I. Geography

• A. Size and diversity of Africa
• B. Variation in geography = variation in civilizations and societies
  • 1.review the place of geography in Egypt, Greece, Rome
  • 2.Along Nile River
    • a. agriculture
    • b. settled society that could affect the order and harmony of Egypt
    • c. trade
    • d. warfare
  • 3.Sahara region
    • a. extremely dry and getting ever drier
    • b. little or no agriculture
    • c. what then? trade!
  • 4.Along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean
    • a. trade along the water routes
    • b. more agriculture than in other areas
    • c. increased wealth here throughout the ancient period
    • d. lots of interaction with wealthy Asian merchants
  • 5.Western Shoulder
    • a. again, cut off from Eastern trade because of desert
    • b. GOLD and SALT
    • c. gold then begat trade
  • 6.Savanah
    • a. defined as grasslands along side the desert
    • b. well suited for hunting and herding

• A. Had very early relationship with areas of Asia minor
• B. Origins on Arabian Peninsula, in modern Yemen
  • 1. arrived from Yemen around 1000BC
  • 2.Some were Jewish, thus the origins of the Ethiopian Jews
• C. Attacked Kush, took over Kush kingdom about 350 ce.
• D. Axum had existed for perhaps over 1000 years before Christ, but really started to rise in power when it took over Kush
• E. Made money by controlling east-west trade
  • 1. Controlled the India-Egypt-Southern Africa routes
  • 2. Ivory, gold, spices, elephants
• F. Also had close ties with Northern Africa, which may have led to acceptance of Christianity
  • 1. Historical ties with Judaism, contact with Egyptian Christians (Copts) brought in Christianity
  • 2. Becomes official religion around 350AD
  • 3. First non-Roman peoples to become Christian
  • 4. Takes a long time to filter down from king to become common religion of all people
  • 5. Today called the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
• G. Even with the fall of Axum and the rise of Ethiopia (as it is called today)
  • 1.still Christian
  • 2.Christianity with a strong African flavor
  • 3.only strong Christian nation in a sea of Islam
  • 4. After 700AD, cut off from rest of Christian world until 1500s, when Portuguese arrive
  • 5. able to withstand Muslim attack because mountains form natural fortress
  • 6.phenomenal churches, hewn out of pure rock

• A. Most societies in these area descended from Bantu
  • 1. Bantu Migration (500BC-1500AD)
  • 2. Migrate from homeland in modern Nigeria and Cameroon
  • 3. iron workers - iron crucial in ability to invade and conquer
  • 4. grazing and agriculture-based economies
  • 5. terra-cotta (a kind of clay) art
  • 6. Organized on clan-kinship basis
  • 7. first monarchies appear around 100AD
• B. Kanem and Bornu empires
  • 1.centered around Lake Chad
    • a. trade based - traded with North Africans
    • b. salt and copper north of Lake Chad
    • c. Forest products from area south of Chad
    • d. great camel caravans carried thousands of tons of slat across Sahara 
  • 2.Kanem founded around 800AD.
    • a. Founded by Sefuwa kings
    • b. Kings ruled over a hierarchy of governors and chiefs
  • 3.1085, Kanem took on Islam
    • a. King Hume (reigned 1085-97) - tactical conversion meant to gain trade advantage. Did not extend down into masses.
    • b. provided means to trade, deal more directly with other Islamic nations
    • c. provided slaves for other parts of Islam
    • d. in 1386, capital moved, reorganized as Kingdom of Bornu
• C. Kingdom of Bornu continued as a trade based Islamic kingdom until about 1846

• A. Ghana as a commercially based empire: culture has origins in 300s as Rome was losing power in that geographic area
  • 1. Founded by Soninke people -- roughly in 600s
  • 2. capital at Kumbi
  • 3. gains prominence in 900s AD
  • 4. Cross-Saharan trade develops around 750 AD
  • 5. Cross-Saharan trade grafted on to indigenous local trade routes
  • 4. "Ghana" was the title of the king
• B. Government
  • 1. sacred king at top
  • 2. king an intermediary between living and dead
  • 3. His sacred status also limited his behavior - had to uphold moral standards
  • 4. network of subchieftans who ruled the clans
  • 5. Government taxed trade
  • 6. Gold belonged to king (called the kaya maghan - Master of Gold)
  • 7. But king expected to redistribute gold to people - held massive feasts
  • 4. Kingdom the size of Texas
• C. Society
  • 1. Clan the basic unit of society
  • 2. based on descent from common ancestor
  • 3.clans often specialized
• D. Moved salt and gold across Sahara from north to south
  • 1.acted as middle men, moving gold and salt but not actually mining them
    • a. gold and ivory from southern forests
    • b. salt deposits in north
    • c. imported horses, swords, carpets and more from Arab world
  • 2.included trade with Romans and with southern Africans
  • 3.at one point, gold was said to be "worth its weight in salt"
  • 4.why salt?
• E. Commerce vs. tribal life
  • 1.trade helped city to grow
  • 2.yet major court life was centered outside the city
  • 3.showed the strength of the old tribal, non-city ways even in the Ghanese empire
  • 4.most traders and court possibly Muslim, most commoners probably African animist religions
  • 5.Islam was urban and commercial; traditional religions rural and less commercial
• F. Commerce was maintained by war
  • 1.kept trade routes open
  • 2.gave the possibility of winning slaves for later sale
  • 3.continuous warfare in desert and grasslands, however, meant a brittle empire
  • 4. Conquered by Berbers from Morroco in 1076AD - after brief period of chaos, revives but disappears by 1203AD.

