independent state, warring between each other and competing of the control of the old capital, and while the kingdom was partially restored in 1709, the fragile peace, that involved the rival royal houses rotating kingship, lasted barely half a century before the kingdom disintegrated further, such that by 1794 when the maniKongo Henrique II ascended to the throne “he had no right to tax, no professional army under his control”, and had only “twenty or twenty five soldiers,” his “authority remains only in his mind,” as real power and wealth had reverted to the provincial nobles. In none of these internal political process was external slave trade central, and the kingdom of Kongo therefore diverges significantly from the many of the presumed political effects of the transatlantic slavery, its emergence, its flourishing and its decline were largely due to internal political processes that were not (and could not be) influenced by Portuguese and other European traders at the coast, nor by the few dozen European traders active in Kongo’s capital (these european traders barely comprised a fraction of the city's 70\-100,000 strong population). The social institutions of Kongo’s former territories were eventually partially transformed in the 18th and 19th century, not as a result of the external slave trade but the political fragmentation of Kongo that begun in the late 17th century, which lead to the redefinition of “insider” vs “outsider” groups who could be legally enslaved, which is the reason why the 18th century map above came to include Kikongo speakers. but even after Kongo’s disintegration, the overall impact of the slave trade on Kongo’s population was limited and the region’s population continued to grow as I will explain below. Examining the founding of Asante and Dahomey within their local contexts. A similar pattern of African political autonomy and insulation from the presumed negative effects of the external slave trade can also be seen in other kingdoms, such as the kingdoms of Asante and Dahomey which according to Inikori and other scholars, are thought to have undergone political centralization as a result of slave trade. According to Ivor Wilks and Tom McCaskie however, Asante’s political history was largely dictated by internal dynamics growing out of its independence the kingdom of Denkyira in a political process where external slave trade was marginal, and none of the Asante states’ institutions significantly depended on the export of slaves into the Atalntic. Furthermore, Dalrymple\-Smith’s study of Asante state’s economic and political history shows that few of the Asante military campaigns during this period were directed towards securing lucrative slave routes, with most campaigns instead directed towards the the gold producing regions as well as trade routes that funneled this gold into the trans\-Saharan trade, adding that the gold\-coast "region’s various polities in the seventeenth century were always focused on the control of gold producing areas and the application of labour to mining and extraction". Making it unlikely that external slave trade or the presumed violence associated with it, led to the emergence of the Asante state in defense against slave\-raiders. The Dahomey kingdom, according to the scholars Cameron Monroe, Robin Law and Edna Bay started out as a vassal of the more powerful kingdom of Allada in the 17th century, from which it adopted several political institutions and rapidly expanded across the Abomey plateau in the early 18th century at the expense of its weaker suzerain, before it marched south and conquered the kingdoms of Allada in 1724 and Hueda (ouidah) in 1727\. Its expansion is largely a result of its rulers successful legitimation of power in the Abomey plateau region through popular religious customs and local ancestor deities, enabling early Dahomey kings to attract followers and grow the kingdom through “the manipulation of local allegiances and overt conquest” in which external slave trade was a secondary concern. Dahomey's conquest of the coastal kingdoms in the 1720s led to a drastic fall in slave exports by more than 70% from a 15,000 slaves a year annually in the 1720s to a low of 4,000 slaves annually in the 1780s, leading to some scholars such as Adeagbo Akinjogbin to claim that Dahomey conquered the coast to abolish the slave trade, and recently Joseph Inikori who says that "Dahomey invaded the coastal Aja states in the 1720s to bring all of them under one strong centralized state in order to end the slave trade in the region". But these observations have been discounted by most scholars of Dahomey history who argue that they are contrary to the political and economic motivations and realities of the Dahomey Kings. For example, Cameron Monroe argues that unlike Dahomey’s interior conquests which were driven by other intents, the objectives of the coastal conquests were largely driven by the control of the external slave trade, despite the rapid decline in slave exports after the fact, This view is supported by other scholars such as Robin Law who argues that the Dahomey kings wanted to monopolize the trade rather than end it, writing that “although Agaja was certainly not an opponent of the slave trade, his policies tend to undermine it by disrupting the supply of slaves into the interior”, and Finn Fuglestad who writes that the theory that "the rulers of Dahomey consciously limited the slave trade, can be safely disregarded" as evidence suggests they were infact preoccupied with restoring the trade but failed because "Dahomeans’ lack of commercial and other acumen" and "the apparent fact that they relied exclusively on their (overrated) military might". Robin Law’s explanation for why Ouidah’s slave exports declined after Dahomey’s conquest of the coast shows how internal policies destroyed Dahomey’s slave export trade, he suggests that the increased taxes on slave exports by Dahomey officials, which rose from a low of 2\.5% to a high of 6%, and which were intended to restrain wealth accumulation in private hands, forced the private merchants from the interior (who had been supplying between 83% to 66% of all slaves through Ouidah) to shift operations to other ports on the slave coast. Yet despite their conquest of the coast in relation to the external slave trade, most of Dahomey's wars weren't primarily motivated for the capture of slaves for export. This view was advanced by John Thornton based on the correspondence between Dahomey’s monarchs and Portuguese colonists in Brazil , who, unlike the British audiences, weren’t influenced by debates between the opposing Abolitionist and pro\-slavery camps, and are thus able to provide less biased accounts about the intentions of the Dahomey rulers. In most of these letters, the Dahomey monarchs describe their conquests as primarily defensive in nature, revealing that the capturing slaves was marginal factor; “a given in any war, but rarely the reason for waging it”. Which confirms the declarations made by Dahomey kings’s to the British that “Your countrymen, who allege that we go to war for the purpose of supplying your ships with slaves, are grossly mistaken.” --- Effects of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa’s Population and Demographics Studies of the trans\-Atlantic slave trade's impact on Africa’s population have long been central to the debates on the continent’s historical demographics, economic size, level of ethnic fractionation and state centralization, which they are often seen as important in understanding the continent’s current level of development. Scholars such as Patrick Manning argue that, the population of West Africa would have been at least twice what it was in 1850, had it not been for the impact of the transatlantic slave trade. But Manning also admits the challenges faced in making historical estimates of populations in places with little census data before the 1900s, writing "the methods used for these population estimates rely on projections backward in time" (which typically start in the 1950s when the first true census was undertaken) and to these estimates he makes adjustments based on his assumption about the population effects of the slave trade. His findings also diverge from the estimates of Angus Madison who argues for a gradual but consistent increase in African population from the 18th century, the latter's findings were inturn based again on backward projections from the mid 20th century, and his assumption of a more dynamic African economy. Madisson's estimates were in turn similar to John Caldwell’s who also derived his figures from population data on projected backwards from the mid 20th century statistics, and his assumption that African populations grew as a result of introduction of new food crops. Nathan nunn who, basing on backwards\-projected population estimates and his assumption that the Atlantic trade led to a fall in africa’s population, goes even further and associates Africa’s historical population data with the continent's modern level of development. Using a map of "ethnic boundaries" made by Peter Murdock in 1959, he argues that external slave trade correlates with modern levels of GDP, and one of the measures central to his argument is that parts of africa that were the most prosperous in 1400, measured by population density, were also the most impacted by the slave trade, leading to ethnic fractionization, and to weak states. These speculative estimates of pre\-colonial African populations which primarily rely on backwards projection of data collected centuries later, and individual authors' presumptions about the effects of slavery, the level of economic development and the level of food production, have been criticized by other scholars most recently Timothy Guinnane who argues that the measurement errors in their estimates are transmitted from continental estimates to regional estimates and down to individual African countries (or ethnic groups as in Nunn’s case), which leads to a very wide variation in the final population estimates between each scholar. For example, the differences between the implied estimates of Nathun Nunn's figure for Nigeria's population in 1500 to have been 6\.5 million, while Ashraf Quamrul estimates it to have been 3\.9 million. A better approach for those hoping to make more accurate estimates of Africa’s population would be to begin with estimates of smaller regions where data was more available. One such attempt was made by Patrick manning to measure the population growth/decline of the "slave coast" (a region along the west african coast that now includes Benin, Togo and south\-western Nigeria), which he estimates suffered a 2\- 4% annual population loss in the 18th century, and that this population decline was higher than its rate of natural increase. But his findings have been regarded as "impressionistic" by scholars such as Robin Law, who argues that Manning’s estimates aren’t derived from "rigorous statistical proof", because they were based on assumptions about the original population of the region that he arrived at by projecting the modern population figures backwards. Population data from west\-central Africa and the demographic effects of slave trade in the coastal colony of Angola. More accurate estimates of pre\-colonial African population on a localised level, were made by Linda Heywood and John Thornton in several west\-central African regions of Kongo, Ndongo (a vassal of Portuguese Angola) and a number of smaller states founded by Umbundu speakers such as Viye, Ngalangi and Mbailundu. Unlike most parts of Atlantic Africa, west\-central Africa had plenty of written information made by both external and internal writers from which quantitative data about pre\-colonial African demography can be derived such as baptismal statistics in Kongo, census data from Portuguese Angola and State fiscal records from the Umbundu kingdoms. The baptismal records from Kongo come from various missionaries to the kingdom in the 17th and 18th century, the population records of Portuguese Angola come from a census undertaken for the years 1777 and 1778, while the Umbundu population figures were collected by Alexandre Jose Botelho de Vasconcellos in 1799 (based from fiscal information derived from Portuguese officials serving as suzerains overlords of the sobas in the region) and Lazlo Magyar in 1849 (based on fiscal records of several Umbundu states and the neighboring Lunda empire, both of which he resided for a long period). The data collected from all these regions shows that the population density of Kongo (in what is now north\-western Angola) varied between 5\-15 people per square kilometer between 1650 and 1700 with the kingdom's population growing from 509,000 to 532,000 over half a century, which reveals that Kongo's population was much smaller than the often cited 3,000,000 people (and the presumed 100 per skq kilometer), but it also shows a steady population increase at a rate close to the contemporary global average, which eventually grew to just under a million by 1948\. Population data from the Umbundu kingdoms (in what is now central Angola), shows that the population density was 5\-10 people per square kilometer between 1799 and 1850 and that the total population across the kingdoms grew by 41%\-127%. Data from the Lunda empire (in what is now western Angola and southern D.R.C) shows its population density was 3\-4 people per sqkm. Population data from the Portuguese colony of Angola (located south of Kongo, and west of the Umbundu states see the map of west\-central Africa in the introduction) had a population growth rate of 25\.7 per 1,000 and a gender ratio heavily skewed towards women in the years between 1777 and 1778, with an annual population increase of around 12,000 which was dwarfed by the 16,000 slaves exported through region each year, although some of these slaves would have come from outside the region and he adds that the gender ratio its likely a result of female slaves being retained and thus suggests the colony’s population may have been stagnant or slightly increasing (a conclusion supported by Lopes de Lima, a colonial official in 1844 who, basing on census data he consulted, observed that the colony’s population had barely grown by 1%) These studies therefore show that the export slave trade had a much lower impact in parts of west\-central Africa than is commonly averred despite the region supplying the largest number of slaves to the Atlantic. Furthermore, considering that the territories of the former Kongo kingdom where an estimated 6,180 slaves were said to have been derived/ passed\-through annually in the years between 1780 and 1789; this amounts to just 1% of the region’s 600,000 population, and in the Umbundu kingdoms where 4,652 slaves were said to have been derived/ passed\-through annually between 1831 to 1855; this amounts to just 0\.3% of 1,680,150 population. Given the importance of west\-central Africa as the supplier of nearly 50% of the slaves taken across the Atlantic, these studies reveal alot about the population effects of the trade whose overall effect was limited. These studies also show that the high population densities of the coast may have been a result of the slave trade rather than despite it, as slaves from the interior were incorporated within coastal societies like Angola, they also call into question the population estimates which are premised on the depopulation of Africa as a result of the slave trade (eg Patrick manning's estimated 30% decline in the population of central Africa between 1700\-1850\). The skewed gender ratio in the Angolan colony with more women than men, seems to support the arguments advanced recently by scholars such as Wyatt MacGaffey and Ivor Wilks who suggest that matrilineal descent among the costal groups of the Congo basin and among the Akan of the “gold coast” was a product of the Atlantic trade as these societies retained more female slaves, although its unclear if all matrilineages pre\-dated or post\-dated the external slave trade. --- Effects of Atlantic slave trade on the African economy: The Atlantic slave trade is an important topic in African economic history and its effects are often seen as significant in measuring the level of africa’s pre\-colonial economic development. Scholars argue that the depopulation of the continent which drained it of labor that could have been better applied domestically, and the dumping of manufactured goods which were exchanged for slaves, destroyed local handicraft industries in Africa such as textiles forcing them to depend on foreign imports. (giving rise to the so\-called dependency theory) For example, Paul Lovejoy combines his political and economic observation of the effects of external slave trade on Africa, writing that “the continent delivered its people to the plantations and mines of the Americas and to the harems and armies of North Africa and Arabia”, which resulted in a "period of African dependency" in which African societies were ruled by "warlords" who were "successful in their perpetuation of rivalries that effectively placed Africa in a state of retarded economic and political development". He argues that external slave trade transformed the African society from one initially where "slaves emerged almost as incidental products of the interaction between groups of kin" to one where "merchants organized the collection of slaves, funneling slaves to the export market” such that "the net effect was the loss of these slaves to Africa and the substitution of imported commodities for humans". He claims that this led to the development of a "slave mode of production" in Africa, where slaves were central to economic production across all states along the Atlantic (such as Kongo and Dahomey). Joseph Inikori on the other hand, looks at the effects of foreign imports on African industries. After analyzing the discussions of other scholars who argue for the limited effects of Africa's importation of European/Indian textiles (which were mostly exchanged for slaves), he argues that their claims are difficult to prove since they didn’t conduct empirical studies on pre\-colonial west African manufacturing, he therefore proposes a study of pre\-colonial west African industry based on import data of textiles from the records of European traders. He argues that west Africa had become a major export market for English and east India cottons, which he says replaced local cotton cloths in places like the "gold coast" (Asante/ modern Ghana) in the 17th and 18th century. He adds that "there is no indication at all that local cotton textile producers presented any competition in the West African market", continuing that these imports adversely affected production in previous supplying centers in Benin and Allada, which he says were edged out based on their “underdeveloped technology” of manufacture relative to the european producers. Lovejoy’s and Inikori’s observations depart from observations made by David Eltis. Basing on the revenue yields from slave trade per\-population in Western Europe, the American colonies and West Africa, at the peak of the slave trade in the 1780s, Eltis calculates that Atlantic slave revenues accounted for between 5\-8% of west African incomes. (his west African population estimate was 25 million, but a much higher estimate such as Manning's 32 million would give an even lower share of income from slavery) he therefore concludes that "It would seem that even more than most European nations at this time, Africans could feed, clothe and house themselves as well as perform the saving and investment that such activities required without having recourse to goods and markets from other countries". John Thornton on the other hand, in looking at the political and economic history of Atlantic Africa, argues that the Atlantic imports weren’t motivated by the filling of basic needs, nor was Africa’s propensity to import European (and Indian) manufactures, a measure of their needs, nor can it serve as evidence for the inefficiency of their industries. He argues instead, that the imports were a measure of the extent of their domestic market and a desire for variety, he calculates that imports such as iron constituted less than 10\-15% of coastal west African domestic needs, excluding military needs which would push the figure much lower (he based this on a population estimate of 1\.5 million for the coast alone, which would would make the share of iron imports much lower if measured against the entire west African population) He also calculates that the “gold coast” textile imports of 20,000 meters constituted barely 2% of the 750,000 meters required for domestic demand; a figure which doesn’t including elite consumption and the high demand for textiles in the region as a secondary currency. In a more detailed study of west\-central African cloth production, Thornton uses Angolan colonial data from the early 17th century in which Luanda\-based merchants bought over 100,000 meters of cloth from the eastern provinces of the Kongo kingdom each year after 1611 (a figure which doesn’t include illegal trade that didn't pass customs houses and weren’t documented), he thus estimates that total production from eastern kongo to have been around 300,000\-400,000 meters of cloth for both domestic demand and exports. This production figure, coming for a region of less than 3\.5 people per square kilometer, implies that eastern Kongo was just as (if not more) productive than major European manufacturing regions such as Leiden (in the Netherlands), in making equally high quality cloth that was worn by elites and commoners in west central Africa, this Kongo cloth also wasn't replaced by European/Indian imports despite their increased importation in Kongo at the time. He thus argues against the "use of the existence of technology (or its lack) as a proxy measure for productivity", adding that the rural\-based subsistence labor of the eastern Kongo, working with simple ground and vertical looms, could meet domestic demand just as well as early industrial workers in the 17th century Netherlands, adding that early european textile machinery at the time was unlike modern 20th century machinery, and often produced less\-than\-desirable cloth, often forcing producers to use the ‘putting\-out’ system that relied on home\-based, less mechanized handworkers who produced most of the textiles. In her study of cloth manufacture and trade in East Africa and West Africa, Katharine Frederick shows that textile imports across the continent didn’t displace local industries but often stimulated local production. Building on Anthony Hopkin's conclusions that textile imports didn’t oust domestic industries, Katharine shows that the coastal African regions with the highest levels of production were also the biggest importers of cloth, and that African cloth producers in these regions, ultimately proved to be the most resilient against the manufactured cloth imports of the early 20th century. In comparing West Africa’s long history of cloth production against eastern Africa’s more recent history of cloth production, and both region’s level of importation of European/Indian cloth, she observes that "West Africa not only produced more cloth than East Africa but also imported more cloth per capita" . She therefore points out that other factors account for the differences in Africa's textile industries, which she lists as; the level of population, the antiquity of cloth production, the level of state centralization and the robustness of trade networks, and argues that these explain why African weavers in high\-import/ high\-production regions along west africa’s coast, in the Horn of africa and the Swahili coast at Zanzibar, were also more likely to use more advanced technologies in cloth production with a wide variety of looms, and were also more likely to import yarn to increase local production, and foreign cloth as a result of higher purchasing power, compared to other regions such as the east African interior. The above studies by Thornton and Katharine are especially pertinent in assessing the effects of external slave trade on African industries as the countries along the west\-African and West\-central coast exported 10 times as many slaves into the Atlantic (around 9 million) than countries along the east\-African coast exported into the Indian ocean (around 0\.9 million), and which in both regions were exchanged for a corresponding amount of European/Indian textiles (among other goods). Furthermore, comprehensive studies by several scholars on Atlantic Africa's transition into "legitimate commerce" after the ban of slave exportation in the early 19th century, may provide evidence against the significance of the Atlantic slave export markets on domestic African economies. This is because such a transition would be expected to be devastating to their economies which were assumed to be dependent on exporting slaves in exchange for foreign imports. In his study of the Asante economy in the 18th and 19th century, Dalrymple\-Smith shows that the rapid decline of Asante’s slave exports shouldn’t solely be attributed to British patrol efforts at the coastal forts, nor on the seas, both of which he argues were very weak and often quite easily evaded by other African slave exporters and European buyers. He argues that the decline in slave exports from the “gold coast” region, should instead be largely attributed to the Asante state's withdraw from the slave export market despite the foregone revenues it would have received had it remained a major exporter like some of its peers. He shows that slave export industry was an aberration in the long\-standing Asante commodity exports of Gold dust and kola, and thus concludes that the Asante state "did not lose out financially by the ending of the transatlantic slave trade" These conclusions are supported by earlier studies on the era of “legitimate commerce” by Elisee Soumonni and Gareth Austin, who studied the economies of Dahomey and Asante. Both of these scholars argue that the transition from slave exports to palm oil exports was a "relatively smooth processes" and that both states were successful in "accommodating to the changing commercial environment". These studies on the era of legitimate commerce are especially important given that at the height of the trade in the 18th century, Asante and Dahomey either controlled and/or directly contributed a significant share of the slaves exported from the west African coast. Approximately 582,000 slaves leaving the port of Ouidah between 1727–1863, this port was by then controlled by Dahomey although over 62% of the slaves came from private merchants who travelled through Dahomey rather than from the state’s own war captives. Approximately 1,000,000 slaves passed through the “gold coast” ports of Anomabu, Cape\-coast\-castle and Elmina in the years between 1650\-1839\. while most would have come from the Fante states at the coast, some doubtlessly came from the Asante. That these exports fell to nearly zero by the mid 19th century without triggering a "crisis of adaptation" in the Asante and Dahomey economies, nor resulting in significant political ramifications, may support the argument that Atlantic trade was of only marginal significance for West African societies. --- Sources of controversy: Tracing the beginnings of the debate on the effects of Atlantic trade on Africa. The origin of the controversies underlying studies on Atlantic slavery from Africa lie not within the continent itself but ideological debates from western Europe and its American colonies, the latter of which were involved in the importation of the slaves and were places where slave labor played a much more significant role in the local economy (especially in the Caribbean), as well as in the region's political history (eg in the American civil war and the Haitian revolution), In a situation which was radically different on the African side of the Atlantic where political and economic currents were largely disconnected from the export trade. It's from the western debates between Abolitionists vs the Pro\-slavery writers that these debates emanate. Added to this were the ideological philosophies that created the robust form of social discrimination (in which enslaved people were permanently confined to the bottom of the social hierarchy primarily based on their race), that prompted historiographers of the slave trade to attempt to ascribe “blame”, however inaccurately or anachronistically, by attempting to determine which party (between the suppliers, merchants, and plantation owners) was ultimately guilty of what was increasingly being considered an inhumane form of commerce. The intertwining of Africa’s political and economy history with abolitionist debates begun in the 18th century with British writers’ accounts on the kingdom of Dahomey, most of which were made by slave traders from the Pro\-slavery camp of the Abolishionist debate. But neither the pro\-slaver writers (eg William Snelgrave) nor the abolitionists (eg Frederick Forbes) were concerned with examining the Dahomean past but only haphazardly collected accounts that supported their preconceived opinions about "the relationship between the slave trade and the transforming Dahomean political apparatus." They therefore interpreted events in Dahomey's political history through the lens of external slave trade, attributing the successes/failures of kings, their military strategies, their religious festivals, and the entire social structure of Dahomey, based on the number of slaves exiting from Ouidah and how much British audiences of the abolitionist debate would receive their arguments. This form of polemic literature, written by foreign observers armed with different conceptual frameworks for cognizing social processes separate from what they obtained among the African subjects of investigation, was repeated in other African states like the Asante kingdom and ultimately influenced the writings of 19th century European philosophers such as Friedrich Hegel, who based his entire study of African history and Africans largely on the pro\-slavery accounts of Dahomey written by the pro\-slavery writer William Snelgrave. Beginning in the 20th century, the debates of African historiography were largely focused on countering eurocentric claims about Africa as a land with no history, scholars of African history thus discredited the inaccurate Hegelian theories of Africa, with their rigorously researched studies that more accurately reconstructed the history of African states as societies with full political and economic autonomy. But the debates on the Africa's contribution to the Atlantic trade re\-emerged in the mid 20th century within the context of the civil rights movement in the US and the anti\-colonial movement in Africa and the Caribbean, leading to the popularity of the dependency theory; in which African societies were beholden to the whims of the presumably more commercially advanced and militarily powerful European traders who interfered in local politics and dictated economic processes in the African interior as they saw fit. External slave trade was once again given an elevated position in Atlantic\-African history. But faced with a paucity of internal documentation at the time, scholars engaged in a sort of academic “reverse engineering” of African history by using information from the logbooks of slave ships to reconstruct the political and social life of the interior. Atlantic slave trade was therefore said to have depopulated the continent, degraded its political institutions, destroyed its local industries, and radically altered its social structures and economies. External documentation about African states made by European slave traders and explorers, was often uncritically reproduced and accepted, while internal records and accounts of African societies were largely disregarded. Fortunately however, the increased interest in Africa's political and economic history has resulted in the proliferation of research that reveals the robustness of pre\-colonial African states and economies throughout the period of the Atlantic trade, added to this are the recently uncovered internal African documents especially in west Africa and west central Africa (from regions that also include Atlantic African countries such as Senegal, the ivory coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Angola), and which contain useful accounts of the region's political history ultimately proving that the continent's destiny before the colonial era, wasn't in control of external actors but was in the hands of the African states and societies which dominated the continent. --- Conclusion: the view of the Atlantic world from Africa The Atlantic slave trade was a dark chapter in African history, just as it was in the Americas colonies where the enslaved people were taken and forced to labor to produce the commodities which fueled the engines of the west’s economic growth, all while the slaves and their descendants were permanently excluded from partaking in the economic and the political growth of the states in which they resided. The intellectual basis of this exclusion was constructed in racial terms which rationalized the institution of chattel slavery, a brutal form of forced labor which the settlers of the colonies considered morally objectionable for themselves but morally permissible for the Africans, by claiming that both the slave suppliers in Africa and the slaves on American plantations, were incapable of “placing value on human life”, and in so doing, managed to simultaneously justify the brutal use of slaves as chattel (whose high mortality thus required more imports to replace them), and also justified the slave descendants’ permanent social exclusion based on race. The history of internal African slavery on the other hand, is a lengthy topic (that i hope to cover later), but it shows that the above western rationales were far from the reality of African perceptions of slavery as well as its institution in the various states within the continent. As i mentioned above, African states had laws which not only protected their citizens including going as far as repatriating them from slave plantations in the American colonies, but also laws determining who was legally enslavable, who would be retained locally, who was to be exported. African written documents also include laws regarding how slaves were to be treated, how long they were allowed to work, how much they earned, and how they earned/were granted freedom. Unlike the static political landscape of the colonies, Africa’s political landscape was fluid, making slavery a rather impermanent social status as slaves (especially those in the army) could overthrow their masters and establish their own states, (several examples include Sumanguru of Soso, Mansa Sakura of Mali empire, Askiya Muhammad of Songhai empire, Ngolo Diarra of Bambara empire), slave officials also occupied all levels of government in several African states and wielded power over free subjects especially in the Songhai and Sokoto empires where virtually all offices from finance to the military were occupied by slave officials), slaves could be literate, could accumulate wealth and own property. In summary, Slavery in Africa wasn’t dissimilar from ‘old world’ slavery in medieval Europe, Asia and the Islamic world and was quite unlike the extreme form of chattel slavery in the Atlantic. Just like their ignorance of African political and economic systems, western writers’ understanding of African social institutions including slavery, was equally inaccurate. The ideas of “guilt” and “blame” in the context of Africa’s role in the Atlantic reveals statements of value rather than fact, and the ludicrous notion of “Africans enslaving Africans” is an anachronistic paradigm that emerged from the western rationale for racial\-chattel slavery and modern concepts of “African\-ess” and “Blackn\-ess” which were unknown in pre\-colonial African states, the latter instead defined their worldview in political, ethnic and religious terms. A free citizen in Kongo for example identified themselves as part of the “Mwisikongo” and not as an “African brother” of another citizen from a totally different kingdom like Ndongo. This is also reflected in accounts of redeemed slaves themselves, as hardly any of their testimonies indicate that they felt betrayed by “their own” people, but rather by foreign enemies, whom they often described by their political/ethnic/religious difference from themselves. This post isn’t an attempt to “absolve” Euro\-American slave societies from their own legacies of slavery (which they continue to perpetuated through the descendants of slaves down to the modern day), nor to shift “guilt” to the African suppliers, but its a call for scholars to study each society within its own context without overstating the influence of one region over the other. Its also not aimed at exposing a rift between scholars of African history, as most of the scholars mentioned above are excellent educators with decades of research in their respective field, and the vast majority of their work overlaps with that of the other scholars despite their disagreements on a few issues: there doesn’t need to be a consensus among these scholars for us to extract an accurate understanding of African history from their research. The Atlantic trade, remains an important chapter in African history, it is however, one among many chapters of the continent’s past. --- If like this article, or would like to contribute to my African history website project; please donate to my paypal --- Down all books about Atalntic slave trade from Africa (listed in the references below), and read more about African history on my Patreon account Transformations in slavery by Paul Lovejoy pg 122\-123\) The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva pg 3\-5\) The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva pg 73\-88\) The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva pg 84 The kongo kingdom by Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman, pg 