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More research needs to be done when it comes to these relations especially south to north migrations. On page 110 Shaban talks about the good relations with "Nubia" but I'd have to type it all out.
Hausa became was a world language "a world=speech between tribes of different languages and between Mediterranean and Sudanese Africa."
quote:The sudden and conspicuous appearance of the Sudan amongst the armies of Ibn Tulun in Egypt calls for an explanation. Some sources like us to believe that he bought as many as 40,000 Negro slaves and made soldieries out of them to build up an empire of his own. Buying such a number of slaves, let alone training them to be an effective fighting force in a completely unfamiliar territory, would certainly have required more time than the few years that preceded their appearance in Egypt and subsequently in Syria and on the Byzantine borders in the early years of Ibn Tuluns rule 868/884. Other sources more accurately inform us that he enlisted these Sudan in his army
quote:For the Zaghawa the Nubian route was a much safer one that would save them from the hazards of the desert. Once this was established, their increasing presence in Egypt was almost a logical consequence and a clear indication of their interest is widening the scope of their trade. Ibn Tulun would have no objection to such an expansion which could only enhance the wealth of his domains. This common interest created the opportunity for military as well as economic co-operation which explains the enlistment of the Sudan in the army of Egypt
quote: In the Chad group the Hausa has spread farthest and acquired most usefulness. The vernacular of a numerous people, it offers a valuable medium of communication through vast districts on both sides of the Binwe and the Niger. In extent of use it surpasses all other languages in inner Africa, serving not only as the mother=tongue of millions but as a world=speech between tribes of different languages and between Mediterranean and Sudanese Africa. Hausa is remarkable for simplicity, elegance and wealth of vocabulary. It stands among the world's imperial languages, magnificent, rich and sonorous, beautiful and facile in grammatical structure, enjoying a harmony in the forms of its words and a symphonic symmetry that few tongues can equal, and assured of prolonged existence and vast expansion. It is the Latin of Central Sudan.
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For those interested in Egypt it is said by some that Timbuktu supposedly received Islam from Egypt. This doesn't mean there was a forced migration of exiled Egyptians like some people assume because migrations went in both directions and there remained strong contact between Egypt and other African nations up till the time of European colonialism.
Also Perry Noble questioned the authenticity of Islam amongst many African people including the Hausa.
quote: About 1100 Yusuf of Marocco influenced the Negroes, but Timbuktu (refounded 1213) is said to have received Islam from Egypt. It entered Gao, down the Niger, in 1009; Melli about 1025; and Silla fifteen years later. Between 1085 and 1100 Hume, the first king of Bornu, extended Islam almost to Egypt.
quote: As we see the northern lobe of Africa from the Bight of Benin to Abyssinia, with Muslim fringes in Equatoria, Somalia and Zanguebar, looped to Mecca by the girdle of Islam, it seems at first as if Reclus must be right.* But second sight shows its unity and vastness to appeal not to reason but to imagination. To assert, as did the author of Shall Islam Rule Africa? that this "half of Africa is as Islamic as Persia", is unwittingly to betray a client; it can almost be maintained that Persia's eight million Islamites do not include one real Muslim. They are Shiites or sectarians, the heterodox and schismatic rivals of Sunnite or orthodox Musulmans. In Africa this other shape of Islam, "if shape it may be called that shape has none, or substance may be called that shadow seems", recalls Milton's picture of death: "What seemed his head the likeness of a kingly crown had on". The supremacy of Sudanese Islam over Negro society is less a reality than a semblance. If material limitations permitted, nearly a hundred tribes could be cited that have accepted Islam only in name when they have not rejected it utterly*. This fact means that the southern line is broken at scores of points. It also means that the strategic centers behind the inner in- trenchments are rotten and sapped. Earth found the Hausa, a Saharo=Sudanese folk on the divide between the Chad and Sokotu basins, animated by little zeal. Lenz informs us that the Futa highlander and the Mandingo have adopted Islam in form or not at all. Brun= Renaud states that the Bambara and the Yolof themselves are mostly pagans. Bagirmi has merely been inoculated, multitudes of its tribes remaining pagans. Muhammad the Tunisian compared his fellow=religion- aries among Sudanese pagans to a ring in Saharan sands. In the Nile basin, from Khartum to Wadelai, Felkin and Wilson discovered the populations of Muslim Kordo to have scarcely any religious ideas; the Shilluk and their neighbors are only partly Muhammadan; and other Negroes — the Bari, Bongo, Dinka, Madi and Shuli — remain sheer heathen. If these source=regions of the Nile be under Muslim dominance, it is through Africanized Arabs extending their political power.
quote:In Persia Islam has never really conquered the convictions of the people. One observer, Gobineau, giving the opinion of a sufi [Muhammadan mystic] has ventured to doubt whether the whole of Persia contains a single true Musulman.
