 Kingdom of Aksum In the sixth century, the kingdom of Aksum was doing what many elsewhere had been doing: pursuing trade and empire. Despite the disintegration of the
Roman Empire in the 400s and the decline in world trade, Aksum's trade increased during that century. Its exports of
ivory, glass crystal, brass and copper items, and perhaps slaves, among other things, had brought prosperity to the kingdom.
Some people had become wealthy and cosmopolitan. Aksum's port city on the Red Sea, Adulis, bustled with activity. Its agriculture and cattle breeding flourished, and Aksum extended its rule to Nubia, across the Red Sea to Yemen, and it had extended its rule to the northern Ethiopian Highlands and along the coast to Cape Guardafui. From Aksum's beginnings in the third century, Christianity there had
spread. But at the peak of Christianity's success, Aksum began its decline. In the late 600s, Aksum's trade was diminished
by the clash between Constantinople and the Sassanid Empire. The Sassanid Empire clashed with Constantinople over trade on
the Red Sea and expanded into Yemen, driving Aksum out of Arabia. Then Islam united Arabia and began expanding. In the 700s,
Muslim Arabs occupied the Dahlak Islands just off the coast of Adulis, which had been ruled by Aksum. The Arabs moved
into the port city of Adulis, and Aksum's trade by sea ended. Aksum was now cut off
from much of the world. Greek-- the language of trade -- declined there. Minted coins became rare. Paganism revived and mixed
with Christianity. And it has been surmised that the productivity of soil in the area was being diminished by over-exploitation
and the cutting down of trees. Taking advantage of Aksum's weakness, the Bedja people, who had been living just north
of Aksum, moved in. The people of Aksum, in turn, migrated into the Ethiopian Highlands, where they overran small farmers
and settled at Amhara, among other nearby places. And with this migration a new Ethiopian civilization began. West Africa In West Africa, trade was giving rise to towns. There, on the fringes
of the Sahara, arose a kingdom and empire that its rulers called Wagadu. The people of this kingdom were the Soninke -- black
people who spoke the language of Mande. Their king was called Ghana, and Ghana became the name by
which this kingdom and empire became known -- ancient Ghana rather than the modern state also called Ghana. The kings of ancient Ghana were
authoritarian. They inherited rule through their mother's side of the family -- matrilineal rather than patrilineal as
with kings in Europe at the time -- and they claimed descent from an original ancestor whom they believed had first settled
the land. Ghana's king was the leader of a religious cult that was served by devoted priests, and the king's subjects
were obliged to view him as divine and as too exalted to communicate directly with them. Ghana's
kings had enhanced their power and enriched themselves by exploiting the trade passing through their territory. From the perspective
of merchants they were not unlike highway bandits, forcing from tradesmen a tax on the gold they carried. But the tax was
shrewder than robbery. Continuing robbery at will would have ended the arrival of gold on their territory. As Ghana's kings grew richer they conquered, forcing obedience from the kings of other tribes, from whom they
exacted tribute. They extended their rule to the gold producing regions to their south, and they imposed a tax on gold production.
Ghana's major competitor was the Berber dominated city of Awdaghost to the northwest -- a city with an ample supply of water, surrounded by herds of cattle and where millet,
wheat, grapes, dates and figs were grown. The Berbers who dominated that city had wanted to make it the major point of passage
for caravan trading across the western Sahara. But in 990 Ghana conquered the city, putting Ghana at the peak of its power.