36\- 41, the elusive archaeology of kongo’s urbanism by B Clist, pg 377\-378, The elusive archeology of kongo urbanism by B Clist, pg 371\-372, A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton, pg 34\) The Kingdom of Kongo. by Anne Hilton, pg 34\-35\) this introduction is an abridged version of Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo by LM Heywood pg 3\-4, The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450\-1521 by Ivana Elbl pg 43\-42, History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton pg 52\-55 History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton, pg 6\-9, 72\) Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo by LM Heywood pg 5\-6 History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton 5\-6\) Precolonial african industry by john thornton pg 12\-14\) History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton pg 94\-97\) (Slavery and its transformation in the kingdom of kongo by L.M.Heywood, pg 7, A reinterpretation of the kongo\-potuguese war of 1622 according to new documentary evidence by J.K.Thornton, pg 241\-243\) Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis pg 137\-138\) Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis pg 87\-90\) Transformations in slavery by Paul Lovejoy pg 40,53\) History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton pg 72 A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton, pg 149\-150, 160, 164\) A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton, pg 176, Kongo origins dynamics pg 121\-122 A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by J. K. Thornton, pg 244\-246, 280\-284\) The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva pg 92\) Map Courtesy of Henry B. Lovejoy, African Diaspora Maps Ltd these books describe the internal systems of the Asante, while they don’t specifically discuss how they related to the external slave trade, they nevertheless reveal its rather marginal place in Asante Politics; “State and Society in Pre\-colonial Asante” by De T. C. McCaskie and “Asante in the Nineteenth Century” By Ivor Wilks Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630–1860 pg 167\-173\) Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630–1860 pg 168 The slave coast of west africa by Robin Law pg 267\-280 The Precolonial State in West Africa by Cameron Monroe pg 62\-68 Wives of the leopard by Edna G. Bay pg 30\) Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies by Sylviane A. Diouf pg 187 The Precolonial State in West Africa by Cameron Monroe pg 74\-76 The slave coast of west africa by Robin Law pg 300\-308 Slave Traders by Invitation by Finn Fuglestad pg 97\), Ouidah The Social History of a West African Slaving 'port' 1727\-1892 by Robin Law pg 117\-118, 121\-124\) Dahomey in the World: Dahomean Rulers and European Demands, 1726–1894 by John hornton, pg 450\-456 Slavery and African Life by Patrick Manning 85\) “African Population, 1650 – 1950: Methods for New Estimates” by Patrick manning, and, “African Population, 1650–2000: Comparisons and Implications of New Estimates” by Patrick Manning “World Economy: A Millennial Perspective” by Angus Maddison and “Historical Population Estimates” by John Caldwell and homas Schindlmayr The long term effects of Africa’s slave trades by Nathan Nunn pg 139\-176\) African Population, 1650–2000: Comparisons and Implications of New Estimates by Patrick Manning pg 37 African Population, 1650 – 1950: Methods for New Estimates by Region by Patrick Manning 7 We Do Not Know the Population of Every Country in the World for the past Two Thousand Years by Timothy W. Guinnane pg 11\-13\) The slave coast of west africa by robin law pg 222\) Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750 by John Thornton pg 417\-427 Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750 by John Thornton pg 521\-526 african fiscal systems as sources of demographic history by thornton and heywood 213\-228 african fiscal systems as sources of demographic history by thornton and heywood 221 ,224,225 The Slave Trade in Eighteenth Century Angola: Effects on Demographic Structures by John Thornton pg 417\- 427 The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 pg 95 The Slave Trade in Eighteenth Century Angola: Effects on Demographic Structures by John Thornton pg 421 The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 pg 92\-93 The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867 pg 98\) The Kongo Kingdom: The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity by Koen Bostoen, ‎Inge Brinkman pg 49\-52 Transformations in slavery by Paul Lovejoy pg 68, 44\-45 10, 121\-122\) English versus Indian Cotton Textiles by Joseph Inikori pg 85\-114\) Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. By David Eltis pg 71\-73\) Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400\-1800 by John Thornton pg 47\-52\) Precolonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade, 1500\-1800 by J Thornton · pg 1\-19\) Drivers of Divergence: Textile Manufacturing in East and West Africa from the Early Modern Period to the Post\-Colonial Era by Katharine Frederick pg 205\-233 Twilight of an Industry in East Africa: Textile Manufacturing, 1830\-1940 by Katharine Frederick pg 206, 227 Twilight of an Industry in East Africa: Textile Manufacturing, 1830\-1940 by Katharine Frederick pg 212 These calculations are based on Nunn’s country\-level estimates of slave exports in “The long term effects of Africa’s slave trades” by Nathan Nunn pg 152\) "Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630–1860" By Angus E. Dalrymple\-Smith pg 155\-161 From slave trade to legitimate commerce by Robin Law pg 20\-21\) Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630–1860" By Angus E. Dalrymple\-Smith pg 155 Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis pg 122\) Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'port' 1727\-1892 by Robin Law pg 112 Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis 116, 118,123\) The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Rebecca Shumway pg 8 The Precolonial State in West Africa by Cameron Monroe pg 15\-16, Wives of the leopard by Edna G. Bay pg 29\-31\) The Horror of Hybridity by George Boulukos, in “Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition” pg 103 Labour and Living Standards in Pre\-Colonial West Africa by Klas Rönnbäck pg 2\-6 Digital preservation of Wolof Ajami manuscripts of Senegal Northern Nigeria: Precolonial documents preservation scheme \- major project Safeguarding Fulfulde ajami manuscripts of Nigerian Jihad poetry by Usman dan Fodio (1754\-1817\) and contemporaries Arquivos dos Dembos: Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays by Julie K. Ward, Tommy L. Lott pg 150\-152 Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies by Sylviane A. Diouf pg xiv 20 )

The evolving image of the European in African art from antiquity until the 19th century: from Roman captives in Kush, to Portuguese traders in Benin, to Belgian colonialists in Congo. in The evolving image of the European in African art from antiquity until the 19th century: from Roman captives in Kush, to Portuguese traders in Benin, to Belgian colonialists in Congo. How Africans saw the "European other". )While studies of "otherness" have been recently popularized across various fields, they often focus on the images of foreign individuals or groups made by artists living in the western world (such as the depictions of people of African descent made by artists of European descent living in places where the latter were socially dominant), rarely has the focus of the studies of otherness been reversed to include how foreign individuals or groups such as Europeans were depicted by African artists living within African societies where they were the socially dominant group. African portrayals of the "European other" in art, were influenced by the nature and frequency of contact between African societies and people of European descent, as well as the robustness of the given society's art tradition. Since extensive interaction between Africans and Europeans was uncommon before the 19th century, depictions of Europeans in African art appear infrequently, except in three African states, the Kingdoms of; Kush, Benin and Loango. These three African societies’ contrasting depictions of Europeans provides a cross\-section sketch of the interactions between Africans and Europeans from antiquity to the eve of colonialism. This article explores the evolving image of the European through African eyes, ranging from the vanquished roman captive in Kush, to the Portuguese merchant\-mercenary in Benin, to the Belgian trader\-colonist in Loango. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The vanquished captive: image of the Roman in Kush’s art. The kingdom of Kush was established in mid\-3rd millennium BC by Meroitic speakers, it flourished from capitals at Kerma (2500BC\-1500BC), Napata (800\-300BC) and Meroe (300BC\-360AD) as a regional power controlling much of what is now north\-central Sudan and was briefly the world’s second largest empire in the 7th century BC, extending its political orbit over parts of Palestine and Syria. It first came to the attention of Greek writers in the 8th century BC as the land of Aethiopia (not to be confused with modern Ethiopia), with more detailed descriptions by Herodotus in the 5th century BC and the Ptolemaic era in the 3th century when direct contacts were initiated, and faint depictions of mythical European figures were made by Kush’s artists, but it wasn’t until the Roman era in the late 1st century BC that depictions of Europeans were included in Kush’s art canon. Kush’s temples, palaces and pyramid\-burials were often richly decorated with painted scenes depicting royals, deities, tribute bearers, captives, as well as fauna and flora of the kingdom, all shown in vivid colors and with reliefs occasionally covered in gold leaf among these painted and relief scenes were images of the vanquished enemy; a common motif in Kushite art as a symbol of the King’s military prowess. While the majority of the representations of captives were often "neutral" representing Kush’s foes as a mostly undifferentiated mass, as artists used a motif that had been adopted unchanged over the centuries some of the captives were differentiated by several external attributes such as, hair types, headgear, clothing, skin color, and other accessories, which were additions by artists to represent new foes of Kush whose depiction couldn’t rely on old prototypes. The depictions of the "Northern/Helmet wearing Types" are the most unique among the new groups of captives, they are often shown wearing helmets, attimes with chinstraps and feathers attached to the top, they wear “special clothing” like sandals and long robes (rather than the characteristic knee\-length loincloth), are shown being killed in various ways with daggers and arrows, and are attimes shown with "northern features”, all of which were additions used to depict Kush’s new northern neighbor; the Romans, beginning in the 1st century BC The most detailed depiction of roman captives in Kush came from the murals in chapel building M. 292 at Meroe (the so\-called “Augustus temple”), water color images of these murals were made by the archeologist Garstang in 1910 and were sent to the Boston museum in 1948, and they remain some of the few meroitic temple murals that have been studied to date, providing us with an approximate idea of the original colors, dressing and overall painting, as well as highlighting the variations in ethnic differences of the bound prisoners based on the clothing, accessories, and skin tone. The first panel shows five bounded captives kneeling below the foot of the Queen (most likely Queen Amanitore) ; the first of these figures is light\-skinned and wears a blue, thigh\-length stripped robe, on his head is a yellow Roman helmet with a chin strap (similar to one found on Queen Amanishakheto's stela, and to the helmeted prizoners on bronze bells found in pyramid N.16 and N.18 in Meroe, and on a relief in Queen Amanirenas’ temple 250 in Meroe) and scholars thus identify him as a Roman captive. Behind him are three prisoners of different origin than him, with various darker\-skin shades, all wearing knee\-length kilts and some with headcaps and ear\-rings. The second panel shows three bounded captives, tied together with a rope and kneeling infront of the sandaled foot of a deity (or the queen), the first two prisoners from the left are light\-skinned, the first of these wears a helmet with a chin\-strap, the second figure wears a stripped robe similar to the one in the first panel and is shod in black, ankle\-high pointed slippers (an unusual feature among Kush's captives). These representations of roman captives were made after the war between Kush and Rome that occurred from 25BC\-20BC in which southern Egyptian rebels allied with Kush attacked roman garrisons in Egypt and destroyed several roman monuments including decapitating a bronze statue of the emperor Augustus, prompting a counter\-attack from Rome that extended into Kush's northern territories (likely at Napata) but was beaten back by the Queen Amanirenas who chased them back into Egypt where both parties signed a peace treaty that was heavily favorable to Kush including the withdraw of Rome's southern border away from Kush and a refusal by Amanirenas to return the Augustus headIt was her successor (most likely Queen Amanitore in the mid 1st century AD) who buried the “Augustus head” in a staircase of her chapel (building M. 292\), the same chapel that was decorated with the murals depicting vanquished roman captives,the artists likely borrowing figure of the roman captive motif from an earlier temple M. 250 whose captive scenes were added during Queen Amanirenas and later Queen Amanishakheto’s reign during the late 1st century BCQueen Amanishakheto also commissioned a stela inscribed in Meroitic about the war between Kush and Rome and included a description of an raid on Kush's northern city of Napata by the "Tǝmeya", a Meroitic ethnonym meaning "whites/Europeans". The word “tǝmeya” is attested across Kush's northern territories as a descriptive term used by the Meroites of Kush for greco\-roman settlers in southern Egypt in the 2nd\-3rd century and was later used to describe the roman authorities in Egypt in the 4th century. The appearance of these Tǝmeya/European captives across a wide period of Kush's history from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD, and the symbolic positioning of the Augustus head in the staircase of a minor chapel in Meroe, all of which commemorate Kush's defeat of Rome; and the conflict’s conclusion with a peace treaty favorable to Kush, perfectly captures the initial encounter between Africa and Europe, one that demonstrated the military might of an independent African state where interactions between Africans and Europeans were dictated on African terms. It also influenced the favorable description of Kush by roman writers such as Strabo and Pliny, who drew from contemporary accounts describing capital Meroe that "so long as the Aethiopians were powerful this island was very famous. for by report they were accustomed to furnish of armed men 250,000 and to maintain of artisans 400,000\. also it is at this day reported that there have been forty\-five kings of the Aethiopians"This account, which doubtlessly exaggerates Kush's demographics and king list was a reflection of Roman perceptions of Kush's power and antiquity, as well as the incorporation of the classical Greek accounts about the utopian land of Kush and its “long\-lived”, “wise” and “handsome Aethiopians” as described by Herodotus. --- --- The merchant\-mercenary of the Atlantic world: image of the Portuguese in Benin art. Foreigners were rarely portrayed in Benin’s voluminous corpus of sculptural art with the few depictions of foreigners being Portuguese merchants and musketeers , as well as images of powerful foreign captives. Portuguese figures appear on Benin's bronze plaques, brass sculptures and ivory armlets as part of the Oba Esigie's symbols of his commercial and military power. The stylized motif of the bearded, long\-haired Portuguese man, wearing 16th century Iberian fashion, holding cross\-bows, guns or other weapons, and carrying manilla currency, was repeated in later centuries by 18th and 19th century artists of Benin long after the actual contacts with the Portuguese had ended. The smooth, rounded bodies of the Benin figures, their in static postures, wearing symbols of rank, with a distinctive emphasis on the head and wide eyes, nose and full lips which in edo tradition potrayed the idealized human body of the" “self” in the prime of life,(and was similarly used for Benin's depictions of foreign war captives, as well as by the artists of neighboring kingdoms such as Ife), stood in stark contrast to the the gaunt, aged faces of the Portuguese whose figures were often depicted in natural proportion without the symbolic emphasis of the head, according to the art historian Susanne Blier "These contrasting aesthetic norms are particularly revealing as they convey through acute visual means how court artists sought to identify local Benin individuals as in the prime of life, while indicating that the Portuguese were in many respects sickly or moribund".The contrasts between the Benin and Portuguese figures were consciously repeated by Benin's artists until the 19th century, with a deliberate avoidance from showing the Portuguese as part of the Oba's dignitaries or courtiers, excluding them from scenes of royal festivals, but only depicting them either alone (with Portuguese attendants rather than Edo attendants), or as ornamental decorations within a larger scene focused on the Edo dignitaries. The most notable portrayals of the Portuguese include the Iyoba mask where they are shown in the Queen Idia’s hair, as faces or figures adorning various vessels and such as salt\-cellars and kola\-nut boxes or in a number of the 16th century bronze plaques where they are depicted either alone as mercenaries or merchants, or as miniature figures/heads/faces that accessorize the scene focused on the larger Benin figures in the corners, or with their faces shown as waist pendants of the Oba. images of the Portuguese as ornamental miniature figures in Benin art: images of the Portuguese as mercenaries images of the Portuguese as merchants image of the Portuguese as ornaments on Benin containers. The type of depictions of the Portuguese in Benin's art underscores the nature of early Atlantic interactions between Africans and Europeans from the 15th to 18th century, where initial attempts to forcefully bring African kingdoms under European control ended in the latter's defeat, allowing African states to maintain full political autonomy while accommodating European commercial interests within their economies, and European military technologies within their armies. While the commercial interactions of the Atlantic world are attimes misconceived as solely exploitative and unequal, there's growing evidence that the commodity exchanges of Atlantic trade were of minimal significance to the African economies and industries, the European imports were insufficient for domestic demand and were only pursued because of a desire for variety rather than to fulfill essential needs. Benin stands as the foremost example of early Afro\-European interactions in the Atlantic, having banned the exportation of slaves since the early 16th century yet remained a wealthy state and a formidable regional power centuries after, and its artists’ depictions of Europeans on the periphery of courtly life as ornaments, but also part of the Oba’s iconography of commercial and military power, are a testament to this. --- the Trader\-colonialists : images of various Europeans in Vili art. the Vili kingdom of Loango was a west\-central African kingdom established in the 16th century on the north\-western fringes of the better\-known kingdom of Kongo, growing in the 17th century as an exporter of copper and ivory as it expanded into the Congolese interior, it underwent a period of internal political upheaval in the 18th century, when titled officials wrestled control from elected kings and for nearly a century between 1780s and 1870s, Loango was ruled by a council, which conveniently postponed the election of the king indefinitely, and it wasinturn headed by clerical figures called Nganga Mvumbi who legitimized the former, this served to buttress the bureaucracy whose control of society gradually became intrusive, leading to the break\-away of several vassal states and its slow disintegration by the 19th century.This period also coincided with the increased demand for (and thus exportation) of slaves, but the trade had largely declined by the mid 19th century, replaced by the commodities exports of ivory, palm oil and rubber, as dozens of European factory communities (from many nationalities including the Belgians, English, French, Portuguese, Dutch and the Germans), were set up further inland, precipitating an influx in ivory to a tune of 8 tonnes a year (about 1/6th of London's total imports), as well as significant quantities of palm oil and rubber by the 1860s, all of which involved an increase in the use of free and enslaved labor in the region immediately adjacent to the coast, and led to the decentralization of power and wealth. This radically altered the region’s political, economic and social landscape and lead to further political fractionation with the proliferation in several small states ruled by petty chiefs controlled by wealthy, titled figures such as the mafouks who dealt with the Europeans collecting taxes and fixing market prices, at a time when the region had become fully integrated into the Atlantic economy and more vulnerable to global economic shocks such as the the sharp fall in commodity prices in the 1880s that was also devastating for the west African coast.The period between 1870s and 1890s was thus marked by a high degree of conflict and competition with clashes between European factory communities and local chiefs, as well as between the local chiefs. This period of social upheaval was also marked by increased interaction between Europeans and Africans and a rapid shift in the balance power that came to favor the former. After the failed Portuguese attempt to colonize most of the upper west\-central African coast in the 16th century, European coastal "factories"/forts were firmly under African control, paying rent to the neighboring Kings and subjected to raids and piracy from other African armies, ontop of this the European traders in the 19th century were making low margins on the commodities trade as African middlemen such as the vili retained the bulk of the profit; much to the resentment of the European traders who disliked the Africans’ prohibitions against Europeans travelling inland, and their cutting (rather than tapping) of rubber trees, which they considered wasteful. But the relationship between the coastal Africans and Europeans changed in the 1870s as prices fell, European traders became less tolerant of the middlemen and their presumed inefficiencies, their control of trade and their piracy, they started to attack the interior chiefs and pirates, and by\-pass the Vili middlemen forcefully, added to this was the increasing despotism of the petty chiefs whose power became more intrusive as a consequence of growing labor demands to offset the falling export prices and the internecine jockeying for power, all of which heralded the early period of colonialism in the late 1880s that would greatly intensify these already negative social changes,culminating in King Leopold’s mass atrocities in Congo that begun in the 1890s. Among the professions that came to be in high demand during this period were ivory carvers, an old craft whose patrons were African royals and nobles, but came to include European collectors. European travelers in the region observed that Loango artists "many have an astounding skill in meticulously carving freehand" and on top of depicting the usual African scenes (which made up the majority of the carvings), they also included scenes of with European figures (although these made up as little as 6% of all carvings), often portraying European customs and mythical Christian figures in works of satire.The carved tusks show pictorial narratives made by various artists working independently of each other and without a standard theme (unlike the centrally controlled artists of Benin and Kush), these figures depicted include titled Africans wearing headcaps (these could be rulers, but were most likely mafouk chiefs ), humorous vignettes, fighters and dancers, harvesters and hunters, processions of porters carrying goods to the coast for export, or carrying back boxes of imported goods into the interior, as well as chained slaves (these are likely anachronistic depictions of the past slave trade as it had ended by thenor were depictions of the contemporary internal slave trade fueled by labour demands for commodity produce) Also included are European figures wearing 19th century European attire, they also carry rifles, documents, cigars and umbrellas. “In general terms so\-called Loango carved tusks can be seen to constitute an innovative art form that seems to draw on both European and Kongo forms of visual communication”. 19th century Loango carved ivory tusks and container, with depictions of Europeans: “It is very strange, one sees whites and assorted people represented with a great talent for observation and mockery.” Father Campana observing the Longo tusks in 1895\. The image of the European in Loango art of the late 19th century is a mix of satire and realism, Loango artists expressed humor, ridicule, and critique through their imagery, and their realism in depicting coastal life including violent scenes of titled African figures, reflected the desires and biases of both client and artist.The Loango ivories are arguably the best African pictorial representation of the social upheavals along the late 19th century African coast, as well as the shifting economic and political power of the Afro\-European interactions; providing a near perfect photograph of the "economic basis of imperialism" in Africa that led to colonialism. The non\-violent exchanges between the European traders and African middlemen, broke down in the late 19th century as each party disputed over the distribution of reduced profits, with the African producers and middlemen expanding labor use (both free and servile) to offset falling earnings (thus making their rule more intrusive), while European traders increasingly moved inland to bypass the African middlemen and applied more forceful means to control the markets, urging their metropolitan governments, now emboldened by their more efficient fire\-arms (and thus reduced cost of war), to adopt more "active policies" (ie: colonial conquest).While the ivories were primarily intended as souvenirs for European consumption, the Loango ivory carvers depict African agency in Afro\-European interactionsbut also portray the growing imbalance in power and Africans’ perception of their rapidly changing society in which Europeans played a prominent role. --- Conclusion: the European as an evolving “other” in African art Depictions of Europeans in African art provide a condensed portrait of the evolving nature of Afro\-European interactions throughout history; the inclusion of the Roman captives in Kush’s royal iconography represented the perception of the romans in Kush; as the first foreign army to invade Kush's heartlands, their decisive defeat was commemorated by the rulers of Kush who innovated a new depiction of captives, to represent the vanquished Roman. The Benin depictions of the Portuguese on the other hand, took place within an era of “relative compatibility and mutual respect" between African states and the Europeans, the europeans are thus included in the corpus of Benin's art, but are visibly relegated to the periphery of the main scenes, representing the marginal role Europeans played during this era. In contrast to Kush and Benin however, the late\-19th century setting of the Loango tusks was a mix of contact and catastrophe, as coastal societies were gradually coming under Europe’s political orbit, and European rationales for alleged superiority were now deeply entrenched, justifying the unequal and forceful nature of interaction between Africans and Europeans. The image of the European "other" in African art was therefore not monolithic. While white skin and the Atlantic sea (from where the Europeans came) were both universally associated with the world of the dead among many of the coastal African societies, African artists weren’t pre\-occupied with including concepts of the european "other" in their cosmologies nor in moralistic dichotomies of good and evil. The european traders' increasingly unequal interactions with the Vili societies also didn’t prompt its artists to create caricatured depictions of them, instead opting for pointed imagery and satirical critiques. Whereas Kush and Benin's stylistic constancy in depicting europeans underscores the stately restrictions under which their artworks were created and the political stability in which the artists lived, the 19th century Loango ivories’ "stylistic unruliness" is a reflection of the messiness of their commissioning and the upheaval in the society around their artists. African depictions of Europeans are therefore visual relics of the evolving nature of contacts between the two societies through history. --- Read more about African history and download african history books on my Patreon account Meroe City, Six Studies on the Cultural Identity of an Ancient African State, Volume 16 by László Török pg 209\-211 The Representation of Captives and Enemies in Meroitic Art by Janice Yellin pg 585\-592\) first photo and illustration: The Royal Cemeteries of Kush by Dows Dunham Vol. IV, pg 138, Plate LV, fig 90, the second photo and illustration (same book); pg 150, Plate LVI, fig 90 The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art by László Török pg 244 , Meroe by P.L. shinnie and R.J. Bradley pg 167\-172 The kingdom of kush by L. Torok pg 451\-455\) Headhunting on the Roman Frontier by Uroš Matić pg 128\-9\) The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art by László Török pg 216\-218 Les interprétations historiques des stèles méroïtiques d’Akinidad à la lumière des récentes découvertes by Claude Rilly pg 33\-50 (see photo in footnote 11 above) Pliny's natural history book VI pg 159 Herodotus in Nubia by László Török A study of the Portuguese\-Benin Trade Relations: Ughoton as a Benin Port (1485 \-1506\) by Michael Ediagbonya Royal Art of Benin by Kate Ezra pg 12\-14, 69, 122\-130\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument by Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 86\-88\) Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba by Suzanne Preston Blier pg 278, 487 Imaging Otherness in Ivory by SP Blier pg 384 Imaging Otherness in Ivory by SP Blier pg 385\) Royal Art of Benin by Kate Ezra pg pg 245\-247\) Royal Art of Benin by Kate Ezra pg 156\-157, 161\) A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250\-1820 by John Thornton pg 248\-261 Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400\-1800 by John Thornton pg 45 A History of West Central Africa to 1850 by John Thornton pg 65\-67, 136\-139, 249, 304\-307 Kongo: Power and Majesty By Alisa LaGamma pg 74 An economic history of West Africa by A. G. Hopkins pg 183\-184\) Catastrophe and Creation by K. Elkholm Friedmann pg pg 33\-38 Catastrophe and Creation by K. Elkholm Friedmann pg 47\-56\) Kongo power and majesty by Alisa LaGamma pg 79\-84\) Kongo: Power and Majesty By Alisa LaGamma pg 64\-69 A Companion to Modern African Art by Gitti Salami, Monica Blackmun Visona pg 64\-65 Strother, Zoe S. "Depictions of Human Trafficking on Loango Ivories." In Humor and Violence: Seeing Europeans in Central African Art, 1850–1997 Subtracting the Narrative by Zachary Kingdon pg 22 A Companion to Modern African Art by Gitti Salami, Monica Blackmun Visona pg 64 see the museum commentary at the taken from “Humor and Violence: Seeing Europeans in Central African Art, 1850–1997 by Zoe Strother A Companion to Modern African Art by Gitti Salami, Monica Blackmun Visona pg 62\-65 An economic history of West Africa by A. G. Hopkins pg 191\-209 Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present pg 159 Subtracting the Narrative by Zachary Kingdon pg 31\-33 Imaging Otherness in Ivory by Suzanne Preston Blier pg 378\-381 14 )TopLatestDiscussionsNo posts Ready for more? Subscribe© 2024 isaac Samuel ∙ ∙ is the home for great cultureShareCopy linkFacebookEmailNoteOther This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please or unblock scripts