Islam, if ever a living power in Persia, is such no longer. The derision with which the raising of the green banner for the holy war was received sufficiently shows this. A Muslim "crescentade" could not count on Persian help. The Sunni looks upon the Shiite Persian as a dog. an infidel. (Haines, Islam, pp. 202=203.) Professor D. B. Macdonald adds that Persia is sufi through and through. The Persian sufi calls himself a Muslim, but has no part in the Faith. (Am. Journ. of Sem. Languages, v. 12, no. 1, p. log note.)
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The connections between the Nile Valley, Chad and West Africa are ancient. There are ancient Egyptian fortresses that have been found on now dried up tributaries of the Nile stretching to the South West of Egypt. These Nile tributaries once formed strong links between Sudan and Chad to the east and fostered trade. These links were strengthened in the Medieval period between Kindoms like Ouddai in Chad and Dongola in Sudan. This part of the nile is called the Yellow nile and dried up around 11,000 years ago. One important archaeological site in this area is Wadi Howar which has some of the oldest examples of pottery in Africa. The Zaghawa inhabit these regions between Western Sudan, Darfur and Chad.
The links between the Nile, the Sahara and West Africa are ancient.
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quote:Houston.... referred to Alexander the Greats views on the unparalleled stature of ancient Oman, which she says was inferior to no country and a harbor of the ancient commerce. She did amass some evidence to argue that this area was under Black African control and culture, something which fits well with the fact that African lands were responsible for much of the wealth of this trade
quote:The Negro is a born trader. Lenz says, "our sharpest European merchants, even Jews and Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and trade of the Negroes." We know that the trade between Central Africa and Egypt was in the hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in early days the cities of the Sudan and North Africa grew rich through Negro trade.
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This sort of confirms a theory I had that European colonialists were actually promoting Islam
"The English conquerors announced that the law of the Koran was to be administered"
"Shall it be said that a Christian Church which has endured through centuries of Moslem persecution fell before the Christian English to whom they looked for deliverance?"
quote: Mr. L. M. Butcher tells the story of Christianity in the Soudan. Missionaries from Egypt came about the end of the fourth century, and the entire land was soon won for the Christian 'faith. Moslems first invaded the Soudan in 640. Their wars on the Christian kingdom of Nubia extorted an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty slaves for the Kaliph, and so in 653 the Arab slave trade began. But the Nubian kingdom was powerful enough to defeat Moslem Egypt in 740 and win better terms for the Egyptian Christians, Frequent difficulties arose from the slave trade which followed the slave-tribute. About 1000 A.D. Khartoum, the capital of the southern Christian kingdom, was described by a Moslem envoy as a town full of magnificent buildings, spacious mansions, churches enriched with gold. The last Christian King of Nubia began to reign about the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1501, a negro and Moslem dynasty established itself in the Soudan, and Listed till the beginning of the present century :—
Yet it must not be supposed that Christianity ever died entirely out of the Soudan. At the beginning of the seventeenth century there were still one hundred and fifty churches in the kingdom of Alouah, and they made a fruitless appeal to the King of Abyssinia to send them the priests whom they could not get from Egypt. In Nubia the number is not likely tu have been less. In 1833 the Egyptian Patriarch succeeded in getting a bishop through to Khartoum and maintaining the succession there once more. The final blow has been given, we are told, by ourselves. Before Khartoum fell in 1886 the Bishop of Khartoum brought away his nuns in safely to Cairo. He told me that he had still seven churches in his diocese, now probably all destroyed.
