This article focuses on the first Chinese whose presence in Africa is clearly documented. Due to the geographical curiosity of the T'ang dynasty, extracts of an 8th century travel report of a Chinese military officer, Du Huan, were documented and preserved. He visited Arabian and African countries. The location of Molin-guo, an African country, seems to be clarified today: it appears to be located in the dry desert lowlands in Sudan and Eritrea. Likewise, this source clarifies the location of another region: Laobosa appears to have been south of Molin-guo, which is the first mention of Abyssinia in an ancient Chinese source. This text is thus one of the very few ancient sources contemporary to the late Aksumite kingdom. Briefly, but with significant details, the relevant peoples' customs are described, most of them still identifiable today.
Indirect contacts between the Northeast African coast and China, mostly based on trade, seem to be documented since at least the 1st century A.D. (Han dynasty). This article focused on the first Chinese, whose presence in Africa is clearly documented. The geographical curiosity of the T'ang dynasty made it possible, that extracts of an 8th century travel report of a Chinese military officer, Du Huan, were documented and preserved. He visited Arabic countries and also Africa. The location of Molin-guo, an African country, seems to be clarified today. South of it lies Laobosa, the first mention of Abyssinia in an ancient Chinese source ; Molin should be located in a dry desert lowland in the Sudan and Eritrea62. This text is thus one of the very few ancient sources contemporary to the late Aksumite kingdom. Briefly, but with significant details, the peoples' customs are described, most of them still identifiable today.
What makes the text fragments on Molin important, is, first, that it is the most ancient source which provides evidence of the presence of a Chinese in Africa63. Most other sources only reflect the fact that products from the African Red Sea coast reached China. Second, it is among the very few ancient sources contemporary to the Aksumite kingdom. Third, the Du Huan travel report fragments give an example on the ways used in that time to cross far distances. Probably rather unusual is the fact, that Du Huan reached the mountainous region south of Egypt by land ; how his way back was organised is not known in detail, but we know that he reached Kanton in Southern China by boat - using the sea routes to India, which we know from a few ancient sources. This shows that still in the period of decline, the sea trade from the African coast was not halted. Fourth, the geographical notions mentioned are reflecting information originating evidently in Arabic contacts, which is probably due to the fact that during the decline of the Aksumite kingdom the Red Sea trade was already in the hands of the Arabs. Finally, the brief descriptions of the multitude of religions give us an impression of the coexistence of religions in this period, on which only very few sources exist.
posted
Does anyone have that Classical Chinese painting of a guy bringing a Giraffe from Africa??
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Mwamaka Sharifu: Descendant of Chinese sailor? [newsphoto]
Is this young Kenyan Chinese descendant? (China Daily) Updated: 2005-07-11 09:18 Nearly 600 years ago, 20 Chinese sailors swam ashore an island off Kenya's east coast, having escaped from a shipwreck.
They went on to marry local women and convert to Islam.
Now a 19-year-old girl who claims to be one of their descendants has come to China to study, having been given a scholarship by the Chinese Government.
Mwamaka Sharifu, from Lamu island in Kenya, will begin her studies in September.
She says she is a descendant of sailors travelling with Chinese explorer Zheng He (1371-1435) in the Ming Dynasty.
Sharifu's story has attracted a lot of attention, as this year is the 600th anniversary of Zheng's first major voyage around the Indian Ocean. Some scholars believe Zheng is the first man to travel a direct sea route linking the Indian Ocean with the West.
Countless exhibitions, books and documentaries began coming out in China about his adventures. Sharifu was invited to China and arrived on July 1.
"I feel proud and happy to be part of it," she said. "I am looking forward to studying in China."
Sharifu said she admires Zheng's courage and adventurous spirit. "I was born as brave as my ancestors," she said. "It is rare for girls in my Muslim village to go so far to study, to such a big and different country."
"My mum and dad were worried about me. But I told them I will be fine in my home country."
Born to a poor family, Sharifu's father, Sharifu Lali, a fisherman, 55, and her mother Baraka Badi Shee, a housewife, 53, couldn't support her university education.
"The scholarship will change my life and the lives of the rest of my family," she said. "I believe that through hard work - a characteristic of the Chinese - I can make a better living."
Having already been to Shanghai, Taicang and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province, Sharifu appeared quiet when arriving in Beijing on Friday, where she will tour the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square.
"China is far better than I thought. It is so beautiful and well-planned," she said.