From an African artistic monument to a Museum loot: A history of the 16th century Benin bronze plaques. in From an African artistic monument to a Museum loot: A history of the 16th century Benin bronze plaques. The manufacture, function and interpretation of an African masterpiece )Benin as it appears in documents of the seventeenth century was a wealthy and highly centralized kingdom, early European visitors never failed to be impressed with its capital; the Portuguese compared it with Lisbon, the Dutch with Amsterdam, the Italians with Florence, and the Spaniards with Madrid, Its size was matched by dense habitation; houses built close to each other along long, straight streets, it was orderly, well laid out, and sparkling clean so that the walls of the houses appeared polished, its ruler’s impressive royal palace, a city within the city, had countless squares and patios, galleries and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that has made Benin famous. The Benin bronzes are among the most celebrated works of African art in the world, but unlike the majority of the corpus of Benin art that was continuously made since the kingdom’s inception, such the bronze commemorative heads which were were needed by each successive king to honor his deceased predecessor, or the ivory, bronze and wood carvings that were made from the 14th\-19th century, the commission of the Benin plaques is often attributed to just two rulers in a fixed period during the 16th century and was likely undertaken within a relatively short period that spanned 30\-45 years between the reigns of Oba Esigie and Oba Orhogbua, the bronze plaques were later stashed away during the 17th century and safely kept in the palace until the British invasion of 1897\. The destruction of the palace, the removal of the plaques and the apathy by western institutions towards restitution, has complicated the analysis of their function, installation and interpretations of the symbolism and scenes that they depicted. This article explores the historical context within which the Benin plaques were made using recent studies of the artworks to interpret their symbolic function. Map of Benin at its height in the 16th century (Courtesy of Henry B. Lovejoy, African Diaspora Maps Ltd.) --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Benin history until the reign of the ‘Warrior\-Kings’: The rise of Benin kingdom and empire was a long and complex process of state formation, Benin’s formative period begun in the late 1st millennium and lasted until the founding of the Eweka dynasty in the 13th century with the introduction of the title of Oba (king), the gradual reduction of the Uzama N'ihinron (an autochthonous body of territorial lords who governed Benin city before the establishment of the Eweka dynasty, they influenced the kingdom’s politics and the Oba’s succession to the throne), and the expansion of the kingdom from its core territory around Benin city to neighboring towns in a drawn out process that was best accomplished under Oba Ewuare in the early 15th century who introduced several centralizing institutions that were later expanded and reinforced by his successors of the so\-called "warrior\-king" era which lasted from 1440AD\-1606AD and is generally considered as the golden age of Benin. Ozolua’s reign: Despite the warrior\-king era's status as a period of increasing prosperity and political stability; Benin underwent a period of political upheaval and socioeconomic changes during the reigns of Oba Ozolua (1480s\-1517\) and Esigie (1517\-1550s). The Oba Ozolua, also called Ozolua the conqueror, is one of the greatest Obas in Benin's history, and is credited with transforming the moderately sized kingdom into an empire with his many conquests reportedly involving 200 battles, he is also immortalized in Benin's art with depictions of him in a long chainmail tunic, an iconographic motif that signifies his power, successes and military prowess, and the memory of Ozula's conquests and successes was so great that all of Benin's later rulers styled themselves as emperors But the complete history of his reign contains accounts about internal strife and tumultuous court politics including rebellions in Benin city itself involving low ranking officials, thus painting a more nuanced portrait of his reign and a reflection of the challenges his legitimacy faced. Ozula was briefly overthrown during a period of uprisings across the empire beginning with the province of Utekon, that forced him into exile to the town of Ora, where he briefly ruled before regaining his throne at Benin. Ozolua remained a polarizing figure at the court and this ultimately led to his demise, the Oba was killed by his own men when campaigning in the province of Uzea in the year 1517, the mutiny was likely a result of his incessant wars. Esigie’s reign: Ozolua's death sparked a succession crisis at Benin as the exact order of birth between his sons Aruanran and Esigie was dispute with the latter supposedly being born immediately after the former, nevertheless, Esigie (r. 1517\-1550\) ascended to the Benin throne and Aruanran promptly moved to Udo (a provincial town close to the capital of Benin), where he prepared for war against his brother. Esigie invaded Udo and fought Aruanran's armies in a costly battle that resulted in many causalities on both sides, but the former ultimately emerged victorious, killing Aruanran's son and forcing the father to commit suicide. Despite the depletion of his feudal armies from the devastation after the Udo war and his father's campaigns, Esigie was still faced with the need to protect his father's vast empire with its newly acquired vassal provinces that took advantage of critical moments of internal strife to remove themselves from Benin's central authority, and the most powerful among the rebellious territories was Igala, ruled by a kinglet named Ata of Idah. The so\-called ‘Idah war’ was one of the most decisive in Benin's history, the Atah of Idah was a renowned military leader and is said to have founded the kingdom of Nupe (a powerful state north\-east of Benin), his army had mounted soldiers and was reputed to be the strongest in the region, Benin's armies on the other hand were almost entirely infantry forces, while some elite soldiers and courtiers rode horses (and are depicted as such), the vast majority of Benin’s soldiers fought on foot since horse\-rearing was nearly impossible in this tsetse\-fly infested forest zone of West africa. Esigie's armies, which had been thoroughly exhausted by the Udo war and his father's incessant campaigns, now faced an existential threat that threatened the Benin capital itself, a dreadful feat that wasn’t repeated by any foreign army until the British invasion. The Oba enlisted assistance from his mother Idia who provided her own forces and spiritual leadership, and he also enlisted the Portuguese mercenaries with whom his kingdom had recently been in contact, the Oba also went to great lengths to convince the feudal lords into devoting more levees to the war effort and when they finally relented, they also brought with them wooden, life\-like statues of soldiers to the war as a ruse for the enemy. On their war to the war, a bird flew over the Oba's armies signifying (or prophesizing) defeat, but Esigie shot the bird and carried it with him, announcing that "he who would succeeded in life could not listen to false prophesy". The war was bitterly fought and one of the soldiers of the Queen mother Idia is said to have assassinated the Atah of Idah, ending the battle in Esigie's favor, the Oba brought back with him the dead bird which he cast in bronze to remind people of his ability to overcome fate. Esigie’s triumph and the Benin plaques: Esigie instituted two festivals to commemorate his victories in Udo and Idah, the first was Ugie Ivie which is a bead ceremony commemorating the victory over his brother at Udo where Aruanran is said to have possessed a large bead of coral suspended on multiple coral strands that Esigie seized after concluding his victory. The second festival that immediately follows the first was Ugie Oro, a procession ceremony in which the Uzama N'ihinron, accompanied by high priests and other Benin courtiers, pass though Benin city's streets beating the bronze effigies of the "bird of prophesy" that had warned of Esigie's defeat, and in the process symbolically acknowledge their mistake at initially failing to support their Oba while also reminding Esigie's subjects of his military prowess in the face of an existential threat. Also accompanying the courtiers were igala dancers captured from the Idah war who were formed into the emadose guild specifically for this festival trumpeting his success in the Idah war. The elaborate public displays that occurred during these festivals that took place for every five days for three months of a year, demonstrated the authority of the Oba, and his magnanimity for a war fought with few resources and little internal support, "Esigie's festival creates a tableau of courtly harmony across Benin's social order from the most powerful courtiers to the lowliest captives, allowing viewers to draw a message of power from an event that became the memorial of a decisive battle", Its within this context that the famous Benin plaques were commissioned; a unique iconography of the Oba’s power that converted Esigie's near failures into legendary successes through monumental art commission. By illustrating an overwhelming panoply of courtiers in their ideal portraits as loyal, devoted nobles carrying out the two royal festivals, visitors to the palace were left with an indelible image of political harmony that contradicted with the fractious reality of Esigie's early reign. One glaring example of this fractious reality was the continued resistance of the Uzama N'iHinron to Esigie's rule even after the successful Idah war, they are said to have refused to take part in the royal festivals, forcing Esigie to work around this affront by creating the Uzama N'Ibie, a new group of titled officials fiercely loyal to the Oba, that were placed immediately below the N'ihinron in the kingdom’s political hierarchy but were awarded fiefs and substituted the Uzama N'ihinron's place at the festival. Furthermore, the Uzama N'Ihinron are said to have used their Ukhurhe ancestral altar staffs to pray for their ancestors to plague the Oba, but a member of the Benin bronze casting guild stole their Ukhurhe staffs and gave them to his guild head who then gave them to the Oba Esigie, revealing that the bronze guild remained loyal to the Oba through this turbulent time. Esigie ultimately prevailed over his rebellious courtiers but at the expense of declining control over his vassals who gradually weaned themselves off the capital. His son and successor Orhugbua (r. 1550\-1578\) thus spent the greater part of his reign pacifying and consolidating the empire, using the coastal provinces including Lagos as a base for conquests into neighboring regions, by this time, the court was firmly under the Oba’s control and it remained largely loyal despite the Oba's lengthy absence. The courtiers would later plead for Orhugbua’s return to the capital which Orhogbua eventually did, establishing a positive relationship between the court and the Oba for the first time, that lasted until the late 17th century. The period of stable rule enjoyed by Orhogbua reveals that Esigie's institutions and elaborate artistic creations were successful in augmenting the power of the Oba, Orhogbua later expanded the plaque tradition and is often attributed with several innovations to the motifs and decorations in the plaque corpus. --- Dating the Benin plaques, their manufacture and the expression of history through Art. Dating: Bronze casting was present in Benin since the 13th century but the plaques were made during the first half of the 16th century as a unique iconographic device, while some scholars had suggested that Benin's art originated from Ife, the consensus among historians is that Benin's art tradition was independent of ife's and that the association is a result of political expediency rather than a historical fact. There is some early external documentation about the display of the Benin plaques that allows us to date their first appearance and when they were removed from public display. The Dutch geographer Olfert dapper in 1668, wrote that: "the king's court is square and stands at the right hand side when entering the town by the gate of Gotton (Gwato).. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries, about as large as the exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars from top to bottom covered with cast copper on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles, and are kept very clean… every roof is decorated by a small turret ending in a point, on which birds are standing, birds cast in copper with outspread wings… cleverly made after living models" the reference of copper "pictures" is clearly about the plaques, dapper based this on an account from Bloemmaert, who inturn gained his information from Dutch traders visiting Benin before 1644 during Oba Ohuan's reign (1608\-1641\). The plaques were likely stored away not long after, because when another dutch visitor to Benin city in 1702, David van Nyendael, wrote about the palace, he confirmed Dapper's earlier account and added details about a large copper snake that was cast on a wooden turret ontop of one of the gates to the palace, but observed that the galleries of the palace had "planks upon which it rests are human figures which my guides were able to distinguish into merchants, soldiers, wild beat hunters, etc" these figures were more likely carved wooden reliefs rather than plaques, representing a new commemorative art medium that had been commissioned by the 17th century Obas. While the 17th century decline in Benin's wealth has been blamed for the end of the bronze plaque tradition, the 18th century resurgence witnessed increased production of royal sculptural artworks in bronze, ivory and wood, showing that the plaque tradition was only one medium out of several, and that it represented a continuous tradition of palace ornamentation in bronze, ivory wood, and terracotta. Manufacture: on the metal sources for the Benin plaques and cire perdue casting While scholars in the past suggested that the Benin plaques were cast using the copper manillas whose importation into Benin increased with the coming of the Portuguese to a tune of 2 tonnes a year, the metallurgical properties of the manillas traded during this period differ significantly from the metallurgical properties of Benin plaques, and archeological excavation around Benin city provided evidence for bronze casting as early as the 13th century, the more likely source for the Benin copper used in the plaques would have been from the Sahel through a northern trade route, The sahel region was also where the bronze casters at Ife in the 14th century derived most of their copper. but some local sources were also available and were used by Igbo ukwu bronze casters in the 8th century, the Benin plaques were thus a combination of these sources. The choice of plaque\-form representation, quatrefoil decorations and other foliate designs used by the Benin sculptors is still subject to debate but is probably not dissimilar from that used on the square panel reliefs on carved wooden doors and the textile designs common in the region’s art. The vast majority of bronzeworks from Benin including the plaques were made by a specialized guild of artists headed by the Ineh n'Igun Eronmwom who supervised the completion of the Oba's commissions, training new guild members and standardizing the artworks. The highly stylized figures of Benin which are fairly similar and of fairly equal dimensions, were more difficult to make than individualized artworks thus requiring a higher degree of central control. The artists made their plaques from a special section in the palace, and they employed the lost\-wax method of casting where the wax sheet was put ontop of a clay core created with a preformed mold, the quatrefoil decoration was then added after this primary composition had been formed, and the brass was then poured into the mold, after cooling, the wax was carefully scrapped and the plaque tied to the palace pillars in orderly fashion. Expressing history and the sculptural art style of the Benin plaques: In the Edo language, the verb "to remember" is literary translated as "to cast a motif in bronze", guides in the city during the 17th century told visitors that plaques depicted their battles and war exploits, the Benin plaques were thus part of a larger assemblage of artworks that create a historical narrative of the empire. One eldery palace courtier who was a palace attendant prior to 1897 recalled that the plaques were kept like a card index up to the time of the punitive expedition, referred to when there was a dispute about court etiquette". like the oral history recounted by the Benin court guilds, the plaques elide specificity, the fluidity of oral history, its ability to change in order to meet the needs of the reigning court, is reflected in the visual narrative conveyed by the plaques; a purposeful embrace of the contingent narrative produced by oral transmission that allows the work to become part of many discourses, rather than illustrating a fixed moment in time, the plaques collapse several historical moments into one event, in a way that achieves narrative multiplicity, allowing viewers to make out key figures, regalia, dressing, architecture, fauna and flora, activities and motifs in the majority of the plaques, without dictating the rationale behind their depiction. The Benin plaques were conceived as an installation artwork which joins many compositions into a single aesthetic statement, although a select few of the plaques convey a specific historical narrative, the majority of the corpus don't, but instead offer detailed ambiguity and may have likely portrayed a more dynamic narrative of historical events depending on their original installation pattern that is unfortunately now lost. Furthermore, the decision to represent almost all figures on the Benin plaques with the same facial and somatic types and predominantly frontal body position, despite the Benin artists' exposure to the naturalistic, individualized artworks of Ife and the Benin artist's own ability to create individualized artworks such as the Iyoba head, was a deliberate artistic choice; the plaques don't celebrate individuals but the entire social order of the court. The plaque figures’ wide open eyes that are spaced apart, with detailed outlines of the eyelids and iris, also serve to create a sense of immediacy for viewers and accentuate the figures' strong gaze. --- Figures, Scenes and interpretations : the Oba, palace courtiers, soldiers, pages, and events. The pinnacle of Benin's system of control rested with the Oba, Benin's bureaucratic rule which sought to control large areas of social, political and economic life in the empire; comprised of state appointed officers (courtiers) who served in limited terms and were responsible to their superiors including vassal rulers, forming a hierarchy that led directly to the Oba. The Oba's power was based ideologically on his divinity, his control of the army and his ability to grant official titles. The Palace was the nucleus of Benin’s administrative structure, accommodating a large population of officials and other attendants that included high ranking soldiers and titled courtiers who were often present at the palace of the Oba for all major festivals, as well as guilds and palace pages the latter of whom served as the Oba’s attendants. Courtiers such as the Eghaevbo n’Ogbe (palace chiefs) were non\-hereditary titled officials who constituted the palace bureaucracy. Benin's standing army was the royal regiment divided into two units, namely the Ekaiwe (royal troops) and the Isienmwenro (royal guards); its high command was constituted by four officers: the Oba as Supreme military commander, Iyase as general commander, Ezomo as senior war Commander, and Edogun as a war chief and commander of the royal troops. Both soldiers and courtiers are often depicted wearing slightly different clothing to signal their rank in the palace hierarchy or identify as vassal rulers. Also present at the court were the Oba's pages, there are several groups of these but the exact identification of which pages are represented remains elusive, the Iweguae is the closest candidate, its a palace association which constitutes personal and domestic servants of the Oba tasked with various duties, such as the Omada and the Emada; the Omada were a non\-hereditary guild enrolled in the palace system that served as attendants for courtiers and the Oba, manufactured and sold artworks and used their earnings to purchase titles, The emada were the last of the pages, often represented nude save for several ornaments, they were granted permission to marry by the Oba after reaching a certain age. The Oba: Soldiers and courtiers: The Oba’s pages: Other figures: Depictions of foreigners in Benin art: Portuguese mercenaries and traders, and high ranking war captives. The Portuguese figures are often portrayed either with military accouterments or as merchants reflecting the roles they played in Benin history; as mercenaries that assisted in his idah war and as the merchants who bought Benin's pepper, ivory and cloth. They are often shown wearing costumes typical of fashion in the 16th century with long skirts, embroidered doublets and split sleeves. The depiction of the Portuguese figures with sharp attenuated limbs, long hair and long nose was a deliberate representation of the European "other" in contrast to the smooth, rounded bodies of the Benin figures who represented the "self". Other foreigners are often shown in battle scenes that comprise a small group of compositions among the wider corpus, the foreign status of the high status captives is often denoted by their facial scarifications, they are often shown wearing battle gear including protective armor, helmets and swords, and are all shown riding a horse perhaps a reference to the cavalry forces of the Atah of Idah or to the infamous foe himself. Portuguese: Battle scenes that include war captives: Depictions of Fauna in Benin plaques: Leopards, mudfish, bird of prophesy, and crocodiles. Animals such as leopards, cows, goats and sheep represent various attributes and powers of the Oba and were sacrificed at the Igue ceremony, the leopard, which in Benin tradition was considered the “king of the forest" represented the Oba's ferocity and speed, leopard hip ornaments, teeth necklaces, skins and prints are badges of honor bestowed upon war chiefs, high ranking courtiers and serve as both protective devices and symbols of power, and the Oba is known to have kept many tame leopards in his palace that were captured by leopard hunter's guild, and Ewuare is often credited with the use of the leopard as a visual metaphor for the Oba. Mudfish has many meanings in Benin's art, it’s the preferred sacrifice to the sea god Olokun and refers to the Oba's relationship with the deity, as well as his ability to pass between land and water; between the human world and the world of spirits, it thus represented the Oba's mystical powers. The identification of the bird of prophesy has proved elusive, as it may represent an extinct species or may not be representation of the actual bird captured by the Oba but rather a more symbolic and fictions composite, it nevertheless features prominently in the Benin plaques as a representation of the triumph of Esigie. Other plaque scenes: hunting, sacrifice, harvesting The Majority of these plaques were most likely composed during the latter period; ie, under the Oba Orhogbua's reign, they depict figures engaged in distinct activity and portray complex social narratives including hunting, drumming, animal sacrifice, games, plant harvesting and other activities, with different figures given their own motions. The plaque of the rider and the captive for example depicts a high ranking Benin soldier escorting a foreign captive, the of this plaque portrays a single action of the Benin soldier guiding the captive to a define place, the "bird hunt" plaque is considered one of the best among these expressive plaques, rather than the front\-facing position of most figures, the hunter is shown turning in the direct of the bird which he aims at with a croswbow. The leopard hunter is remarkable for its use of synoptic vision, the vegetation seen from above, while the leopards are in profile and the hunters between the two and the plate of the amufi acrobats that shows two acrobats at the Amufi ceremony whose members climb trees for certain ritual purposes, for this ritual, they climb into a very tall tree, which they secretly prepare with ropes at night. After reaching the highest branch in the next day's ritual, they wrap the rope around themselves and throw themselves into the air, arms and legs spread, to swing in large circles in the air. They move their arms, which are hung with rattles, as if they had wings. At the very top of the relief panel in the top branches of the tree sit three large birds. --- Conclusion: the end of the bronze plaque tradition, Benin’s decline, the British invasion, displaying the loot in museums and debating African art. Benin decline and end of the bronze plaque tradition: Tradition holds that the Oba Ahenzae (1641\-1661\) gambled away the treasury and couldn't afford to obtain the bronzes needed to make the plaques, the plaques were most likely stored away during his reign and replaced by more modest wood carvings observed by the Dutch visitor Nendael a few decades later, the traditions about gambling away the treasury may reflect the decline of power and wealth that Benin underwent in the 17th century, the primary factor seems to have been the increased power of titled officials and bureaucracy that reduced the power of the Oba at a critical point when there was no eligible successor, the Oba was confined to his palace where he couldn't led military campaigns and some of his authority was restricted, secondly were radical shifts in export trade, Benin still maintained its ban on exporting slaves that had been in place since the early 16th century and the Dutch who had been purchasing Benin's pepper and ivory for nearly a century since the Portuguese left, had started purchasing significant quantities of textiles whose production was less centrally controlled, allowing for the decentralization of wealth into the hands of the lower bureaucracy. This shift in power eventually devolved into a civil war pitting some of the Oba's higher ranking officers against his allies, beginning In 1689 and ending around 1720s, resulting in the shattering of the hierarchically organized bureaucratic associations and the establishment of a multi\-centered, autonomous associations. while Benin was restored in the 18th century and a lot of art was commissioned , it gradually went into decline such that by the late 19th century it had been reduced from a regional power to a minor kingdom. The British invasion, sacking and looting of the Benin plaques, debating African art. The brutal expedition of 1897 in which the British sacked the city of Benin, killed tens of thousands of edo civilians and soldiers, and looted the palace of approximately 10,000 bronzes, ivories and other objects; including around 1,000 plaques, resulted in many of the artworks being sold to several western museums and collectors. When the looted Benin artworks arrived in western institutions, they caused a sensation, the “remarkable old bronze castings” were considered "the most interesting ethnographic discovery since the discovery of the ruins in Zimbabwe" and came at a time when theories of scientific racism were at their height in popularity, among these theories was the Hamitic race theory which posited that all forms of civilization in Africa were derived from a "Caucasoid"/"Semitic” race of immigrant Hamites. Colonial scholars such as the then British Museum curators Charles Read and Maddock Dalton, wrestled with how to fit these excellent works of African art into the Hamitic theory, questioning how could a “highly developed” art, comparable in quality with Italian Renaissance art, be found amongst the members of an “entirely barbarous race”, they thus attributed the bronze\-works to Portuguese, and to the ancient Egyptians whom they claimed introduced this form of art to the Benin sculptors, but even then, some of their peers such as Henry Roth disagreed with them saying that questioning the “expressed opinion of Messrs Read and Dalton,” that the Benin art “was an imported one” from Europe, observing that Benin was discovered by the Portuguese in 1486 and by the middle of the 16th century “native artists” produced art of a “high pitch of excellence" and that the artistic skills of the natives could not have developed so rapidly, because “I do not think the most enthusiastic defender of the African will credit him with such ability for making progress.” Over time however, these racist studies of Benin art were discredited and they gave way to more professional analysis of the famous artworks that recognize them as African artistic accomplishments, proving that the technique of lost\-wax bronze casting was ancient in the region, that Benin's art tradition predated the Portuguese arrival and is one of several art traditions in the region. The Benin plaques were iconographic symbols of the Oba Esigie's triumph that depicted Benin’s courtly life in the 16th century; the last vestige of a glorious era in Benin’s past. --- Read more about Benin history, the British expedition and download african history books on my Patreon account The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 115, 28\) the military system of benin kingdom c.1440 \- 1897 by OB Osadolor pg 50\-83\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 29\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 30\-33\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 29 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 30\-35\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 36\-37\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 38\-41\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 35 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 120\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 48\-51\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 18 Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba by Suzanne Preston Blier pg 281 The Lower Niger Bronzes: Beyond Igbo\-Ukwu, Ife, and Benin By Philip M. Peek Royal Art of Benin by Kate Ezra pg 121 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 106\-110\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 45\) Royal Art of Benin by Kate Ezra pg 118 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 60\-62\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 123\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 65\-67\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 88\) Civil War in the Kingdom of Benin, 1689\-1721 by Paula Ben\-Amos Girshick and John Thornton pg 359\-362\) the military system of benin kingdom c.1440 \- 1897 by OB Osadolor pg 82\-83\) the military system of benin kingdom c.1440 \- 1897 by OB Osadolor pg 94\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 132\) Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 253\-254\) Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 70\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 82,121 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 84, 87\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 62\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 65,67 Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 128\-129\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 47, 86\) Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 33\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 90,93\) Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 20\-34, 156\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 16 Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 93\) Royal Art of Benin By Kate Ezra pg 200\), The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 147 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 115\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 64\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 67\) Divine Kingship in Africa by William Buller Fagg pg 42 Two Thousand Years of Nigerian Art pg 235 The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 50\) Civil War in the Kingdom of Benin, 1689\-1721 by Paula Ben\-Amos Girshick and John Thornton pg 369\-375\) The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks pg 137\-151\) Displaying Loot: The Benin Objects and the British Museum by Staffan Lundén pg 281\-303\) The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch pg 198\) 12 )

Global encounters and a century of political transformation in a medieval African empire: the emergence of Gondarine Ethiopia 1529\-1636 in Global encounters and a century of political transformation in a medieval African empire: the emergence of Gondarine Ethiopia 1529\-1636 the African experience of early\-modern globalization )The connection of the Indian ocean world to the Atlantic world in the 16th century was the arguably the most defining moment in human history, initiating an unprecedented explosion of cross\-cultural exchanges of ideas, techniques and people, and stimulating states to think in global terms and to formulate political ideologies and practical strategies on the vast world stage. The ancient states of Ethiopia (the Aksumite kingdom 100\-700, the Zagwe kingdom 1100\-1270 and the Solomonic empire 1270\-1632\-1974\) had for long participated in the currents of Afro\-Eurasian trade and politics, with Aksumite fleets sailing in the western Indian ocean, Zagwe pilgrims trekking to the holy lands and Solomonic ambassadors travelling to distant European capitals. But in a decisive break form the past, the arrival of foreign armies, priests and new weapons in the horn of Africa presented a cocktail of unique challenges to the then beleaguered empire which directly resulted in a radical metamorphosis of its intuitions, religion and military systems that enabled the emergence of a much stronger Gondarine state whose structures provided the foundation of Ethiopia's political autonomy. The experience of early\-modern globalization presented challenges and opportunities for the Solomonic state, but also provided it with flexible spaces for institutional growth and cultural accommodation, enabling it to defeat its old foe —the Adal kingdom, strengthen the Ethiopian orthodox church's theology and re\-orient its foreign political and trade alliances. This article explores the global and regional context in which the transformation of the medieval Solomonic empire into Gondarine era occurred, tracing events from the near annihilation of the Solomonic state in 1529 to the expulsion of the Jesuits and founding of a new capital at Gondar in 1636\. Map of the Solomonic empire in the early 16th century including its main provinces and neighbors --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- The Solomonic global entanglement; from the Adal\-Ethiopia war to the arrival of the Portuguese. The Adal conquest of Ethiopia came after the Solomonic empire had been through nearly half a century of terminal decline, caused by succession disputes and other internal power struggles that undermined the centralizing institutions of the monarchy. Between 1478 and 1494, the empire was ruled by regents on behalf of child\-kings, and despite the crowing of a stronger ruler; the emperor Na'od in 1494, the centrifugal forces that had been set loose by his predecessors continued to weaken the empire; his battle with the now resurgent Adal kingdom ended in disaster, and his attempts to strengthen weak frontier territories (especially the Muslim\-majority south\-east), ultimately claimed his life in 1508 at the hands of the Adal armies. His successor Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl fared a little better, inflicting disastrous defeats on the Adal armies and forcing them to shift their capital from Darkar to the old city of Harar in 1519, Lǝbnä's military campaigns, which targeted the permanent settlements, enhanced the influence of the only partially governed nomadic groups on the frontier regions and drove both mercantile and agricultural communities into the arms of the Adal kingdom which itself was undergoing a transformation with the emergence of the war party. The latter, guided by a series of charismatic leaders, defined their goals in Islamic terms, they side\-stepped the older aristocratic establishment, and declared holy war against Christian Ethiopia, the strongest of these was Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim (Gran) who ascended to the Adal throne in 1525 and moved his capital to Zeila. Only a year later, Gran's armies were skirmishing in Ethiopia's eastern provinces and in 1527, he launched a major campaign into the Solomonic provinces of Dawaro and Ifat, and in 1529, he struck in the Ethiopian heartland with his entire army which possessed several artillery and a few cannons, eventually meeting the vast army of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl at Shembra koure where he inflicted a devastating defeat on ethiopian army that sent the king to flight, Gran's armies grew as many disgruntled Ethiopian groups joined its ranks and by 1531 he was pacifying most of the Solomonic state’s territories and bringing them firmly under his rule, completing the conquest of most of Ethiopia by 1533 when he subsumed the regions around Lake Tana. The devastation wrought by Gran's armies forever altered the psyche of the Solomonic state, the destruction of its literary works and its architectural and cultural heritage, and the horrors that the population experienced was recorded by many contemporary chroniclers : "nothing could be saved, from men to beasts: everything came under Gragn's rule. They carried off from the churches everything of value, and then they set fire to them and razed the walls to the ground. They slew every adult Christian they found, and carried off the youths and the maidens and sold them as slaves. The remnant of the Christian population were terrified at the ruin which was overtaking their country, nine men out of ten renounced the Christian religion and accepted Islam. A mighty famine came on the country. Lebna Dengel and his family were driven from their house and city, and for some years they wandered about the country, hopeless, and suffered hunger and thirst and hardships of every kind. Under these privations he was smitten with grievous sickness and died, and Claudius \ Soon after his ascension in exile, Gälawdewos re\-established contacts with the Portuguese who coincidentally were wrestling control of the maritime trade in the western half of the Indian ocean from the Ottomans by attacking the latter's positions in the red sea. In the early 16th century Portuguese and Ottoman expansions had been on an inevitable collision course. The Ottomans had advanced into the Indian Ocean world after defeating Mamluk Egypt in 1517 and claiming hegemony in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in the same decade. A few years earlier, the Portuguese had found their way into the Indian Ocean, sacking the Swahili cities and western Indian cities between 1500\-1520s as they advanced northward, and in their attempts to monopolize the lucrative the Indian ocean trade out of Arab, Indian, Swahili and now Ottoman hands, the Portuguese blockaded access to the Gulf and the Red Sea while diverting traffic to the their colonial enclaves. Following some skirmishes, war between the two empires began in earnest in 1538, when the Ottoman lay siege to Diu and quickly spread throughout the western Indian Ocean basin, involving a variety of client states, one of these was Yemen and this is when Gran took the opportunity to formalize relations between his now vast empire and the Ottomans. In 1541, a vast Portuguese fleet arrived in the red sea hoping to strike at the heart of the Ottoman naval enterprise in Suez, the battle ended in an Ottoman victory but fortunately for the Ethiopians, it had brought enough soldiers for Gälawdewos who had spent a year skirmishing with Gran's forces, turning what was until then a regional conflict, into a global conflict. The first skirmishes between this Portuguese army of 400 arquebusiers ended with an initial defeat of Gran's forces, but this prompted Gran to seek more concrete Ottoman support in exchange for turning his empire into an client state as these small defeats had led to desertion in his army, its then that a large arsenal of artillery was given to Gran including 800\-900 arquebusiers and 10 cannons, and in 1542, Gran's forces crushed the Portuguese army and executed its commander Cristóvão da Gama, leaving less than 50 men of the original force who then retreated further inland, but disputes broke out between his Ottoman contingent and it was dismissed leaving only a few dozen behind. In 1542, Galawdewos met up with the remnants of the Portuguese force and scored a few small but significant victories against Gran's armies, and On 22 February 1543 at Dembiya, Gran's army suffered an astounding defeat where he was killed, and Galawdewos ordered that "the head of the late King of Zeila should be set on a spear, and carried round and shown in all his country, in order that the people might know that he was indeed dead." the Adal army quickly disbanded and despite attempts to regroup, bereft of both the Gran's leadership and Ottoman support, they quickly retreated to their homeland. Gälawdewos spent the rest of his rule pacifying the empire and restoring the old administrative structures especially in the south\-east which had been the weak link that Gran exploited, and by the mid 1550s, the Solomonic empire was united within its old borders. --- Subscribe --- Transforming the Solomonic military system: Guns or Institutions? The presumed superiority of guns in military technology, their effects in transforming pre\-modern African warfare and their centrality in Africa’s foreign diplomacy is a subject of heated debate among Africanists. Its instructive however to note that guns, especially the matchlock, arquebuses and muskets that were used in 16th\- 18th century warfare, were much less decisive in battle as its often assumed (especially after the initial shock wore off), they also didn't offer an overwhelming advantage in war (as both European colonist armies in the 16th century and Atlantic African states came to discover when both were defeated by inland states armed with traditional weapons). But they did offer a slight advantage relative to the weapons that were available at the time and units of soldiers with fire\-arms were incorporated in many African armies during the 16th century onwards. Initially, these soldiers came from the “gun\-powder empires” such as the Ottomans and the Portuguese who were active in the army of King Alfonso (d. 1543\) of Kongo, in the army of Oba