posted
On page 64 of "The Negroland of the Arabs examined and explained" by William Desborough Cooley he gives the passage where Ibn Khaldun talks about Abu Ishak and Mansa Musa having a fine palace built after his return from Mecca. In this translation it doesn't mention any introduction of a new architectural style in the western Sudan
I think the bolded bellow was interpreted by some people as architecture being introduced by foreigners
quote:Mansa Musa, on his return, conceived the idea of building himself a fine palace. Abu Ishak showed him a model, and erected the edifice, with plaster and all kinds of ornaments, for which he received 12,000 mithkals of gold . Mansa Musa maintained an intimate and friendly correspondence with Sultan Abu-l-Hasan, of Al-Maghreb, and reigned twenty-five years.
quote:Despite the increasing interest in translation in the last two decades, there has been no investigation of the translation of historiography and its transformation from one language to another. This article takes as a case study the translation into French of Ibn Khaldûn, the fourteenth-century North African historian. It considers specifically the translation done by William de Slane in the context of the colonization of Algeria. The Histoire des Berbères, the French narrative of Ibn Khaldûn that relates to the history of Arabs and Berbers in the Maghreb, has become since then the source of French knowledge of North Africa. It is upon that French narrative that colonial and post-colonial historians have constructed their knowledge of North Africa, of Arabs, and of Berbers. The article shows how a portion of the writing of Ibn Khaldûn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way as to become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century. Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the article shows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an "imaginary" by transforming local knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essay reveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language to another, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a creation-in Ricoeur's words, a "restructuring of semantic fields.
Btw, ironically I was just looking at another earlier article discussing the Almoravids conquest and why it was likely bogus but I don't have full access..
posted
It was an example of mistranslations and/or misinterpretation that might also apply to other situations. Main focus being Arabic literature not archeology
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I don't have access. It's amazing that article is over 20 years old and people still accept the idea of an Almoravid conquest unquestionably
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^Yea, that's crazy.. Also relevant is a paper that I'd read a while ago concerning ancient Ghana. It's hilarious but once upon a time in a land far far away, the perception used to be that Ghana was founded and occupied by white people based on a misreading of Almoravid influence and a lack of chronology:D
This is from an older paper (1954) by R. A. Mauny called "The Question of Ghana"... Ironically, the idea comes from Black scholars according to him. He cites them as saying:
quote:People do not agree as to the tribe to which these princes belonged. Were they, as some claim, Ouakore or, as others say, Ouangara?' That is unlikely and probably inaccurate. According to other sources, they might have been Sanhadja: which seems to me more likely, for they are named in their genealogies by the term Asko'o-Sociba which is equivalent to Ham as a surname in Sudanese usage. What is certain is that they were not negroes [sudan]. God knows it better than anyone; for these events are very old and took place in countries far from ours; therefore it is not possible nowadays for historians without fear of contradiction to agree on this subject, for they have no ancient chronicle upon which they can rely.
- Mahmoud Kati, Tarikh el-Fettach
and:
quote:Mali is a very large and extensive region in the far west, extending toward the Atlantic Ocean. The first ruler to establish a state there was Qayamagha,l the seat of his sovereignty being Ghana, a large city in the land of Baghana.3 It is said that the state (saltana) was founded before the Prophet Muhammad's mission, and that twenty-two kings ruled before that event, and twenty-two after, making a total of forty-four in all.4 They were bidan [white] in origin, though we do not know from whom they were originally descended- and their vassals (khuddiim) were Soninke (Wac kuriyyfin). When their dynasty came to an end they were succeeded by the Malians, who belong to the sudan [Blacks].
Es-Sadi, Tarikh al-Sudan [translation from Hunwick as it was preferable]
He says that specifically Mahmoud Kati likely tried to attribute to Ghana a bidan origin in order to detach his own Soninke clan from a 'pagan' legacy (at least this is the logic that Mauny seemed to use).. Funny that afterwards he feels obligated to go through so much to prove something that we now take for granted. Citing the various Arab authors chronologically, Mauny writes....
"Among the earlier references, Yakoubi,s in A.D. 872, places the Ghana people among the negroes and Masoudi (c. A.D. 944) does the same. Ibn Hawqal (c. 977), who had crossed the Sahara to Aoudaghost and therefore knew what he was talking about, also places Ghana in the land of the negroes, and so does A1 Birouni (c. 1036). El Bekri, speaking of the people of Ghana, says : '. . . the religion of these negroes is paganism.'7 Idrisi (I I 14) states that Ghana, now Muslim in religion, is the greatest town of the land of the negroes, but relates, as we have seen, that the kings are said to be descended from Salih ben Abdallah, a descendant of the Prophet (see p. 203 above). Since, a century before, El Bekri had recorded that the kings were negroes, we must take it as probable that after the Berber Almoravids took Ghana in 1077, the pagan dynasty was replaced by a Muslim one, which perhaps had, as Idrisi claims, Cherifian and therefore white blood in its veins. This tradition of a Cherifian, probably white, dynasty could explain why, several centuries later, the Tarikhs speak of non-negro kings of Ghana." - Mauny
He says people like Maurice Delafosse ran with this, using it to justify his belief that the people of Ghana were "Semitic".. Much of this is also before archaeology had its say but amusing nonetheless... Funny also how it comes back full circle to the Almoravids...
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posted
Kati descended from an al~Andalus immigrant family.
Delafosse, relying on oral documentation, wrote that Judeo-Syrians migrated to old Ghana (and elsewhere in the Western Sudan) not that Ghana was Semitic.
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posted
Well indeed as iterated, the paper IS a bit old (1954).. Though you're correct about Kati, I have seen conflicting descriptions which after reading further is attributable to his own self-description:
quote:The writer of the note, and purchaser of the manuscript, turns out to be the grandfather of Mahmud Kati, so evidently the male ancestry of the family was from central Spain, and appears to claim Visigoth origins. However they settled in West Africa and married locally, since Mahmud Kati himself uses a nisba (ethnic label) that relates him to the Soninke people [Wafikurı], and it is possible that he was related to the ruling dynasty, the Askiyas, of the Songhay empire, whose male ancestry was also Soninke.
So apparently he's descended from both since his family intermarried. Doesn't necessarily negate his being identified as a Soninke, though I see why you'd probably see that as simplistic.