"Beijing is a big city," Sharifu added. "But Taicang city will always be a special place for me as it is said it is where my ancestors came from."
Located in East China's Jiangsu Province, Taicang is where Zheng set sail from.
Legend in Lamu Island says two of the Chinese ships struck rocks off the eastern coast of Kenya and 20 sailors swam ashore. However, local tribes said they could only stay if they could kill a big python in the village.
One sailor - a master swordsman - lured the python out of the cave and killed it. The Chinese sailors stayed, married local women and converted to Islam.
The heritage of Chinese descendants in the African village has been passed on from generation to generation, not by written records but by oral tradition.
"My grandma said some Chinese sailors came to Kenya by way of the Indian Ocean. Most of them died after a storm at sea but some survived," Sharifu recalled.
Now, only six people on the island of 7,500 people are known as Chinese descendants. They are Sharifu, her mother, her two sisters and two younger brothers. However, despite Chinese porcelain being unearthed on the island and the existence of Chinese folklore there, it is not known if the group really are descendants of Zheng's sailors.
Sharifu said that in 2002 some Chinese experts came to her home and cut some of her mother's hair for DNA tests in China. Later, she said, they told her mother that she was a Chinese descendant.
The teenager was calm when being questioned about her Chinese blood, saying that people have a right to doubt her. "Asking questions will help people know more about me. And I am convinced that I am a true Chinese descendant."
Sharifu's story was put under the spotlight after she wrote a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Kenya last year, expressing her wish to pursue a higher education in China.
"I want to learn traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) so that I can treat my people in Kenya after graduation," she explained.
The Muslim girl wore a grey silk scarf around her neck.
"When I was in Kenya, I used to wear the scarf on my head. But now I keep it lower, because I think people here like to see me."
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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Now in the 12th year, in a corner of the Western Seas, in the stagnant waters of a great morass, Truly was produced a qilin (ch'i-lin), whose shape was as high as fifteen feet. With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy, boneless horn, With luminous spots like a red cloud in a purple mist. Its hoofs do not tread on living beings and in its wanderings it carefully selects its ground. It walks in stately fashion and in its every motion it observes a rhythm, Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or a musical tube. Gentle is this animal, that has in antiquity been seen but once, The manifestation of its divine spirit rises up to heaven's abode. Ministers and people together vie to be the first to gaze upon the joyous spectacle, a true token of Heaven's aid and a proclamation of Heaven's favour. How glorious is the Sacred Emperor whose literary and military virtues are most excellent, who has succeeded to the Precious Throne and has achieved Perfect Order in imitation of the Ancients.
Painting with Poem by Shen Du (1357-1434)
The qilin is a Chinese auspicious mythical animal with giraffe-like features. Zheng He, a Muslim admiral ambassador eunuch, brought a giraffe from the east coast of Africa to the emperor Yongle. From Zheng He's stela:
quote: In the fifteenth year of Yongle (1417): Commanding the fleet we visited the western regions. The country of Hulumosi (Ormuz) presented lions, leopards with gold spots and large western horses. The country of Adan (Aden) presented qilin of which the native name is culafa (giraffe), as well as the long-horned animal maha (oryx). The country of Mugudushu (Mogadishu) presented huafu lu ("striped" zebras) as well as lions. The country of Bulawa (Brava) presented camels which run one thousand li as well as camel-birds (ostriches).
J.J.L. Duyvendak, however, maintains that Malindi sent a delegation to Peking with the giraffe.
quote: . . . . In 1402 an outward-looking emperor named Yong'le (Yung-lo) came to power. Seeking to reassert a Chinese presence on the western seas and to enhance the prestige of his rule and dynasty, he began funding spectacular voyages by Zheng-He. . . . . As Zheng He pressed westward in 1414, he sent part of his fleet north to Bengal, and there the Chinese travelers saw a wondrous creature. . . . . The giraffe the travelers saw in Bengal was already more than 5,000 miles from home. It had been brought there as a gift from the ruler of the prosperous African city-state of Malindi, one of the several trading centers lining the east coast of Africa (Malindi is midway along modern Kenya's coast, three degrees south of the equator). Zheng He's diplomats persuaded the Malindi ambassadors to offer the animal as a gift to the Chinese emperor. They also persuaded the Malindi ambassadors to send home for another giraffe. When Zheng He returned to Beijing, he was able to present the emperor with two of the exotic beasts.