Esige (d. 1550\) of Benin, in the army of Gälawdewos (d. 1559\) of Ethiopia, and in the army of Mai Idris Alooma (d. 1602\) of Kanem\-Bornu, in time, African soldiers across most parts of Atlantic Africa and the Horn of Africa were soon trained in their use especially in regions where guns could be easily purchased, soon becoming the primary weapon of their armies. The Solomonic empire had for over a century prior to Gran's invasion been in contact with parts of western Europe, while scholars had for long claimed that the intention behind these embassies was to acquire European technology and military alliances, this "technological gap" theory has recently been challenged as a more comprehensive reading of the literature shows little evidence of guns or it especially not in the early 15th century when the Solomonic empire was at its height and required little military assistance, but instead points to a more symbolic and ecclesiastical need to acquire foreign artisans (eg builders, carpenters, stonemasons, goldsmiths, painters) as well as religious relics from sacred places, all of which was central to Solomonic concepts of kingship and royal legitimacy. Nevertheless, Solomonic monarchs soon recognized the advantage fire\-arms would offer in warfare however slight it was, the earliest definitive diplomatic request for arms was in 1521 from emperor Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl who was interested in their use by both the Portuguese and Ottomans and acquired a few of them from the former, but these weren’t used in his military at the time and there is also a much earlier mention of firearms during the reign of Yeshaq I (r. 1414\-1429\) who is said to have employed a former Mamluk Egyptian governor to train his troops(although this comes from an external source). However, it wasn't until after the campaigns against Ahmad Grañ were over, that the Solomonic rulers permanently incorporated the use of fire\-arms into their armies. The first firearms corps comprised of Portuguese soldiers in the service of Gälawdewos (r. 1540\-1559\), most of whom were the remnants of the 1541 group, he is reported to have “ordered the Portuguese to protect him and follow him wherever he went to with two squadrons.” and by 1555, he is said to have had 93 Portuguese soldiers at his court. This fire\-arms army unit was maintained by his successors but the use of fire\-arms didn't greatly transform the Solomonic army nor alter the balance of military power away from the center until the the late\-18th century when provincial nobles started amassing significant arsenals. The real transformation occurred in the centralization of the army, which shifted away from the reliance on feudal levies to a standing army under the King’s command, this process had been started by Zä\-Dəngəl (r. 1603\-1604\) but it was Susənyos (r.1606\-1632\) who developed it fully, first with corps of bodyguard battalions that incorporated both Portuguese and Turkish musketeers, a largely Muslim cavalry from his battles in the south\-east, and an infantry that now included soldiers from several groups he had been fighting on the frontier such as the Oromo, the royal army thus rose from 25,000 men to around 40,000 in the 1620s and most of it was maintained by his successors. --- Transforming the society; the Oromo expansion and establishing a symbiotic equilibrium on the Solomonic frontier. The Oromo were autochthonous to most regions of what is now central and south eastern Ethiopia, and they were until the 16th century mostly on the fringes of the Solomonic heartlands (in north\-central Ethiopia). Internal political process within several independent Oromo polities had transformed their political and social structures, as the growth of long distance trade and the centralization of power under increasingly patrimonial rulers resulted in changes in Oromo concepts of land tenure and military ethos, leading to a period of expansion and migration across eastern Africa that brought them in contact and direct conflict with the Solomonic empire. Some of the most notable among the disparate Oromo groups from this period of expansion were; the Yajju who are mentioned by the time of Amhad Gran in the early 16th century and became prominent elites in the Ethiopian royal court over the century; the Mammadoch who expanded into the north\-central Ethiopia in the 16th century, carving out the province of Wallo and playing an integral role in Solomonic politics of the later periods by forming strategic alliances and marriages; the Barentuma who expanded to the province of Gojjam and extended their reach north into Tigre, as well as the Mäch’a and the Tulama (Borana) who expanded into the provinces of Shäwa and Damot. Initially, the Solomonic armies won their first skirmishes in their battles against these various Oromo armies in 1572 and 1577, but their victories were reversed by 1579 following several Oromo victories and by the 1580s they constituted the only major military threat to the empire. Särsä Dəngəl thus begun employing contingents of some of them into his army by 1590, and many of the provincial rulers begun integrating Oromo elites into their administration \-\-just as many of the Oromo polities were integrating former subjects of the Solomonic state including some of the nobility with the most notable example being the future emperor Susənyos who was their captive in his youth and fought alongside them in many of their battles. After several decades of warfare between the Solomonic and Oromo armies, an equilibrium was established as the integrated groups in either states became important middlemen in the trade between the Solomonic state and the Oromo kingdoms in its south\-west, these later evolved into lucrative trade routes that extended upto the Funj kingdom (in Sudan) and became important to later Gondarine economy and its prosperity. The Oromo courtiers at the Gondarine court became very influential in the 18th century, marrying into the nobility and become the most powerful group in mid\-18th century Gondarine politics, the Oromo cavalrymen also constituted an important unit of the Gondarine military. --- Transforming the church: the Jesuit episode in Ethiopian history (1555\-1634\), rebellions and the reaffirmation of the Ethiopian orthodox church. Shortly after Gran's defeat, Gälawdewos tried to restore the now ruined Orthodox church institutions, importing two abuns (head of the Ethiopian church) who were needed to ordain the thousands of priests needed to replace those killed during the invasion. He also strengthened the philosophical foundations of the Ethiopian church, clarifying its basic tenets and defending it in several of his own treatises that were written in response to accusations of Ethiopian orthodox “heresy” by the Portuguese missionary order of the Jesuits which had arrived in the country shortly after the defeat of Gran. The Jesuit's arrival came at a critical time when many Solomonic subjects, especially those who hadn’t fully adopted Christianity and had been forcefully converted to Islam by Gran, were only then returning to their old faith. The orthodox church therefore faced an existential challenge in this new theater of religious competition and the Jesuits’ aggressive proselytization worsened its already precarious position. The leader of the Jesuits was Joao Bermudez and he claimed the late king Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl had promised to convert to Catholicism in a letter which the latter sent to Pope Clement VII in 1533, Bermudez thus openly challenged the royal court and the established orthodox clergy to convert to Catholicism. In truth however, Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl's letter was only an expression of interest for a closer association, but Bermudez, a barber with no theological training, had appointed himself as “catholic abun” of what he considered the new Ethiopia church during one of the embassies that Dǝngǝl sent to Portugal and Rome in 1535\. Within a few years, his aggressive proselytization, disrespect for Ethiopian traditions, orthodox customs and imperial authorities was sparking rebellions in parts of the country, and after tolerating his insolence for as long as he could, Gälawdewos was forced to exile Bermudez. But the damage to Solomonic\-Portuguese relations had been done and the incongruity between either states' understanding of their relationship only widened. The Jesuit mission had been doomed from the start, even Goncalo Rodrigues, one among the first priests, wrote in 1555 that "the notables of the empire would prefer to be subjects to Muslim rule rather than replace their customs with ours." nevertheless, after several initial setbacks in which the Jesuits took sides in the war between king Mēnās (r. 1559\-1563\) and the rebel Yéshaq, they later gradually influenced their way through the upper strata of the Solomonic system, continuing through Särsä Dəngəl’s rule (r. 1565\-1597\) but eventually lost their influence and the mission nearly ended in 1597\. This was until the priest Pedro Perez took the office in 1603 and proved rather successful in converting some of the Ethiopian elites and re\-establishing a Jesuit influence in the Solomonic court by presenting himself as a “purveyor of technological progress” and limiting the conversion efforts to the emperor and his immediate family, he weathered the succession disputes and endeared himself to the newly crowned Susənyos (r. 1606\-1632\) whom he impressed with the workings of Iberian absolutism and showed him how Catholicism would further centralize his rule, leading Susənyos and his brother Sela Christos to convert to Catholicism by 1621\. Both Susənyos and Christos then proceeded to violently repress all Ethiopian traditions and state institutions opposed to the new religion, issuing edicts that made Catholicism the state religion and greatly undermining the ethiopian orthodox church. "the Catholic presence in Ethiopia, far from being a simple matter of converting elites and commoners, entailed establishing a Catholic space that was increasingly expanded at the expense of Ethiopian Christianity". The Catholic inquisitions of the 1620s destroyed countless books, led to the arrest of defiant Ethiopian clergy and purged the administration of orthodox sympathizers. The Jesuit penchant for building their residences as fortresses such as at Fǝremona which were often well guarded with garrisoned soldiers, was viewed with great suspicion by the Solomonic elites and subjects as first step to colonization —as one priest wrote “the missionary residences were seen as true fortresses rather than as praying centers” The Solomonic nobility including Susənyos’s immediate family (especially his kinswomen) were split between cooperating with the new emperor's religion or rebelling against it, and many chose the latter option. In 1620 a large rebellion led by Yonael broke out that included many clergymen and monks but it was brutally suppressed by Susənyos’s army with the help of Christos. In 1622, the Ichege (the second most powerful figure in the Ethiopian church) reprimanded Susənyos publicly, and in 1623, a general rebellion led by Wolde Gabriel that was later suppressed. In 1628 another large rebellion led by Tekla Girogis was put down, and finally the largest rebellion broke out in 1629 led by Malkea Christos. The rebellion of Malkea lasted upto 1632, it defeated the royal army in several battles and conquered many provinces, promoting Susənyos to take command of his army and ultimately defeat the rebellion but incurring a great cost with tens of thousands of killed in the battle. Disillusioned by the failure to centralize his empire, and the failure to establish a new religion, Susənyos revoked all edicts of forceful conversion to Catholicism and abdicated in favor of his anti\-Jesuit son Fasilädäs. --- Transforming the empire; the Jesuit expulsion and the start of a new, Gondarine era. In 1634, Fasilädäs ordered all the Jesuit missionaries to leave the country, following this decision, a large group of Jesuit priests accompanied by a few hundred Ethio\-Portuguese Catholics, went into exile to India Sela Christos was imprisoned and later killed and the Ottoman governor of the Red sea port of Massawa were instructed by Fasilädäs to kill any Jesuit that arrived in their city; a policy which for a time extended to almost any western ("non\-orthodox") European as some unfortunate capuchin priests came to find out. Following Fasilädäs’s restoration of Ethiopian orthodox church faith in the early 1630s, a handful of defiant Jesuits continued to operate on the highlands and found refuge in Tigre while their brothers left the region entirely. One by one, the remaining Jesuits were either executed by the authorities or killed by angry crowds, while Catholic books—in an ironic turn of events to the Catholic inquisition—were burned. Deprived of its clergy, the Luso\-Ethiopia’s Catholic community slowly died out as Fasilädäs’s successors continued this anti\-Catholic policy, and in 1669 two of the five missionaries who had succeeded in reaching Ethiopia were identified and faced death by crucifixion and in the same year, the remaining Luso\-Ethiopian Catholics faced the choice of either leaving for the Funj kingdom capital Sinnar (in Sudan) or embracing orthodox Christianity. The long list of missionary failures turned the entire region into the ultimate destination for martyrdom\-seeking missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries, it also convinced European commentators that the country and its rulers were content in their “xenophobic” isolation leading to the now infamous quip about by the English historian Edward Gibbons: “encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Aethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten.” In truth however, the empire was now actively courting the supposed “enemies of its religion” with the sole exception of the Iberian and Italian Catholics. Fasilädäs was implementing a cautious anti\-Catholic policy while exploring strategic economic and political alliances with the Muslim world (such as the Ottomans, the imamate of Yemen, the Mughal empire and the Funj kingdom) as well as the Dutch protestants. The Ottomans in particular were interested in developing new relations with what had previously been their primary antagonist in the red sea region. Fasilädäs initiated relations with Yemen in 1642, with the Ottoman caliphs in 1660 and the Mughal empire in 1664, as well as across the Indian ocean world through his ambassador Murād who travelled to the cities of Delhi, Batavia, Malacca, Surat, Goa, and Ceylon almost always on official capacity. And rather than a “xenophobic isolation”, Fasilädäs established the city of Gondar in 1632, turning into one of the biggest African capitals of the era with a population of nearly 80,000, it housed diverse communities of Ethiopians (Christians, Muslims, Jews, traditionalists) as well as Indians, Greeks, Armenians and Arabs. In a decisive break from the mobile camp of his predecessors, Fasilädäs established a permanent capital at Gondär in 1636 which was located at the crossroads of the most important caravan routes linking the Ethiopian\-Sudanese borderlands with the Red sea ports, he then started the construction of his fortified royal quarters (the Fasil ghebbi). Over the following decades, Gondär turned into a thriving city and witnessed the largest scale of construction in the region since the famous rock\-hewn churches of Lalibäla in the 12th century. The cosmopolitan capital reflected the new Gondarine state’s character with its melting pot of communities, including the Ğäbärti Muslims who brokered trade between the state and the Red Sea ports, the Betä Ǝsraᵓls who provided most of the city’s artisanal services, along with growing communities of Indians masons, Armenian and Greek merchants and craftsmen, and the Oromo soldiers and nobility who where incorporated in all levels of the state’s social order. Fasilädäs retained a number of institutions and influences from Susənyos' era including the Ethio\-Portuguese fire\-arms corps who remained serving in his army while his own troops continued adopting firearms, and they wouldn't be expelled until the reign of his successor Yohannis I (1667\-1682\). Fasilädäs also retained and employed the indian masons that had been used by the Jesuits to build a number of structures in Susənyos' era, these masons were primarily influenced by the Mughal empire’s Indo\-Islamic architecture especially the so\-called “palace gardens” built by Akbar and Jahangir . The Indian stonecutter Abdalkarīm who was directed by the Ethiopian architect Gäbrä Krǝstos to build Susənyos' palace at Danqaz, was retained to build Fasilädäs's castle in 1638\-48 where he worked with several Ethiopian architects (they also built the Guzara castle and several bridges). Despite these foreign influences, the Gondarine palaces retained the spatial layout of the mobile Solomonic royal camp with its concentric structure. The adoption of these new architectural styles was part of a reformulation of concepts of power and kingship made by Fasilädäs, "unlike his forbears, the king no longer defined his attributes by waging war and expressing his religious devotion alone, but also by indulging in aesthetic, “elevated” experiences”; along with the hybridized art styles and textile fashions that characterized the Gondarine era, this new architecture underscored the ruler’s sense of refinement. Over the reigns of his successors, there was a marked increase in construction works of Gondarine style including several castles, churches and libraries some of which were reconstructions of older churches ruined during Gran’s invasion; the new architecture of power, had become firmly established and would last through the entire Gondarine era; a nearly two century long period of artistic and cultural renaissance in Ethiopia. In 1743, empress Mentewwab completed the construction of what came to be the last of the Gondarine monuments, with richly decorated interior, its clergy clad in the finest clothes and its library crammed with manuscripts it represented the glory of the monarchy, a glory that would unravel in the decades following her demise, when the great city was sacked and gradually abandoned leaving nothing but the crumbling ruins of towering castles that still retained an air of authority, a relic born from Ethiopia’s tumultuous global encounter. --- Global encounters and transformation of African societies. The arrival of the Portuguese in the Ethiopian highlands was admittedly one of the most pivotal moments in the Solomonic empire's history but not for the reason most historians have come to understand. Instead of a Portuguese directed overhaul of the feudal Ethiopian institutions as its commonly averred, the empire’s institutions underwent a metamorphosis in response to the enormous political and cultural strains it faced, of which the Portuguese presence was but one of several challenges that the Solomonic monarchs had to contend with. Rather than a technology/gun revolution transforming a feudal military, the empire’s army underwent an orderly centralization that despite breaking down two centuries later, provided the blue\-print for the restorers of the empire in the 19th century (Tewodros, Yohannis and Menelik). Rather than the decline of Ethiopian orthodox in the face of Catholicism and Islam, the church revitalized itself, and Ethiopian clerics, monarchs and people fiercely defended their faith with words and later, with their lives. Ethiopian clerics engaged in passionate debates defending their Ethiopian orthodox theology in writing (eg Zags Za'ab’s “The Faith of the Ethiopians” printed in 1540 and circulated in European capitals, as well as king Gälawdewos’ treatises addressed to his Portuguese guests), and Ethiopians defended their faith on the battlefields where their own emperor had turned his armies against them, winning the battle but ultimately losing the theological war. Lastly, rather than a superimposition of new architectural styles and aesthetics by the Portuguese, Gondarine patrons consciously adopted a range of construction styles that came to define their new concepts of power, building the vast majority of the iconic Gondarine edifices long after the Jesuits had been expelled. The evolution of Gondarine Ethiopia’s foreign relations and their transformative effects on its internal institutions mirror the changes occurring in other contemporaneous African states in which their old military systems, religious institutions and concepts of power underwent a metamorphosis that enabled them to respond better to the challenges the rapidly globalizing world presented. Africa’s global encounter, rather than triggering the precipitous decline of its medieval civilizations, allowed the continent to enter the early\-modern era with full political and economic autonomy, beginning a new golden age. --- Read more about Medieval ethiopia’s diplomatic relations with medieval Europe and Mamluk egypt on my Patreon account --- Huge thanks to my patrons and to all who support my blog, I'm grateful for your generosity! Church and State in Ethiopia by Taddesse Tamrat pg 268, 285\-301\) The History of Islam irica by Nehemia Levtzion pg 229\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 86\-90\) Layers of Time by Paul B. Henze pg 87 The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian\-European Relations, 1402\-1555 by Matteo Salvadore pg 181\-182 The Portuguese expedition to Abyssinia in 1541\-1543 as narrated by Castanhoso By J. Bermudez pg 55\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 100\-102\) Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe By Verena Krebs pg 212 Mss see J. K. Thornton’s “Warfare in Atlantic Africa” and Rory Pilossof’s “Guns don't colonise people…” Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe by verena krebs pg 185\-189\) “Ethiopians at the Council of Florence” in : The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian\-European Relations by M. Salvadore The Jesuit Mission to Ethiopia (1555\-1634\) and the Death of Prester John by Matteo Salvadore pg 147\) Linguistic and Cultural Data on the Penetration of Fire\-Arms into Ethiopia by Richard Pankhurst pg 47 Early Portuguese Emigration To The Ethiopian Highlands by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs\-Moner pg 10\) Firearms and Princely Power in Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century by RA Caulk pg 609 Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg pg 198\) manuscript page; The Other Abyssinians by Brian J. Yates pg 20\-25\) The Other Abyssinians by Brian J. Yates pg 33\-34\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 164\-167\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 190\) The Ethiopian Borderlands by Richard Pankhurst pg 322\-316 The Political Economy of an African Society in Tranformation by Tesema Ta'a pg 61 Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 103\) The Jesuit Mission to Ethiopia (1555\-1634\) and the Death of Prester John by Matteo Salvadore pg 151\) Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 104\) The Jesuit Mission to Ethiopia (1555\-1634\) and the Death of Prester John by Matteo Salvadore 138\-150\) The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Víctor Manuel Fernández pg 101 Envoys of a Human God By Andreu Martínez d'Alòs\-Moner pg 304 Sisters Debating the Jesuits by WL Belcher Ethiopia and the Red Sea by Mordechai Abir pg 216\-222\) The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Víctor Manuel Fernández pg 304 Early Portuguese Emigration To The Ethiopian Highlands by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs\-Moner pg 24\) Muslim Partners, Catholic Foes: The Selective Isolation of Gondarine Ethiopia by Matteo Salvadore pg 54\) Muslim Partners, Catholic Foes: The Selective Isolation of Gondarine Ethiopia by Matteo Salvadore pg 62\-63\) Mss Mss Muslim Partners, Catholic Foes: The Selective Isolation of Gondarine Ethiopia by Matteo Salvadore pg 53\-54 Envoys of a Human God by Andreu Martnez D'als\-moner pg 321 The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Víctor Manuel Fernández pg 31\-35, 471\-472 The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Víctor Manuel Fernández pg 34 The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557–1632\) by Víctor Manuel Fernández pg 334, 354 Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia by Donald Crummey pg 108 Mss On the transformation of Atlantic african military systems, religions and concepts of power, see the topics “On a War Footing: The ‘Fiscal\- Military State’ in West African Politics” and “Feeding Power: New Societies, New Worldviews” in Toby Green’s “A fistful of shells” Link to , reading: “第十一回国際歴史学会議への報告書 : 日本における歴史学の発達と現状” Pg 179 6 )

Christian Nubia, Muslim Egypt and the Crusaders: a complex mosaic of Diplomacy and Warfare. in Christian Nubia, Muslim Egypt and the Crusaders: a complex mosaic of Diplomacy and Warfare. The kingdom of Makuria, a medieval African power. )For more than six centuries, the Nubian kingdom of Makuria is said to have maintained a relatively cordial relationship and the various Muslim dynasties of Egypt which was quite unique for the era; merchants from both countries plied their trades in either cities, pilgrims travelled safely through both regions, and ideas flowed freely between the two cultures, influencing the artistic, literary and architectural traditions of both states. Scholars have for long attributed this apparent peaceful co\-existence to the baqt treaty, according to a 15th century writer, the baqt was a written agreement between the Makurians and the Rashidun caliphate (the first Muslim state to conquer Egypt) in which the two sides agreed to terms of settlement that favored the Muslim Egyptians, with Makuria supposedly having to pay jizyah (a tax on Christian subjects in Muslim states), maintain the mosque at Old Dongola and deliver a fixed quota of slaves. Historians have for long taken this account as authoritative despite its late composition, they therefore postulated that to the Muslim dynasties of Egypt, the kingdom of Makuria was a client state; a Christian state whose special status was conferred onto it by its more powerful neighbor, and that the peaceful relationship was dictated by the Muslim dynasties of Egypt. Recent re\-examinations of the texts relating to this baqt peace treaty as well as the relationship between Makuria and the Muslim dynasties of Egypt however, reveal a radically different picture; one in which the Makurian armies twice defeated the invading Rashidun armies in the 7th century and in the succeeding centuries repeatedly advanced into Muslim Egypt and played a role in its internal politics, supporting the Alexandrian Coptic church and aiding several rebellions. Rather than the long peace between Makuria and Egypt postulated in popular historiography, the relationship between the two states alternated between periods of active warfare and peace, and rather than Muslim Egypt dictating the terms of the relationship; Makuria imposed the truce on the defeated Egyptian armies and carried out its relationship with Egypt on its own terms often maintaining the balance of power in its favor and initiating its foreign policy with Egypt; the latter only having to react to the new state of affairs. This relationship significantly changed however once the crusaders altered the political landscape of the Near east, their conquest of the Christian ‘holy lands’ and establishment of crusader states created a radically different dynamic; the threat of Makuria allying with the crusader states and combined with both Christian states' attacks into Muslim Egypt in the 12th century led to the emergence of a military class in Egypt which seized power and attacked the Christian states on both fronts; advancing south into Makuria and north into the crusader states in the late 13th century, managing to conquer the latter but failing to pacify the former for nearly two centuries until Makuria's eventual demise from internal processes. This article explorers the relationship between Makuria and the Muslim dynasties of Egypt, focusing on the prominent events that shaped their encounters, the relationship between the crusaders and Christian Nubia and the gradual decline of Makuria Map of medieval North\-east Africa, showing the wars between Makuria and Muslim Egypt --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- First encounters: the emergence of Makuria, warfare, Egypt’s defeat, and an uneasy peace. The fall of the kingdom of Kush in the late 4th century was followed by the emergence of several Nubian small states along the length of its territories; with Noubadia emerging in the 5th century in the northern most regions (southern Egypt), Makuria and Alodia by the 6th century (in what is now north and central Sudan). In all three new kingdoms new capitals were established and they became centers of political and religious power; the heavily fortified city of city of Old Dongola (or Tungul) emerged as the center of the centralized state of Makuria by the 6th century with Faras as the capital of Noubadia and Soba as the capital of Alodia, after a number of Byzantine missions in the mid 6th century, the royal courts of the three kingdoms adopted Christianity, which became the state religion. Makuria defeats the Rashidun caliphate and imposes a the baqt treaty Between 639 and 641, the Arab armies of the Rashidun caliphate had conquered much of Egypt from byzantine control and soon after, advanced south to conquer the territory of the Nubians. In 641, the Rashidun force under the leadership of famous conquer Uqba Ibn Nafi penetrated south of Aswan and further into the territory of the kingdom of Noubadia (which at the time was independent of Makuria, its southern neighbor); it was against the Noubadian military that Uqba's first invasion was fought in 641/642, the chronicler Al\-Baladhuri (d. 892\) describes the battle which was ultimately won by the Noubadian armies as such : "When the Muslims conquered Egypt, Amr ibn al\-As sent to the villages which surround it cavalry to overcome them and sent 'Uqba ibn Nafi', who was a brother of al\-As. The cavalry entered the land of Nubi like the summer campaigns against the Greeks. The Muslims found that the Nubians fought strongly, and they met showers of arrows until the majority were wounded and returned with many wounded and blinded eyes. So the Nubians were called 'pupil smiters … I saw one of them \. Undeterred by this initial defeat however, the Rashidun armies would again send an even large force to conquer Nubia in 651 under the command of Abd Allah who now faced off with the combined Noubadian and Makurian army led by King Qalidurut of Makuria, this attack took place in the same year the Aksumite armies were attacking Arabia and the speed with which Abdallah's forces moved south, bypassing several fortified cities in the region of Noubadia was likely informed by the urgency to counter the threat of what he thought was as an African Christian alliance between Aksum and Makuria Abdallah's forces besieged Old Dongola and shelled its fortifications and buildings using catapults that broke down the roof of the church, this engagement was then followed by an open battle between the Makurian forces and the Rashidun armies in which the latter suffered many causalities ending in yet another decisive Nubian victory, as the 9th century historian Ahmad al\-Kufı wrote: "When the Nubians realized the destruction made in their own country, they . . moved to attack the Moslems so bravely that the Moslems had never suffered a loss like the one that they had in Nubia. So many heads were cut off in one battle, so many hands were chopped, so many eyes smitten by arrows and bodies lying on the ground that no one could count". In light of this context of defeat it was therefore the Rashiduns who sued for peace rather than the Makurians, as the historian Jay Spaulding writes "it is unlikely that the party vanquished at Old Dongola would have been in a position to impose upon the victors a treaty demanding tribute and unilateral concession" The oldest account of this "truce of security" treaty was written by the 9th century historian Ibn Abdal\-Hakam, it was understood as an unwritten obligation by both parties to maintain peaceful relations as well as a reciprocal exchange of commodities annually known as the baqt wherein the Muslims were to give the Makurians a specified quantity of wheat and lentils every year while the Makurians were to hand over a certain number of captives each year. Centuries later however, the succeeding Muslim dynasties of egypt conceived the original treaty as a written document obliging the Nubians to pay tribute in return for the subordination to the caliphate, but the actions of the kings of Makuria reveals that the original treaty's intent continued to guide their own policy towards Muslim Egypt. --- Makuria and the first Muslim dynasties of Egypt; the Ummayads (661\-750\), the Abbasids (750\-969\) The unification of Noubadia with Makuria took place during the reign of king Qalidurut in the face of the Rashidun invasion of both kingdoms and siege of Old Dongola that year, but this unification wasn't permanent and the two kingdoms split shortly after, only to be reunified during the reign of Merkurios (696\-710\) who also introduced the policy of religious tolerance; uniting the Chalcedonian and Miaphysite churches of either kingdoms, the latter of which was headed by the coptic Pope of Alexandria who from then on appointed the archbishops at Old Dongola. While the now much larger kingdom Makuria flourished, an uneasy peace with Muslim Egypt followed and during the reign of Ummayad caliph Hišām (r. 724\-743\), the Ummayad armies twice invaded Makuria but were defeated, and in retaliation to this; the Makurian army under King Kyriakos invaded Egypt twice, reportedly advancing as far as its capital Fustat, ostensibly to force the Ummayad governor of Egypt to restore the persecuted Alexandrian pope Michael (r. 743–67\) after the Makurians had learned of the ill\-treatment he had suffered, as well as his imprisonment and the confiscation of his finances, the Makurian army is said to have done considerable damage to the lands of Upper Egypt during this attack until the governor of Egypt released the patriarch from prison, Kyriakos's army then returned to Makuria and peace between the Ummayads and Makurians resumes. Similar attacks from the Makurian army on the then Abbasid controlled Egypt are recorded in 862 at Akhmin that also included the cities of Edfu and Kom Ombo, a significant portion of upper Egypt (the region geographically known as southern Egypt) was occupied by the Makurians in the 9th century and Edfu became a center of Nubian culture until the 11th century. At a time when the Muslim population of Egypt is said to have surpassed the Christian population. During this time, Abbasid governor of Egypt Musa Ibn Ka'ab (r. 758–759\) complained about the decorating state of relations between Makuria and Abbasid Egypt, writing to the Makurian king Kyriakos that "Here, no obstacle is placed between your merchants and what they want, they are safe and contented wherever they go in our land. You, however behave otherwise, nor are our merchants safe with you" and he demanded that the Makurian king pays 1,000 dinars for an Egyptian merchant who had died in Makuria, but there's reason to doubt this claim by the governor about the safety of Nubian traders in egypt as another contemporary account writes that the "Arabs ‘were in the habit of stealing Nubians and sold them as slaves in Egypt \ In 830, an embassy from the Abbasid caliph at Baghdad arrived at the court of the Makurian King Zacharias demanding payment of about fourteen years of arrears in Baqt payments, King Zacharias is however only ruling as a regent of the rightful king George whom he sends to Bagdad to negotiate the terms of the treaty, which at this time had been re\-imagined by the Abbasid judges as a customary payment of 360\-400 slaves a year from Makuria in exchange for Egyptian wheat and textiles, but the boy\-king George explained that Makuria had no capacity to acquire that number of slaves, (indeed, the only instance of Makuria sending slaves to Egypt in the context of baqt before the 13th century was when it exported two slaves), the Abbasid caliph then agreed to lower the obligation by 2/3rds of the previous figure and king George returned to Makuria, but there is little evidence that this lower figure of slaves was remitted by king George nor by his successors until the late 13th century. Besides, the attacks that the Makurians launched into Abbasid Egypt in 862, a few decades after these negotiations, and the Makurian occupation of much of upper Egypt upto Edfu for nearly three centuries reveals the relative weakness of Abbasid control in their southern region, much less the ability to ensure the Makurians met their obligations. --- Makuria and late\-period Abbasid Egypt; its offshoot dynasties and the rise of the slave armies. During the late Abbasid period in the 9th century; its offshoot dynasties of the Tulunids (868–905\) and the Ikshdids (935\-969\); as well as the era of the Fatimid caliphate (969\-1171\), the institution of slave armies in Muslim Egypt was greatly expanded, these slaves taken from a diverse range of ethnicities and were reputed to be fiercely loyal to their Kings which allowed the latter to centralize their power, the bulk of military slaves were Turks, Greeks, and Armenians but a sizeable percentage were African; especially during the period between the 9th and 12th century. While the African portion of these armies is often thought to have been purchased from Nubia, there are several reasons why Makuria is very unlikely to have been the source, one is that the use of African slave soldiers which increased during the Tulunid and Fatimid era, and later sharply declined in the Ayyubid and Mamluk era in the 12th and 13th century, contrasts with the period