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I point out Kati's Andalusian ancestry as an add on to the comment:
quote:Ironically, the idea comes from Black scholars ... . . . . Mahmoud Kati likely tried to attribute to Ghana a bidan origin in order to detach his own Soninke clan from a 'pagan' legacy
In consideration of the times, the place, and the people, it must be noted that those not of Gnawa origins were called white. That included all taMazight and Arabic speakers as well as Fulani. This is a difficult concept for non-West Africans to understand, but a caramel complexioned Soninke (like the mansa Gonga Musa) will call a chocolate coloured Zenaga (like amir Yusuf ibn Tashfin) a white man.
The Kati name is not Soninke. You left out Kati's Andalusian origin. I corrected the omission. Hunwick goes too far in attributing Visigothic origins to Kati. The clan founder himself, in a margin of the referenced note, says no more than that Toledo is the capital of the Goths. He says nothing about himself being a Visigoth.
To add onto the multi-ethnicity of the clan I wonder how Quti became Kati when it's known that a Levite family named Kehath immigrated to Timbuktu just before the Expulsion of Jews from Spain. The Touat was a known enclave of Jewish oases before al~Maghili's pogrom (also dated to 1492).
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As a note of precision, al~Quti is a nisba for the Goth ethnicity. But again I wonder about a nisba because every al~Takruri is not a Toukouleur but can just be from Tekrur or the western Sahel/Sudan in general as easterners labeled that entire region the Takrur because in Tekrur you had the first Muslims that far south and that far west (yes, before al~Murabitun converted/refined Islam among the Sanhadja aMazigh confederacy).
From a current day Kati clan member:
quote:Kati est une déformation de « Qut » et Alfa Kati l’indique lui-même : « C'est une corruption de langue qui fit du mot Kunya Kati; Kati est à l'origine, Quti ». L’ethnique Qut est la traduction arabe du terme Goth. Les traducteurs des Tarikhs de Tombouctou ont interprétés diversement ce nom. Ils donnent tantôt Koti, tantôt Kouti et souvent Kati. La lecture correcte est bien Quti ou Qoti que donnent certains membres de la famille comme Muhammad Abana ; les Kati de Kirshamba donnent eux Cota. Le nom Kati ne vient donc pas du nom latin Cota comme l’a laissé supposé Cantera-Burgos dans son étude sur le poète juif de Tolède Rodrigo Cota que j’ai suivi dans mon ouvrage intitulé Les juifs à Tombouctou, publié à Bamako en l’année 1999. Cantera Burgos lui-même, à propos des Quti, cité par ibn Bashkual, fut victime d’une longue tradition qui supposait ce nom comme juif. Le poète et philosophe de Málaga, Solomon Ibn Gabirol au XIe siècle le cite déjà. Moïse Ibn Ezra de Grenade au XII e siècle fait de même en l’incluant parmi les auteurs de la littérature juive d’Espagne, comme cela peut se voir dans l’article de M. Schreiner : « Le Kitâb al-Mouhâdara de Moise b. Ezra », publié dans la Revue des Etudes Juives. M. Steinschneider dans son travail intitulé Die arabische Literatur der Juden, poursuit cette mésinterprétation du nom Quti. Neubauer, dans son Hafs al-Qouti, le fait venir lui, du nom de ville Qout « située d’après Yaqout, dans la province de Balkh ». Abraham Laredo, dans son ouvrage intitulé Le nom des Juifs du Maroc, reprend la même hypothèse. Il faut accepter avec Dunlop que Quti n’est simplement pas un nom juif. Bien sûr, les Quti se métisseront à Tombouctou avec les Cohen de Fez et Mahmud Kati b. Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad Abana b. Ibrahim b. Mahmud Kati III est juif par sa mère. Je suis revenu sur tout cela dans mon second ouvrage qui porte sur les sources arabes relatives aux juifs dans la vallée du Niger.
Wa'kari -- definitely a nisba for Soninke --appears to also be a nisba for Wakore which is more a descriptor for nobility than an actual ethnicity. I will have to look further into this because in Soninke the etymology of wa-kore leads to meaning "milk white" unless corruption of some other word(s) is/are at root.
For sure a Kati did marry a sister of Muhammed Toure who, when he became the Askia, banned Jews from Songhai cities.
It's hilarious but once upon a time in a land far far away, the perception used to be that Ghana was founded and occupied by white people based on a misreading of Almoravid influence and a lack of chronology
Even if one were to lend credence to the idea of an Almoravid origin for the ancient Ghanaian complex, how does "Almoravid" equal "white"?
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
This is from an older paper (1954) by R. A. Mauny called "The Question of Ghana"... Ironically, the idea comes from Black scholars according to him.
Assuming that these scholars wrote in Arabic, was he supposedly citing these "Black scholars" from a generic Arabic world context, or from the in loco African [which are varied], presumably Western African context?
quote: He cites them as saying:
quote:People do not agree as to the tribe to which these princes belonged. Were they, as some claim, Ouakore or, as others say, Ouangara?' That is unlikely and probably inaccurate. According to other sources, they might have been Sanhadja: which seems to me more likely, for they are named in their genealogies by the term Asko'o-Sociba which is equivalent to Ham as a surname in Sudanese usage. What is certain is that they were not negroes [sudan]. God knows it better than anyone; for these events are very old and took place in countries far from ours; therefore it is not possible nowadays for historians without fear of contradiction to agree on this subject, for they have no ancient chronicle upon which they can rely.
- Mahmoud Kati, Tarikh el-Fettach
and:
quote:Mali is a very large and extensive region in the far west, extending toward the Atlantic Ocean. The first ruler to establish a state there was Qayamagha,l the seat of his sovereignty being Ghana, a large city in the land of Baghana.3 It is said that the state (saltana) was founded before the Prophet Muhammad's mission, and that twenty-two kings ruled before that event, and twenty-two after, making a total of forty-four in all.4 They were bidan [white] in origin, though we do not know from whom they were originally descended- and their vassals (khuddiim) were Soninke (Wac kuriyyfin). When their dynasty came to an end they were succeeded by the Malians, who belong to the sudan [Blacks].