Muslim/Arab Incursions During Ghana's
days of glory, Muslim tradesmen were coming south in caravans from places like Sijilmasa, Tunis and Tripoli. From Sijilmasa the caravans had been going through Taghaza to Awdaghost. From Tunis and Tripoli they had been going to Hausaland and the Lake Chad region. They had been bringing salt southward, and they also carried cloth, copper, steel, cowry shells, glass
beads, dates and figs. And they brought slaves for sale. The Muslims were literate while the
Soninke and their kings were not. The Soninke left no record of the doings of their kings. It was through Muslim writers that
modern historians would gather what information they could about Ghana. The Muslims were offended
to find people worshiping their king as a divinity rather than worshipping Allah. The Muslims complained of people believing
their kings to be the source of life, sickness, health and death. The Muslim writer al-Bakre described a Ghana king
as having an army of 200,000 men, 40,000 of whom were archers. And he described the presence in Ghana of small horses. Among the Soninke, the town of Kumbi had become a commercial center alongside a town of round mud-brick huts. Muslim tradesmen living there built
stone houses and a number of mosques. Some Muslims there served as ministers at the king's palace, and the town of Kumbi
became an intellectual center for western Africa. Muslim writers described one king of Ghana
as renowned for his great wealth and the splendor of his court. The king held audience wearing fine fabrics and gold ornaments
and bedecked his animals and retainers in gold. People in the north of Africa spoke of the king of Ghana as the richest monarch
in the world. But the power of the kings of Ghana was destined to end. Muslims in western Africa
united behind the Almoravids -- a Muslim dynasty that ruled in Morocco and Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. A religious
movement among the Muslims known as the Sanhaja inspired the Almoravids and others to a jihad (holy war), and Muslim
Berbers in the Sahara joined an effort toward conversions and war against Ghana. The leader of the Sanhaja movement and army
in the Sahara area, Abu Bakr, captured Awdaghost in 1054. And in 1076, after many battles, he captured the city of Kumbi.
Almoravid domination of Ghana lasted only a few years, but the Almoravids held onto control
of the desert trade that had been dominated by Ghana. Without control of the gold trade, the power of Ghana's kings declined
further. They had, meanwhile, converted to Islam -- while holding onto the religious rituals and myths that justified their
rule to their subjects. Ghana's kings allowed the Berber herdsmen to move into Soninke homelands, and these herdsmen began
overgrazing Ghana's lands. Ghana's agricultural land became worn and less able to support as many people as before.
Subject kings and tribes broke away from Ghana's rule. The king of the Sosso people, in neighboring Kaniaga, turned the tables on Ghana, and in 1203 the Sosso overran Ghana's capital city, Kumbi.. Mandingo Empire After their victory over
Ghana, the Sosso expanded against the Mandingo (or Mande) -- a people who spoke Mande and lived on fertile farmland around
Wangara. The Sosso king, Sumaguru Kante, put to death all of the sons of the Mandingo ruler but one, Sundjata, who
appeared to be an insignificant cripple. But Sundjata rallied the Mandingo. A guerrilla army built by Sundjata overwhelmed
the Sosso and in 1235 killed their king, Sumaguru Kante. Sundjata annexed Ghana in 1240, and he took control of the gold trade
routes. Merchants moved out of Kumbi to another commercial city farther north: Walata. And in small groups the Soninke people began emigrating from what had been their homeland. The Mandingo empire, called Mali, gained control over the salt trade from Taghaza and the copper trade of the Sahara. The gold trade was a source of wealth for Mali, and so too was trade in
food: sorghum, millet and rice. And regarding trade, Mali dominated the town of Timbuktu, nine miles north of the Niger River, which had risen a century or two before as a point of trade for desert caravans. After
Sundjata's death in 1255 more conquests were made by his successors -- Mansa Uli and then Sakura. Sakura had been a freed
slave serving in the royal household and had seized power after the ruling family had become weakened by quarreling among
themselves. It is surmised that Sakura was responsible for Mali's expansion to Tekrur in the west and to Gao in the east. By the 1300s, Mali's kings had converted to Islam, which
gave them advantages of good will in diplomacy and in commerce. But, again, the pagan rituals and artifacts that were a part
of the ideology and justification of rule were maintained. And the king's loyal subjects continued their traditional prostrations
and covering themselves with dust to display their humility. By the 1300s, Muslim Mandingo
merchants were trading as far east as the city-states in Hausaland and beyond to Lake Chad. Islam was spreading with the trade
of its merchants, and it appears that in the 1300s or 1400s the kings of Hausaland converted to Islam. But when a Mali king
tried to pressure people in the gold mining region around Wangara to convert, a disruption in the production of gold was threatened,
and the pressure to convert was withdrawn. One well known Mali emperor who was Muslim was
Mansa Musa, who ruled from 1312-1337. On record is Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca, his entourage described as including 500 slaves with gold staffs and 100 camels each with 300 pounds of gold.