A pair of giraffes in Beijing in 1415 was well worth the cost of the expedition. In China they thought the giraffe (despite its having one horn too many) was a ["temple dog"] (ch'i-lin), whose arrival, according to Confucian tradition, meant that a sage of the utmost wisdom and benevolence was in their presence. It was a great gift, therefore, to bring to the ambitious ruler of a young dynasty. The giraffes were presented to the emperor Yong'le by exotic envoys from the kingdom of Malindi, whom the Chinese treated royally. They and the marvelous gift so excited China's curiosity about Africa that Zheng He sent word to the kingdom of Mogadishu (then one of the most powerful trading states in East Africa and now the capitol of modern Somalia) and to other African states, inviting them to send ambassadors to the Ming emperor.
The response of the African rulers was overwhelmingly generous, for China and Africa had been distant trading partners from the time of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220).
. . . .
The African emissaries to the Ming throne came with fabulous gifts, including objects for which entrepreneurs had long before managed to create a market in the Far East -- tortoise shell, elephant ivory, and rhinoceros-horn medicine. On their many visits they also brought zebras, ostriches, and other exotica. In return, the Ming court sent gold, spices, silk, and other presents. Zheng He was sent with his fleet of great ships on yet another voyage across the Indian Ocean to accompany some of the foreign emissaries home. This escort was the first of several imperially supported trips to Africa. According to official records, they went to Mogadishu, Brava, and perhaps Malindi;
. . . .
Samuel M. Wilson The Emperor's Giraffe Natural History (Vol. 101, No. 12, December 1992)
The author of Myths of Chinese Exploration at Simon World casts doubts on claims that 19-year-old Mwamaka Sharifu of Kenya is a descendent of Chinese men who sailed with a vast fleet of ocean-faring ships 600 years ago led by Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He. He also dismisses recent accounts of 15th century maritime exploration which claim that the Chinese have sailed as far as Australia and the Americas as "historical mythology".
For those whose knowledge of world history is primarily based on Eurocentric studies typical of the Western educational experience, revelations that Chinese explorers may not only have mapped out far-reaching areas of the world but actually preceded the Portugese and the Spanish by at least a hundred years comes as a rude shock. Skepticism can arise from inadequate research, general lack of in-depth knowledge of the history of non-Western civilizations, and a stubborn worldview mixed with perhaps a dose of good ole fashioned hubris that refuses to accept modern challenges to the conventional Western understanding of the Age of Exploration.
The specific case of Ms Sharifu's claims to Chinese ancestry may indeed be unproven unless there is some hard evidence such as DNA analysis. But it is not as far-fetched as one might think.
This map, called Da Ming Hun Yi Tu (Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire), was featured in a 2002 BBC news article. Made of silk, it is the oldest known map of the Africa, dating back to 1389, more than a hundred years before any European explorer had reached the continent. The large body of water depicted within the landmass is thought to be Lake Victoria. The western coast of southern Africa is clearly visible, which suggests that Chinese navigators and cartographers may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope during that period. Portugese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to accomplish that feat in 1488.
Zheng He (鄭和), also known as Cheng Ho (birth name: Ma Sanbao; Arabic name: Hajji Mahmud) is an actual historical figure (1371-1435) who served as admiral for the third Ming Dynasty emperor, who reigned from 1403 to 1424. His life and accomplishments are highly fascinating. He is arguably China's most famous maritime explorer. From 1405 to 1433, Zheng He sailed from China to many destinations scattered throughout the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and shores of Africa. For 28 years, in 7 major voyages, he visited over 30 kingdoms and logged more than 50,000km. His tomb is located in Nanjing, which was recontructed in 1985 according to Islamic tradition, as Zheng He was a Muslim...
A perfect example of the enormous impact Asians have made in history that unfortunately is little known.
Chinese have been seafaring and exploring different continents longer than Europeans but you never hear about!
I hope that would all change.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: _________ __________________________ Now in the 12th year, in a corner of the Western Seas, in the stagnant waters of a great morass, Truly was produced a qilin (ch'i-lin), whose shape was as high as fifteen feet. With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy, boneless horn, With luminous spots like a red cloud in a purple mist. Its hoofs do not tread on living beings and in its wanderings it carefully selects its ground. It walks in stately fashion and in its every motion it observes a rhythm, Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or a musical tube. Gentle is this animal, that has in antiquity been seen but once, The manifestation of its divine spirit rises up to heaven's abode. Ministers and people together vie to be the first to gaze upon the joyous spectacle, a true token of Heaven's aid and a proclamation of Heaven's favour. How glorious is the Sacred Emperor whose literary and military virtues are most excellent, who has succeeded to the Precious Throne and has achieved Perfect Order in imitation of the Ancients.