Es-Sadi, Tarikh al-Sudan [translation from Hunwick as it was preferable]
He says that specifically Mahmoud Kati likely tried to attribute to Ghana a bidan origin in order to detach his own Soninke clan from a 'pagan' legacy (at least this is the logic that Mauny seemed to use)..
This is related to the question I put forward immediately above. I asked so, because recalling on a previous discussion, this was noted:
Red أحمر
Since in the past the term "white" was used for a person whose complexion was like a "black" person today, one must wonder what it is that the Arabs of the past called people who were "white" in the sense that the word is used today. In the past, those who had complexions like those who are considered "white" today were called red.
Tha'alab, the Arabic language scholar of the 9th century AD says, "The Arabs don't say that a man is white because of a white complexion. 'White' to the Arabs means that a person is pure, without any faults. If they meant that his complexion was 'white', they said 'red'".
Ibn Mandour says that the expression The Red People applies to the non-Arabs because of their whiteness and because of the fact that most of them are fair-skinned. He says that the Arabs used to call the non-Arabs such as the Romans and the Persians and their neighbors, The Red People. He also says that when the Arabs say that someone is white, they mean that he has a noble character--they don't mean that he is white. He says that the Arabs call the slaves The Red People. This is because most of the slaves of the Arabs were white (red). Click below for original in Arabic.
On that note, the author above is inferencing the supposedly "Hamitic" origins of said figures interesting from what the author claims to be "Sudanese" [as in presumably "blacks" in this context] word for "Ham", not from a "Hamitic" word itself. Concerning the top question , could the author supposedly citing here, have taken "Ham" to be equal to "white"? The author also translates "Sudan" [which is a term equivalent to "black(s)"] as "negroes", but references it elsewhere as "blacks".
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Funny that afterwards he feels obligated to go through so much to prove something that we now take for granted. Citing the various Arab authors chronologically, Mauny writes....
"Among the earlier references, Yakoubi,s in A.D. 872, places the Ghana people among the negroes and Masoudi (c. A.D. 944) does the same. Ibn Hawqal (c. 977), who had crossed the Sahara to Aoudaghost and therefore knew what he was talking about, also places Ghana in the land of the negroes, and so does A1 Birouni (c. 1036). El Bekri, speaking of the people of Ghana, says : '. . . the religion of these negroes is paganism.'7 Idrisi (I I 14) states that Ghana, now Muslim in religion, is the greatest town of the land of the negroes, but relates, as we have seen, that the kings are said to be descended from Salih ben Abdallah, a descendant of the Prophet (see p. 203 above). Since, a century before, El Bekri had recorded that the kings were negroes, we must take it as probable that after the Berber Almoravids took Ghana in 1077, the pagan dynasty was replaced by a Muslim one, which perhaps had, as Idrisi claims, Cherifian and therefore white blood in its veins. This tradition of a Cherifian, probably white, dynasty could explain why, several centuries later, the Tarikhs speak of non-negro kings of Ghana." - Mauny
Mauny for some objectively-obscure rational, seems to take "Berber" as something that is mutually exclusive with "Blacks" or "Negroes". As asked earlier, in that Almoravids, as implicated by primary texts, their geographic origins and ethnic groups affiliated with them, are considerably melaninated, how does that become mutually exclusive with "Blacks"...the author does not say, at least in the cited excerpts. Seems like some dogma of "racial purity" is used as a rational here(?), equating Sharifian (spelt here as "Cherifian"] legends of ancestry [from Muhammed] with "white blood"...in which case, the schema used in places like the US, at the time of the publication [1954], seem to have been reversed, wherein the supposedly "non-White blood" would render the candidate a member of the "non-white" ancestor.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri:
because in Tekrur you had the first Muslims that far south and that far west (yes, before al~Murabitun converted/refined Islam among the Sanhadja aMazigh confederacy).
Asking from the understanding that Islam spread deep into western Africa via interaction with groups situated in the more northerly western African territories, how were areas around northern Mauritania or southern Morocco relatively late to pick up the religion, when compared to the more southern Sahel or sub-Saharan areas of western Africa. What primary sources clue us in on this?
Seeing how we are dealing with western Africa [hence, dealing with western Africans] and that this author refers to the said group as "diaspora", what does the author propose as the original homeland of this group, where I take it that they are *no longer situated*?
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posted
Very illuminating. Thanx al-Takuri! I recall the distinction between sudan/bidan as applied in the western Sahel being described as "cultural" but indeed it wasn't as easy to grasp without some kind of analogy or anecdote, which is why actually talking to people [west Africans or those otherwise familiar], as opposed to reading verbatim translations is invaluable.
I'm reading the paper on the Wangara (diaspora) right now.
...........................
@ The Explorer.. I agree with you actually for the most part since my own view of the Almoravids is that of a Berber confederation which comprised peoples of various swarthy complexions. The "white" attribution indeed is a product of Mauny's time as "white" isn't a term I'd apply to them in isolation devoid of a reference (like say, how other Africans described them in Arabic or in the context of that paper).. That's just an addition to the thread's theme of mistranslated, distorted, and misinterpreted sources.
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Obviously Mauny is reflecting the racism of his time, which would make Northern Africans and their "advanced" culture the product of "white blood" and therefore make the Almoravids, and important part of the Islamic cultural presence in Spain, a white group. This has absolutely nothing to do with facts on the ground. Any book on foreign people and cultures from the 1960s on back is very likely to have such juxtapositions between primitive "negro" groups and advanced "caucasoid" groups. This is especially true in books about travels through Northern and Western Africa.
The Almoravids should be considered an extension of African culture from the interior of Africa, not an extension of white 'berbers' from the North. The culture of the Almoravids and most Sanhaja Berbers was heavily based around trade with the South and it is from the south that many of their cultural traits originated or were nurtured. And this stretches clear across the Sahara to the Nile Valley. There were important fundamentally AFRICAN elements of the Saharan Berbers that had absolutely nothing to do with "white" Muslim identity or culture that is often swept under the rug by such historians. The Sanhaja (Tuareg), Senegalese, Nigeria, Fula(Fulani), Chadians and Nile Valley peoples had very similar elements of cultural interchange that formed the basis of Medieval African culture. Unfortunately due to the "hype" surrounding Islam as a "primary" force for cultivating civilization in the old texts, a lot of indigenous African cultural traditions get overlooked.