Mansa Mura is described as spending lavishly in the bazaars of Cairo and his spending is said to have increased the supply of gold to an extent that its price depreciated on the
Cairo exchange. And, as usual, scholars were not immune from being influenced by wealth, Mansa Musa bringing a collection
of them back with him from Mecca. Mali was literate, but only insofar as it employed Muslim scribes at the court of
its kings. As in Europe, the common people of Mali were not yet expected to read and write. Songhai Rebellion and Mali's
Decline Mali reached its peak in fame and fortune in the 1300s. Then weak and incompetent
kings inherited power. Late in the 1300s the old problem of dynastic succession brought quarrels that weakened the Mali
kingship and gave others opportunity. The others in this instance were the Songhai people,
who lived along the middle of the Niger River and monopolized fishing and canoe transport there. Trade at Gao had brought
Islam to the Songhai. Some Songhai royalty had converted to Islam, as had an unknown percentage of Songhai commoners. Mali
control over the Songhai capital, Gao, had always been tentative, and the spirit of independence had not died among Songhai kings. A Songhai king
led his people in rebellion. The rebellion disrupted Mali's trade on the Niger River. Mali's empire suffered as the
Songhai sacked and occupied Timbuktu in 1433-34. In 1464 a Songhai king, Sonni 'Ali took power, and again Timbuktu was
attacked, Sonni 'Ali capturing the city after a great loss of life. Five years later, Sonni 'Ali conquered the town
of Jenne which had been thought impregnable. In his twenty-eight years of military campaigning, the victorious Songhai
king won the title of King of Kings. He dominated trade routes and the great grain producing region of the Niger river delta.
Sonni 'Ali's competitor, the Mali empire, was deteriorating, and the Mali empire was to die in the 1600s. Benin Exports Slaves Benin was a city that dated back to the eleventh century -- and no relation to the West African nation of Benin
of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Benin was a large city for its time -- a walled city several kilometers wide
in a forested region inland from where the Niger River emptied into the Atlantic. In the mid-1400s the ruler of Benin, Ewuare,
built up his military and began expanding. Captives taken in battle he traded to the Portuguese. Benin's empire reached
about 190 miles (300 kilometers) in width by the early 1500s. Then it stopped expanding, and with this it had no more captives
to sell as slaves, while selling slaves to the Portuguese was being taken up by others.
South Central Africa Some scholars theorize that Bantu speaking people had moved south from around the Benue River in western Africa into south-central Africa. By the 900s, the pastoral and Hamitic speaking Tutsi were migrating
southward, into east-central Africa, to Rwanda, near Ukerewe, in centuries to come to be known as Lake Victoria. There, it is said, the Tutsi introduced cattle raising,
iron-working, new crops, kingship and caste divisions. The people whom the Tutsi overran were Bantu speakers -- the Hutu --
and the Tutsi made vassals of some of the Hutu, giving them cattle in exchange for services and loyalty. Before the 1100s agriculture was practiced in much of south-central Africa, except in the interior of southern Angola, close to the Kalahari Desert. In south-central Africa, bananas were grown. This was tropical woodland and savana, where yams and sugar
cane were grown. Beans, groundnuts, sorghum and other millets were cultivated in areas of savanna. And people augmented their
food production by hunting, fishing, gathering grubs and by raising chickens, pigs and, in a few places, cattle. There was
also pottery making, wickerwork and salt production. At Munza were iron mines. People in this region of Africa preferred using salt and metal, including copper, as currency
for trading. By the 1300s, communities in Katanga were uniting into a kingdom of farmers, fishermen and crafts people, and they were trading in dry fish and
products made of metal. In some of the more remote parts of south-central Africa were villages
that were still egalitarian, but in the more densely populated areas monarchs had arisen. These monarchs associated their
rule with spirits, and their rule was supported by rituals and priests not totally removed from sorcery, divination, healing
and fertility rites. And those supporting monarchical rule believed in the sacredness of lineage and royal blood of their
monarchs. A monarch had underlings who advised him and went with him in his visits to the villages where he claimed rule.
He had the keepers of emblems, a military chief and warriors to support his rule. He had slaves. And from his subjects the
monarch received taxes with which to maintain his operation and to buy what he needed to maintain what he considered an appropriate
lifestyle. By the 1400s small empires thrived in south-central Africa. One was centered
at Luba. Another was centered at Lunda -- where, it appears, people learned metal working from Luba. A third empire was centered in the kingdom of
the Kongo, which dominated areas such as Loango, Kakong, Ngoi and Kisama.