But after Omdurman " the rights of the Christian inhabitants were as absolutely ignored as if they did not exist." The English conquerors announced that the law of the Koran was to be administered : " No word was said of the Bishop's Court, which even in the worst times of the Moslem tyranny was legally empowered to decide all matters of marriage and inheritance for the native Christians." Mr. Butcher concludes :—
Shall it be said that a Christian Church which has endured through centuries of Moslem persecution fell before the Christian English to whom they looked for deliverance?
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The above article is wrong about there being an annual tribute that Makuria had to pay. although there are things wrong in this article too Jay Spaudling does show that there wasn't really a forced tribute
"Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World: A Reconsideration of the Baqt Treaty" by Jay Spaudling
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I've read many modern sources that depict these "Nubian" invasions into Egypt as "rebellions". Read what the The encyclopædia Britannica 1910 says. I don't see how they could have marched an army into Egypt in 737 but gained their independence in the 10th century. This is so stupid they are always depicted as being dominated by "Arabs". Read what S.A. Shaban wrote (first post on thread) I think these Christian Nubians were sometimes aiding the Arab conquests. Through Egypt different nations throughout Africa could exert their influence in the Islamic world. The Romans were oppressive but Egypt became open to the rest of Africa when the Romans were defeated
There is another source here that claims the Nubians invaded Egypt with a large army in 640
"Man, past and present" By Augustus Henry Keane 1900
quote:They were Christians, it should be remembered, for many centuries, and although the flourishing Christian Empire of Nubia, with its seventeen bishoprics and its thirteen viceroyalties, all governed by priests, was not founded, as is commonly supposed, by the renowned Silco, " King of the Noubads and of all the Ethiopians," it was strong enough frequently to invade Egypt in defence of their oppressed Greek and Koptic fellow-Christians. So early as 640 a combined army of Nubas and Bejas, said to have numbered 50,000 men with 1500 elephants, penetrated as far north as Oxyrhynchus (the Arab Bahnosa) where such a surprising store of Greek and other documents was discovered in 1897. Cultured peoples with such glorious records, and traditions going back even to pre-Christian times (Silco and Queen Candace, contemporary of Augustus
quote:the country now forming the mudiria was once part of the ancient empire of Ethiopia Napata being one of its capital cities. From about the beginning of the Christian era the chief tribes in the region immediately south of Egypt were the Blemmyes and the Nobatae. The last named became converted to Christianity about the middle of the 6th century, through the instrumentality, it is stated, of the empress Theodora. A chieftain of the Nobatae, named Silko, between the middle and the close of that century, conquered the Blemmyes, founded a new state, apparently on the ruins of that of the southern Meroe (Bakarawiya), made Christianity the official religion of the country, and fixed his capital at (Old) Dongola. This state, now generally referred to as the Christian kingdom of Dongola, lasted for eight or nine hundred years. Though late in reaching Nubia, Christianity, after the wars of Silko, spread rapidly, and when the Arab conquerors of Egypt sought to subdue Nubia also they met with stout resistance. Dongola, however, was captured by the Moslems in 652, and the country laid under tribute (bakt)— 400 men having to be sent yearly to Egypt. This tribute was paid when it could be enforced; at periods the Nubians gained the upper hand, as in 737 when Cyriacus, their then king, marched into Egypt with a large army to redress the grievances of the Copts. There is a record of an embassy sent by a king Zacharias in the 9th century to Bagdad concerning the tribute, while by the close of the l0th century the Nubians seem to have regained almost complete independence. They did not, however, possess any part of the Red Sea coast, which was held by the Egyptians, who, during the 9th and 10th centuries, worked the emerald and gold mines between the Nile and the Red Sea. The kingdom, according to the Armenian historian Abu Salih, was in a very flourishing condition in the l2th century. It then extended from Assuan southward to the 4th cataract, and contained several large cities. Gold and copper mines were worked. The liturgy used was in Greek. In 1173 Shams addaula, a brother of Saladin, attacked the Nubians, captured the city of Ibrim (Primis), and among other deeds destroyed 700 pigs found therein. The Egyptians then retired, and for about loo years the country was at peace. In 1275 the Mameluke sultan Bibars aided a rebel prince to oust his uncle from the throne of Nubia; the sultans Kalaun and Nasir also sent expeditions to Dongola, which was several times captured. Though willing to pay tribute to the Moslems, the Nubians clung tenaciously to Christianity, and, despite the raids to which the country was subjected, it appears during the 12th and 13th centuries to have been fairly prosperous. No serious attempt was made by the Egyptians to penetrate south of Napata, nor is it certain how far south of that place the authority of the Dongola kingdom (sometimes known as Mukarra) extended. It was neighboured on the south by another Christian state, Aloa (Aiwa), with its capital Soba on the Blue Nile.