But again, African musical instruments, metal working, mining, leather working, wood working, agriculture and technical know how were very important to the spread of Islam in Africa and became a part of the body of Islamic knowledge and culture. Just as the pre-existing cultures of the Levant, India and Asia were fundamental forces in shaping Islam, so too were the pre-existing cultures of Africa. And on the same token, the conservative forces strictness and rigidity that tried to purge these practices from Islam are the same forces that did the same across the Islamic world regarding pre-existing cultural traditions.
And one other point to remember is that Ancient Moorish Spain was more similar to the mystical/magical stories of might and magic from modern popular culture than many people realize. In fact much modern popular culture gets inspiration from the actual happenings in ancient Moorish North Africa and Spain, even though most people do not know it. At the time early Islam was much more mystical in nature than it is today, as a lot more of the mystical and magical elements from cultures that came before Islam still existed. This includes Persian mysticism, Egyptian magic, African mysticism, Arabian mysticism and Indian mysticism. All of these were a powerful force during the Islamic golden Ages. The scientist/scholars practiced alchemy, divination and many other mystical/practical sciences which became part of the lore of groups like the Illuminati and other "secret orders", precisely because of things like the Inquisition that tried to stamp out all "witch craft" and magic in the Western world, along with the more conservative forces in Islam that weeded out most of the scholarly elements of Islam along with the more esoteric. Look at the books by Ibn Arabi and Al Ghazali to name a few.
Geomancy is one example of the types of mystical traditions that were influence by Africans within Islam:
quote: Geomancy (Greek: γεωμαντεία, "earth divination") is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand. The most prevalent form of divinatory geomancy involves interpreting a series of 16 figures formed by a randomized process that involves recursion followed by analyzing them, often augmented with astrological interpretations.
Once practiced by people from all social classes, it was one of the most popular forms of divination throughout Europe and Africa in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Books and treatises on geomancy were published up until the 17th century when most occult traditions fell out of popularity. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn attempted a revival of old occult arts including geomancy, but the short time they desired to master their arts restricted their ability to fully practice and revive them. Geomancy has recently seen a new interest through the works of John Michael Greer and other practitioners, with more mainstream occult circles practicing and teaching geomancy.
Geomancy, from Greek geōmanteía translates literally to "foresight by earth"; it is a calque of the Arabic term ‛ilm al-raml, or the "science of the sand". Earlier Greek renditions of this word borrowed the word raml ("sand") directly, rendering it as rhamplion or rabolion. Other Arabic names for geomancy include khatt al-raml and darb al-raml.[1]
Geomancy as an art is theorized to have its origins in the Arabic Middle East, although the lack of historical records prevents any measure of certainty. The original names of the figures were traditionally given in Arabic, excluding a Persian origin. The reference in Hermetic texts to the mythical Ṭumṭum al-Hindi potentially points to an Indian origin, although Skinner thinks this to be unlikely [2] Having an Islamic or Arabic origin is most likely, since the expansive trade routes of Arabian merchants would facilitate the exchange of culture and knowledge. It is theorized that related systems of divination in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Ifá and sikidy, either were based on or co-developed with Arabic divination systems; the use of binary numbers is a distinct trait in the culture of the African plains.[3]
European scholars and universities began to translate Arabic texts and treatises in the early Middle Ages, including those on geomancy. Isidore of Seville lists geomancy with other methods of divination including pyromancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, and necromancy without describing its application or methods;[4] it could be that Isidore of Seville was listing methods of elemental scrying more than what is commonly known as geomancy. The poem Experimentarius attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, who wrote in the middle of the 12th century, was a verse translation of a work on astrological geomancy. One of the first discourses on geomancy translated into Latin was the Ars Geomantiae of Hugh of Santalla; by this point, geomancy must have been an established divination system in Arabic-speaking areas of Africa and the Middle East. Other translators, such as Gerard of Cremona, also produced new translations of geomancy that incorporated astrological elements and techniques that were, up until this point, ignored[5]. From this point on, more European scholars studied and applied geomancy, writing many treatises in the process. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Christopher Cattan, and John Heydon produced oft-cited and well-studied treatises on geomancy, along with other philosophers, occultists, and theologians until the 17th century, when interest in occultism and divination began to dwindle due to the rise of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason.
quote: My introduction to Cedena, or sand divination, took place in Dakar, Senegal, where the local Islamic culture credits the Bamana (also known as “Bambara”) with a potent pagan mysticism. Almost all diviners had some kind of physical deformity — “the price paid for their power. One diviner seemed quite willing to teach me about the system, suggesting that it “would be just like school.”The first few sessions went smoothly, with the diviner showing me a symbolic code in which each symbol, represented by a set of four vertical dashed lines drawn in the sand, stood for some archetypical concept (travel, desire, health, etc.) with which he assembled narratives about the future.But when I finally asked how he derived the symbols — in particular the meaning of some patterns drawn prior to the symbol writing — they all laughed at me and shook their heads.“That’s the secret!”My offers of increasingly high payments were met with disinterest.Finally, I tried to explain the social significance of cross-cultural mathematics.I happened to have a copy of Linda Garcia’s Fractal Explorer with me, and began by showing a graph of the Cantor set, explaining its recursive construction.The head diviner, with an expression of excitement, suddenly stopped me, snapped the book shut and said “show him what he wants!”
posted
The modern use of the idea of black Africa had to have its roots in the Arab word Sudan Bilad al-Sudan. The thing is even though thats where the concept came from doesn't mean it had the same meanings. In both situations its not strictly about skin color when talking about a black person in the United States the word implies having roots in Africa. American black history means history of those who have African roots in America.