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Eastern Africa Those who remained
in Nubia after conquests by the Soba and by the Aksumites lived for long periods in peace and cooperation with Egypt, including
returning to Egypt runaway slaves. They traded with Egypt, and some genetic diffusion with the Egyptians occurred. Between
the ninth and twelfth centuries, Nubia became more Arabic and more Muslim. And blacks from Nubia filled the ranks of Egypt's
military. Egypt went through rule by the Fatimids, followed by the turmoil of the Christian crusades
and rule by Saladin and his Ayubbid dynasty. In 1172 Christian Nubia joined Europe's Crusaders by attacking the Ayubbids,
and an Ayubbid army successfully counterattacked. In 1250 the Mamelukes replaced the Ayubbids, and the more aggressive Mamelukes
warred frequently, their armies diminishing Nubian populations and taking many slaves from Nubia. Nubia split into two kingdoms,
Makouria and Alwa. In the 1300s Makouria collapsed. Then in the 1400s, pastoralists from Egypt overran Alwa, and this
was followed by civil war there. The Muslim invasions were accompanied by anti-Christian violence, and by 1500 little Christianity
was left in what had been Nubia. Christianity
and Islam in Ethiopia Since the 900s, people
in and around the Ethiopian highlands had been benefiting from trade with port cities such as Adulis on the Red Sea, Zeila and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, and Mogadishu, Merca and Brava on the shore of the Indian Ocean. These were towns populated by Muslims, and inland were Muslim and Christian
communities, often neighboring each other. The Muslims had a strong sense of community and generally participated more in
trade than the Christians -- trade being largely in Muslim hands. The Christians were under various chiefdoms, many were farmers,
and a few of them were prosperous and had slaves. In the area was also a Jewish community, the
Falashas, who spoke Ge'ez and knew no Hebrew. They were unfamiliar with the Talmuds that had been produced in West Asia,
but they claimed to be descended from the ten tribes banished from Israel. Around the year
1270, at Amhara, in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, a new Christian dynasty, the Solomonids, was founded by Yikunno-Amlak,
a conqueror who was described as a king of kings. His dynasty was believed to be a continuation of the Christian kingdom that
had been in Aksum centuries before. Yikunno-Amlak was to be described as descended from Solomon's son, Manelik and the
Queen of Sheba. His Christian subjects believed that they were God's chosen people, that they were maintaining purity
in Christian belief, and that they were members of a second Israel. The Solomonids addressed
the problem of monarchical succession by putting Yikunno-Amlak's male descendants in a mountain retreat guarded by several
hundred warriors. There Yikunno-Amlak's descendants remained in isolation, studied their faith, wrote poetry and composed
sacred music as they awaited selection as heir to the throne. It was under Yikunno-Amlak's
grandson, Amda Seyon (1314-44), that the Solomonids gained military dominance in Ethiopia -- Solomonid rule stretching from
Adulis in the north to Bali in the south. The success of Christians against Muslims in Ethiopia did not sit well with the Muslims
of Egypt. In Ethiopia, Amda-Seyon became concerned about retributions against his fellow Christians in Egypt. He demanded
freedom of worship and other civil rights for Christians in Egypt, and he was prepared to fight Egypt and to ally himself
with Christian Europe to end Muslim supremacy in West Asia, but no such war took place. The Mamelukes of Egypt remained interested
primarily in events in the eastern Mediterranean. Christians in Egypt were becoming more outnumbered by Muslims, and this
would continue into the 1400s, with the Muslim majority increasingly blaming Christians and other minorities for their troubles.
In the 1400s the power of the Solomonids in Ethiopia declined as various Muslim communities
rebelled against it. Under the king Beide-Maryan (1468-78), the Solomonids suffered their first serious military defeat. And
after 1478 the Solomonids were weakened by a conflict over succession -- their attempt to solve the problem of succession
apparently having failed. War between two Solomonid princes continued for several years. Muslims took advantage of Solomonid
weakness, declared a holy war, and the Solomonid Empire collapsed. But a Solomonid king remained, a local king rather than
a king of kings, the Solomonids would rise again, the last of them to be Haile Selassie in the 20th century. Farther South In the 700s
and 800s, Arab traders looking for opportunity were moving southward into coastal towns such as Mogadishu, Merca and Brava.