Cut off more and more from free intercourse with the Copts in Egypt, the Nubian Christians at length began to embrace Jewish and Mahommedan doctrines; the decay of the state was hastened by dissensions between Mukarra and Aloa. Nevertheless, the Nubians were strong enough to invade upper Egypt during the reign of Nawaya Krcstos (1342-1372), because the governor of Cairo had thrown the patriarch of Alexandria into prison. The date usually assigned for the overthrow of the Christian kingdom 1351. Only the northern part of the country (as far as the 3rd cataract) came under the rule of Egypt. Nevertheless, according to Leo Africanas, at the close of the 15th century Christianity and native states still survived in Nubia, and in the l6th century the Nubians sent messengers to Abyssinia to Father Alvarez, begging him to appoint priests to administer the sacraments to them—a request with which he was not able to comply. Thereafter the Nubian Church is without records. The Moslems may have extinguished it in blood, for the region between Dongola and Shendi appears to have been depopulated.
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If anyone can give information on Sudanese soldiers in Muslim armies I'd really appreciate it. Remember that allot of literature has been distorted and mistranslated
"Medieval West Africa: Views From Arab Scholars and Merchants"
quote: Page 40 quote from Yaqut 13th century The king of Zafun is stronger than the veiled people of the Maghreb and more versed in the art of kingship. The veiled people acknowledge his superiority over them, obey him and resort to him in all important matters of government. One year the king, on his way to the pilgrimage, came to the Maghreb to pay a visit to the commander of the Muslims, the veiled king of the Maghreb, of the tribe of Lamtuna. The Commander of the Muslims met him on foot, wheras the king of Zafun did not dismount for him. He was tall, of deep black complexion and veiled
page 45 From Ibn Sa'id 13th century
In the same latitude is Zafun, which belongs to pagan Sudan and whose ruler enjoys a good reputation among (other) kings of the Sudan
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David Ayalon mentioned Yaqut and believed that he was one of the writers that started downplaying the Nubian military prowess (page 22) Ironicly if you look at the post above Yaqut was willing to admit to the military dominance of half pagan Africans. What is interesting here is David Ayalon notices a phenomenon of extreme honesty concerning the early Muslim writers.
On page 19 he quotes Al-Masudi “The people of Hijaz and Yemen and the rest of the Arabs learned archery from them (The Nubians)”
On page 20 the author wrote
3. The awe and respect that the Muslims had for their Nubian adversaries are reflected in the fact that even a rather late Umayyad caliph, ‘Umar b ‘Abd al- ‘Aziz (‘Umar II 717-720), is said to have ratified the Nubian-Muslim treaty out of fear for the safety of the Muslims (“he ratified the peace treaty out of consideration for the Muslims and out of [a desire] to spare their lives”)
The author claims that the Nubians were not allowed to join the topmost military units of the Muslim armies. Instead all these honored positions were supposedly given to “Caucasians”. That sounds suspicious to me especially with the extreme honesty that the author was talking about. It would be strange to speak highly of their skill with the bow but then turn around and deny them high positions in the military. One would have to ask why the mighty Nubians would allow themselves to be denied the highest positions in the Muslim armies. Also Yaqut being the one to downplay the Nubian military supremacy also sounds suspicious to me because as I pointed out earlier he did not have a problem with half pagan Africans. According to Ibn Sa'id the Zaufn belong to the pagan Sudan. Also remember the encyclopædia Britannica 1910 said that another invasion was launched into upper Egypt in the 14th century I think there would have been people around who would dispute Yaqut’s claims. I wonder if the confusion is because the writings of the different authors were mistranslated in different ways, either that or Yaqut simply had an anti- Christian bias
“The Spread of Islam and the Nubian Dam” by David Ayalon
Pages 17-20 and page 22 cover the Nubian Dam
About the bellow Al-Masudi an early writer claimed that the Nubians shot with strange bows but Yaqut supposedly changed “strange bows” into “Arab bows”
quote:Already Yaqut (d. 1229), in his classical geography dictionary, dilutes the unequivocal statements of the early sources almost beyond recognition. In his entry under “Dunqula” all he has to say is that the eye of one of the Muslim leading fighters was hit. In his entry under “Nuba” he says about its inhabitants: “They shoot with arrows from Arab bows”
“…a fair-skinned Arab is something inconceivable… “ Ibn Abd Rabbu of Cordoba born 9thc. in El Iqd el Farid (The Precious Necklace), quoting Shuraik el-Qadi a 7th century Arab of the clan of Nakha’l of the Maddhij in the Yemen.