Ibn Khaldun said "The blacks are made up from different races, people and different tribes. In the east, the best known are the Zanj, the Abyssins and the Nubians"
In America black and Negro are used to mean the same thing. There are indigenous Sudan who are lighter skinned than people who are not Sudan.
quote:
Another misunderstood term used by the Arabs of the past to described a person's complexion is the term "black". It must be understood that when the Arabs of the past used the term "black" to describe a complexion, they meant that the person's complexion was actually black--much darker than the complexion of people who are called "black" today. The Arabs used the term "black"; or they used the term "shadeed al udma (very adam)". The two terms were used interchangeably to describe a very, very dark complexion. Most people who are called "black" today are actually not black. Many people mistakenly believe that an Arab that the Arabs described as "black" was from a different race or origin from the other Arabs. This isn't the case at all. When the Arabs described another Arab as black-skinned, they were only expressing the fact that the person was so dark-skinned that he/she was black, a color much darker than the color of most so-called African Americans and also a color much darker than the color of most so-called Africans. They didn't mean that he/she wasn't an Arab. The term "black" is used today for people who are not black at all. There are some peoples and tribes in Arabia and in so-called Africa who are black-skinned, but black-skinned is a specific complexion-- a very, very dark complexion. This is an important point that must be kept in mind.
posted
In this translations of Ibn Khaludn it says "These are synonyms used to designate the particular nation that has turned black". Is it possible it was mistranslated and Ibn Khaldun meant nations that remained black
This might be important
Negroes from the south who settled in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tends towards whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose color gradually turns white in the course of time
quote:The inhabitants of the first and the second zone in the south are called the Abyssinians, the Zanj, the Sudanese. These are synonyms used to designate the particular nation that has turned black. The name Abyssinians however is restricted to those Negroes who live opposite Mecca and the Yemen and the name Zanj is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean. These names are not given to them because of an alleged descent from a black human being, be it Ham or anyone else. Negroes from the south who settled in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tends towards whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose color gradually turns white in the course of time.
quote:And if the Prophet – may Allah be pleased with him – knew that the Zanj, Ethiopians and Nubians were not ruddy or light-skinned, rather dark-skinned, and that Allah Most High sent him to the dark-skinned and the ruddy, then surely he made us and the Arabs equals. Hence, we are the only dark-skinned people. If the appellation dark-skinned applies to us, then we are the pure Sudan, and the Arabs only resemble us.
posted
Semantically, ideologically or otherwise, it is incorrect to try and ascribe Africa as being home to different "races". The only race of Africa is the human race. Likewise, the only population indigenous and aboriginal to all parts of Africa is that population with various complexions within the range of brown skin and generally identified as black. All other descriptions are labels, identifiers and associations created from foreign perspectives and ideologies that only reflect variation in political and ideological boundaries which are used to overlay these fundamental facts of African identity.
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posted
Wait so does the word Sudan not apply to everyone indigenous to Africa south of the Sahara. Could a lighter skinned person be Sudan
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: [QB] In consideration of the times, the place, and the people, it must be noted that those not of Gnawa origins were called white. That included all taMazight and Arabic speakers as well as Fulani. This is a difficult concept for non-West Africans to understand, but a caramel complexioned Soninke (like the mansa Gonga Musa) will call a chocolate coloured Zenaga (like amir Yusuf ibn Tashfin) a white man.
posted
Who cares? Bilad es Sud is a foreign term, like Niger, Maure, Ethiop and so forth. They all mean the same thing: black person and have all been used to label various parts of Africa. They are not accurate descriptions of or references to the historical extent and range of black people in Africa. Such terms are only general references and not the detailed ethnographic or phenotypic sources required to asses the full range of physical diversity of Africa over the ages.
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posted
I wouldn't be interested in it but Berber people like Ibn Battuta talk about it. Was this concept completely introduced by Arabs?
Also I'm not saying there is a rigid division between people "white" or "black" or anything else and I'm trying to be sensitive to the beliefs of the people we are talking about.
This is from the end of page 75 Ibn Ibn Battuta is talking
quote:We marched from Karsekho and came to the river Sansarah, which is ten miles from Mali, and it being the custom of the country that no one enters there without asking leave, I wrote to the company of Whites, and to its chief, Mohammed ben Alfakih Algezuli, and also to Shemso-d-din, to engage me a lodging; and so, when I came to the river (Sansarah), I embarked in a canoe, and without further trouble, arrived at the city of Mali, the residence of the Sultan of Negroland; and, landing near the burial ground, I walked directly to the quarter of the Whites, and found Mohammed ben Alfakih, who had procured me a lodging opposite to his own house."
quote:Mansa Musa maintained an intimate and friendly correspondence with Sultan Abu-l-Hasan, of Al-Maghreb, and reigned twenty-five years.
On his death the empire devolved on Mansa Magha—that is, Sultan Mohammed, for in their language Magha signifies Mohammed. He died after a reign of four years, and was succeeded by Mansa Suleiman, son of Abu Bekr, and brother of Musa, who reigned twenty-four years. After him came his son, Mansa Ibn Suleiman, who died nine months after ascending the throne. Then followed Mari Jatah, and Mansa Magha, son of Mansa Musa, and reigned fourteen years. He (Mari Jatah) was a wicked and dissolute prince. He sent an embassy to Abu Selim, son of Abu-l-Hasan, Sultan of Al- Maghreb (the West), which embassy arrived in Fez in the year 762; and among other presents which came with it, were some very tall animals called Zerafah (camelopards), as high as obelisks, and strange in the land of Al-Maghreb
posted
^^Yea, but I was under the impression that "Mahgreb" simply means "west"..
Edit: Ok, nevermind as it's even mentioned in that excerpt.. What were you trying to convey?
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posted
People were identified as coming from the Mahgreb (What many westerners would call nowrthwest Africa) or western Sudan (What westerners would call west Africa). During the colonial era scholars used the concept of Sudan and sought to depict it as an area isolated and passive in world history
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quote:Mansa Musa maintained an intimate and friendly correspondence with Sultan Abu-l-Hasan, of Al-Maghreb, and reigned twenty-five years.
On his death the empire devolved on Mansa Magha—that is, Sultan Mohammed, for in their language Magha signifies Mohammed. He died after a reign of four years, and was succeeded by Mansa Suleiman, son of Abu Bekr, and brother of Musa, who reigned twenty-four years. After him came his son, Mansa Ibn Suleiman, who died nine months after ascending the throne. Then followed Mari Jatah, and Mansa Magha, son of Mansa Musa, and reigned fourteen years. He (Mari Jatah) was a wicked and dissolute prince. He sent an embassy to Abu Selim, son of Abu-l-Hasan, Sultan of Al- Maghreb (the West), which embassy arrived in Fez in the year 762; and among other presents which came with it, were some very tall animals called Zerafah (camelopards), as high as obelisks, and strange in the land of Al-Maghreb
There is no book written by Ibn Kaldun called "Negroland". Therefore, the title is somewhat misleading. You need to reference a good translation of Ibn Kaldun's works in order to understand what he actually said about Bilad es Sud as opposed to reading about it second hand. This book is written by Europeans and contains many of their prejudiced views and therefore must be taken with a big dose of salt.