when slaves from Makuria are documented to have been exported into Egypt in the 13th/14th century; these slaves are often associated with the Mamluk wars with Makuria and the latter’s payment of the baqt, added to this reason is the above mentioned lack of significant Nubian slave trade prior to the Mamluk invasion as well as the lack of mention of slave trade from 10th century descriptions on Makuria made by travelers, all of which make it unlikely that the more 30\-40,000 African soldiers of Muslim Egypt passed through Makurian cities unnoticed. The most likely source for these were the red\-sea ports of Aidhab and Badi (where a significant slave market existed in the 8th century), and from the Fezzan region of southern Libya; where a large slave market existed in the city of Zawila from the 8th to the 12th century, many of whom were ultimately sold to the Maghreb and Muslim Egypt. Despite the red sea region primarily falling under the political orbit of the Muslim empires that also controlled Egypt, the ports of Aidhab and Badi were also politically important for the kingdom of Makuria, Aidhab was founded during the reign of Rashidun caliph Abû Bakr \, both ports traded in the usual African commodities of gold, cattle, ivory and slaves, but it was slaves that became important to its trade in the 8th century. These slaves were drawn from various sources but primarily from the neighboring Beja groups. In the late 9th century, Gold became the primary export of Aidhab, most of it was mined from Wadi Allaqi in the eastern desert and brought through caravan routes to the coast, along these routes; goods, pilgrims and caravans travelled from Aidhab to Aswan from where they were sold to Fustat. In 951 and 956, more invasions from the Makurian army into upper Egypt are recorded that reached upto the western oases of the desert at Kharga and the city of Aswan, these inturn led to an invasion into the northern parts of Nubia by the forces of the Ikhshidid egypt which briefly captured Qsar Ibirim in 957, the later action promoted a response from the Makurian army that advanced as far north as Akhmin in 960s and occupied much of the region for atleast 3 years. in 963, the Ikhshidid army led by the famous African slave general Kafur al\-Ikhshidi attacked Makuria reportedly upto Old dongola although there’s reason to doubt this claim, this invasion was soon retaliated by another Makurian attack shortly before his death in 968\. After the Fatimid conquest of egypt in 969, relations between the Fatimid sultans and the kings of Makuria became much better save for a minor raid by the rebellious Turkish slave Nasir ad\-Dawla who led his forces into Makuria in 1066 but was crushingly defeated by the Makurian army, No wars were conducted by any of the Fatimid caliphs into Makuria and none were conducted by the Makurian kings into Egypt for the entire period of Fatimid rule. The lull in warfare between Makuria and Egypt from the 10th to the late 12th century allowed for an extensive period of trade and cultural exchanges between the two states, coinciding with the unification of Makuria and the southern Kingdom of Alodia to form the Kingdom of Dotawo in the mid 10th century --- The long peace between Makuria Fatimid Egypt: Trade, pilgrimage, correspondence and the coming of the crusaders Evidence for this relatively peaceful coexistence is provided by the appearance of several Makurian Kings in Fatimid Egypt beginning with King Solomon who left Nubia for Egypt after his abdication, where he retired to the church of Saint Onnophrios near Aswan and died later in the 1070s to be buried in the monastery of St George at Khandaq. This act of personal piety by King Solomon who believed that “a king cannot be saved by God while he still governs among men” would be repeated by successive Makurian Kings from the 11th through the 13th centuries, including King George who ascended to the throne in 1132, and left for Egypt after his abdication to retire to an Egyptian monastery in Wadi en\-Natrun where he later died in the late 1150s. Nubian pilgrims as well found it much easier to journey through Egypt on their way to the holy lands as well as to other Christian states in Europe such as the Byzantine empire; the Makurian King Moses George (who reigns during the end of the Fatimid era) also abdicated the throne to travel to Jerusalem, he later reached Constantinople in 1203 where he was met by the crusader Robert de Clari, whose chronicle of the Fourth Crusade mentions a black Christian king with a cross on his forehead who had been on a pilgrimage through Jerusalem with twelve companions, although only two continued with him to Constantinople, the King said he was on his way to Rome and ultimately to the church of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Moses George’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem and parts of the Byzantine realm was part of a larger stream of Christian pilgrims from Nubia into the holy lands, several of whom were mentioned by Theoderich in 1172 and by Burchard of Mount Sion in 1280AD when they had obtained possession of Adam’s Chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher . Direct contacts between Makuria and Christian Europe which now included European travelers and traders visiting Old Dongola, thus provided European cartographers, diplomats, church officials, and apocalyptic mythographers with more material for locating Nubia within the wider sphere of Christendom. The Makurian economy was relatively monetized using Fatimid coinage which arrived through external trade, these coins were used in purchasing land and other commodities by the Makurians as well as in paying rent and taxes The robust literary tradition of Makuria which had by this time been sufficiently indigenized with extensive the use of Old Nubian script displacing Greek and Coptic in many textual works including the production of lengthy scribal masterpieces such as the Attiri book of Michael (an original 300\-page codex written by a Makurian scribe under the patronage of the eparch) and a Coptic version of the book of Enoch, which had for long been assumed to be lost to the rest of the Christian world save for Ethiopia, thus providing further evidence of Nubia’s place in medieval Mediterranean ecumenism. Correspondence between Makuria and other African Christian states increased during this time, firstly was with the Coptic community of Egypt whose pope appointed the archbishops at Old Dongola, but the Nubian church was distinguished from its Ethiopian peer because the former retained the right to recommend its own candidates for the post of Archbishop of Old Dongola, who was taken from among its own citizens, attesting to the relative degree of independence of the Makurian church had that lasted even during its decline in the late 14th century. Makuria also had fairly regular contacts with Christian Ethiopian especially the kingdom of Aksum and the Abyssinian empire; in an 11th century account, an unnamed Ethiopian king sent a letter to the Makurian king Georgios II describing the deteriorating political situation of his kingdom which he interpreted as God’s punishment for the inappropriate treatment of the Abuna (the appointed head of the Ethiopian church) by previous rulers, and asked King Georgios to negotiate with the Patriarch Philotheos for the ordaining of a new Abuna. Georgios responded sympathetically to this request, sending a request letter to the patriarch who nominated Daniel as the new Abuna for Ethiopia. In the later years, other Ethiopians are noted to have travelled through Makuria on their way through Egypt (or from it) including an Ethiopian bishop who passed by the Makurian church of Sonqi Tino in the 13th century, and an Ethiopian saint who travelled through Makuria in the mid 14th century. A 13th century Ethiopian painting of a dignitary at a church in Tigray also depicts a Nubian visitor who may have come from Makuria or Alodia. Fatimid travelers and embassies were also sent to Makuria, the most famous was Ibn Salim al\-Aswani in 970 who was sent by the Fatimid governor to Old Dongola and stayed in the capital for about six months, providing the most detailed account of the kingdom of Makuria (and its southern neighbor of Alodia) describing its “beautiful buildings, churches, monasteries and many palm trees, vines, gardens, fields and large pastures in which graze handsome and well\-bred camels” this account was later collaborated by Abu salih writing before 1200, he was an Armenian chronicler in Egypt who described Old Dongola as "a large city on the banks of the blessed nile, and contains many churches and large houses and wide streets. the king's house is lofty with several domes built of red\-brick and resembles the buildings in iraq", these descriptions match those of earlier writers such as Ibn Hawqal in the mid 10th century (who didn’t visit Old Dongola but did visit its southern neighbor Alodioa) and the recent archeological discoveries of the medieval Makurian cities and monuments in Sudan. --- Makuria and the Ayyubid Egypt (1171\-1250\): An uneasy peace and the coming of the crusaders The rise of the Ayyubid Egypt heralded the end of the cordial relations between Muslim Egypt and Makuria, the new foreign policy of the Ayyubids towards Makuria was colored by the political and religious upheaval brought about by the crusader invasions of Egypt in the 12th century. The crusaders had taken over the holy lands of the near east (the region from Sinai to Syria) and succeeded in establishing four crusader states, among which, the kingdom of Jerusalem (1099\-1291\) which directly bordered the Fatimids, was the most powerful. While Egypt had previously been peripheral to crusader concerns, it became the primary target of various Christian European armies with the beginning with Amalric of Jerusalem in 1163 and continued with several attacks that lasted for nearly a century, these attacks coincided with the decline of Fatimid power with the ascendance of child\-kings between 1149 and 1160 the ultimately led to the rise of powerful military officials who ruled with full authority. One of these military officers was Saladin who became wazir (a vizier) of the last Fatimid caliph Al\-Adid, in 1169, Saladin then begun expanding his power at the expense of his caliph by weakening the caliph’s army and strangling its revenues, these actions prompted the army to revolt and the African infantry soldiers, led by Mu'tamin al\-Khilafa sought an alliance with the crusaders, this conspiracy that was uncovered by the Saladin who crushed their revolt, leading to the soldiers fleeing to upper Egypt, allowing Saladin to seize power in 1171 following the death of the caliph al\-Adid. The conspiracy to ally with the Frankish crusader armies to overthrow Saladin also included Nubians from Makuria, and when the remnants of the african soldiers he had defeated retreated to upper Egypt, they attacked the city of Aswan in alliance with (or support from) the Makurians, Saladin sent an army under Shams ad\-Dawla who then sacked Qasr Ibrim in 1173 Shams then sent a messenger to negotiate with the Makurian King Moses George demanding that he submit to Saladin’s authority and convert to Islam but the king is said to have "burst into wild laughter and ordered his men to stamp a cross on the messenger's hand with redhot iron” Frustrated with the collapse in negations, Shams tortured the bishop of Qasr Ibrim for money but "nothing could be found that he could give to shams ad\-daulah, who made him prisoner with the rest", Shams would later award Ibrim in fief to a soldier named Ibrahim al\-Kurdi but this only lasted a two years aftewhich al\-Kurdi drowned in the Nile and his soldiers abandoned the city which reverted back to the Makurians. King Moses George continued to rule for nearly half a century until his abovementioned pilgrimage through the holy lands and Europe, Makuria itself maintained an uneasy but rather quiet relationship with Ayyubid Egypt until its fall to its own Mamluk slave soldiers in the late 1240s, which happened at a critical time during the invasion of Egypt by the seventh crusade. Interlude: Makuria and the Crusader states The late 1240s also mark the beginning of a concerted effort by Christian European kings to establish relations with the Makurian kings through their crusader offshoots, initially these were missionary efforts since the Miaphysite church of Alexandria which was followed by the Makurians, had existed in opposition to the roman catholic church of the western Europeans, Pope innocent IV thus called for a general council that met in Lyon in 1245 where he issued a papal bull that delegated Franscian friars to several Christian states urging them to join the Roman catholic church, one of their countries of destination was Makuria, he also dispatched emissaries with letters to the Makurian rulers (among other Christian kings) with the same instructions. While little is known about the letter reaching its intended recipients at Old Dongola, the discovery of a 13th/14th century graffito written in the Provençal dialect of southern France, at the Makurian city of Banganarti (which is less than 10 km from Old Dongola) attests to a direct contact between Christian Europe and Makuria by this time, and by the early 14th century, Genoese merchants were already active at Old Dongola. In the late 13th century, plans were being made by the crusaders that explicitly included a proposed alliance with the Makurians to split the forces of the Mamluk Egyptians, especially after the latter’s defeat of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 (the last of the crusader states to fall), and several of these proposed military alliances between Makuria and the crusader armies were presented to the Pope clement V in 1307 and to Pope John XXII in 1321\. But the Mamluks were aware of the threat such an alliance would bring and worked to stifle any contact between the Nubians and the crusaders, and Mamluk sultans became more active in the succession struggles in Makuria with the intent of undermining its power. --- Makuria and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt (1250\-1517\): warfare, decline and the end of Christian Nubia. Its within the above mentioned context that the Mamluk policy towards Makuria turned decidedly hostile, But the Makurians themselves had already understood the threat the Mamluks posed and In 1268, the Makurian king David sent messengers to the Mamluk sultan Baybars about his deposition of the previous king whom he claimed was blind and that he had expelled him to al\-Abwab (a small state between Makuria and Alodia). The Mamluk red sea trading interests also posed a threat to the Makurians, especially the port of Aidhab which had since grown into the principal port of the region at the expense of the southern ports of Badi and Suakin both of which allowed the Kings of Makuria and Alodia access to the sea. In 1182/3, the crusader armies under Renaud de chatillion attacked Aidhab (not long after Shams had attacked Qasr Ibrim in 1173\), but the town had recovered and in 1272 the Makurian armies of king David attacked the same town as well as the city of Aswan and killed the governors stationed there, this promoted a retaliation from the Mamluk armies a few months later who attacked the city of Qasr Ibrim. In 1276, A disgruntled nephew of King David named Shekanda arrived at the sultan's court, claiming the throne of Nubia and requesting assistance from the Baybars to reclaim his throne in exchange for Shekanda meeting the baqt requests, the Mamluks then invaded Makuria a few months later, sacking Qsar Ibrim where they killed Marturokoudda, the eparch of Nobadia and a prominent local landowner, they then advanced south to Old Dongola (which was the first time Muslim Egypt’s armies had fought on Nubian soil in the 600 years since their defeat in 652\), this time the battle ended with a Makurian defeat as David's divided forces couldn't withstand the Mamluk forces and he was captured and imprisoned not long after. Shekanda was the enthroned as King of Makuria, but the Mamluk sultan Kalavun (the successor of Babyars) now considered Makuria only as a province of his Mamluk sultanate as he made clear in his negotiations with King Alfonso of Aragon in 1290 in a treaty that explicitly describes Kalavun describes himself as the “sultan of Makuria , the territory of David” this last emphasis was most likely added to suppress any attempts of the crusaders to form an alliance with the Makurians. The Mamluk army under would in the same year prepare for a siege of Acre and they ultimately defeated the forces of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291, taking the remaining Frankish footholds on the coast (Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Haifa) and ending Christian Europe's permanent presence in the holy lands. Before preparing the siege of Acre however, the sultan Kalavun had been involved in the succession disputes in Makuria where another disgruntled claimant appealed to him for military assistance to recover his throne which he claimed had been seized by the then reigning King Shamamun (Simeon), who was his maternal uncle. Kavalun sent an expedition in 1287 to take Old Dongola but Simeon retreated with his army and also informed his eparch/governor of Noubadia, Gourresi, to retreat, but the latter was captured by the Mamluks and turned to their side, allowing Kavalun's army to install Simeon's nephew to the throne and Gourresi as his deputy. Soon after the Mamluk forces returned to Egypt, Solomon re\-emerged and deposed his nephew in 1288, the deposed nephew and Gourresi fled to Cairo to report this, which prompted Kavalun to send an even larger army in 1289 to reinstall the deposed nephew, but since the latter died on the journey, a son of David was chosen instead, Simeon retreated again and allowed the installation of the puppet but after the Mamluks had returned to Cairo in 1290, Simeon deposed their puppet, killing him and Gourresi. Simeon's rule continued unabated till his passing between 1295\-1297, he is said to have sent his share of the baqt to sultan Kavalun after assessing that the latter was tired of installing weak rulers to the Makurian throne, and this is perhaps the earliest mention of a baqt payment and it consisted of 190 slaves. Simeon was succeeded by King Ayay who reined until 1311 or 1316, he sent two embassies to the Mamluk court in 1292 and 1305, explaining his failure to pay the baqt obligation, offering small customary present of camels instead of slaves, he also requested military assistance against the Arab incursions in upper Egypt which had for made the region insecure for the Mamluk sultans but had also begun extending their predations south to the northern regions of Makuria Ayay was succeeded by his brother King Kudanpes likely after a palace coup, the latter travelled to the Mamluk court in the following year likely to deliver a baqt and is said to have brought about 1,000 slaves as payment for decades worth of arrears. (this was the last recorded baqt payment by the Makurians) But Kudanpes wasn't secure on the throne and his claim was again challenged by his nephew Barshanbu, a son of King King David's sister who had grown up in Cairo and had since converted to Islam, Barshanbu requested the Mamluk sultan Al\-Nasir to grant him forces and install him at Old Dongola, to which King Kudanpes responded by nominating his own Muslim nephew Kanz al\-Dawla to the sultan as a better alternative, but the latter was detained by al\-Nasir who then sent a force to depose Kudanpes and install Barshanbi which was accomplished in 1317; whereafter the administrative building at Old Dongola was converted to a mosque (this is the first mention of a mosque in Makuria). Soon after his installation however, sultan Al\-Nasir released al\-Dawla who then deposed Barshanbu and reigned as king of Makuria. Still unsatisfied with the continued Makurian independence, sultan al\-Nasir released the deposed king Kudanpes in 1323 to depose al\-Dawla but this ended in failure Kanz al\-Dawla was however the only Muslim ruler of Christian Makuria until its fall in the 15th century, and all of his known successors are mentioned to be Christian, as the reign of King Sitti in the 1330s indicates a restoration of Makuria's prominence with a firm control over the northern provinces as well as its capital Old Dongola, and Makurian institutions seemed to have successfully weathered the turbulence of the earlier decades quite well. although a number of monasteries had been abandoned by this time. The internal tension of the late 13th and early 14th century should not lead us to imagine Nubia heading into a rapid decline, as Makurian literacy, arts and construction appear to continued in the 14th century and 15th century. Internal strife returned in the 1365 as another king was yet again challenged by his nephew, the latter of whom reportedly formed alliances with the Banu Kaz, (a mixed Arab\-Beja tribe that had over the 14th century come to control much of the red sea region including the port of Aidhab and challenged both Mamluk and Makurian authority in their eastern regions) the usurper seized Old Dongola forcing the reigning king to retreat to his new capital called al\-Daw from where he requested the Mamluk armies aid him in his war, the Mamluk forces defeated the usurper who agreed to become the eparch at Qasr Ibrim under the reigning Makurian king, but Old Dongola was abandoned permanently after serving 800 years as the capital of Makuria. The Makurian state nevertheless persisted and a Nubian bishop named Timotheos is appointed in the 1370s to head its church, little is known about Makuria in the succeeding years, the constant predations of the Banu Kaz and the Beja on the red sea ports and eastern regions remained a looming threat, and had prompted the Mamluk sultan Baybars to sack Aidhab in 1426 and the town was permanently abandoned. In 1486 Makuria is ruled by King Joel who is mentioned in local documents, which attests to the relatively seamless continuity of Nubian legal practices and traditions in the late 15th century; eparch still govern Makuria’s northern province of Noubadia and Bishops (now stationed at Qasr Ibrim) are still present throughout the same period. By the turn of the 15th century, Makuria only existed as rump state, in 1517 Mamluk Egypt fell to the Ottomans and in 1518, Ali b. Umar, the upper Egypt governor of Mamluks who had turned to the Ottoman side is mentioned to have been at war with the “lord of Nubia”, the old kingdom of Makuria limped on for a few years and then slowly faded to obscurity. --- Conclusion: Makuria as an African medieval power A closer inspection of the history of the relations between Makuria and Muslim Egypt throughout the millennia of Makuria’s existence reveals a dynamic that upends the misconceptions in the popular accounts of medieval north east Africa. The kingdom of Makuria is shown to be a strong, stable and centralized power for much of its existence outlasting 6 Muslim Egyptian dynasties, it consistently represented a formidable challenge to centralized Egyptian authority. Its dynastic continuity relative to the various Muslim dynasties of Egypt also serves as evidence of Makuria's much firmer domestic political position which enabled it to dictate the terms within which both states conducted their relationship; for more than 600 years after the initial Muslim advance onto Nubian soil, it was Makuria which fought on Egyptian soil with several recorded battles in every century of its existence against each Egyptian dynasty (save for the Fatimids). Makuria’s elites were actively involved in Egyptian politics, and the strength of Makuria's army became known to the crusaders as well who devised plans to ally with it against a common foe, all of which indicates a balance of power strongly in favor of the Makurians and quite different from that related in al\-Maqrizi's 15th century account, as the historian Jay Spaulding writes "Present Orientalist understanding of the baqt thus rests largely upon a single hostile Islamic source written eight hundred years after the events it purports to describe…The baqt agreement, from a Nubian perspective, marked acceptance of the new Islamic regime in Egypt as a legitimate foreign government with which, following the unfortunate initial encounter, normal relations would be possible" Even after the Mamluks succeeded in turning the balance of power against the Makurians, their attempt at interfering in Makurian politics was ephemeral, its institutions, particularly the Makurian church, remained a powerful factor in the royal court eventually restoring the Christian state until its gradual decline a century later. The largely hostile relationship between the Makurians and Muslim Egypt reveals that it was military power that sustained Makuria’s independence rather than a special status of peaceful co\-existence as its commonly averred. This is similar to the relationship between the early Muslim empires and the Kingdom of Aksum, the latter of which is often assumed to have been “spared” by the Arab armies (as per the instructions of Prophet Muhammad) but evidence shows that Aksum was the target of several failed Arab invasions beginning in 641, just 9 years after the prophet’s death, and their defeat by Aksum’s armies is what secured the kingdom’s independence; sustaining it and Makuria as the only remaining Christian African states of the late medieval era. --- Read more African history on my patreon --- The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 760, 808\-810 The Rise of Nobadia by Artur Obłuski pg 199\) Ancient Nubia by P. L. Shinnie pg 123\) The power of walls by Friederike Jesse pg 132\) The Nubian past by David Edwards pg 249\) Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg 584\) Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg 578 Was King Merkourios (696 \-710\), an African 'New Constantine', the unifier of the Kingdoms and Churches of Makouria and Nobadia by Benjamin C Hendrickx pg 17\-18\) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 762\) The Rise of a Capital: Al\-Fusṭāṭ and Its Hinterland by Jelle Bruning pg 106\-7 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 763\), Ancient Nubia by P. L. Shinnie pg 125\) Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg589\) The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers pg 112 The Rise of a Capital: Al\-Fusṭāṭ and Its Hinterland by Jelle Bruning pg pg 106\-7\) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 763 Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg 592\) Race and Slavery in the Middle East By Bernard Lewis pg 63\-65 Possessed by the Right Hand by by Bernard K. Freamon pg 206\-218\) Race and Slavery in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis pg 67\-68 Across the Sahara by Klaus Braun pg 133\-135 The Origin and Development of the Sudanese Ports by T Power pg 5, 7, 9\) The Origin and Development of the Sudanese Ports by T Power pg 10\-12, 13\-15\) The Archaeology of Islam in Sub\-Saharan Africa by T. Insoll pg 103\-105 The Rise of the Fatimids by Michael Brett The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate by T power pg 157 Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World by Alexander Mikaberidze pg 458 the nubian past by David Edwards pg 215\) The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia by Derek A. Welsby pg 88\-89 Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini p.248\) Ancient Nubia by P. L. Shinnie pg 129\) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 765 The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia by Bruce Williams pg 764\) The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople by Donald E. Queller pg 140\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini p.252\) New discoveries in Nubia: proceedings of the Colloquium on Nubian studies, The Hague, 1979 by Paul van Moorsel pg 144\) Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia by D. Welsby pg 77\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 262\-264\) The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers pg 105\-114\) The Old Nubian Texts from Attiri by by Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 231\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 255\-256\) An Unexpected Guest in the Church of Sonqi Tino by Ochala pg 257\-265 Nubia a corridor to Africa by W. Adams pg 461\-462 Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century pg 199 Banganarti on the Nile, An Archaeological Guide by Bogdan Zurawski The age of the crusades by P.M. Holt pg 46\- 51\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 263\-264\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 249\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 250\-251\) The other ethiopia Nubia and the crusade (12th\-14th century) by R Seignobos pg 309\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 263\-263\) The other ethiopia Nubia and the crusade (12th\-14th century) by R Seignobos pg 310\-312\), A man from Provance on the Middle Nile by Adam Łajtar and Tomasz Płóciennik The kingdom of alwa by Mohi el\-Din Abdalla Zarroug pg 86\) The Archaeology of Islam in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Timothy Insoll pg 94\-97\) The age of the crusades by P.M. Holt pg 133\) Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260\-1290\) by by Peter Holt pg 132\) The age of the crusades by P.M. Holt pg 103\-104\), From Slave to Sultan: The Career of Al\-Manṣūr Qalāwūn by Linda Stevens Northrup pg 147\-149\) Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg 592\) The age of the crusades by P.M. Holt pg pg 134\) Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg pg 592\) The age of the crusades by P.M. Holt 135\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 29\-30\) The Monasteries and Monks of Nubia by Artur Obłuski The 'last' king of Makuria (Dotawo) by W Godlewski The last king of makuria by by W Godlewski The Archaeology of Islam in Sub\-Saharan Africa by Timothy Insoll pg 97\) Medieval Nubia by G Ruffini pg 254\-257\) The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia Derek A. Welsby pg 254 Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World by Jay Spaulding pg 585 The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate by Timothy Power pg 93 15 )

The Aksumite empire between Rome and India: an African global power of late antiquity (200\-700AD) in The Aksumite empire between Rome and India: an African global power of late antiquity (200\-700AD) "There are four great kingdoms in the world: Persia, Rome, Aksum and China; none surpasses them" )For more than half a millennium of late antiquity, the ancient world's political theatre was dominated by a handful of powerful empires, one of which was an African civilization from the northern horn of Africa. Its conquests extended from southern Egypt to central Arabia, its merchants sailed to Jordan and Sri Lanka, and its emissaries went to Constantinople (Turkey) and Amaravati (India). This was the empire of Aksum, a state which left its imprint on much of the known world, etching its legacy on stone stelæ, on gold coins and in the manuscripts of ancient scholars. As the Persian prophet Mani (d. 277AD) wrote in his Kephalaia: "There are four great kingdoms in the world. The first is the kingdom of the land of babylon and Persia, the second is the kingdom of the Romans. The third is the kingdom of the Aksumites, the fourth is the kingdom of silis (China); there is none that surpasses them". Rising from relative obscurity in the 1st century, the early Aksumite state in the northern horn shifted from its old capital at Bete giorgyis to Aksum, giving it its name. Its from this new capital that the fledging empire established its control over the coastal town of Adulis (and its port Gabaza), and over the next five centuries, the bustling city of Adulis became the most important transshipment point and trading hub in the red sea, a conduit for the late antique trade network of Silk, Pepper and Ivory that connected the Roman empire to India and China. This lucrative trade financed the military conquests of the Aksumite kings which in Mani's time included the regions of; western Arabia, Yemen, northeastern Sudan, southeastern Egypt, northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and parts of Djibouti and Somaliland. The wealth derived from the agricultural surpluses and trade imports acquired from these lands sustained the construction of the grand villas, large cities and monumental basilicas. The prestige earned by the Aksumite emperors from their global power status was demonstrated in their monumental funerary architecture of large stone and rock\-cut tombs surmounted by massive stela more than 100 ft high, on their gold, silver and copper coins which were used as currency across the red sea littoral and the eastern Mediterranean and have been found as far as Palestine and India, and in their diplomatic and political relationships with the emperors of Rome and the kings of India. Aksum's prominence marked the second time an African civilization outside north Africa played an important role in global politics (after the kingdom of Kush), Its conquest of the Hamyrite kingdom of southern Arabia twice in the 3rd and 6th century as well as its conquest of the Meroitic kingdom of Kush in the 4th century, cemented its position as a dominant power in the red\-sea region. Aksum was situated right at the center of a lucrative trade conduit between Rome and India and maintained a close political relationship with both societies, but especially with Rome to which Aksum sent several embassies. The Aksumite empire's cautious and deliberate adoption of Hellenism, and later Christianity was underpinned by the internationalist world view and ambitions of its emperors, especially its adoption of Christianity, a religion where Ethiopia (a name for Kush which Aksum later appropriated) featured prominently in biblical texts as well as Christian eschatological narratives which position it ahead of Egypt as the first among the “gentile nations”. This prominence is emphasized in the medieval Ethiopian text; the Kebra negast (a quasi\-foundational charter of the “Solomonic” Ethiopian empire) that retained sections from the Askumite era which position the Aksumite emperor Kaleb (r. 510\-540\) as senior to the Byzantine\-roman emperor Justin I (518\-527\) in an allegorical meeting of the two powers convened at Jerusalem to divide the world. Its within this internationalist world view and cosmopolitan trade context that an understanding of the global reach of the Aksumite empire is best situated, an African state which left its legacy in the minds and works of classical writers, playing a seminal role in early global commerce, the spread of the now\-dominant religions of Christianity and Islam, and whose monarchs, armies, scribes, merchants and people created one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the ancient world. This article focuses on Aksum on the global political arena, providing an overview of its origins, its conquests in Arabia and northeast Africa, its extensive trade network, its diplomatic ties with Rome and its global legacy. Map of the Aksumite empire including the cities and states mentioned in this article --- if you like this article, or you’d like to contribute to my African history website project; please donate to my paypal --- Origins of Aksum: from the Neolithic era to Bieta Giyorgis The emergence of the Aksumite state at the turn of the common era was a culmination of the increasing social complexity in the northern horn of Africa from the 3rd millennium BC to the mid first millennium BC which enabled the rise of small polities in the region, these early polities gave Aksum many of the kingdom's cultural affinities and distinctive architecture such as the elite tombs surmounted with stone stela and the rectilinear dry\-stone houses built around densely packed proto\-urban settlements. This begun at the ancient site of Mahal Teglinos in the “gash group” neolithic culture (2700BC\-1400BC) as well as at Qohaito in the “Ona neolithic” culture (900\-400BC). but the biggest contribution came from the Damot (D'MT) kingdom based at Yeha in northern Ethiopia, Damot was an ancient state of autochthonous origin established around the 9th century BC which was involved in the long\-distance with the Nile valley kingdoms (Kush and Egypt) and the maritime trade network of the red\-sea region (dominated by the kingdom of Saba in southern Arabia), and was significantly urbanized, its rulers adopted a number of south\-Arabian elements from the Saba such as the south\-Arabian script, and modified their local architecture to Sabean styles with the construction of the large temples at Yeha, Hawlti, Malazo, Meqaber Ga’ewa and a few other sites, the Damot kingdom however, remained fundamentally African evidenced by the names of the rulers that are only attested in the northern horn of Africa, the king's co\-regency with/prominent position of their queen regents, statues of seated women with ornaments in Nubian style, the overwhelmingly local pottery wares and local funerary traditions all of which point to a deliberate but largely superficial borrowing of Sabean elements by autochthonous rulers to enhance their power. Temple at Yeha, Ethiopia built in the 9th century BC excavation photo of an early Aksumite palace at Beita Giyorgis built in the late 1st millennium BC The complexes were likely provincial administrative centers of the Aksumite state for housing the local governors; the largest of the best preserved were within the vicinity of Aksum itself was the so\-called queen Sheba's palace at Dungur, Taaka Maryam, Enda Semon, and Enda Mikael other elite residences were at Matara, Adulis, Wakarida , and a smaller one at Beta Semati among others these were surrounded by lower status domestic buildings of square plan with multi\-roomed interiors and dry\-stone walls, and in the later era would be build around large basilicas. the Dungur palace at Aksum Aksum