They participated in the trade that traversed the Indian Ocean. As in Nubia, intermarriages with local blacks occurred. Arab
tradesmen made themselves dominant in the region, and a few Arabs migrated farther south along the coast, the island of Pemba, for example, becoming part Muslim by the 900s. Along the coast below Mogadishu,
Merca and Brava, Africa remained predominately black. There were hunters, fishermen, growers of sorghum, millet, rice, cucumbers,
coconuts, sugar and bananas, and some were raising cattle. Some hunter-gatherers integrated with the cattle herders and agriculturists
around them -- societies ruled by kings who believed that they were divine but vulnerable to assassination if they were oppressive.
Inland, about 180 miles from the eastern coast, on a plateau sparse in trees, was Zimbabwe, where Bantu speakers were living sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries -- the Bantu speaking people
having replaced the Sa (Bushmen) whom they had driven into the desert. The Bantu speakers had come in two waves, the last
wave being a pastoral and agricultural people who built the stone structures that were to be known in the 20th century as
the ruins of Zimbabwe, of an architecture unknown to any people elsewhere in the world -- the oldest of which dated from the
700s. Gold that was mined near Zimbabwe was taken to trading towns along the coast. So too were
leopard skins, rhinoceros horn, ambergris, slaves and ivory -- the ivory of the African elephant more in demand than the harder
ivory of the Indian elephant. Joining this trade was iron taken from deposits around the towns of Mombasa and Malindi. Traders on the eastern coast of Africa, many of them blacks, profited from a rise in trade with Asia, and
from India the Africans imported silks, cottons and glassware. From the 1100s, Arabs began
arriving in greater number in this coastal area. In the 1200s Mombasa became staunchly Muslim, and a Muslim dynasty was established
at Kilwa. By the mid-1200s, Kilwa controlled the trade from Sofala to its south, Sofala being a point of departure for gold from inland. Meanwhile,
economic activity in Zimbabwe was predominantly cattle raising, while the wealth of its king grew from trade in gold.
With his wealth the king was able to maintain a powerful army and to extend his authority across a variety of principalities
-- a hundred miles to the west and to the Indian Ocean in the east. During the 1300s and into the 1400s Zimbabwe was the richest
state on Africa's eastern coast, but it was also declining: Zimbabwe was losing its timber. Its lands were overgrazed
and farmlands were eroding. Zimbabwe declined as a power, and it was abandoned around 1450. Successor states arose: Torwa
to its west, Changamire just to its north, and Mutapa on the Zambezi River. Mutapa's economy was also based on cattle and wealth from the gold trade, and Mutapa expanded locally
by military conquest. Toward the end of the 1400s, Kilwa's preeminence on the east
coast was fading as dynastic struggles sapped its strength. Kilwa was losing the trade in gold from Sofala to Mutaba. And
Mutaba's gold trading attracted the Portuguese, who had begun sailing along Africa's eastern coast. Trade between
Africans and the Europeans was on the rise, in slaves as well as gold. Summary After 12,000 BCE Beginning of a wetter phase in Africa north of the equator.