If these passages are from the hands of Ibn Kaldun, then it indeed reflects on the fact that the descriptions of Africa are based on generalized descriptions and based around foreign ways of identifying people which has nothing to do with reality.
As an example on page 21, the descriptions of the Zenaga as if they were 'intermingled' with blacks, but not blacks is a perfect example of such nonsense. The Zenaga are being distinguished artificially, as the progenitors of the Almoravids, from the other Africans as if they were a different "race", when they were not.
Like I said earlier, the Zenaga and other Saharan African Berber populations share strong ties of culture and identity with inner Africa and this did indeed extend all the way to Spain during the Medieval period.
However one must remember as well that the West Africans of Timbuktu also wrote a book called Bilad es Sudan and it is based strongly around the writings of peoples like Ibn Kaldun, but unfortunately they rely too much on foreign accounts of their own history.
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@ The Explorer.. I agree with you actually for the most part since my own view of the Almoravids is that of a Berber confederation which comprised peoples of various swarthy complexions. The "white" attribution indeed is a product of Mauny's time as "white" isn't a term I'd apply to them in isolation devoid of a reference (like say, how other Africans described them in Arabic or in the context of that paper).. That's just an addition to the thread's theme of mistranslated, distorted, and misinterpreted sources.
The Almoravids fall into the descriptor "black", in so far as the word applies to epidermal melanin levels, as applied to Saharo-sub-Saharan Africans. "Medieval" Iberians and other southwest Europeans have left imprints of the influential figures of this complex, along with texts, that leave no doubt about this, for instance. Mauny alleges to be translating, what I take it was Arabic, and yet, does it with faulty Eurocentric reasoning, as opposed to doing it from familiarity with Arabic contexts, and/or western African, if contexts were provided discretely as such, respectively. Even if, say "white" were used in a generic Arabic context to describe one group of people discretely from another group, but meant to be placed in the context of say, "purity", contrary to the sort of logic Mauny applies to the translation, it should not be written to say "white people". By simply substituting a word for its equivalents in English does no justice to the primary work it is placed, because context are lost along way, as exemplified. If the generic Arabic equivalent for Eurocentric "white people" is "red people" [in Arabic], as exemplified in the piece I recited above, then that would be the more appropriate translation into "white people". One cannot simply just translate "red people" into the English equivalent on the account that it is written as "red people" in Arabic, and so, must be stuck to that manner in English as well, and not expect out-of-context translation...this is what it appears to me, from the excerpts cited, that Mauny is doing. No little indicator of this, is the seemingly erratic translations of "Sudan", wherein one comes across the term translated as "Blacks", and in other instances, as "Negroes". Clearly, this is the expression of Mauny's Eurocentric projections onto texts from the Arabic speaking world; his Eurocentric slanted mental conditioning renders "Negroes" interchangeable with "Blacks", and so, projected so in the translations, even though "Sudan" need not or does not have such a relation in Arabic context itself. He takes it for granted that Arabic words can merely be substituted for English counterpart words without loss of context, which is obviously a flawed train of thought. Henceforth, a "pure person" described in Arabic as a "white person", Mauny will simplistically translate to mean, well, "white person" as it is applied to northern Europeans in English, without thinking twice about the loss of context that had just occurred by doing so.
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posted
@ Altakruri,why did Mohammed Toure,band Jews from the Songhay cities? the two groups worked well togeather in Islamic Iberia did'nt they?so what was the politics behind that.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
If Kati were from Andalus then why can't it be assumed that his family was Moorish--i.e. "black-a-moor?
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posted
People talk about how the Moors were black but they ignore the same for the Arabs. The era of the Arab conquests was truly the dark ages!
Remember this from the true arabs website
quote: Al Dhahabi says "Red, in the speech of the people from the Hijaz, means fair-complexioned and this color is rare amongst the Arabs. This is the meaning of the saying '...(He was) a red man as if he is one of the slaves'. The speaker meant that his color is like that of the slaves who were captured from the Christians of Syria, Rome, and Persia". So it must be understood that what people call "white" today was called "red" by the Arabs of the past.
If anyone isnt' convinced explain this:
quote:The lowest factors in the future development of Africa are the Abyssinian and the Arab, both Semitic in ancestry, both interbred with Hamites and Negroes.
quote:Originally posted by markellion: If anyone isnt' convinced explain this:
quote:The lowest factors in the future development of Africa are the Abyssinian and the Arab, both Semitic in ancestry, both interbred with Hamites and Negroes.
What is there to explain other than the fact that this is an outdated and inaccurate quote?
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quote:Originally posted by ackee: @ Altakruri,why did Mohammed Toure,band Jews from the Songhay cities? the two groups worked well togeather in Islamic Iberia did'nt they?so what was the politics behind that.
He was obviously a very wise man. Jews are very parasitic and traitorous, as they are loyal only to their "nation". They have produced Jonathan Pollards throughout their history.
During the Islamic occupation they came under protection of the Moors, when the tide turned they changed sides. The official version has it that they were unjustly "persecuted" and chased out of Spain in 1492, but this is misleading. When the Moors were defeated they simply converted and sided with the emerging white imperialism (Isabel and Ferdinand) and with their wealth and technology gained under Moors went out, disguised under Christendom (Morranos), to conquer the west. The blood of indigenous Americans is as much on their hands as the Christians. Read Michael Bradley books as well as The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews.
Of course their belief that blacks are cursed of Ham, according to their "holiest of books" the Talmud, didn't help either.
Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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posted
People had to acknowledge that there wasn't a strict divide between "Africa" and "Arabia"
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:Originally posted by markellion: If anyone isnt' convinced explain this:
quote:The lowest factors in the future development of Africa are the Abyssinian and the Arab, both Semitic in ancestry, both interbred with Hamites and Negroes.
posted
Why are you struggling with the errors and fallacies in a 150 year old Eurocentric text? Obviously it does not accurately reflect the reality on the ground in North Africa 1000 years ago.