“…the Arabs describe their color as black and they describe the color of the non-Arab Persians as red.” Assertion of the 13th c. grammarian Ibn Manzur or Mandhur in Lisaan al Arab, Vol. 4 (born in Tunis or Northern Egypt.)
“Red, in the speech of the people from Hejaz means fair-complexioned, and this color is rare amongst the Arabs. This is the meaning of the saying … a red man as if he is one of the slaves.” From Seyar A’laam al-Nubalaa, vol. 2, by the Syrian Al-Dhahabi (Thahabi),of the century 14th c. A.D.
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Remember as I said allot of literature has been mistranslated in a racist way. In "The Nubian Dam" Tabari is listed as one of the writers that wrote about the dominance of the Nubian military. On the Zanj revolt M.A. Shaban said that "Tabari makes it very clear that the strength of the rebels was dependent on the support of these merchants." And also that "All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources."
quote:All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources.....The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans who had made their homes in the region.....
(continued page 102)...If more proof is needed that it was not a slave revolt, it is to be found in the fact that it had a highly organized army and navy which vigorously resisted the whole weight of the central government for almost fifteen years. Moreover, it must have had huge resources that allowed it to build no less than six impregnable towns in which there were arsenals for the manufacture of weapons and battleships. These towns also had in their mammoth markets prodigious wealth which was more than the salt marshes could conceivably produce. Even all the booty from Basra and the whole region could not account for such enormous wealth. Significantly the revolt had the backing of a certain group of merchants who preserved with their support until the very end. Tabari makes it very clear that the strength of the rebels was dependent on the support of these merchants.
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See bellow about the skill in naval warfare and navigation these are important when it comes to African history and their influence throughout the world. Also note how Muwaffaq had to "mobilize all the financial and military forces against this audacious enemy..." This shows that the Bantu had an incredible amount of influence throughout the world. They after all controlled the Indian Ocean trade
quote:With remarkable efficiency and expedition the rebels swiftly established their control over most of the Persian Gulf coast, and extended it inland to secure their food supplies. Special vehemence was reserved for the port of Basra, which they practically destroyed. Their choice of sites for their own new towns and their meticulous knowledge of the intricate waterways of the region in addition to their great skill in naval warfare were all utilized to strangle the Basran economy and drive all the in-coming trade through their own channels. Wasit, the major bottle-neck on the way north to Baghdad, was completely cut off from any road or waterway leading south to the Gulf coast. Furthermore, the rebels occupied Kufa in order to secure the alternative inland route to the north. They expelled government forces from all these areas and easily withstood the onslaught of the successive expeditions that Muwaffaq sent against them. Realizing the grave dangers of this situation, he decided to mobilize all the financial and military forces against this audacious enemy…...