Populations ancestral to most West Africans make up the foragers and hunters of these lands. By about 8,000 BCE
Great lakes formed in Niger Bend, Lake Chad and Upper Nile regions. Spread of 'African aquatic culture' through
this ‘great lakes' region. Sedentary fishing communities using pottery and microlithic tools become established
long the shores of lakes and rivers. Saharan region enjoys savanna-type climate. Favorable conditions lead to
population growth. 9,000 to 6,000 BCE Saharan region in its wettest phases. By 6,000 BCE /Evidence of domesticated
'humpless' cattle in the Saharan region. Also seed-cropping (or harvesting) of grains. 6,000-2,500 BCE
Spread of predominantly cattle-raising peoples throughout the Sahara. Probably ancestral to modern-day Berber groups. 3,000-1,000
BCE Farming spreads through the former fishing belt of the tropical woodland
savannas and forest margins of West Africa. This Guinea Neolithic era saw the domestication of millets, rice, sorghum,
yams, and palm trees among others. After 2,500 BCE Saharan region enters a period of rapid desertification,
driving people and larger game animals to seek better watered lands to the north and south for habitation. Neolithic
settlements spread along the Saharan borderlands and near rivers and lakes in the West. 1,200-700 BCE/Excavations at
Dar Tichitt (modern Mauritania) reveal progression from large, un-walled lakeside villages to smaller walled hilltop villages
in response to drier climate and increasing pressure from nomads. After 2,000 BCE Favorable climatic
conditions and developing technology and socio-cultural systems lead to population growth in the Niger valleys. African Neolithic
farming spreading south and east from the area of modern-day Cameroon. Probably associated with speakers of proto-Bantu
languages. After 600 BCE/Advent of iron-smelting and iron use in West Africa. Height of the civilization
known as Nok, which produced art work ancestral to that of later Yoruba and Igbo peoples. CARTHAGINIA
COLLAPSE: FINAL FALL OF BLACK AFRICA ca.800 BCE | Founding of African Carthage. | Ca.600 | African Carthage establishes
its independence from Tyre and organizes Phoenician colonies in the west. | 550 | Foundation of
the Magonid dynasty. | 535 to 480 | Conflict between African Carthage and European Sicily. | 480 to 410 | Temporary peace between the contenders for Sicily. Carthage expands into the Tunisian plain,
becomes more indigenous African. Rise in power of merchant-controlled officials called sufets. First mention of independent Berber kingdoms of Numidia and Mauritania. | 410 to 307 | Renewed conflict on Sicily. Carthage, using Numidian, Mauritanian and Libyan mercenaries for
its army, controls the western part of the island. | 348 | Carthage signs a trade treaty
with Romans. | 264 | Messina ally on Sicily, triggers the first Punic War. | 242 | End of the First Punic War. Carthage loses Sicily. Sufets elected annually. | 242 to 237 | Libyan mercenaries lead a revolt which turns to civil war in Carthage. | 237 to 221 | With peace at home, Carthage begins a period of expansion into Spain under the generals Hamilcar
Barca and Hasdrubal. fears Punic expansion. | 218 to 202 | Second Punic War
begins when Hannibal, who succeeded Hasdrubal in Spain, launches an attack on via the Alps. Hannibal lays waste
Italy, but has to return to Carthage to defend the city against the Scipio and his Numidian allies. Hannibal and
Carthage are defeated. | 202 to 149 | Extension of Punic civilization into Numidia under the ally,
King Massinissa. | 149 to 146 | Third Punic War. Carthage destroyed utterly. It becomes
a province known as Africa. | 6th
century | The Byzantine Empire gains control of
the coastal lands North Africa, including Kmt. The Byzantines are Orthodox Christians rather than Latin ones. |
EARLY CHRISTIANITY DATES | MAHGRIB AND W. MEDITERRANEAN | KMT AND EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN | After 30 CE |
| Early gatherings of Jesus'
followers in Jerusalem. | 48 CE |
| Conversion of Saul of Taursus and expansion of Jesus' messages to Gentiles (Non-Jews) | By end of 1st century |
| Christian community in Alexandria traces foundation to St. Mark. | By end of 2nd century | Christian
communities in Italy and Mahgrib. Missionaries sent to Gaul, Spain and Britain. | Christian communities in Kmt are spreading among Coptic speakers of the countryside | 250 | Decius begins systematic persecution of Christians | Christian Catechetical School established in Alexandria | 302-305 |
| Bishop of Alexandria first titled Archbishop or Patriarch | 311` | Christianity legalized in Empire |
| Early 4th
centuy | Rise of Donatist schism in Mahgrib. |
| 313 | Constantine's
Edict of Milan |
| 320 |
| Pachomius organizes the
first true monastic communities in Kmt | 325 | Council of Nicaea | Athanasius becomes Archbishop of Alexandria. Develops "one-nature" theology.Traditional
date for the conversion of Axum to Christianity. | 394 | Christianity declared official reglion of Empire |
| 395 | Augustine becomes
Bishop of Hippo. Orthodox Catholics triumph over Donatists. |
| 476 | Fall of Western Empire |
| 5th
century | Vandals (Arian Christians) invade and
take over Nahgrib | 451 Council of Chalcedon rejects
"monophysite" belief in the total oneness of God and Christ for Trinitarian theology. | 6th | Byzantine Emperor takes Mahgrib from Vandals, re-establishes orthodoxy | Byzantines rule Kmt. Much persecution of Monophysites. |
WEST AFRICA: C.800 BCE TO 1591 AD/CE By 800 BCE/Neolithic
agricultural African populations inhabit the best lands of the savanna and forest margins. Regional trade networks bican
Populations on the exchange of salt, fish, pottery, and other regional specialties developing. Small, clan-based villages
typical of agricultural areas. Nomads dominate in the drier areas. -800 to -500/Development of Carthage in the
north stimulates exchanges of products across the Sahara Desert, managed by desert Berbers using horses, oxen and chariots.