stele field Greek remained a minority language in Aksum (compared to Ge’ez), it was specifically intended for a foreign audiences and a careful reading of Aksumite inscriptions indicated that they were first written in Ge’ez then translated to Greek which partially explains the contrast between the well\-written Greek inscriptions of Aksum’s zenith vs the poorly written ones in the 7th century. And the last of Aksum’s most significant elements were the stone Thrones; these massive, neatly dressed stone slabs in form of a royal seats measured about 2 meters square and 0\.3m thick, they had footstools and were protected in a shrine\-like shelter with a roof supported by corner pillars. Aksum’s stone thrones were carved as early as the 3rd century and the tradition continued well into the 6th century, some of these thrones were sat on at ceremonial occasions in the later Aksumite eras although most served a symbolic rather than functional value, many of the thrones were widely distributed in the kingdom's domains although all virtually all are currently at Aksum itself. A number of them bear inscriptions, the earliest of which was an inscribed throne found at Adulis that narrates the conquests of an Aksumite emperor in the early 3rd century, this Monumentum Adulitanum II inscription was the first extensive royal inscription of Aksumite monarchs and it preserves the earliest historiography of Aksumite's global reach. --- The first era of the Aksumite empire's red\-sea hegemony (200\-270AD) By the 2nd century AD, the red sea trade route connecting the eastern Mediterranean, (dominated by the roman empire) and the western half of the Indian ocean, (dominated by a number of polities including the Satavahana state), had become an important conduit in the late antique trade, which the states in the coastal region of the northern horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula were well positioned to exploit. The Aksumite state had been greatly expanding since the 1st century when it was first attested in external accounts with the mention of the "city of the people called Auxumites" as well as a “king Zoskales” in a document titled the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Zoskales was likely a governor/kinglet of Adulis subordinate to Aksum. Aksum was consolidating its authority near the red sea coast , subsuming smaller states a few of which were attested locally in unvocalized Ge'ez as ’GB and DWLY and establishing itself in the maritime trade to the Indian ocean; it was during this time that first Aksumite emissaries are attested abroad on a late 2nd century Satavahana stupa depicting Aksumite diplomats bearing presents. Aksum then set its sights across the red sea to the southern Arabian region which at the time was politically fragmented between small states engaged in internecine wars, providing the Aksumites with an opportunity to exploit. Foreign merchants (including Aksumites in the bottom half) giving presents to the Satavahana king Badhuma, depicted on a sculpture from Amaravati, India For the rest of Gadara’s campaigns, we turn to the local documentation provided by the Monumentum Adulitanum II, a Greek inscription made on a throne set at Adulis by an unnamed Aksumite ruler (whom most scholars consider to be Gadara) narrating his campaigns in northeastern Africa and the Arabian peninsular, the account is fairly detailed mentioning the King's conquests in the eastern desert upto southern Egypt, conquests into Ethiopian interior upto the Simēn mountains as well as into northern Somaliland, and conquests into Arabia from the Sabean kingdom in the south to as far north as the ancient Nabataean port of Leuke Kome in northwestern Arabia. "I sent both a fleet and an army of infantry against the Arabitai and the Kinaidocolpitai who dwell across the Red Sea, and I brought their kings under my rule. I commanded them to pay tax on their land and to travel in peace by land and sea. I made war from Leukê Kômê to the lands of the Sabaeans." This was the zenith of Aksumite imperial power, with overseas wars, occupation of territories in Arabia, military alliances, a fleet and infantry, and the extension of Aksumite political and military influence over the entire red\-sea region, it was in the 3rd century that Mani was counting Aksum among the global powers, which was befitting of an empire controlling vast territory from northwestern Arabia to the Ethio\-Sudanese interior to Somalialand and southern Arabia. Throne bases at Aksum and a reconstruction of the Adulis throne By the end of the 3rd century, Aksum had relinquished control of southern Arabia peacefully as Himyar annexed both Hadhramawt and Saba but maintained diplomatic relations with Aksum in the succeeding decades. Aksum maintained control of western Arabia well into the 6th century (even before its second invasion of Himyar in the 6th century) and controlled parts of Himyar as well, this presence is attested to by inscriptions in Zafar from 509 as well as at Najran in the 6th century; both of which had large Aksumite community that recognized the authority of Aksum’s monarchs and Aksum’s port city Adulis now rivaled all Arabian port cities as the busiest port in the region. --- Interlude from the 4th to early 6th century: Aksum’s maritime commerce, the conquest of Kush and Ezana’s conversion to Christianity. Aksumite trade flourished beginning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Aksum became the major supplier of ivory to Rome and western Asia and would continue so well into the seventh century, gold, civet\-perfume and incense were also exported from the Aksumite mainland but in small quantities. Doubtlessly the most important Aksumite trade was its re\-export of Indian silk textiles and pepper to Rome; as the roman vessels gradually pulled out of the red\-sea trade in the mid first millennium, the vacuum was filled by intermediaries like Aksum whose vessels sailed to Sri Lanka to purchase the Indian textiles as well as pepper for Mediterranean markets which was exchanged for gold coinage, Aksumite and roman goods. The most explicit reference to this middle\-man role of Aksum comes from Proconious in the 6th century where Justinian I (r. 527\-565\) encourages the Aksumite emperor Kaleb to direct his merchants to buy more cargoes of Silk from India, another roman chronicle writes that the Aksumite king resented the Himyarite usurper Dhu Nuwas for blocking Aksum’s Roman trade, saying "You have harmed my empire and inland India (arabia) by preventing Roman traders from reaching us" as well as Cosmas in the early 6th century who records Aksumite trading fleets in Sri Lanka These writers were only recording the culmination of a protracted process in which Aksum became the most important commercial partner of Rome in the red sea network, the kind of trade which necessitated the issuance of gold coinage which, after a period of using roman and Kushan coins (from northern India that were found at Debre Damo in ethiopia) in the late 2nd century and early 3rd century, was undertaken at Aksum with coins struck bearing Aksumite rulers’ names starting with Endybis (r. 270\-290\) and continuing into the 7th century. Aksum’s trimellaic issues were inscribed in Greek and later in Ge'ez and were carried by Aksumite merchants in Aksumite ships plying their trade from the northern red\-sea to Egypt, Arabia and southern India. The importance of Aksum’s gold coinage and its predominance in the archeological discoveries of Aksumite material culture outside Africa was a function of its preference in international trade, for example, the writer Cosmas noted that the Sri Lankan king preferred the gold coinage of the Romans and Aksumites to the silver coinage of the Persians. its for this reason that these Aksumite gold coins have been discovered in various ports across the red sea and Indian ocean littoral such as at the Jordanian port city of Aila (Aqaba) where 6th century writer Antoninus of Piacenza wrote that all the "shipping from Aksum and Yemen comes into the port at Aila, bringing a variety of spices" This two way traffic involved Aksumite and roman merchants, whose transshipped merchandise (silk, pepper and Aksumite ivory) was taxed at Alia. Another important port where Aksumite merchants were active was Berenike on the Egyptian red sea coast, Aksum’s connection with this city was more permanent and involved the establishment of an Aksumite quarter where an a number of Ge'ez inscriptions were found as well as coins from Aphilas' reign from the 4th century. Aksumite coin hoards have also been found at Zafar and Aden in Yemen and in India at Mangalore and Madurai dated to the 4th and 5th century, as well as at Karur in Tamil Nadu. The Aksumite coastal city of Adulis remained the main transshipment point connecting the red sea region to the indian ocean, its from this city that merchants would sail directly to and from Sri Lanka and such was the journey taken by the writers Scholasticus of Thebes (d. 360\), Palladius (d. 420\) and Cosmas Indicopleustes (d. 550\). Aksum’s gold coins from the 3rd\-6th century (British museum, Aksum museum) In the 4th century, the emperors Ousanas and Ezana sent expeditions into the "middle Nile" region of sudan which was under the control of the declining Kingdom of Kush that was facing incursions from the nomadic groups such as the Blemmyes, Nubians and the Beja all of whom were also threatening Aksum's western provinces. Ousanas’ campaign terminated in the domains of Kush itself where he erected victory inscriptions, a throne and a bronze statue at its capital Meroe, two of these inscriptions are of an unamed king bearing the titles "King of the Aksumites and Himyarites …" and they narrate his capture of Kush's royal families, erection of a throne, the bronze statue and the subjection of tribute on Kush. While its difficult to gauge how firm Aksum's control of kush was, the primary intention of Aksum’s western campaigns into Sudan since the reign of Gadara was to secure the eastern desert region against the threats posed by the nomadic groups who were threatening the red sea ports like Berenike especially after the decline of roman control there, the road to southern Egypt built by Gadara was primarily for pacification of the region more than it was for over\-land trade. The resumption of nomad incursions in the the eastern desert prompted another invasion this time led by Ezana in 360AD primarily directed against the Nubians the latter of whom had overrun Aksum’s northwestern provinces as well as the territory of Kush \-then a tributary state of Aksum and thus under its protection, as Ezana's inscription narrates: "I went forth to war on the Noba, because the Mangurto and Khasa and Atiadites and Barya cried out against them saying: “The Noba have subdued us, come and help us, because they have oppressed and killed us.” Ezana then sacked many cities of the Nubians north of the 3rd cataract region upto the 1st cataract region. But since the region of Nubia was peripheral to Aksumite concerns, these campaigns weren’t followed up by his successors and the Nubian state of Noubadia had firmly established itself in the region by the mid 5th century, by which time Aksum's power had seemingly declined briefly when it was visited by Palladius (d. 431\) although this “decline” may have only been apparent as the coinage issued during this period was monotonously stable in all three metals without debasement. Throughout this period since the 3th century, the Aksumite monarchs maintained the titles "king of Aksum, Himyar, Saba, dhā\-Raydān, Tihāma, Ḥaḍramawt …" despite losing their Arabian territories (except Tihama/Hejaz), this lay of claim of territories that they didn't actually rule reflected the ambitions of the the Aksumite emperors to reposes them and were contrasted by the Himyratie king's similar titulary of "King of Saba, dhū\-Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt, Yemen" thus pitting these two states in direct opposition to each other, so when the political and religious upheavals in Himyar in the early 6th century presented an opportunity for invasion, the Aksumite emperor Kaleb (r. 510\-540\) took this chance to restore Aksumite power in southern Arabia. Emperor Ousanas’ victory inscriptions at Meroe (now kept in the Sudan national museum) --- Kaleb's invasion of Himyar and the restoration of Aksumite hegemony in Arabia The Aksumite conquest of Himyar is attested in a number of primary sources and was ostensibly a religious conflict but was infact a restoration of Aksum's political and economic hegemony in the red sea region. As mentioned earlier, Kaleb had accused Dhu nuwas, the ruler of Himyar of disrupting Aksum's trade with Rome which was substantial as the byzantine\-roman emperor Justinian I (r. 527\-565\) had asked the Aksumite emperor to increase his purchases of Indian silk at the time when the overland silk route across Asia had been constrained by Rome's uneasy relationship with the Sasanian\-Persian empire. Parallel to Aksum's conversion to Christianity was Himyar's conversion to Judaism but since Aksum maintained a continuous presence in Arabia's Tihama coast, it was the them that introduced Christianity in the Himyarite domain through the bishop Philophilus of Adulis (also called Theophilos the Ethiopian) who built a church in Zafar (the Himyarite capital) in the mid 4th century, this church was supported by the Aksumites who were involved in a military campaign into Himyar with the support of the Himyarite Christians afterwhich they installed a puppet king in 518 named Ma‘dīkarib Ya‘fur, (the direct predecessor of Dhu Huwas) who was violently overthrown by the latter who then proceeded to massacre the Christian community at Najaran including priests, monks and its inhabitants in 523, he would also kill any merchants trading with Aksum and seize their merchandise according to a report made by the roman historian and ambassador to Aksum, Nonnosus : “When some traders crossed into Homerite borders, as usual, Damianos \ Kaleb invaded Himyar in 525 with a fleet of 60 ships, some of which came from Aila (Aqaba) as well as Berenike, Farasan, Barbaria (somaliland) and atleast 9 ships from Aksum itself (built at Adulis), most of these were largely of roman design and were likely originally merchant vessels except the Aksumite and Barbaria ships which were sewn ships bounded with ropes rather than nails, and were much like the square\-sail medieval Swahili and Somali ships, they carried the Aksumite army of 120,000 men which defeated Dhu Nuwas's army and replaced him with an aksumite vicerory named Sumyafa Ashwa‘. Kaleb restored and built several churches in Zafar and Najaran, left an inscription at Zafar commemorating his victory and left a sizeable Aksumite contingent to pacify the province. This contingent was headed by the Aksumite general Abraha, who with its support deposed Ashwa and installed himself as ruler of Aksum's south Arabian province in 530, Abraha defeated several of Kaleb's attempts to remove him and the two later resolved that Abraha retain his autonomy in exchange for tribute to Kaleb, Abraha then begun ambitious construction projects in southern Arabia at Marib as well as military campaigns into central Arabia in 552 as far as the Hijaz coast (ie Tihama) including Mecca although without establishing a strong foothold thus marking the gradual end of Aksumite control of the western Arabia coast. Abraha had earlier on organized an international conference in 547 with diplomats from Byzantine, Persia, Aksum, the Lakhmids (eastern Arabian kingdom), and Ghassānids (northern Arabian kingdom) at his new capital Sana which was a continuation of the power politics in late antiquity between the Romans and the Persians with their allied states of Aksum and Ghassanids vs the Lakhmids and the now deposed Himyarites and similar embassies had been sent by the Romans to the Aksumite emperor Kaleb in 530 headed by Nonnosus, and the Akumites had also sent two embassies to Constantinople in 362, 532 and 550. Abraha ruled until 552 afterwhich he was succeeded by his sons Axum and Masruq until 570\-575 when the Aksumite control of Arabia was ended by a Persian invasion, the resurgent Persians proceeded to annex Egypt from the Byzantines in 619, all of which was a prelude to the Arab invasion of the eastern Mediterranean region and the fall of both Persia and Byzantine, the great Aksumite coastal city of Adulis was sacked by an invading Arab fleet in 641AD but the Arab army was defeated onland by the Aksumites, Adulis survived the attack but its importance as a transshipment port rapidly fell by the late 7th century coinciding with the rapid decline of the capital of Aksum forcing the retreat of Aksumite court into the Ethiopian interior and the gradual fall of the empire in the late first millennium. bas\-relief of Sumuyafa Ashwa from 530AD, Kaleb’s viceroy in southern Arabia --- Conclusion: the legacy of Aksum The extent of Aksum's global influence was preserved in accounts written by both its supporters and detractors, its commercial reach and dominance of the red sea region informed Mani's description of it as one of the global powers, its diplomatic, religious and commercial ties with Rome cemented its legacy as Rome's biggest ally. While its legacy in Muslim Arabia was split between the disdain for Abraha's invasion of the then pagan city of Mecca in 552 (which in Islamic tradition was postdated to around the time of Muhammad’s birth in 570\), but this negative memory was paired with the positive image of the Aksumite ruler’s protection of the nascent Muslim community which fled to Aksum in 613AD. Owing to its domination of the red sea littoral, Aksum was the second African power to play a significant role in global politics (after the 25th dynasty/empire of Kush), its wealth, monumental architecture, the Ge'ez script (used by over 100 million Ethiopians and Eritreans) and the establishment of one of the oldest Christian churches, are some of the most important Aksumite contributions to history: the legacy of one of the world’s greatest powers in late antiquity. Ruins and architectural elements at Aksum (photos from the Deutsche Aksum Expedition 1902\) --- if you liked this article, or you’d like to contribute to my African history website project; please donate to my paypal --- for more on African history including downloads of books on Aksum’s history, please subscribe to my Patreon account The indo roman pepper trade and the muzirirs papyrus by Fredericho de romanis pg 333 Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pgs 52\-53 How the Ethiopian Changed His Skin by D Selden pg 339\-340 Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 66\-68\) The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn of Africa by Rodolfo Fattovich pg 154\-157\) Relations between southern Arabia and the northern Horn of Africa during the last millennium BC by David W. Phillipson pg 260 Remarks on the preaksumite period of nothern ethiopia by R. fattovich pg 20\-24 Relations between southern Arabia and the northern Horn of Africa during the last millennium BC by David W. Phillipson pg 260\) The development of anfcient states in the Northern Horn of Africa by Rodolfo Fattovich pg 158\) Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 48, 49 Ethiopia: History, Culture and Challenges by Siegbert Uhlig et al Pg. 106 Beta Samati: discovery and excavation of an Aksumite town by Michael J. Harrower et al Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 139\-156\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 181\-193\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 54\-56\) l Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg pg 132\-136\), Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 69\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 73\-74\) Trade And Trade Routes In Ancient India By Moti Chandra pg 235 Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 72\-73\) (see George Hatke and G.W. Bowerstock’s books in this reference list) The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam By G.W. Bowersock pg 46 The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 112\) Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 75\-77\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 196\-201\) The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 115\-116, 127 Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 200\) The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 127\), The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 45\-47\) The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 61\) Cultural Interaction between Ancient Abyssinia and India by Dibishada B. Garnayak et al. pg 139\-140 The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy Power pg 84\-85\) Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pg 94 The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam by G.W. Bowersock pg 63\-71\) Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pg 67\-80 Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pg 64, 62\) Aksum and nubia by G. Hatke pg 95\-121, 135\) Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 82\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 187\-188\) The Red Sea region during the 'long' Late Antiquity by Timothy pg 115\-116\) Aksum, an african civilization of late antiquity by by S. C Munro\-Hay pg 221 The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam by G.W. Bowersock pg 97\-103\) The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam by G.W. Bowersock pg 104\-107\) Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 201\-202\) Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times By George F. Houran pg 54 The Ancient Red Sea Port of Adulis by Evan Peacock pg 133 12 )

The last king of Kano: Alwali II at the dawn of West Africa's age of revolution (1781–1807\) in The last king of Kano: Alwali II at the dawn of West Africa's age of revolution (1781–1807\) )The fall of Songhai to Morrocco in 1591 was succeeded by a over a century of political and social upheaval in west Africa, the Niger River Valley from Jenne to Timbuktu \- which comprised the old core of the medial empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai\- became a backwater while the previously peripheral regions in what was Songhai's southwest and south eastern flanks become the new centers of wealth and heartlands for the succeeding states. The Moroccan empire which briefly succeeded Songhai had effectively pulled out of the entire region after 1612 following its failure to pacify the region beyond the principal cities; effectively making 1591 an pyrrhic victory that "swallowed up both the conqueror and the conquered", a period of internecine warfare erupted across the region as the now\-independent provinces and periphery states sought to consolidate their power, culminating with the rise of the empire of Segu under Bitòn Coulibaly in 1712 (in what were formerly Songhai's south western provinces) and the re\-establishment of independent Hausa city\-states (in what were formerly Songhai's south\-eastern peripheries); a process that was completed by 1700AD. The principal Hausa city\-state during this time was Kano, the capital had a population of over 40,000 a vibrant handicraft industry in textiles and leatherworks, it controlled a territory about 60,000 sqkm large and engaged in extensive trade with west Africa and north Africa. Kano had been effectively independent by the end of the reign of its ruler (Sarki) Kisoke (r. 1509\-1565AD) who'd ended the tributary relationship it had with the empires of Kanem\-bornu and Songhai (plus its offshoot of Kanta). The city state controlled a bevy of towns such as Gaya, Rano, Karaye, Dutse and Gwaram, it had a heterogeneous population dominated by Muslim Hausa but with significant proportions of traditionalist Hausa (Maguzawa) as well as non\-Hausa minorities such as the Fulani, the Kanuri, the Wangara (Dyula), the Yoruba and seasonal traders from its north like the Turegs, maghrebian Berbers and Arabs. Kano was run by a quasi\-republican system of government in which power oscillated between the state council comprised mostly of non\-royal hereditary and appointed officials versus the King himself, the latter of whom was elected by four senior members of the state council and his powers over administration were restrained depending on the power of the sitting council members. painting of Kano from Mount Dala by H. Barth, 1857 Central to Dyula islam are the pedagogical traditions of Al Hajj Salim Suwari, a prominent scholar of Soninke origin living in the late 15th century and early 16th century who taught several notable west African scholars active in the Mali and Songhai empires, Salim belonged to a dominant school of thought among the Wangara that was concerned with principals guiding the interactions between Muslims and non Muslims. The central theme of these principles was an aversion towards armed conversion (eg through jihad) except in self\-defense, because unbelief was interpreted by this school as a product of ignorance rather than wickedness; that it was God's design for some people to remain unbelievers longer than others, and that Muslims may accept the authority of a non\-Muslim ruler if that ruler enables them to follow their religion. Suwari's school of thought was a product of the political realities of west Africa during this time, when traditionalist forces were powerful and Muslims constituted a small minority (albeit influential). it was carried by Wangara traders and scholars across west Africa but especially to the Hausalands where they comprised an influential merchant and scholarly class in the cities of Katsina and Kano, their Dyula Islam was urban based, associated largely with the elite and royal courts and supported by the long distance trade in gold of which the wangara were famous. One such immigrant was Abd al\-Rahman Zaghaite who arrived in the Kano in the late 15th century according to the Wangara chronicle. This “accommodative” Islam held sway over the more orthodox teachings especially those of the northafrican scholar al\-Maghili who had visited Kano and Katsina in the late 15th century and advocated for more radical reforms of the political and social systems of the state to be more in line with Islamic principles and insisted that the only association between Muslims and non\-coverts was jihad. This pluralist state of affairs lasted until the 18th century when a revolution swept across westafrica beginning with Nasir al\-Din's movement in the senegambia region who primarily directed it against the Hassaniya Arabs of southern Mauritania and also against the Senegambian African states the latter of whom he claimed offered little protection for their citizens from the former’s raids. The teachings of Nasir and his followers were relatively more in line with al\-Maghili's and in opposition to the predominant Dyula teaching in the region. The decades from 1770 to 1840 AD have been characterized by various world history scholars as the "age of revolutions", a historical construct used to highlight the period of rapid political and social transformation in western Europe and the Atlantic world. In Africa, this period was marked by the fall of several old states to the growing power of village\-based transhumant scholarly groups whose call for political reform directed against the elites of the Senegambia region was couched in the language of jihad, this begun with Nasir al\-Din in 1673 a Berber cleric who rallied a diverse group of followers from Wolof and Torodbe\-Fulani groups against intrusive nomadic Arab groups north of Senegal river and against the African rulers of the kingdoms south of the river, his movement was ephemeral but the scholarly groups associated with it spread it across the region founding the states of Futa Bundu in 1699, Futa Jalon in 1727, Futa Toro in 1769 and Sokoto in 1804, it was the latter that subsumed Kano which was at the time led by Sarki Alwali II (r. 1781\-1807\). As the first Hausa city\-state to fall to the revolution, Kano under the reign of Alwali has been the focus of studies on the revolution age in west Africa. This article looks at the social political organization of Alwali's Kano on the twilight of the 800\-year old Bagauda Dynasty. Kano cityscape in the early 20th century --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- State and society under Alwali II (r. 1781\-1807\) Political structure and governance in Kano The main authority in the Kano government lay with the Sarki (ruler) and the Kano state council (Tara ta Kano) comprised of nine senior officials; the Madaki, Sarkin Bai, Dan Iya Wambai, Makama, Galdima, Sarkin Dawaki and the Tsakar Gida, the first four were electors who appointed the successor on the death of the Sarki and their advice on official matters was not to be overuled by the Sarki, they were therefore the highest forum of the state and its final deliberative organ. The power of the council was counteracted by the Sarki through expanding his executive authority by creating offices of senior and powerful slave officials such as the Shamaki, Dan Rimi, Sarkin Dogarai, etc as well as elevating dynastic offices such as the Ciroma. While government power had been oscillating between both the Sarki and the council for centuries, the continuous expansion of executive powers created differing lines of communication and effectively centralized authority around the Sarki at the expense of the council, the pinnacle of this centralization was attained by Sarki Zaki (r. 1768\-1776\) and continued by his successors including Alwali II. Below this was a lattice of dozens of administrative offices with varying levels of seniority and authority, differentiated by various criteria such as; hereditary or appointed, royal or non royal, resident in the capital or outside the capital, military or civil, secular or religious. The most influential of these offices were the dynastic offices reserved for the ruler's kin such as the Ciroma (crown prince) and the fief holders (Hakimai) who were directly under the authority of the Sarki. The state had courts both at the capital and regional courts all of which were presided over by a judge (Alkali) and the appointed provincial judges (Alkalai), the law administered in Kano was a mixture of Hausa law (al'ada) and Muslim law, these judges (and rural chiefs) were also incharge of local prisons and police staff. Kano under Alwali II was an expanding polity, incorporating formerly independent chiefdoms as subordinate components, he is credited with subsuming the chiefdom of Birni Kudu, which was then added to the dozens of statelets that had long been conquered by Kano such as Rano, Gaya, Dutse, Karaye and Burumburum. Kano and its neighbors in 1780 The walls of kano Kano in the late 18th century was one of the most prosperous and largest cities in west africa, within the city's walls were about 40,000 people engaged in all kinds of crafts industries, farming and trading activities, the city\-state provided an attractive market for visiting merchants owing to its strategic position along the main trans\-west African and Transaharan caravan trade routes The caravan trade was closely regulated by Alwali' IIs government, first by securing the major routes within its territory through building fortified towns along these routes, garrisoning the perimeter against bands of Tuareg raiders, sinking wells, and encouraging settlements and small markets to provision caravans along the routes. On arrival, the caravan was met by the Sarkin Zago (an official incharge of supplies and accommodation), unloading their camels at the Kofar Ruwa gate and showing the guests to well\-built hostels where they would be housed (rent) during the course of their stay, the hostel owner also acted as their broker/trading agent who itemized their goods, change their currencies, buy provisions and was provided a minimum price above which he was allowed to retain the profit, while credit and warehousing services were provided by wealthy residents in the city. Initially, no tax was levied on these caravans and other itinerant traders by the government but they were expected to present a small gift to the king and senior officials. Kano's main market, the Kasuwan Kurmi, had been established by Sarki Rumfa in the 15th century, with most of the market officials remaining in place by Alwali II's time. Kano's primary trade items were its local manufactures, especially its signature textiles that were used both as clothing and as currency. Kano had by the 17th century established itself as one of the major cloth producers in west Africa supported by its vast cotton plantations in the state, its signature indigo\-dyed robes, veils, turbans and trousers being traded north to the Tuareg, east to Kanem\-Bornu, west to the Niger valley and the Senegambia region and south to Yoruba country. Strips of cloth of uniform size, weave and dye called turkudi served as secondary currencies (complementing gold dust, silver coinage and cowries) and were favored by merchants in the region The second most lucrative trade items were leatherworks such as footwear, armor, bags, book covers, beddings etc. The most important imports were salt from the Sahel (brough by Tuareg and Kanuri traders), Italian paper from Northafrica (brought by Berbers and Arab traders), kola from Asante (modern Ghana) as well as silk cloths and other manufactures. Kano had in the early 18th century been briefly supplanted as the Hausaland’s economic capital by Katsina (a neighboring Hausa city\-state to its north) because of the Kano state’s response to the cowrie inflation in the local market, ie: the high taxation used in an attempt to curb it, but selective immunity of influential traders from this taxation saw Kano recover its position under Sarki Yai II (r. 1753\-178\) and Sarki Zaki (r. 1768\-1776\) continuing into Alwali' II’s reign. Collection of state revenues was governed by both Hausa custom and Maliki\-Islam law and were thus derived from the following; inheritance taxes (such as 33% on deceased officials assets and10% of deceased private individuals' property), 20% of war booty, 10% on civil transitions that occurred through its court, 10% on cereal/grain harvests and mining products. The grain was collected by Hakimai and stored in large granaries under their care, it was mainly held as reserve against famine but was also used to supply the royal court since the Sarki was always informed of the amounts of grain collected and locations of the granaries where it was kept after every harvest. Alwali is recorded to have collected stores of sorghum and millet as reserves against war. --- Epilogue: Inflation, taxation, revolution and the fall of Kano Cowrie inflation imported into Kano In the early 18th century, a new route for importing cowries into Kano was opened through yoruba country that was coming directly from the Atlantic economy, unlike the relatively small amounts of cowries in Kano arriving from transaharan routes, these Atlantic cowries arrived in sufficient quantities; with more than 25 tonnes of cowries being brought into the neighboring Hausa city\-state of Gobir from the Nupe (in Yoruba country) between 1780\-1800 AD. This increase in cowrie circulation in the Hausalands was part of a wider phenomenon across west Africa as the 18th century that saw vast quantities of cowrie imported from european traders, these cowrie imports rose from an average volume of 90 tonnes annually in the decade between 1700\-1710; to 136 tonnes a year in 1711\-1720; to 233 tonnes in 1721\-1730 (with spikes as high as 323 tonnes in 1722, 306 tonnes in 1749\) the average annual imports of cowrie then gradually fell in the 1760s to 61 tonnes but resumed to 136 tonnes a year in the 1780s, The supply of currency in west Africa during the 18th century was thus exceptionally high both along the coast and in the interior as evidenced by the fact that just one Hausa city (Gobir) could absorb nerly 2% of west africa's annual currency supply, and this doesn’t include the cowries arriving from the transahran routes and the influx of Maria Theresa Thaler coinage in the 1780s. West African states faced a new challenge of inflation to which they responded with what by then considered to be unorthodox taxation policies. (this inflation and taxation is best documented in the “chronicle of Timbuktu” written by a resident scholar; Mawlāy Sulaymān in 1815\) Cash taxation in response to the inflation These increased volumes of cowrie currency without corresponding increases in production of tradable goods triggered an inflation in Kano beginning with Sarki Sharefa's reign (r. 1703\-1731\) who tried to curb the cowrie inflation by introducing; monthly taxation paid in cash (ie cowrie) at Kano's Kurmi market (as opposed to the usual annual tax paid mostly in kind); a cash tax on iterant Tuareg and Arab traders (from whom none was previously demanded); a cash tax on family heads in Kano state (in lieu of grain tribute) and a cash tax on transhumant pastoralists such as the Fulani called jangali (replacing the usual livestock tithe). Opposition to these taxes must have been bitter as the Kano chronicle says of Sarki Sharefa that "he introduced certain practices in Kano all of which were robbery", despite this, the taxation was mostly continued by successive Sarkis with varying decrees of intensity; with taxes increasing under Sarki Kumbari (r. 1731\-1743\) and briefly reducing under Sarki Yaji II (r. 1753\-1768\) but only for iterant traders \-thus attracting them back to Kano\- while maintaining the taxes for the rest of the population, Yaji II’s taxation policy was continued under Alwali II’s reign. Reaction by Kano’s citizens to these taxes Response to these new taxes was varied; the itinerant Tuareg and Arab traders left for Katsina during Sarki Sharefa's reign but returned when their taxes were removed during Sarki Yaji II's reign, but the heaviest burden of this cash tax fell on the Maguzawa (non\-muslim Hausa groups) who paid 3,000 cowries per family head vs 500 cowries for Muslim Hausa family heads, it