Painting with Poem by Shen Du (1357-1434)
The qilin is a Chinese auspicious mythical animal with giraffe-like features. Zheng He, a Muslim admiral ambassador eunuch, brought a giraffe from the east coast of Africa to the emperor Yongle. From Zheng He's stela:
quote: In the fifteenth year of Yongle (1417): Commanding the fleet we visited the western regions. The country of Hulumosi (Ormuz) presented lions, leopards with gold spots and large western horses. The country of Adan (Aden) presented qilin of which the native name is culafa (giraffe), as well as the long-horned animal maha (oryx). The country of Mugudushu (Mogadishu) presented huafu lu ("striped" zebras) as well as lions. The country of Bulawa (Brava) presented camels which run one thousand li as well as camel-birds (ostriches).
J.J.L. Duyvendak, however, maintains that Malindi sent a delegation to Peking with the giraffe.
quote: . . . . In 1402 an outward-looking emperor named Yong'le (Yung-lo) came to power. Seeking to reassert a Chinese presence on the western seas and to enhance the prestige of his rule and dynasty, he began funding spectacular voyages by Zheng-He. . . . . As Zheng He pressed westward in 1414, he sent part of his fleet north to Bengal, and there the Chinese travelers saw a wondrous creature. . . . . The giraffe the travelers saw in Bengal was already more than 5,000 miles from home. It had been brought there as a gift from the ruler of the prosperous African city-state of Malindi, one of the several trading centers lining the east coast of Africa (Malindi is midway along modern Kenya's coast, three degrees south of the equator). Zheng He's diplomats persuaded the Malindi ambassadors to offer the animal as a gift to the Chinese emperor. They also persuaded the Malindi ambassadors to send home for another giraffe. When Zheng He returned to Beijing, he was able to present the emperor with two of the exotic beasts.
A pair of giraffes in Beijing in 1415 was well worth the cost of the expedition. In China they thought the giraffe (despite its having one horn too many) was a ["temple dog"] (ch'i-lin), whose arrival, according to Confucian tradition, meant that a sage of the utmost wisdom and benevolence was in their presence. It was a great gift, therefore, to bring to the ambitious ruler of a young dynasty. The giraffes were presented to the emperor Yong'le by exotic envoys from the kingdom of Malindi, whom the Chinese treated royally. They and the marvelous gift so excited China's curiosity about Africa that Zheng He sent word to the kingdom of Mogadishu (then one of the most powerful trading states in East Africa and now the capitol of modern Somalia) and to other African states, inviting them to send ambassadors to the Ming emperor.
The response of the African rulers was overwhelmingly generous, for China and Africa had been distant trading partners from the time of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220).
. . . .
The African emissaries to the Ming throne came with fabulous gifts, including objects for which entrepreneurs had long before managed to create a market in the Far East -- tortoise shell, elephant ivory, and rhinoceros-horn medicine. On their many visits they also brought zebras, ostriches, and other exotica. In return, the Ming court sent gold, spices, silk, and other presents. Zheng He was sent with his fleet of great ships on yet another voyage across the Indian Ocean to accompany some of the foreign emissaries home. This escort was the first of several imperially supported trips to Africa. According to official records, they went to Mogadishu, Brava, and perhaps Malindi;
. . . .
Samuel M. Wilson The Emperor's Giraffe Natural History (Vol. 101, No. 12, December 1992)
Very interesting alTakruri, thanks.
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posted
My returned thanks to both Djehuti and Yonis. Your notes of appreciation make the hard work of ferreting out the information, the considerable time and effort expended, well worth my while. Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Being female Mwamaka Sharifu lacks the NRY chromosomes that could support her claim and the island's legend. But someone doing fieldwork for a masters degree could conduct tests on Pate island's Siyu villagers who claim direct male lineage from the shipwrecked Chinese.
For me, it's hard to ascribe Mwamaka's features to 15th century Chinese because a retained foreign phenotype from one ship's surviving crew demands endogamous marriage among the survivors' further generations. (This incident is like the later one of Pitcairn and H.M.S. Bounty's crewmen) In Mwamaka's case Arab infusion is also involved because she's a member of a Sherifan family.