If you want the truth then you cannot start by using this book as your only reference.
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posted
Toure took council from al~Maghili who, besides doling out every severed Israelite head in Tuat, instructed "it is a meritorious act to destroy a synagogue."
Just do a search on the keys, you will find supporting materials right on the 'net.
quote:Originally posted by ackee: @ Altakruri,why did Mohammed Toure,band Jews from the Songhay cities? the two groups worked well togeather in Islamic Iberia did'nt they?so what was the politics behind that.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^^But how does an outdated and inaccurate quote help prove that??
For one thing it suggests that the physical appearance of Arabs somehow struck him as having some kind of connection with Ethiopians
The thing is don't most writers describe people in the Maghrib and Arabs as the same color. like Ibn Battuta describe most Berbers/Tuaregs and and Arabs as white (dark skinned). Are Berbers ever described as being generally darker than Arabs
White supposedly means a blackish complexion with a light-brown undertone.
quote: on the way home again, passed through Touareg country, whose women impressed him. They were, he wrote, "the most perfect in beauty and the most shapely in figure of all women, of a pure white color and very fat; nowhere in the world have I seen any who equal them in fatness."
posted
Amazigh Muslims in Audaghast were Zenata. Zenaga picked up on Islam after them. The Zenata were established in the Sahel carrying on trade perhaps even before there was a Dar al Islam.
Standard works on West African history published by UNESCO and/or Cambridge will give you the primary sources. Levtzion also has published on the period and place.
quote:Originally posted by The Explorer:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri:
because in Tekrur you had the first Muslims that far south and that far west (yes, before al~Murabitun converted/refined Islam among the Sanhadja aMazigh confederacy).
Asking from the understanding that Islam spread deep into western Africa via interaction with groups situated in the more northerly western African territories, how were areas around northern Mauritania or southern Morocco relatively late to pick up the religion, when compared to the more southern Sahel or sub-Saharan areas of western Africa. What primary sources clue us in on this?
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posted
The term "white" is not from Mauny's time. It is in the primary sources. Though some contemporaneous writers connected aMazigh and Gnawa through TaNaKh genealogies they did not label the littoral or the Sahara as Beled es~Sudan.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: The "white" attribution indeed is a product of Mauny's time
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posted
Actually 'ni ger' stems from a taMazight word for river/stream.
As I wrote some time back the darkest Africans between the littoral and the Sahara were situated in the chotts region of what's now Algeria. Apparently the Latins adapted the word and applied it to the people more so than any river, but they did apply it to both.
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Bilad es Sud is a foreign term, like Niger, ... They all mean the same thing: black person and have all been used to label various parts of Africa.
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posted
Thanx for correcting that alTakuri.. I see many objecting to the term as applied but I can appreciate more and more that these are more a case of cultural relativism than of our own biases.
quote:Originally posted by markellion: For one thing it suggests that the physical appearance of Arabs somehow struck him as having some kind of connection with Ethiopians
The thing is don't most writers describe people in the Maghrib and Arabs as the same color. like Ibn Battuta describe most Berbers/Tuaregs and and Arabs as white (dark skinned). Are Berbers ever described as being generally darker than Arabs
White supposedly means a blackish complexion with a light-brown undertone.
Ok, see, my point is that I agree in part with your conclusion but not your reasoning (which is crucial).. You completely ignore the erroneous information contained therein your cited quotation. Yes, there are implications which swing one way to justify your point, but there are implications that also null your point, like the claim that Ethiopians are "racially" distinct from other Africans.
We have to be sharper than this my friend. Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
The point wasn't that what he said was true its why would Colonialists at that time make that kind of observation despite the fact they wanted to separate Arabia and Africa. Arab sources actually consider Ethiopians brothers with Zanj and also Nubians.
Ibn Khaldun:
"Further away there are the Nubians, brothers of the Zanj and the Abyssins. They owe on the left side of the Nil river the town of Dongola....."
In the bellow Jahiz says "not to mention those more distant in substance and more intensely different" which suggests Zanj is to Ethiopian what Persian is to Arab to some extant when it comes to substance and the intensity of their differences
Taken from: Al Jahiz, nine essays
"You asserted that the difference between the Turks and the Khurasani is not like the difference between the Persian and Arab, the Byzantine and the Slav, or the Zanj and the Ethiopian, not to mention those more distant in substance and more intensely different. It is rather, like the difference between a resident of Mecca and of Medina."
quote:For one thing it suggests that the physical appearance of Arabs somehow struck him as having some kind of connection with Ethiopians
The thing is don't most writers describe people in the Maghrib and Arabs as the same color. like Ibn Battuta describe most Berbers/Tuaregs and and Arabs as white (dark skinned). Are Berbers ever described as being generally darker than Arabs
White supposedly means a blackish complexion with a light-brown undertone.
Ok, see, my point is that I agree in part with your conclusion but not your reasoning (which is crucial).. You completely ignore the erroneous information contained therein your cited quotation. Yes, there are implications which swing way one to justify your point, but there are implications that also null your point, like the claim that Ethiopians are "racially" distinct from other Africans.
posted
Zanj/Ethopian would represent Bilad al-Sudan the south.
Slav/Byzantine would represent those of the north
Arab/Persian in the middle. Arabs are in a position that they would still be related to the Sudan to the south a coming together of cultures.
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posted
I don't know why you are so concerned with this one text. What is it that you are trying to get at?
I don't see what it is that you feel you are extracting from this one text.
People use various geopolitical terms to refer to other cultures/populations depending on the political climate of the time. That is why referring to such works can only give generalized information.
For the ACTUAL distribution of any physical trait or feature among populations in any part of the planet you need anthropology which relies heavily on physical remains, biology and genetics.
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posted
Will the important thing in this thread is Arabic texts so I got off topic. Are there any medieval writers that referred to Berbers as a different color than most Arabs. Both are generally referred to as white meaning dark skinned. I'm actually more interested in how they viewed different people in the world than genetics.