was especially heavy for the Maguzawa who had peripheral relations with the economy and couldn't procure the shells easily, but these groups had little avenue for protest so their only recourse was to form larger families (thus reducing the number of taxable family heads), as for the response of the Muslim Hausa within the Kano city itself the Kano chronicle mentions that “most of the poorer people in the town fled to the country”. The tax was also relatively heavy on transhumant pastoralist groups particularly the non\-sedentary Fulani (as opposed to the sedentary Fulani who had were already citizens of the state). During the dry season, these pastoralists crisscross the Sahel and savanna looking for good grazing lands as well as a market for their dairy products; moving back and forth following the monthly shifts of the rainy seasons. These pastoralists presented an administrative challenge for the (sedentary\-based) Hausa city\-states as the former were ill formed about local state laws and taxes, while most of these pastoralists were Fulani, the state response to them was unlike the resident Fulani who were part of the local scholarly class (ulama) or were sedentary agro\-pastoralists that had for long been familiar with state laws and even had administrative positions in the Kano government such as the Sarkin Fulani, Ja’idanawa and Dokaji. The jangali tax on these pastoralists was intended to force them to avoid Kano altogether or to settle permanently and join the resident Fulani community. But for this jangali tax to be successful it required a clearer level of communication between the government and these seasonal populations, but these communications had since been constrained by centralization. As Nasir’s revolution was growing the Torodbe Fulani (who were sedentary Fulani of diverse origin but spoke fulfude and thus assumed Fulani identity) had established themselves as an prominent group among the diverse scholarly class (ulama) of the senegambia region, it was from these (as well as a few other groups such as the Wolof) that Nasir al\-Din heavily recruited in his 1673\-1674 movement. While Nasir’ movement was ultimately unsuccessful, the Torodbe would reignite their movement in 1776 by overthrowing the Mandinka\-led Denanke state of great Fulo and establishing the imamate of Futa Toro. Between Nasir's failed movement in 1674 and the 1776 establishment of Futa toro, the Torodbe migrated from the senegambia to the Hausalands, Muhammad Bello (a scholar and later, sultan of Sokoto) attributed this migration to the wars between the Torodbe and the Tukolor (a Fulani group native to the senegambia and related to but distinct from the Torodbe, Wolof and the Serer). In the Hausalands, the Torodbe became part of the local Ulama (alongside the already established Wangara, Kanuri and Hausa scholars) but were largely village\-based thus becoming distanced from the the urban\-based Ulama and instead associating more with the peasants and pastoralist Fulani, therefore articulating the peasant's grievances better. These grievances came at a time when Hausa governments such as Alwali II's were faced with the challenge of inflation, added to this was the increasing centralization of authority under the Sarkis that had been accomplished by the early 18th century at the expense of constrained communication with the lower levels of society. It was these political and economic conditions that created a situation ripe for a revolution movement, therefore when the Torodbe cleric Uthman Fodio made a call for reform he found ready support. He called for reform, ostensibly against what he claimed were "oppressive" Hausa rulers who "devoured people’s wealth" through taxes (especially the Jangali tax against which he protested vehemently), he claimed that they were opulent, and supposedly practiced a hybridized form of Islam. He recruited his followers mainly from the pastoral Fulani and despite initially failing to take the Hausa city of Gobir in 1804, he succeeded in spreading his movement through letters and writings first to the Sarkis and then to the Ulamas of other city\-states. Most of the Sarkis ideologically agreed with some of his reforms but were against his movement, Alwali II reportedly wanted to write to Uthman, accepting his reforms but was advised against it by his Ciroma named Dan Mama, the latter instead accepted the movement of Uthman in secret and offered to support him overthrow Alwali II who knew nothing of this treachery. Dan Mama's father had been appointed Ciroma under Yaji II's reign (1753\-1768\) as regent to secure the latter's son's election to the throne over the sons of his predecssor’s line, while Yaji II was successful in his goal (since his sons; Zaki, Dawuda and Alwali II himself suceded to the throne), it was at the expense of investing unusual powers in the Ciroma as regent (such as substantial fief holdings that allowed him to raise cavalry units and accumulate wealth to influence the council) so when Alwali II named his one week old infant as Ciroma, and officially dismissed Dan Mama (only retaining him as the regent), the latter was deeply estranged and threw his lot to the first invaders to appear at Kano's gates: Uthman's movement. The Dan Mama would later be rewarded by by Uthman's government who retained him in his lofty office after the overthrow of Alwali II. Uthman's movement mobilized followers by writing letters to the Ulama who'd then recruit locally and appoint a leader for their local movement then travel to receive a flag from Uthman; symbolically assuming his as their leader (caliph). In Kano, the Ulama sent for a flag although they didn’t appoint a leader, but the group coalesced enough to battle with Alwali II and successfully defeat two skirmishes sent by him at Kwazzazabo in 1806\. After negotiations between Alwali II and Uthman fell apart, battle lines were drawn at Kogo, Alwali II's force was routed and armor was captured, Uthman’s followers then took the town of Karaye and continued advancing towards Kano, losing some forces in an engagement with the armies of Alwali II’s tuareg ally named Tambari, but continued to steadily approach the city of Kano itself. Alwali II met them outside its walls, by then, the Dan Mama (and a few other officials such as the Sarkin Fulani) openly dissented and switched to the invading force supporting it with their own forces (although Dan Mama himself remained in Alwali II’s camp). Alwali II then sent appeals to the Bornu empire but they weren't forthcoming because Uthman had organized his followers in Bornu to block any assistance coming from there, something that they succeeded in doing by blocking the Bornu vizier's troops and threatening Bornu itself. Alwali II therefore turned to other Hausa cities; Katsina and Daura who assembled force to join him, Alwali II thus met Uthman's followers for a pitched battle at Danyaya, the latter had combined all his followers to face Alwali II and after a 3\-day battle, they defeated Alwali II’s army, and his allies, all of whom went back to their cities. Alwali II would later face his last battle at the fortified town of Burumburum, Uthman's followers besieged it and managed to breach it after several weeks and in the ensuing battle, Alwali II fell; marking the end of one of the world's longest reigning dynasties. After this battle, Kano was subsumed in Uthman's Sokoto empire along with other Hausa city\-states, their deposed dynasties founded powerful splinter states such as Damagaram, Maradi and Abuja. As for the idealized revolutionary government; the Sokoto empire retained many of the "vices" Uthman had charged the Hausa states of perpetuating and expanded some of them, the jangali tax remained, the market taxes remained, the abhorred taxes on the Ulama remained and the opulent palaces of Hausa Sarkis were maintained. Just like the Genevan journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan observed about the French revolution; Uthman’s movement eventually "devoured its own children" gradually at first in the succession disputes of the 1860s and then rapidly in the internecine civil wars that raged in the 1890s. In the end, all states formed during the revolution movement both in support and in opposition to it were but players in the rapidly evolving global economic and political order that culminated in their colonization by Britain in 1904 and ended with the independent state of Nigeria in 1960\. Sokoto empire in 1850 --- Conclusion Kano under Alwali II was a Hausa city\-state per excellence, a virtually independent kingdom free from the imperial overreach of Kanem\-Bornu empire (the preeminent west African power of the time), and able to exert its influence as far as Timbuktu, but Kano under Alwali II was only one of many states in a political order that had been prevailing in west Africa since the early second millennium, an order characterized with the conscious acculturation into the dominant West African political and religious order that involved a delicate synthesis of traditional customs and Islam, but one that increasingly favored the latter when articulating and legitimizing power. This complex equilibrium was supported by an elaborate economic system which furnished the state with revenue in tribute rather than in cash, and mobilized armies from territorial fief holders rather than maintaining them permanently. This entire political and economic system was threatened once new forms of articulating and legitimizing power were propagated, and once the rapidly evolving global economic order washed shiploads of cowrie currency onto the west African littoral and into the interior, as Toby Green observed, powerful fiscal\-military states equipped with relatively modern firepower and robust taxation systems such as Dahomey and Asante did not fall to the revolution sweeping west Africa, (Asante and Dahomey in fact expanded northwards, absorbing Muslim states in their path), while states where such fiscal\- military systems were embryonic (like Kano under Alwali II) or nonexistent (like Segu), fell to the revolution movement. Some of the revolution states were themselves inturn absorbed by other reform movements once they failed to implement these fiscal\-military systems; such was the fate of the Massina empire which fell to Umar Tal's Tukulor empire whose standing armies were equipped with modern rifles. Alwali II was therefore a leader faced with a complex interplay of economic and political phenomena most of which was beyond his control, while discourses on west Africa's revolutions has given outsized credit to the cleavages of ethnicity and new sects of Islam, and have gone on to anachronistically extrapolate them into modern conflicts couched within the same theories of ethnicity and religion, few have examined the revolutions in 18th century west Africa from political and economic angle which would offer a far more accurate assessment of circumstances that led to their success. Far from myopically placing blame on villains and lauding heroes, this observation of Kano under Alwali II presents a balanced portrait of a west African ruler in the midst of a happenstance driven process of revolution, such a nuanced perspective of political paradigms should guide our interpretations of modern African political movements, the entrenched leaders they seek to replace and provide an assessment of the political order that these movements establish once in power. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- for free downloads of books on Huasa history and more on African history , please subscribe to my Patreon account The man who would become caliph by S Cory, pg 197 Government in Kano by M. G. Smith, pg 141 M. G. Smith, pgs 48\-49 A Reconsideration of Hausa History before the Jihad by Finn Fuglestad pg 326\-339 M. G. Smith. pg 116\-117 M. G. Smith. pg 145 M. G. Smith. pg120 M. G. Smith, pg 159\) M. G. Smith, pg 161 The history of islam in africa by Nehemia levtzion, pg 97\-98 Nehemia levtzion, pg 73\) chapter: “the origins of Jihad in west Africa” in : West Africa During the Age of Revolutions by Paul Lovejoy M. G. Smith pg 48, 49 M. G. Smith pg 170\-172 M. G. Smith, pg 73\-78 M. G. Smith pg66 M. G. Smith, pg 26\-27, 34\) M. G. Smith pg69 sub\-chapter: “The experience of state power: the example of kano” in: A fistful of shells by Toby Green M. G. Smith pg 41\-42 M. G. Smith pg 61\-63 M. G. Smith 51, 53 The shell money of the slave trade by J. S. Hogendorn, pg 104\-105 J. S. Hogendorn, pg 58\-62 M. G. Smith, pg 55\-61 M. G. Smith pg 61\-63 M. G. Smith pg 59 M. G. Smith pg 57 Nehemia levtzion pg 77,78 Nehemia levtzion pg83, 85 M. G. Smith pg 55 M. G. Smith pg 188, 171\-173\) Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria By Roman Loimeier, pg 12 sub\-chapter: “conclusion: reforming the system or reproducing it” in: A fistful of shells by Toby Green 5 )

Cloth in African history: the manufacture, patterning and embroidering of Africa's signature textiles in Cloth in African history: the manufacture, patterning and embroidering of Africa's signature textiles An overview of textiles from sub\-Saharan Africa )Textiles are one of humankind's most essential commodities. Throughout history individuals and social groups have used clothing to enhance their social position and identity, set social boundaries, as currency and a variety of utilitarian purposes. In Africa, conspicuous displays of expensive cloth was a fine\-grained way of displaying wealth, this included both locally made luxurious cloth and imported cloth, such displays were made in both public and private settings; on festivals and burials where redistribution, gift giving, bride price and burial shrouds involved countless meters of finely made cloth, in homes where wall hangings, carpets, blankets and other attire of excellent manufacture were prominently displayed in a custom that was common across many parts of Africa. Delicately woven, dyed and patterned strips of cloth served as currencies in the majority of African societies, spreading designs and techniques of cloth manufacture across regions and making textile production and trade a mainstay of African industry and commerce; weavers, dyers and embroiderers, textile merchants were some of the most ubiquitous professions across the continent and the cloth artworks that they propagated were (and still are) a defining feature of African aesthetics. The manipulation of plant and animal fibers into apparel constituted a major human revolution; African weavers processed flax palm, reeds, papyrus, tree barks, sheep fleece, camel hair and cotton to make tunics, robes, head warps, skirts, cloaks, trousers, blankets. African Cloth industries are attested possibly as early as the Khartoum Neolithic in Sudan with the discovery of spindle whorls dated to the 5th millennium and the cotton plant species 'Gossypium herbaceum’ has since been proven to be native to Africa While our knowledge of cloth in Africa is limited by the few studies on its development and the poor preservation of plant fibers in tropical climates (especially in the subequatorial regions), what is known is that woolen textiles from sheep wool and camel wool, and plant fibers such as flax\-linen, raffia and barkcloth were fairly widespread across much of the entire continent before the spread of African cotton (and later Indian cotton) starting in the late first millennium BC. There have been a few notable early discoveries of such cotton textiles eg from nubia dated to the 1st century BC, cotton textiles from Aksum dated to the 4th to 7th century, cotton textiles from iwelen in Niger dated to the 9th century and from Bandiagara region of Mali in 11th century, on the east African coast by the 11th century, and igombe ilede’s cotton textiles in southern Africa dated to the 14th century. Depictions of textiles in Africa are fortunately, much older such as the linen and leather cloths of the Kerma kingdom from the 3rd millennium BC, body\-wraps clinched on the waist, from the Nok neolithic from the late first millennium BC, as well as a number of sculptural and painted depictions of textiles from across the continent. Textural evidence for cloth in Africa comes much later; concerning cotton cloth, one of the earliest mentions of cotton cultivation in Africa was about the cotton trees grown in kingdom of Kush and is taken from Pliny's natural history, similar cotton cultivation is mentioned in Aksum on the ezana stela from the 4th century , In the 11th century, al\-bakri (d. 1094\) wrote that the people of the Ghana empire wore cotton silk and brocade, that domestic cloth weavers and supplying large cities with woven products and that in the kingdom of Takrur, cloths of finely woven cotton served as currency, References to extensive cloth making industries in Africa became more common from the mid second millennium, by which time many of Africa's signature fabrics and designs, weaver’s looms, dye\-pits, and trade routes were in place, the list of which is includes dozens of unique cultural textiles such as the Bògòlanfini, Uldebe, Boubou and Riga from western africa, the kemis and gabi from horn of Africa, the Adire, Akwete, Benin, Ijebu and Kente cloths from coastal west africa, the libongo, kuba and loango cloths from west central Africa, the Seketa and Machira cloths of southern and eastern Africa, etc African textile manufacture and aesthetics was dynamic involving innovations in its designs and patterns, the various forms of apparel and changes in fashion were dictated by local factors such as; discoveries of different forms of looms, patterning styles, dyes and forms of embroidery, and external influences such as; imports of yarn and silk whose threads were incorporated into locally made cloths. Africa’s textile industry declined by the mid\-20th century not as much because of competition from cheap factory imports but because of the shifts in labor supply ; Africa's major textile producing regions also tended to be significant importers of cloth, but drastic changes in labor supply during the colonial and post\-independence era (as workers moved to other sectors) constrained the ability of this traditionally labor intensive handicraft industry to attract new workers or maintain the required amount of labor. Fortunately, the increasing demand for both hand\-woven and factory made African textiles has led to a resurgence in production of Africa’s cultural textiles This article explores the history of cloth making and textile designs across the continent in four regions of Sudan and the horn of Africa; west Africa; west\-central Africa and eastern and southern Africa mostly focusing on the types of apparel, the methods of manufacture and the different designs. --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Cloth history in Sudan and the horn of Africa Home to some of Africa's oldest states, this region is also the place with some of the earliest attested African textiles. Restricting our observation to the post\-neolithic era; the A\-Group, C\-group and Kerma kingdom Nubians living in the 4th/3rd millennium BC wore dyed linen loincloths and skirts (similar to Egyptian loincloths) and a leather caps (that would later became a staple Nubian wardrobe), during the Kushite era (800BC\-300AD) this attire was then complemented with a shoulder\-fastened wrap\-over (similar to a coat) and a sash tied around the right shoulder (similar to a shawl) both of which were elaborated embroidered.Aksumites wore linen loincloths, as well as cloak and embroidered tunic shirts, while medieval Ethiopians wore shirts, tunics, cloaks all of which could be loose or tight fitting and buttoned, white or vibrantly colored, plain or embroidered as well as full\-length cotton skirts for women, other attire included headwraps or turbans, stockings and a netela scarf for women, in Somalia common apparel included wrapped clothing such as tunics, cloaks and turbans or leather caps for men and a full length dress for women, most of these clothes were bleached, some were dyed and embroidered In ancient Nubia, cloth was weaved using warp\-weighed looms and it was done from the top downwards producing thick cotton cloth and woolen cloth as well, medieval weavers in Sudan would later use in pit treadle looms. In Ethiopia and Somalia, weaving was done over pit\-treadle looms; a weaver sat on the edge of the pit above which the loom is mounted and in which he operates the treadles with his feet, in the Benadir region of Somalia, spinning wheels were also employed to speed up the production of yarn, as many as 1,000 weaving households in Mogadishu were employed in the 1840s and as much as 360,000 pieces of cloth that were sent into the interior annually in the mid 19th century. Dyeing in Nubia was done using indigo, weld and madder to achieve blue and red shades, and embroidery threads often used dyed yarn. Ethiopian and Somali weavers attimes unwrapped imported silk threads and incorporated them into local clothing to create colorful embroidery typically applied on the corners of the cloth using several kinds of foliate and floral motifs in various colors the most striking of which were gold, yellow, and red. 11 century painting of Bishop marianos of Faras from the kingdom of Makuria wearing typical ecclesiastical garb of Nubia, embroidered silk cotton dress of Queen Woyzaro Terunesh of ethiopia made in 1860s (now at V\&A museum) --- Cloth history in eastern and southern Africa In south\-eastern Africa, locally woven cotton cloths were made into blankets, cloaks, hammocks, robes and body\-wraps clichéd on the waist, along the east African coast, cloth was widely manufactured in many of the coastal city states such as Kilwa, Pate, Sofala and the Kirimba islands into various forms of attire such as wide sleeved robes, full length dresses, ankle length silk cloaks that were wrapped over their shoulders and a head wrap of a turban, in the east African interior both cotton and other plant fibers and barks were woven into fine clothing; most notably cotton in much of central Tanzania at Ufipa and Nyamwezi, and Malawi in the lower shire region, and in the African great lakes region, finely made barkcloth was fashioned into robes, cloaks and beddings the biggest makers of these textiles were the in Buganda and Karagwe kingdoms Weaving was done using the the fixed\-heddle horizontal ground loom in most parts of eastern and southern Africa often for weaving wider cloths, and the pit loom was later used in northern Kenya, production of cloth in this region was substantial, most of the cloths made in the Swahili cities were sold into the interior, in Mutapa, strips of locally made cloths also served as currency while in the great lakes region, Buganda and Karagwe barkcloth was sold across the region, by the late 19th century, the Zanzibar cloth makers had come to dominate the east African market selling over 614,000 meters of cloth a year into the interior during the mid 19th century most of which was reworked cloth that it had imported. Cloths in eastern and southern africa were dyed using indigo especially near Kirimba islands which where the main source of indigo dyed cloths on the swahili coast and the Kirimba’s local Milwani cloth was often dyed blue, Zanzibari weavers are known to have added fashionable borders of embroidery using silks and dyed cotton threads by the early 19th century into the Zanzibari cloth and imported merikani cloth, these patterns would later be mimicked by Dutch and British producers in the early 20th century in the manufacture of the now\-ubiquitous kanga. Swahili men from Lamu, Kenya (photo from 1884\), Swahili woman from Zanzibar, Tanzania (photo taken before 1900\) --- Cloth history in west Africa In the central and western Sudan (a belt of land stretching from northern Nigeria to Senegal) cotton cloths were made into trousers, gowns, dresses, cloaks, turbans, blankets, shirts, and caps this was done in a variety of places but the major production centers were in the inland Niger delta (central Mali) and the Hausalands (northern Nigeria), the same articles of clothing such as shirts, trousers, headwraps, blankets were made in coastal west Africa but with a stronger emphasis on robes and body\-wraps either clinched to the waist or on the shoulder. West African weavers employed a wide variety of looms the most common were narrow band treadle looms which speed up pattern weaving through the use a harnesses suspended from a pulley and foot pedals to manipulate warp threads, both vertical and horizontal looms were also used to produce larger cloths as well, Manufacture of textiles in west African cities and regions was substantial, as Heinrih Barth estimated that the city of Kano alone exported over £40,000 worth of cloth annually in the 1850s (about £5,000,000 today) and Kano was one of many cloth producing cities in northern Nigeria, while Benin kingdom exported more than 120,000 meters of cloth to Dutch and English traders in 1644\-1646 which was a fraction of its internal trade, explorers in the 19th century observed that thousands of tailors, dyers and embroiderers were employed in the manufacture of cloth during In the Hausalands, in south\-eastern Nigeria, in the Senegambia and in central Mali. Dyeing was primarily done using natively domesticated indigo which was the favorite medium for resist dyeing in south\-eastern Nigeria and the Hausalands, while a wide range of plant and mineral colors such as hibiscus and camwood were used for obtaining red patterns , the Bambara weavers of Mali dyed using fermented mud and plant extracts to achieve a deep brown color with yellow and black accents Patterning in west African cloth was achieved by stitching strips of cloth, stamping, drawing and painting designs on its surface using dyes or paints made from organic materials, while embroidering was worked in stiches using colored yarn and imported silk or wool than was unwrapped; a variety of geometric, floral designs were attained using interlacing chain stiches as well as straight stiches depending on the skill of the embroiderer, in Dahomey and among the yoruba, such embroiderers added lively scenes such as animal hunts, battle scenes and other depictions cross section of west african tunics from; the Mande of mali (19th century, at quaibranly), the Tellem of Mali (17th century at Ulm museum), the Hausa of Nigeria (19th century at british museum), the Fon of Dahomey, Benin (19th century at quai branly) --- Cloth history in west central Africa In west central Africa, weavers used the fiber of raffia to make wall hangings, blankets, carpets, ankle\-length skirts, full length body\-wraps, burial shrouds and tents, the “great textile belt” in west central Africa included kingdoms such as Kongo, Loango, Kuba, Luba, and the ‘seven kingdoms’. Production was done using both vertical and ground looms for making narrow strips and wide cloths although some cloths were also made without the use of the loom and the size of the cloth was determined by the lengths of the fibers, "units" of larger pieces of cloth were often made by stitching together smaller square pieces of cloth using rafia threads. West\-central African weavers used very tight weaves to make the cloths attain a soft texture and the process of making them required a high level of skill, thus making the quality of such textiles high, this can be collaborated based on observations of travelers, traders and missionaries in the region during the 16th to 18th centuries who compared it to velvet or “velvetized satin” and favorably drew parallels to their own best manufactures, they collected many of these cloths and set them back to Europe inadvertently preserving some of the oldest textiles from this region (as none are found in archeological contexts). Production capacity of west central African cloth manufacturers was high, the eastern Kongo region of Momboares produced about 400,000 meters of cloth a year in the 17th century (this was a region with just 3\.5 people per sqkm and a population of 250,000\) the Momboares was one of several centers in the great textile belt of west\-central Africa that stretched from the northwestern coast of Angola to the Tanzania/DRC border and including such famed cloth producers as the Kuba and Luba, The production capacity of this region compares favorably with contemporaneous cloth producers such as leiden in eastern Holland that were making 100,000 meters of cloth a year. Cloth in west central Africa was dyed using a number of organic mediums and mineral sources such as redwood, chalk, charcoal and select types of clay to archive various colors such as red, yellow, blue and enhance their characteristic deep\-gold of the raffia, dyeing was added to the thread before it was woven and could as well be added after the cloth was made, this latter process was also featured in embroidering which involved dyeing, detailed needlework and clipping of individual tufts applying geometric and interlacing patterns and motifs. Kongo cushion cover (inventoried 1737 at Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen), Kuba embroidered prestige panels from the 19th\-20th century (at detroit institute of arts, met museum) --- Conclusion: On the gradual decline of Africa’s cloth production and its recent upsurge Cloth is arguably africa’s most resilient aesthetic tradition, African textiles were a pivotal form of individual and cultural identity and their designs, motifs and artworks are a vivid illustration of historical chapters of the African past. African patrons consistently favored a cosmopolitan spectrum of textiles with aesthetics derived from a wide range of sources; this was attested for example, in west central Africa where royals and elites accumulated great hoards of cloth from all over the world as part of a regional tradition of using large burial shrouds, Queen Njinga for example, had a cloth hoard in 1663 that included Dutch, Asian, Kongo, Loango and Yoruba cloths. Cloth was also hoarded in the gold coast region as a marker of wealth and frequent changes of expensive cloth bought from as far as the Huasalands and central Mali as a way of conspicuous consumption. These extravagant purchases, displays and uses of textiles were also observed in northern Nigeria, in Ethiopia, in Zanzibar, in south eastern Africa and it was this appreciation for diverse fashions that defined African cloth manufacturing and consumption. Discourses of Africa’s cloth history especially those that focus of africa’s propensity to import textiles are based on facile models of economic behavior in which it’s assumed that cloth was imported because it wasn’t made locally or the imports were of high quality, yet the evidence shows Africa’s biggest cloth producers were also the biggest importers, rather than displace the domestic textile industry, imports complemented it not only by stimulating demand for cloth products and increasing the supply of yarn but encouraging related crafts of dyeing and embroidering, and far from being high quality, early factory made cloth was mass produced and of very poor quality; estimates of textile production and consumption also record a marked uptick in both across Africa in the mid 19th century that continued into the early 20th century. The twilight of Africa’s cloth manufacture was instead heralded by the shifts in its labor institutions beginning in the early 20th century particularly the interactions between African workers, producers and consumers as African producers chose to allocate labor where the most profit could be accrued based on local conditions and global trading opportunities. The recent upsurge in production of African cultural textiles is also dictated by the same dynamic; increasing domestic and foreign demand that can afford to pay the wages required for specialist tailors of African designs whose products are relatively pricey because of the cultural value attached to them and the methods of production. The recent renaissance of African textile production is characterized by highly personalized artworks which draw upon reservoirs of classical traditions, the visual language of African textile tradition preserve a rich legacy of Africa’s cultural history --- for more on African history, please subscribe to my Patreon account Archaeogenomic Evidence of Punctuated Genome Evolution in Gossypium by Sarah palmer Cotton in ancient Sudan and Nubia by E. Yvanez and M. M. Wozniak, pg4 Foundations of an African civilisation by D. W Phillipson, pg 179 The early history of weaving in west africa by Sonja Magnavita, pgs 191\-193 The Swahili world by Stephanie Wynne\-Jones, p327 Cotton weaving in South\-east Africa by P Davison, pg 175 daily life of nubians by R. S. Bianchi, pg 97 Cloth in west african history by Colleen E. Kriger, pg 71 Studien Zum Antiken Sudan by Steffen Wenig, pg 299 D. W Phillipson, pg 200 Colleen E. Kriger, pg 74 R. S. Bianchi, pg 44, 97 The kingdom of kush by L. Torok, pg 438 D. W Phillipson pg 200, A Late Antique Christian king from Ẓafār pg 6 history of ethiopia 1622 by pedro paez, pg 204\-205 The politics of dress in Somali Culture by H. M. Akou pg 36,37 Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non\-Western Cultures by Helaine Selin pg 241 textiles of africa by D. Idiens pg 23 Africa's development in historical perspective by N. Nunn, pg 271, 267 Indigo in the Arab World By Jenny Balfour\-Paul pg 119 Economic History of Ethiopia by R. Pankhurst, pg 260 D. Idiens, pg 187 As Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain by J. G. Prestholdt pgs 30\-35 Twilight of an Industry in East Africa by K. Frederick, pg 37, 167 Political power precolonial buganda by R. J. Reid pg 72\-75\) N. Nunn, pg 272 K. Frederick pg 141 J. G. Prestholdt, pg 21,22 K. Frederick, pg 73 Colleen E. Kriger, pg 96\-99 Colleen E. Kriger, pg 37 Colleen E. Kriger, pg 70\-77\) Benin and the Europeans by A. F. C. Ryder, pg 93 D. Idiens, pg 15\) Sahel art and empires by Alisa LaGamma, pg 241 The Essential Art of African Textiles by Alisa LaGamma pg 33\-34 A history of west\-central africa by J.K.Thornton pg 12 Precolonial African industry and the Atlantic trade by J. Thornton pg 11\-14 Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast by PM Martin pg2 K. Frederick, pg 10\-20 11 )