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The English, in fact, are truly the lordly conquering and superior race. It was the English, after all, that stripped the Zanj of their place in history
Perry Noble
I recommend reading pages 160-164 on African languages
quote:The beauty, plastic power and richness of Bantu languages delight and amaze all. They possess almost limitless flexibility, pliancy and softness. Their grammatical principles are founded on the most philosophical and systematic basis. Their vocabularies are susceptible of infinite expansion. They can express even delicate shades of thought and feeling. Perhaps no other languages are capable of greater definiteness and precision. Grout doubts whether Zulu — the purest type of a Bantu dialect, the lordly language of the south, the speech of a conquering and superior race — is surpassed in forming derivatives by German or Greek. Livingstone characterized as witnesses to the poverty of their own attainments men who complain of the poverty of Bantu languages. Bentley, after referring to the flexibility, fulness, subtlety of idea and nicety of expression in Kongoan, accredits this wealth of forms and ideas to the Bantu family in bulk. The wide sway of these qualities points out their immense practical importance to civilization. Three languages may be taken as the English tongue of their respective spheres. Zulu stretches from Natal to Nyasa, Swahili from Zanzibar well=nigh across equatorial Africa, and Mbundu (Ngolan) from Portuguese West Africa far eastward. In French Kongo the Fan (Mpangwe) and in Belgian Kongo below Livingstone Falls the Kongoan are strong developing factors. But Zulu, Swahili and Mbundu form representative and standard languages for the south, the east, the west. The unity in variety of Bantu speech, its flexibleness, power of growth and molding give ground for the belief that the best elements of the best languages may be embodied in a language classic, complete and one.*
quote:The Bantu languages, in fact, are rather more closely related one to the other—even in their extremest forms—than are the Aryan languages. This is so much the case that a native of Zanzibar can very soon make himself understood on the Congo, while a man of the Cameroons would not be long before he grasped the vocabulary of the Zulu. This interesting fact must play a certain part in the political development of Africa south of the fifth degree of north latitude. The rapidity with which the Kiswahili tongue of Zanzibar—a very convenient, simple, and expressive form of Bantu speech— has spread far and wide over East Central Africa, and has even gained a footing on the Congo, hints at the possibility of the Bantu Negroes at some future time adopting a universal Bantu language for inter-communication
quote:During the first or Meccan period (610=622) of his prophetship Muhammad and his followers looked upon the Abyssinian Christians as their religious kinsmen. "Yonder," he said to some of his persecuted converts without protectors, and, as he spake, pointing westward: "Yonder lieth a land where none is wronged. Go thither, and remain till the Lord open a way". Dean Stanley noted this connection between the Abyssinian Christians and the first Muslims. He wrote: "Springing out of the same oriental soil and climate, if not from the bosom of the oriental church itself, in part under its influence, in part by reaction, Muhammadanism must be regarded as an eccentric, heretical form of eastern Christianity. This was the ancient mode of regarding Muhammad. He was considered not the founder of a new religion but, rather, one of the chief heresiarchs of the church"
quote:It is an interesting fact that among the few words of Christian origin in the Quran some, including Shaitan or Satan, came from Abyssinia.
Footnote Perry Noble writes that a Dr Smith
quote:regards Islam as in many respects a counterpart of medieval Christianity" and that "professor Duncan Macdonald even calls "Islam simply Calvinism!
Mohammedan history abounds with examples of distinguished Negroes. The eloquent Adzan or Call to Prayer, which to this day summons at the same hours millions of the human race to their devotions, was first uttered by a Negro, Bilal by name, whom Mohammed, in obedience to a dream, appointed the first Muezzin or Crier. And it has been remarked that even Alexander the Great is in Asia an unknown personage by the side of this honoured Negro. Mr. Muir notices the inflexible constancy of Bilal to the faith of Islam under the severest trials. Ibn Khallikan mentions a celebrated Negro Khalif, who reigned at Bagdad in the ninth century. He describes him as a man of great merit, and a perfect scholar. None of the sons of Khalifs spoke with greater propriety and elegance, or composed verses with greater ability
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The idea that there was little contact between "West Africa" and the rest of the world until the time of Mansa Musa is a figment of the imagination, a product of European colonialists. As the first post on this thread shows there were large scale migrations from south to north. The reliance on trade across the Sahara also means reliance on the people of the Sahara and to the people who controlled it (The Sudan). As Pekka Masonen shows the trade was to the advantage of the Sudan, the Muslim conquests relied greatly on Sudanese support. What is also funny is that the salt trade was also controlled by the Sudan. The 1591 Moroccan invasion was over a dispute over salt mines because the Songhay controlled those mines but they were closer to Morocco than the Niger. Europeans always portray the situation in a way to make the "Sudan" look passive but one needs to remember that the situation was normally in the Sudan's favor. The Touaregs normally acted as the agents of the Sudan
Edit: Also remember the quote from Yaqut (13th century) that I already posted on this thread
"The king of Zafun is stronger than the veiled people of the Maghreb and more versed in the art of kingship. The veiled people acknowledge his superiority over them, obey him and resort to him in all important matters of government."
"Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean World" by Pekka Masonen
quote:The principal reason why the North African traders were willing to accommodate in the local conditions in Western Africa, was the same as in the case of Europeans in China: it was the only way to continue the profitable trade. Before the European discovery of America, West African mines were the most important single source of gold both for Northern Africa and Europe; it is estimated that two-thirds of all the gold circulating in the Mediterranean area in the Middle Ages was imported across the Sahara. This made the uninterrupted continuity of trade more important for North African rulers than their West African counterparts. The demand for salt, for which the Arabs bartered the gold in Western Africa, is usually overemphasized in the historiography. Contrariwise, the Saharan rock salt was an expensive luxury product and available to the wealthy people only. Furthermore, it could be quite easily substituted by locally produced salt from plants and soil, whereas the North African rulers could not obtain gold for their coins elsewhere.
However, the position of the powerful states of the West African savanna was not based on the possession of the gold reserves, but on the control over the principal trade routes leading from the desert edge terminals to the gold fields in the south. In this way, the rulers of northern savanna could monopolize the trade, and they strictly prevented the Arabs to establish any direct contacts with the actual producers of gold. Inside Western Africa, the trade was carried on by local brokers, or the Dyula.
quote: The prosperity of the Sudan, and its wealth and commerce, were known far and wide in the sixteenth century. Caravans returning along the coasts proclaimed its splendours in their camel loads of gold, ivory, hides, musk, and the spoils of the ostrich. The Portuguese (always the first traders of Europe), endeavoured at this time to enter into relations with these countries of the Niger, whose magnificence had become a proverb. ' As tar cures the gall of a camel, so poverty finds its unfailing remedy in the Sudan,' was the saying of northern Africa.
So many attractions gathered together under one sky could not fail to rouse the attention, and by-and-by the cupidity, of neighbouring territories. Chief among these was naturally that country nearest to the Sudan, Morocco. From the first their avarice assumed a harshly definite character, for the people of Morocco had not, and never did have, any desire to colonise and develop a commerce, nor even to institute a religious propaganda. They looked upon the Sudan in the light of a gold-mine, and their first aspirations, like their ultimate efforts, were concentrated upon the mere drainage of this precious metal. This covetousness of theirs was also the source of a new danger to the Sudan, as it became the means of jeopardising its salt-supply.
The interior of the Sudan lacks this most necessary of products, and salt represented, and always will represent, their principal article of commerce. It was the true gold of the Sudanese, their most precious commodity, and they obtained it from the mines of Thegazza, which were situated in the heart of the desert. These mines were nearer to Morocco than to the countries of the Niger, but Thegazza, as we have seen, was the property of the Songhois, and possessed its representative Emir.
Hostilities commenced towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1545 Mouley Mohammed El Kebir, the sultan of Morocco, sent an embassy to the king of the Songhois, claiming the mines of Thegazza, under the pretext that they were situated on his frontiers. Askia Ishak i. admitted neither the pretext nor the argument, and emphasised his denial of the claim by an army of Touaregs whom he despatched to pillage Draa, a town on the frontiers of Morocco, a plain intimation that he was strong enough to defend his own, and was quite prepared to do so should the sultan be inclined to dispute his rights.
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If anyone can please give info about the Nubian involvement in Egypt in 640. It looks like this would be a very important in understanding the general history....
(I already posted the bellow)
"Man, past and present" By Augustus Henry Keane 1900
quote:They were Christians, it should be remembered, for many centuries, and although the flourishing Christian Empire of Nubia, with its seventeen bishoprics and its thirteen viceroyalties, all governed by priests, was not founded, as is commonly supposed, by the renowned Silco, " King of the Noubads and of all the Ethiopians," it was strong enough frequently to invade Egypt in defence of their oppressed Greek and Koptic fellow-Christians. So early as 640 a combined army of Nubas and Bejas, said to have numbered 50,000 men with 1500 elephants, penetrated as far north as Oxyrhynchus (the Arab Bahnosa) where such a surprising store of Greek and other documents was discovered in 1897. Cultured peoples with such glorious records, and traditions going back even to pre-Christian times (Silco and Queen Candace, contemporary of Augustus
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You know what .., an Arab friend randomly mentioned an epic "*the* revolt/rebellion of the blacks [or the black rebellion or something] .. did you ever hear about it?" and i said "the Zanj rebellion? slave rebellion?" and he kept staying with "black/blacks" ..
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