Iron use psreads into the region from the north or east, or both. Larger scale settlements
appearing in southern Mauritania. the middle Niger River basin, and the Jos plateau region. These areas correspond respectively
to the ancestral homes of the modern African Soninke (northern Mande); Songhai; and Yoruba peoples. -500 to -200/Iron
use spreads rapidly throughout West Africa, stimulating population growth, trade, and urbanization. Iron-age peoples
of Nok (modern Nigeria) produce magnificent terra cotta sculptures stylistically ancestral to later Yoruba and Benin art.
Indirect trade continues across increasingly well-marked Saharan trails, still traversed by horse or ox-drawn vehicles. -800
to +200/Era of Nok civilization. Bantu expansion 'takes off' to the south
and east. Earliest towns, such as Jenne, growing up along the Niger on its most northerly stretch. -100 to +100/Camel
use reaches the western Sahara via Berbers living in its southern reaches. c.100 to 400 CE/Camel using Saharan Berber
peoples, such as the Taureg and Sanhaja, develop trans-Saharan trade routes, linking the Maghrib and West Africa directly
for the first time. Salt, copper, gold, dates, slaves, agricultural produce, manufactured goods and ivory among the
goods exchanged. Soninke-led Ghana, Songhai-led Gao grow as middlemen for the expanding commerce. Trade routes
also link Nigeria and Lake Chad to North Africa. 400 to 900/Ghana, with its capital at Kumbi Saleh, becomes the first
regional "great power." With their control over the southern end of the trans-Saharan trade and the northern
end of the gold trade, the Ghana of Wagadu can afford the cavalry necessary to enforce his rule throughout the lands between
the Niger and the Senegal Rivers. The trans-Saharan boom stimulates the growth of
regional trade in copper, iron and other goods, both agricultural and manufactured. 750 to 1000/Muslim merchants from
the North become a major force in trans-Saharan and West African commerce. Islam spreads to Takrur and Ghana.
Among the Kanuri of Lake Chad, the Sefawa family founds a dynasty who will rule Kanem for a thousand years. The trans-Saharan
trade grows rapidly along with the expansion of the Islamic world. Artists of Igbo Ukwu in southern Nigeria produce
fine works in bronze. ca.1000/ Foundation of Ife, the political and spiritual capital of the Yoruba. 1054
to 1070/Almoravid Sanhaja establish control over trans-Saharan routes from the borders of Ghana to Morocco, greatly weakening
Ghana. 11th & 12th c./Several Sudannic kings convert to Islam. Commerce in the Sudan gradually comes to be
dominated by Muslims, both of local and north African origin. 13th c./ Rise of Mali under the great Mande hero,
Sundiata Keita. Ghana incorporated into the new great power. From its new capital
at Niane on the Niger, Mali develops trade with the developing gold fields of the Akan in modern-day Ghana. 14th
c/ Empire of Mali dominates the Western half of West Africa, controlling the gold and salt trade; promoting Islam;
and providing peace and prosperity to its region. Mansa Musa, the best known ruler of Mali, made the pilgrimage to Mecca. 15th
c./ Mali suffers dynastic difficulties and economic challenges as the gold fields
move further south and east. Songhai gains strength. Portuguese merchants begin trading directly with the Akan
along the coast of modern Ghana. 16th c./ Songhai, with its capital at Gao replaces Mali as the imperial power
of West Africa. Islamic learning flourishes with government patronage in the university town of Timbuktu. 1591/
Moroccan troops armed with guns cross the desert and defeat the army of Songhai, which break apart within a short time afterwards.
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