• A. Successors to Ghana - larger, better organized
• B. Based on the same kinds of trade as Ghana
  • 1. gold, salt, slaves - mostly to Fez, Tripoli, and Alexandria
  • 2. taxes on trade funded government
• C. Mali
  • 1. Founded by Mandinka people
  • 2. Sundiata Keita (d. 1260) defeats major enemies in 1240, establishes empire
  • 3. Dyula - Mandinka merchant companies
    • a. came to control trade routes
    • b. brought wealth to empire, making it stronger
    • c. also brought Islam into empire
  • 4. King combined Islam with local religions to keep power
  • 5. Kingdom also had a strong agricultural base
• D. Rising importance of Islam to these areas
  • 1. Increasingly the religion of the people, not just the king
  • 2. Mansa Musa, king of Mali (1312-1337) makes pilgrimage to Mecca, 1324
    • a. by this point, Mali and empire of 8 million
    • b. fabulously wealthy because of gold trade - Dyula established extensive southern trade routes in gold region
  • 3. Timbuktu becomes a major center of Islamic scholarship
  • 4. Songhai rises up in place of a weakened Mali after Mansa Musa's death
• E. Songhai
  • 1. Founded by city-state of Gao
  • 2. Sunni Ali creates empire in 1464
  • 3. Shift towards a civil-service based government and professional army
  • 4. These reforms brought by Islam
  • 5. After Sunni Ali, kings depended on towns an merchants, increasingly isolated from villages
  • 5. Brought down by Moroccan invasion and internal revolt
• D. Importance of the Slave trade
  • 1.Africans had taken slaves in wars for hundreds or thousands of years
  • 2.then sold slaves to Romans, Europeans, Islamic Arabs, and then Europeans
  • 3.most slaves had been in wealthy households
  • 4.most therefore were not crop workers, etc.
  • 5.slave trade with Europe grew quickly once Europeans needed slaves for America in 1500s
  • 6.importance that slave trade had been part of all cultures for thousands of years

• A. Less strongly organized than in the North
• B. Why?
  • 1.geography-away from the trade routes
  • 2.geography--no easy way of creating stable societies based on agriculture
  • 3.instead, less-centralized groups and tribes
    • a. hunters
    • b. herders
• C. Zimbabwe as the exception
  • 1.Shona people - created empire from about 1200-1450
  • 2. Culmination of centuries of mineral trading societies
  • 2.maintained important cities, now well preserved ruins - largest called Great Zimbabwe
  • 3. trade important - last stop on eastern trade routes coming down Indian coast of Africa
  • 4. little is known about this culture- no written records
• D. Yet most were still small groups, semi-independent peoples instead of centralized societies
  • 1.made sense in how people had to live
  • 2.made sense ecologically--hunters never over-hunted
    • a. made sure that food supplies were always there
    • b. constant movement meant little historical evidence
    • c. did however maintain a stable culture that survives to this day
    • d. also created significant drawings and paintings on rock

• A. Series of trading city-states tied into Indian-Persian-Arabic trade
  • 1. Rise to prominence around 1050 AD
  • 2. But important back to Ptolmeic Egypt period (300s BC - time of Christ)
  • 3. Depended on Seasonal winds to trade with India, Persia, and Arabia
  • 4. Traded in cinnamon, ivory, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn, palm oil, and slaves in exchange for cotton, iron tools, glass, silk, Chinese porcelain and coins
  • 5. Much of imported goods sold to inland groups
• B. Zanzibar the most famous of these
• C. Swahili, a Bantu-Arabic trade language, develops to facilitate trade
• D. Mixed culture develops (Arabic-Persian-African) - predominantly Muslim

• A. In 7th century Islamic Arabs conquered much of northern Africa
• B. Islam could then spread south (except for Axum/Ethiopia)
• C. Islam (as said before) was
  • 1.a trade based religion
  • 2.therefore also an urban religion (as was Christianity)
  • 3.therefore would be strongest where there were cities and caravans and merchants
• D. Did not spread equally across Africa
  • 1.very little Islam in southern Africa
  • 2.very little among the rural populace
  • 3.therefore the religion of the economic elite
  • 4.therefore also often the religion of the ruling class
• E. Power of Islam in Africa
  • 1.linked it to Arab countries, North Africa
  • 2.linked various parts of Africa together
  • 3.provided political organization for African rulers