Also the way people talk about the Moors being black but act like Arabs weren't black. By United States views both were black. I'm not saying we should look at this the way people in the United States think but if/when people say the Moors were black they should say the Arabs of that time were black
When this says Negroland I'm guessing Ibn Battuta (a Berber) is using the term bilad al-sudan.:
quote: This is from the end of page 75 Ibn Battuta is talking
quote:We marched from Karsekho and came to the river Sansarah, which is ten miles from Mali, and it being the custom of the country that no one enters there without asking leave, I wrote to the company of Whites, and to its chief, Mohammed ben Alfakih Algezuli, and also to Shemso-d-din, to engage me a lodging; and so, when I came to the river (Sansarah), I embarked in a canoe, and without further trouble, arrived at the city of Mali, the residence of the Sultan of Negroland; and, landing near the burial ground, I walked directly to the quarter of the Whites, and found Mohammed ben Alfakih, who had procured me a lodging opposite to his own house."
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Toure took council from al~Maghili who, besides doling out every severed Israelite head in Tuat, instructed "it is a meritorious act to destroy a synagogue."
Just do a search on the keys, you will find supporting materials right on the 'net.
quote:Originally posted by ackee: @ Altakruri,why did Mohammed Toure,band Jews from the Songhay cities? the two groups worked well togeather in Islamic Iberia did'nt they?so what was the politics behind that.
The question wasn't how he did it but why. Stop dodging the inevitable and tell us why in almost every country your people have incurred the wrath of the natives, either killed or chased out.
Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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quote:Originally posted by markellion: Will the important thing in this thread is Arabic texts so I got off topic. Are there any medieval writers that referred to Berbers as a different color than most Arabs. Both are generally referred to as white meaning dark skinned. I'm actually more interested in how they viewed different people in the world than genetics.
Also the way people talk about the Moors being black but act like Arabs weren't black. By United States views both were black. I'm not saying we should look at this the way people in the United States think but if/when people say the Moors were black they should say the Arabs of that time were black
When this says Negroland I'm guessing Ibn Battuta (a Berber) is using the term bilad al-sudan.:
quote: This is from the end of page 75 Ibn Battuta is talking
quote:We marched from Karsekho and came to the river Sansarah, which is ten miles from Mali, and it being the custom of the country that no one enters there without asking leave, I wrote to the company of Whites, and to its chief, Mohammed ben Alfakih Algezuli, and also to Shemso-d-din, to engage me a lodging; and so, when I came to the river (Sansarah), I embarked in a canoe, and without further trouble, arrived at the city of Mali, the residence of the Sultan of Negroland; and, landing near the burial ground, I walked directly to the quarter of the Whites, and found Mohammed ben Alfakih, who had procured me a lodging opposite to his own house."
[/QB]
Actually I haven't seen anywhere where you have provided sources from Arabic where the Berbers were identified as a monolithic entity and not black. I also have not seen anything where you have referenced anything in Arabic claiming Arabs to be monolithic and not black. That is the point. You have latched onto a handful of European translations of a few Arabic medieval texts, yet you pretend that this presents the full scope of the Arabic views of the world, when it does not. I also have not seen anything that shows how white in the Arabic texts meant black, as opposed to meaning honorable. So I think you are confused because you are taking texts that have been either purposely or accidentally mistranslated at face value.
In medieval Islam, it was the clan or family connection that was the most important. Berber was not the perjorative, Lamtuna, Zenata, Masmuda, Zenaga, Sanhaja and other terms were, as those terms were the identifiers for the clans within "Berber" society that played a role in the encounters between Africans and Arabs as they swept across North Africa. If you look for Arabic medieval works on those peoples you will find much more than what you have provided thus far. Likewise, when reading about Arabs, again it is the clan names and family names that are most important, with family genealogy and history being an important branch if Islamic scholarship, especially that showing relationship to the prophet. All of which shows that Medieval Arabs did not see the world in a monolithic way as these texts suggests as opposed to a complex hierarchy of castes, professions, clans and families based on various systems of identity, especially for groups within the Islamic world. Once you get to groups on the periphery of the Islamic world or unfamiliar at the time, then you get more generic descriptions and attributes used, often degradingly as to be a non Muslim was to be a heathen to begin with in many senses.
There are tons of texts across North Africa and the Islamic world that are in Arabic from the period and all you have are the selected few chosen by Europeans for translation. They do not present the depth and breadth of Arabic texts on the people of the Medieval Islamic world as most Arabic documents from the Medieval period have not been translated into English and that includes work on all subjects known to man.
quote: By the 10th century, Cordoba had 700 mosques, 60,000 palaces, and 70 libraries, the largest of which had 600,000 books. In the whole al-Andalus, 60,000 treatises, poems, polemics and compilations were published each year.[21] The library of Cairo had two million books,[22] while the library of Tripoli is said to have had as many as three million books before it was destroyed by Crusaders. The number of important and original medieval Arabic works on the mathematical sciences far exceeds the combined total of medieval Latin and Greek works of comparable significance, although only a small fraction of the surviving Arabic scientific works have been studied in modern times.[23]
posted
Actually I didn't mean or shouldn't have said either was monolithic or the same color and I know people in the north could be blacker than people south of the Sahara.
The important thing is the meaning of the word Sudan. That doesn't mean any group was isolated from others
Ok when Ibn Khaldun says black here could it be taken to mean "south". By Sudan (or western Sudan) they were just meaning someone was south of the Maghrib a general term. Then more important is more specific tribal/national identity
quote:When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghanah , the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghanah, which, according to the author of the Book of Roger (El Idrisi), and the author of the Book of Roads and Realms (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world.
posted
Bilad Es Sud, like Berber or "Barbarian" were originally generic labels used to refer to the non Muslim populations based on generic attributes. The land of the blacks going back to East Africa first, prior to the Upper Nile populations converting to Islam. Likewise it is key to remember another term used for East Africa like Zanj or Abbysinian. Again, one should not take one word as a basis for trying to describe the world of the time, as the Arabic world did not really see the things that way.
And seeing as you are talking about Ancient Ghana being the furthest point South that Islam had penetrated at the time, it only makes sense that such generic terms would be used. That is vastly different than the Islamic world of just 200 years later. Again, those pejorative labels started out as simply ways of labeling groups or peoples unknown to Islam and only later became adopted across the board. But even then, when trying to establish identities within the Islamic cultures of Africa you have to go by clan or family identifiers. That is the most important form of identification and therefore a bit more descriptive than such generic terms as Bilad es Sud.
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