A 19th century African philosopher: the biography and philosophical writings of Abd Al\-Qadir Ibn Al\-Mustafa (Dan Tafa) in A 19th century African philosopher: the biography and philosophical writings of Abd Al\-Qadir Ibn Al\-Mustafa (Dan Tafa) including the three philosophical works attributed to him )On Philosophy in Africa Philosophy is simply defined as "the love of wisdom" and like all regions, Africa has been (and still is) home to various intellectual traditions and discourses of philosophy. Following Africa's “triple heritage”; some of these philosophical traditions were autochthonous, others were a hybrid of Islamic/Christian and African philosophies and the rest are Europhone philosophies While the majority of African philosophical traditions from the first category (such as Ifa) were not transcribed into writing before the modern era, the second category of African philosophical traditions (such as Ethiopian philosophy and Sokoto philosophy) were preserved in both written and oral form, and among the written African Philosophies, the most notable works are of the 17th century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob, eg the 'Hatata' and the works of Sokoto philosopher Abd Al\-Qādir Ibn Al\-Mustafa (Dan Tafa) the latter of whom is the subject of this article --- Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all: --- Biography of Dan Tafa: west Africa during the Age of revolution West Africa at the time of Dan Tafa birth was in the midst of a political revolution led by highly learned groups of scholars that overthrew the older established military and religious elites, leading to the foundation of the empires of Sokoto in 1806 led by Uthman dan Fodio and the empire of Hamdallayi in 1818 led by Amhad Lobbo, among other similar states. Birth and Education Dan Tafa was born in 1804, during the migration of Uthman Dan Fodio's followers which preceded the establishment of the Sokoto empire, he was born to Mallam Tafa and Khadija, both of whom were scholars in their own right. Mallam Tafa was the advisor, librarian and the 'leader of the scribes' (kuutab) in Uthman's Fodiyawa clan (an extended family of scholars that was central in the formation of the Sokoto empire) and he later became the secretary (kaatib) of the Sokoto empire after having achieved high education in Islamic sciences, he also established a school in Salame ( a town north of Sokoto; the eponymously named capital city of the empire, which is now in northern Nigeria) where he settled, the school was later run by his son Dan Tafa. Khadija was also a highly educated scholar, she wrote more than six works in her Fulfulde language on a wide of subjects including eschatology and was the chief teacher of women in the Fodiyawa her most notable student being Nana Asmau; the celebrated 19th century poetess and historian Dan Tafa’s Studies Dan Tafa studied and wrote about a wide range of disciplines as he wrote in his ‘Shukr al\-Wahib fi\-ma Khassana min al\-'ulum’ (Showing Gratitude to the Benefactor for the Divine Overflowing Given to Those He Favors) in which he divides his studies into 6 sections, listing the sciences which he mastered such as the natural sciences that included; medicine (tibb), physiognomy (hai'at), arithmetic (hisaab), and astronomy (hikmat 'l\-nujuum), the sciences of linguistics (lughat), verbal conjugation (tasrif), grammar (nahwa), rhetoric (bayaan), and various esoteric and gnostic sciences the list of which continues, plus the science of Sufism (tasawwuf). It was in the latter discipline that he was introduced to Falsafa (philosophy) under his main tutor Muhammad Sanbu (his maternal uncle), about who he writes: "As for Shaykh Muḥammad Sanbu, I took from him the path of Taṣawwuf, and transmitted from him some of the books of the Folk (the Sufis) as well as their wisdom, after he had taken this from his father, Shaykh ‘Uthmān; like the Ḥikam (of Ibn ‘Aṭā’ Allāh al\-Iskandarī), and the Insān al\-Kāmil (of ‘Abd al\-Karīm al\-Jīlī), and others as well as the states of the spiritual path." In summary, "Dan Tafa was raised in the extraordinary milieu of the founding and early years of the Sokoto Caliphate exposed to virtually all of the Islamic sciences transmitted in West Africa at the time, from medicine, mathematics, astronomy, geography, and history, jurisprudence, to logic, philosophy, Sufism". Folio from the ‘Shukr al\-Wahib fi\-ma Khassana min al\-'ulum’ from a private collection in Maiurno, Sudan --- --- Dan Tafa’s writings Dan Tafa wrote on a wide range of subjects and at least 72 of his works are listed in John Hunwick's “Arabic Literature of Africa vol.2” catalogue (from pgs 222\-230\) .His most notable works are on history, for which he is best remembered, especially the ‘Rawdat al\-afkar’ (The Sweet Meadows of Contemplation) written in 1824 and the ‘Mawsufat al\-sudan’ (Description of the black lands) written in 1864; both of which include a fairly detailed account on the history of west Africa, he also wrote works on geography such as the ‘Qataif al\-jinan’ (The Fruits of the Heart in Reflection about the Sudanese Earth (world)" which included a very detailed account of the topography, states, history and culture of west Africa and the Maghreb, and even more notably, he wrote ‘Jawāb min 'Abd al\-Qādir al\-Turudi ilā Nūh b. al\-Tâhir’ (Abd al\-Qādir al\-Turūdī's response to Nüh b. alTāhir); a meticulous refutation of the Risāla of Nuh Al\-Tahir, in which the latter, who is described as "the doppelgänger of Dan Tafa in the Ḥamdallāhi empire", was trying to legitimize the status of Ḥamdallāhi’s ruler Ahmad Lobbo, as the prophesied "12th caliph" by heavily altering the Tārīkh al\-fattāsh; a famous 17th century Timbuktu chronicle on west African history. Dan Tafa had thus established himself as the most prominent and prolific writer and thinker of Sokoto such that by the time of German explorer Heinrich Barth's visit to Sokoto in 1853, Dan Tafa was considered by his peers and Barth as: "the most learned of the present generations of the inhabitants of Sokoto… The man was Abde Kader dan Tafa …on whose stores of knowledge I drew eagerly" Folio in the ‘Rawdat al\-afkar’, from a private collection in Maiurno, Sudan --- --- The Philosophical writings of Dan Tafa Above all else, it was his writings on philosophy that set him apart from the rest of his peers; in 1828 he wrote first philosophical work titled 'Al\-Futuhat al\-rabbaniyya' (The divine Unveilings) described by historian Muhammad Kani as: "a critical evaluation of the materialists, naturalists and physicists' perception of life … matters relating to the transient nature of the world, existence or non\-existence of the spirit, and the nature of celestial spheres, are critically examined in the work" He followed this up with another philosophical work titled 'Kulliyāt al\-‘ālam al\-sitta' ('The Sixth World Faculty) that is described by professor Oludamini as: "a brief but dense philosophical poem about the origins, development, resurrection, and end of the body, soul, and spirit, as well as a discussion of hyle (prime matter)" and later in his life, he wrote the 'Uhud wa\-mawāthiq (Covenants and Treaties) in 1855\. which is a short treatise written in a series of 17 oaths taken by the author, its described by Muhammad Kani as: "an apologia to his critics among the orthodox scholars who viewed philosophy with skepticism". According to Muhammad Kani and John Hunwick, these three works fit squarely within the genre called Falsafa ie; Islamic philosophy. Falsafa isn't to be understood as a philosophy directly coming out of Islam but rather one that was built upon centuries of various philosophical traditions including Greek, Roman, Persian philosophy and Quranic traditions. Practitioners of Falsafa include the famed Islamic golden age philosophers such as Ibn sina (d. 1037AD), Ibn Arabi (d. 1240AD) and Athīr al\-dīn Abharī(d. 1265AD) ; especially the latter two, whose work is echoed in Dan Tafa's "sixth world faculty". Dan Tafa's general philosophy can be read mostly from his two of his works ie; his last work; "covenants and treaties" which was written both in defense of philosophy and religion but also outlines his personal philosophies and ethics. and his second work; “On the sixth world faculty”. folio from ‘Uhud wa\-mawāthiq’ (covenants and treaties) from a private collection in Maiurno, Sudan In the few centuries after establishing the "house of wisdom" in which Arabic translations of classical philosophical texts were stored, read and interpreted, Muslim political and religious authorities were faced with a dilemma of how to welcome the 'pagan' intellectual traditions of these texts into the ‘ulum uid\-dın’ ( ‘‘sciences of the religion’’) where Islamic wisdom was meant to be sought and realized, a dilemma they seem to have resolved by the 12th century when Falsafa was integrated with the disciplines of theology (Kalam) and Sufism (Tasawwuf) but the disputes and tension regarding the permissiveness of a number of 'sciences' meant that philosophy wasn't always part of the curriculum of schools both in the Islamic heartlands and in west Africa; which made the method of learning it almost as exclusive as that of the "esoteric" sciences that Dan Tafa asserted that he learned, this "exclusive" method of tutoring philosophy students was apparently the standard method of learning the discipline in Sokoto and it was likely how his uncle Muḥammad Sanbu taught it to him, even though Dan Tafa implied In his oaths that he had been teaching it to his students at his school in Salame. The integration of philosophy and theology in Islam however, was in contrast to western Europe where philosophy and theology drifted apart during the same period although there were exceptions to this rule, as even the enlightenment\-era philosophers included "defenders of Christianity/religion" such as German philosopher Friedrich Hegel; a contemporary of Dan Tafa. It is within this context of the tension surrounding the permissiveness of philosophy that Dan Tafa wrote his apologia. In it, he unequivocally states his adherence to his faith while also lauding the necessity of reason; for example in his 1st oath, seemingly in direct response to his critics who likely charged him with choosing rational proofs as his new doctrine, he explains that: "The evidences of reason are limited to establishing the existence of an incomprehensible deity and that Its attributes are such and such. But the evidences of reason cannot fathom in any way Its essential reality" therefore he says: "I have taken an oath of covenant to construct my doctrine of belief upon the verses of the Qur’an and not upon evidences of reason or the theories of scholastic theology" He then “moderates” the above oath, writing in the 2nd oath that: "I have taken an oath and covenant to closely reflect upon the established precepts and researched theories regarding the majority of existing things and upon what emerges from the influences which some parts of existence have upon others. I have not disregarded the benefits and blessings which are in these precepts. Further, I have refrained from being like the mentally shallow who say that created existence has no effective influence, whatsoever. In holding this position, I remain completely acquainted with the fundamental Divine realities from which all things have emerged." The 1st oath was likely influenced by Uthman Fodio defense of taqlīd, while his argument that rational proofs alone can't reveal the existence of God was similar to the one stated by Ibn Arabi (d. 1240\) in which the latter writes "If we had remained with our rational proofs – which, in the opinion of the rational thinkers, establish knowledge of God’s essence, showing that “He is not like this” and “not like that” – no created thing would ever have loved God. But the tongues of the religions gave a divine report saying that “He is like this” and “He is like that”, mentioning affairs which outwardly contradict rational proofs". And the 2nd oath, while not contradicting the first, leaves plenty of room for Dan Tafa to consider "researched theories" on the things in nature without disregarding the befits in their principles He continues with this moderation in the 3rd oath by implying that there is no contradiction between the proofs of reason and the authority of the Qu'ran, writing that: "I have taken an oath and covenant to weigh and measure all that I possess of comprehension with the verses of the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet …Whoever doubts this, then let him try me" in this oath, Dan Tafa defends his knowledge and use of philosophy stating that he weighs it with his faith and is steadfast in both, so much that he invites anyone among his peers to an intellectual debate if they wish to challenge him on both. This oath is also related to the 9th oath in which he writes: "I have taken an oath and covenant to closely consider the established principles which underline worldly customs. For, these principles are an impregnable mainstay in knowing the descent of worldly affairs, because these affairs descend in accordance with these principles" the worldly customs here being a reference to practices that are outside the Islamic law which aren't concerned with worship eg the study of philosophy and esoteric sciences which are the subject of this work. Dan Tafa also takes care not to offer the above intellectual debate (of the 3rd oath) on account of his own pride (…"let him try me") but rather in good faith, as he also writes in his 4th oath: "I have taken an oath and covenant that I will not face off or contend with anyone in a way in which that person may dislike; even when the bad character of the individual requires me to. For, contending with others in ways that are reprehensible is too repugnant and harmful to enumerate. This oath is extremely difficult to uphold, so may Allah assist us to fulfill it by means of His benevolence and kindness." In this apologia, Dan Tafa however seemingly yields to his critics by promising to end his teaching of philosophy, leaving no doubt he was tutoring some of his students in Salame the discipline of Falsafa, as he writes in his 10th oath: "I have taken and oath and covenant not to invite anyone from the people to what I have learned from the philosophical (falsafa) and elemental sciences; even though I took these sciences in a sound manner, rejecting from that what is in these sciences of errors. Along with that, I will not teach these sciences to anyone in order that they may not be led astray; and errors will thus revert back to me" this was the first explicit mention of falsafa in these oaths but it was certainly the main subject of this apologia. In this oath, he promises to refrain from teaching philosophy to his students to prevent them from being led into error that would revert back to him, he nevertheless continues defending his education in philosophy writing that he took it "in a sound manner". In his oaths he also includes ethical concerns that were guided by his personal philosophy for example in his 7th oath he writes that": "I have taken an oath and covenant to not compete with anyone in a right which that person has a greater right over than me. Rather, I will stop with the fundamental right which is mine until it is they who compete with me in my right. Then at that point, I will contend with them with the truth for the truth regardless if that right of mine is of a religious or worldly nature. Realize that the prerequisites for reclaiming and demanding one’s rights is well known with the masters of the art of disposal" The above oath could be seen in practice when a promise made to Dan Tafa's by the Sokoto ruler Ali Ibn Bello (r. 1842 to 1859\) to make Dan Tafa the Wazir, was instead passed on to another, but Dan Tafa continued advising Ali Ibn Bello despite the latter breaking his promise to give him the Wazir office which he, more than anyone else, was fully qualified for, and all this happened in 1859, after he had written this work And in his 8th oath he writes: "I have taken an oath and covenant not to take two distinct causative factors or more in seeking after my worldly affairs. Rather, I will stop with a single cause and will not add any additional causative factors until the one I relied upon fails. Then I will change to another causative factor for earning wealth. This is mainly in order not to make things constricted for other Muslims in their causative factors" This could also be seen in practice at the educational institution that Dan Tafa operated which continued to be his primary source of income, and from where he continued writing books, advising Amirs and teaching his students. He also devised an exam to test the leaning standards of the Sokoto scholars that consisted of cunning historical and legal questions, many of his works contain critiques and recommendations on how various disciplines should be studied and taught --- 2: “On the sixth world faculty”: the development of intellect and prime matter "oaths an covenants" is in part, a summary of his earlier philosophical works especially the one titled "on the sixth world faculty" in which he writes on the development of intellect: "On the Development of the Intellect: The development of intellects is by firm patience Its striving in actions … It brings news of all matters, And seeks to clarify what is required and what is supererogatory for them And it holds your soul back from its lusts, And eliminates aggression to prevent injuries" He continues … "On prime matter: The \[prime] matter is the fixed entities Before their attributes are qualified by existence And the continuous rain (dīma) is like the soul, from it arises Warmth with coolness, and they spread And so follows wetness and dryness And the rest of four basic elements Then appear the spheres and the planets Orbiting them, and likewise the fixed stars The motions perpetually traverse the spheres Running with darkness and illuminating the kingdom (al\-mulk) Then from them appear the engendered beings \[the kingdoms] Which are multiple and composite Like the mineral, plant, and animal \[kingdoms] They differ in their governing principle From which they become hot and dry \[fire], cold and wet \[water] And the inverse of these concomitants occurs \[hot and wet (air), cold and dry (earth)] In accordance with natural transformation At the places of land and sea As for animals, their nature is different … (continued)" The above excerpt is from the "sixth world faculty" as translated by Oludamini, who describes the who work as "characterized by a density and concision that seems to necessitate an oral commentary". Dan Tafa's philosophy on prime matter can also be analyzed through the Avicenna and Aristotelian philosophies of prime matter (Hylomorphism) Dan Tafa’s writings of Philosophical Sufism also included among his writings are those termed "Sufi philosophies", and they include works such as 'Nasab al\-mawjūdāt' (Origin of Existents) which describes the origin of each existent thing in terms of its essence, its attributes, its governing principle (nāmūs), and its nature. And another work titled 'Muqaddima fī’l\-‘ilm al\-marā‘ī wa ta‘bīr' which is an introduction to the science of dreams and their interpretation from the perspective of both natural philosophy and philosophical Sufism, and other works like the 'Muqaddima fī’l\-‘ilm al\-marā‘ī wa ta‘bīr', 'Naẓm al\-qawānīn al\-wujūd', etc. --- --- The rest of Dan Tafa’s works Unfortunately, in 1898, during France’s African colonial wars, the Voulet–Chanoine military expedition (which was a very notorious and scandalous campaign even for the time), the French soldiers, who were passing through northern Sokoto, “burning and sacking as they went”, also invaded and burned Salame to the ground, "and took away with them valuable books" what survived of Dan Tafa’s large library and school were these 72 works, 44 of which are in the private collection of his son; Shakyh Bello ibn Abd’r\-Raazqid, which is currently in Maiurno, Sudan Folio from ‘Nasab al\-mawjūdāt’, from a private collection in Maiurno, Sudan As the works of Dan Tafa demonstrate, Sokoto was home to a robust system of education during west Africa's intellectual zenith that included a vibrant tradition of Falsafa (philosophy) and various sciences, this tradition was similar to that in contemporaneous centers of learning in the Muslim world. While it's unclear to whom these philosophical works were addressed, the nature of his writing suggests they were addressed to his peers rather than his students although the need for oral commentary leaves open the possibility that he taught these works in his school. Dan Tafa's apparent exceptionalism among the surviving west African philosophical writings is mostly a result of the neglect of west African literary traditions rather than an evidence of absence; for example, Dan Tafa was taught everything he knew while in Sokoto which was unlike many of his west African peers who travelled widely while studying and teaching and some went even further, eg Salih Abdallah al\-Fullani from guinea whose work is known as far as Syria and India added to this, Dan Tafa's works were only known in his region (northern Nigeria) unlike peers such as Nuh Al Tahir whose works were known in nigeria, Mali, Mauritania and the Senegambia. Yet despite this, the wealth and depth of Dan Tafa's philosophical writings attest to the existence of a vigorous tradition of philosophy studies and discourses in west Africa including those that were transcribed into writing. --- for more on African history, please subscribe to my Patreon account --- Deep knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions, by Oludamini Ogunnaike, pgs 10\-18 Ethiopian philosophy vol3, by claude sumner The Life of Shaykh Dan Tafa by Muhammad Shareef, pg 28 Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of central Sudanic Africa Vol.2, by John Hunwick, pg 161 John Hunwick, pg 162 Muhammad Shareef pg 31 Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa by Oludamini Ogunnaike, pg 141, in ‘Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts’ A Geography of Jihad. Jihadist Concepts of Space and Sokoto Warfare by Stephanie Zehnle pg 85\-101 the Tārīkh al\-fattāsh at work; A Sokoto Answer to Ḥamdallāhi's Claims, pg 218\-222 in Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith Henrich Barth, travels vol iv, pg 101 John Hunwick, pg 222 Philosophical Sufism by Oludamini Ogunnaike pg 152 John Hunwick pg 230\. Precolonial African Philosophy in Arabic by Souleymane Diagne, pg 67 of “A Companion to African Philosophy” Souleymane Diagne, pg 68 Deep knowledge by Oludamini Ogunnaike, pg 6 Philosophical Sufism by Oludamini Ogunnaike pg 150 muhammad shareef's translation The Life of Shaykh Dan Tafa by Muhammad Shareef pg 46 Muhammad Shareef pg 46 philsophical sufism by Oludamini Ogunnaike pg 168\) The sokoto caliphate by murray last pg 140\) Literature, History and Identity in Northern Nigeria by Tsiga, et al. pg 26 The Life of Shaykh Dan Tafa by Muhammad Shareef pg 50 Arabic Literature of Africa: Writings of Western Sudanic Africa vol4 by John Hunwick pg 504\-5 4 )

African paintings, Manuscript illuminations and miniatures; a visual legacy of African history on canvas, paper and walls in African paintings, Manuscript illuminations and miniatures; a visual legacy of African history on canvas, paper and walls a look at African aesthetics through history )Africa is home to some of the world’s oldest and most diverse artistic traditions, from the distinctive textile patterns across virtually every African society to its unique sculptures and engravings But while many of these are well known symbols of African culture worldwide, little is known about Africa's vibrant painting and manuscript illustration tradition, this is mostly because of painting's association with "High Culture" (High Art) from which African painting is often excluded In this article, I'll look at the history of African painting and manuscript illustrations that were rendered on three surfaces; Walls, Paper (or parchment) and Canvas (or cloth) --- Support African History Extra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more on African history and keep this blog free for all: --- Wall paintings; murals and frescos Painting in ancient and medieval Nubia Kerman wall painting (2500BC\-1550BC) The kingdoms of the middle Nile region have some of the most robust painting traditions in the world. Wall painting in this region begun in the kingdom of Kerma during early 2nd millennium BC whose antecedents are to be traced back to the cave paintings A\-group chiefdom of the forth millennium The most elaborate paintings are dated to the classic Kerma period between 1650 and 1550BC that include the polychrome scenes in the mortuary shrines of the Kerma kings and on the walls of the Defuffa temples depicting stars, deities, fishing scenes, hunting scenes, Nilotic fauna (including giraffes) and large lions in a way that art historian Robert Bianchi writes "The depictions invite comparison with the earliest depictions of animals in Nubia, particularly on rock art" While few photos of the Kerma paintings are accessible, there's one depicting cattle and giraffes from mortuary temple K XI and a low relief figure of a large lion made using faience tiles and set in the eastern deffufa temple of Kerma during the classic Kerma era, giving us a look at the painting traditions of Kerma paintings of giraffes and cattle from the KXI mortuary temple, 18th century BC (at kerma, sudan) lion inlay from the eastern deffufa temple, 1700BC, (at the boston museum) The wall painting traditions of Kush continued into its resurgence as a powerful state during the “Naptan Era” in the 8th century BC when its capital was at Napata and its rulers were buried in the royal cemetery of el\-kurru, While many of the Napatan\-era temples, monuments, statues, palaces and houses were often richly decorated with painted scenes, the only paintings that survive were those in the burial chambers and vestibules of the royal tombs esp. the two tombs of queen Qalhata and king Tanwetamani both built by the latter who also commissioned the paintings The former tomb was the best preserved and seemingly most lavishly painted featuring scenes describing the queen's path to the afterlife, the ceiling is painted with a delicate star field (first two photos below) , Tanwetamani's tomb is also richly painted depicting him with the typical kushite cap crown (last photo). queen Qalhata’s tomb paintings, 7th century BC, (at el\-kurru in sudan) The period between the 6th and 14th century witnessed the emergence of a distinctive art culture in the christian nubian kingdom of Makura, with its capital at Old Dongola, this art adorned the walls of cathedrals, monasteries, palaces and other buildings in the kingdom, most famous of these collections were the hundreds of paintings recovered from the cathedral of Faras, the Kom H monastery at Old Dongola , and the church of Banganarti The artistic center of Makuria was at Old Dongola, its capital, from which the kingdom’s iconographic models and stylistic trends were exported across other regional cities such as Faras Nubian art is described by art historian "resolutely local style" characterized by rounded figures. an elongation of the silhouettes and the specific design of the eyes and nose, paintings are often multicolored and have a rich chromatic range, its is however to be located just as much within the larger Eastern Christian art with its byzantine themes The original themes in Nubian and Ethiopian art are described by Martens\-Czarnecka who in her comparisons of both writes that; "the Nubian and Ethiopian painters endeavor to depict "the objective reality of the subject, in accordance with their knowledge or their belief, rather than the 'visual impression that emerges from it" The technique used for executing the majority of the Nubian murals was tempera, pigments were sourced locally, the primary colors were yellow, red, black, white and gray. A composition was sketched first in yellow ochre with a thin brush, then the contours of the figures, vertical lines of the robes, etc. nativity mural from faras cathedral, 10th century, sudan national museum --- Ethiopian wall paintings From Aksumite paintings through the Zagwe and early Solomonic paintings Aksum was a powerful state controlling much of the northern horn of Africa and parts of the southern coasts of the red sea between the 3rd and 10th century AD afterwhich the region was controlled by the Zagwe kingdom from the 11th century which later fell to the "Solomonic" empire in the 13th century till the mid 20th century. The northern horn region , like Nubia, had a much older rock art tradition that continued well into Aksum's pre\-christian era and it was this art tradition that was then transferred to other mediums such as building walls, canvas, cloth and paper although the distinctive art style that came to be known as Ethiopian art was largely developed in the mid 1st millennium after Aksum's official conversion to Christianity While few datable Aksumite paintings survive, there are a number of churches and monasteries from the late Aksumite era that probably preserve original Aksumite paintings eg the paintings on the ceiling of Abune Yemata Guh, the church of Abraha\-wa\-Atsbaha and Mika’el Debra Selam . In general, Ethiopian wall paintings were often made by trained painters, likely using old pattern books to prepare their utensils: brush, paints and dyes. Painters use locally produced pigments, primarily the colors yellow, red, black and white Some of the painters from this period are known by name notably Fre seyon the primary painter of the workshop of a circle of painters employed by emperor Zara Yaeqob's court in the 15th century and others such as Abuna Mabaa Seyon, however, most Ethiopian painters remained anonymous, a number of wall paintings include names of people who commissioned the paintings or people who are represented in the painted scenes. Abreha wa astbaha painting, undated Between the mid16th and late 18th century. The increasing cosmopolitanism of the Ethiopian court with its imperial capital at Gondar led to the inclusion of a number of foreign painting styles into Ethiopia's artistic tradition For the Gondarine emperors, patronage of the arts was a means of displaying imperial status as the; Starting with the 17th century, the city of Gondar dominated for centuries the art of Ethiopia. The saying "who wishes to paint goes to Gondar" well illustrates this preponderance This artistic epoch is divided into two periods, the first gondarine style beginning around 1655 and flourishing under emperor Yohannes I (r. 1667\-8 2\) with painters trained at workshops associated with churches and monasteries near the capital who later influenced the art of regional centers such as at the lake Tana monasteries. The second gondarine style, is associated with the patronage of the regent empress Mentewwab and her son the emperor Iyyasu II (r. 1730\- 55\) "this florid style is distinguished by its heavy modeling of flesh, carefully rendered patterns of imported fabrics, and shaded backgrounds changing from yellow to red or green." this style also later spread to a number of churches in the Tigray region as well Gondarine style murals generally depict expanded narrative cycles including realistic details of clothing, furniture, hair styles, and even genre scenes but while realistic details of costumes and accessories are emphasized, Ethiopian painters continued the tradition of older art styles without an indication of lightsource or a shadow indicating continuity with the early solomonic, zagwe, and Aksumite art styles Narga Selassie monastery wall paintings in the second gondarine style , an 18th century painting of mary and child with empress mentewab (at the bottom) --- African Paintings on other surfaces; The painted Pottery and stone slabs from the meroitic art of the kingdom of Kush Meroitic pottery (from the Meroitic period when the capital of Kush was at Meroe between the 4th century BC and the 4th century AD) is described as the "the finest achievement of Meroitic art" Kush's older decorative pottery styles which date back to the aforementioned Kerma kingdom were revived in polychrome pottery painting in the 5th century BC using geometrical, guilloche, and floral motifs, added to this were the new Ptolemaic styles adopted by Kush’s artists in the 3rd century BC; to produce a distinctive painting style employing geometric and floral friezes with a characteristic frieze motif composed of a snake and stars, Nubian fauna, flora and other Kushite themes eg one about ‘the hare, two guinea fowls, and a hyena’ that is derived from an ancient animal fable in Kush from the 4th century BC Meroitic pottery's "line drawing style" is described by nubiologist Laszlo Torok; "its decoration structure, iconographical repertory and subsidiary patterns are characterized by a geometrical clarity of the design structure, a striving for sharp definition, and a conspicuous precision of the execution" The Meroitic painted Stela are often funerary/mortuary Stelae representing the deceased, they were placed on tombstones or inside their graves, they often depict one or two figures standing beneath a winged sun disk. While the tradition of painting on stone slabs/ stela was revived in the late Meroitic era it had been a feature of Nile valley artistic traditions since the 3rd millennium BC Meroitic Painted pottery of giraffe and palm tree, 1st century AD (at the penn museum) --- Ethiopian paintings on cloth, Canvas and wood From the Aksumite to the early Solomonic era, the bulk of Ethiopian paintings that survive were rendered on paper/parchment, cloth and on walls, followed in the 15th century by paintings on wood panels known as icons in the form of diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs and by the 16th century, paintings on canvas The styles and themes on both of these icons and canvas painting surfaces follow the abovementioned artistic styles; early solomonic, firstgondarine and second gondarine, Most icon painters remain anonymous but some notable icon painters from this time include the aforementioned painter Fre Seyon Ethiopian painting of "The Last Supper", tempera on linen, 18th century (at the Virginia museum of fine arts) --- African Manuscript illustrations; on miniatures and other decorations in African manuscripts Nubian manuscript illumination Nubian illuminations have received limited scholarly attention, but the recent studies of a few fragmentary manuscripts from the cities of Serra east and Qsar ibrm allow for a reconstruction of Nubian illumination, the similarities between the Serra and Qsar Ibrim illumination attest to the presence of a local manuscript production center in Nubia The miniature illustrations of bishops, priests and angels on these manuscripts also follow the wider Nubian art styles depicted on wall murals manuscript with seated bishop giving a sermon from qsar ibrim, 10th\-12th century AD (at the british museum) Ethiopia's manuscript illustration tradition is one of the oldest in the world dating back to the Aksumite kingdom in the mid 1st millennium AD, the Aba Garima gospels, which are two ancient ethiopic gospel books, were dated to between the 4th and 6th centuries AD, making them the oldest illuminated gospels in the world Ethiopian manuscripts were illuminated and illustrated following the same styles as their paintings, but also include ornamental interlace, stylized floral, foliate and geometric patterns, the miniatures depict various figures including apostles and other Christian figures, rulers and patrons, saints and people, flora and fauna, mythical creatures and landscapes, architectural features and buildings, and general representations of contemporary Ethiopian life Ethiopian illuminators often worked in monasteries where the skills was passed on from a tutor to their student, by the 15th century two monastic houses had developed their own distinctive styles of illumination; the ewostatewos style and the estifanos style (known as the gunda gunde style), increasingly, emperors such as Dawit and Zera Yacob patronized the arts and establishing scriptoriums While most illustrators remained anonymous, a few signed their works eg the scribe Baselyos (also known as the Ground Hornbill Master) active in the 17th century miniature from the Garima gospels, a portrait of an apostle, 4th\-6th century AD (at abba garima monastery, ethiopia) Much of west Africa's art tradition is primarily rendered on textiles (which will be the subject for a future article) that display a wide range of geometric and floral patterns, its from this artistic tradition that west African manuscript illumination ultimately derives, as art historian Sheila Blair writes on west African illumination "such patterns of diagonals, zigazags and strapwork arranged in rectangular panels are standard on bogolanfini, the "mud\-dyed cloths made in mali, traditionally by sewing together narrow strips" West African illuminated manuscripts also featured abstract miniature illustrations of the prophet's compound and household (attimes including his wives' houses, sandals, horses, swords), his pulpit and the graves of the prophets and the first two caliphs The images are often rendered in highly geometric form with houses indicated as rectangles or circles, walls as colored line bundles and the sandals in abstract form Unlike Nubian and Ethiopia illustrations however, the avoidance of depicting sentient beings In west African manuscript miniatures is doubtlessly because of Aniconism in islam abstract miniatures in a copy of the popular prayerbook 'Dalāʾil al\-Khayrāt' written by a scribe in northern ghana, 19th century, (british library) Eastern africa is home to a wide range of artistic styles and just like west Africa, the majority of its paintings and illustrations were rendered on textiles using a rich array of colors, patterns and designs and while regionally diverse, the illuminations in eastern Africa's manuscript centers were cosmopolitan and adapted as much as they influenced other manuscript centers The recently published study of an illuminated Harar Qur'an from the 18th century is evidence of this cosmopolitanism, with two way influences between Harar (in Ethiopia), ottoman Egypt, Islamic India and Zanzibar on the Swahili coast In east Africa, some of the most notable illuminated manuscripts besides Harar have come from the cities of Mogadishu (Somalia) and Siyu (Kenya) Siyu in particular flourished in the late 18th and early 19th century as a prominent center of learning, housing several prominent scholars and producing thousands of works that were sold and circulated around the region. Siyu's scribes used locally produced ink to render the texts and ornamentation in the classic triad of black, red, and yellow, outlining blank pages in black ink to create a dynamic play of positive and negative space Siyu's illumination designs derive largely from its local Swahili art, eg the geometric knot motifs on Swahili tombstones, the floral and foliate motifs on Swahili doors and the “Solomon’s knot” that’s common across subsaharan africa. Siyu's manuscript cultures were partially influenced by similar themes in the mainland cities of Lamu (Kenya) and Mogadishu Illuminated Qur’an made in the city of Siyu, Kenya by Swahili scribes, 18th\-19th century (Lamu Fort Museum) African painters and illustrators were part of the wider African art tradition, African art cultures were thoroughly cosmopolitan incorporating and adopting various art styles, themes and motifs from across different world regions into their own styles but African painters still retained their unique African aesthetics, at times archaizing by bringing back older styles inorder to emphasize the distinctive look that sets them apart from other artistic traditions. African painting is thus an integral part of African history. --- I wrote an article on my Patreon about an ancient African Astronomical Observatory discovered in the ruins of Meroe in Sudan, including the illustrations and mathematical equations engraved on its walls sneak peek --- Daily life of the nubians by Robert Steven Bianchi, pg 81 Pastoral states: toward a comparative archaeology of early Kush, page 11, Royal Cemeteries of Kush, vol. 1: El Kurru by Dows. Dunham, plate 9 Dows. Dunham, plate 18 Pachoras Faras by Stefan Jakobielski The Wall Paintings from the Monastery on Kom H in Dongola by Malgorzata Martens\-Czarnecka Banganarti 2003 : The Wall Paintings by Magdalena Łaptaś La peinture murale copte by du Bourguet Studies of Sudanese Medieval Wall Paintings from 1963 to the Present \- Historiographic Essay by Magdalena M. Wozniak The wall paintings from the Monastery on Kom H in Dongola by Malgorzata Martens\-Czarnecka, pg 92,\-93 Foundations of an African Civilisation by D. W Phillipson pg 222 The Story of Däräsge Maryam By Dorothea McEwan pg 97 African zion by Munro\-Hay et al, pg 142 The Story of Däräsge Maryam By Dorothea McEwan pg 97, 98 Major themes in ethiopian painting by Stanislaw Chojnacki, pg 35 African zion by Munro\-Hay et al, pg 195 Stanislaw Chojnacki, pg 19 Hellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia by László Török pg 275 László Török, pg 263 Between Two Worlds by László Török, pg 474 Stanislaw Chojnacki, pg 319 The Marian Icons of the Painter Frē Ṣeyon by Marilyn Heldman pg 114 The Oriental Institute 2015–2016 Annual Report. by Gil J. Stein, pgs 140–41 The Garima Gospels by Judith McKenzie, Francis Watson african zion, pg 63 Secular Themes in Ethiopian Ecclesiastical Manuscripts by Richard Pankhurst Marilyn Heldman pg 101 Stanislaw Chojnacki, pg 492 The meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie et al. pg 69\-70\) A Fragment of Paradise by R. Bravmann The trans saharan book trade by Graziano Krätli et al, pg 236\-239 The visual resonances of a Harari Qur’ān by Sana Mirza Siyu in the 18th and 19th centuries. by J de V Allen The Siyu Qur’ans by Zulfikar Hirji 4 )