Anyway here's one among many articles about her, it's from a Chinese daily.
quote: Feature: Kenyan girl with Chinese blood steals limelight
UPDATED: 08:23, July 01, 2005
She was born in a remote island along the Kenyan coast. In her childhood, she learned her forefathers were among some Chinese sailors who escaped from a wrecked ship hundreds of years ago.
Her fate is totally changed after groups of Chinese visited her village to study the cultural relics left by an ancient Chinese fleet. And suddenly she steals the limelight as she is invited to visit China as a special guest and is offered a scholarship to pursue further studies in a Chinese college later this year.
Her name is Mwamaka Sharifu, a 19-year-old graduate of Kenya's Lamu Girls Secondary School and widely known as the "China girl" since media disclosed her Chinese origin.
On Thursday evening, she took the flight to China together with Alfred Mramba Kashari, mayor of Kenya's Malindi city, as they are invited by the Chinese government to join the celebrations of the 600th anniversary of its greatest ancient navigator Zheng He's overseas adventures.
"I want to see the place where my ancestors live," said Sharifu, adding that she is going to explain to her hosts why there are Chinese descendants living along the coast of east Africa.
Sharifu was born in the remote village of Siyu of the Lamu islands, where many pieces of ancient chinaware were unearthed recently. Legend has it that a Chinese trade vessel sank somewhere near the island hundreds of years ago and the sailors aboard settled down and gradually merged into the local community.
Many archaeologists and journalists who visited Lamu believe the wrecked ship must be one of the Zheng He's grand fleets, which visited Kenya's Malindi, Mombasa and other east African ports in 1415. Apart from a lot of chinaware found in Kenya's coast areas, the fact that some locals exhibit Chinese features makes scholars believe that they are the offspring of Zheng's crew.
"I look forward to visiting China and studying in the Chinese university," said Sharifu, adding that she'd like to choose medical science as her major so that she will be able to come backto help her fellow Kenyans.
None of her friends is as lucky as Sharifu: besides the upcoming root finding trip, the Chinese government also offered her scholarship to pursue a bachelor's degree in China.
The Chinese embassy and some private Chinese have offered financial assistance to the Lamu schoolgirl. And with the help of the embassy, the Ministry of Education of China has decided to provide an extra government scholarship for her.
"This year marks the 600th anniversary of the navigation from China to Kenya by Zheng He, the great Chinese navigator. To give an opportunity to Miss Mwamaka Sharifu to study in China has a special significance in commemorating this important event and promoting the existing China-Kenya friendly cooperation to a new height," said the embassy in a statement.
She also got recommendations from Athman Lali Omar, head of Coastal Archaeology National Museums of Kenya.
"I'd like to salute the Chinese for seeing her through at leastto secondary school level. And I would like to congratulate Mwamaka Sharifu for pursuing in her study to this level and also for her interest to go further in her education," he said.
The Lamu islands of north Kenya, including Pate island, Manda island, Lamu island and some other smaller islands, had been trading frequently with the oriental world for hundreds of years.
The Siyu village on Pate island has around 2,300 people, according to the village chief Bwana Ahmedi Maka. Among them, there are still about 30 people who are believed to be the offspring of the ancient Chinese sailors.
Source: Xinhua
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:For me, it's hard to ascribe Mwamaka's features to 15th century Chinese because a retained foreign phenotype from one ship's surviving crew
Yep.
I am glad to see and examination of African Chinese trade contacts, but no evidence exists about this particular person's distant ancestry.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Excellent point. If one's present phenotype denoting x ancentry is present but the genotypeing doe snot show evidence of this, what could we say about this in general.
Perhaps environmental triggering (like the Bushmen) can spontaneously short circuit and form new/unique strands to self trigger/form unique identity? Brainstorming only? Many of the Hui (Chinese Muslims) (over 900 years!) have origins in the Arabian peninsula though I am sure the Silk Road provided the 'foreign' element in their genotyping. What about the Uighur and other of the Western provinces of China?
Posts: 1290 | From: usa | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Perhaps environmental triggering (like the Bushmen) can spontaneously short circuit and form new/unique strands to self trigger/form unique identity?
Many continue to base speculation on a false root premise -
* there is a singular authentic African phenotype.
** Deviation from this in Africa must be due to non African admixture.
*** Obversely similarity outside of Africa to this archtype [in the pacific islands for example], must denote admixture, from Africa.
Because all humans and base physical variation originate in Africa, and very recently by anthropological standards - the root premise is false, and therefore the assumptions that follow from the false premise, are faulty.
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posted
Its absolutely funny how the LAST place to become civilized, Western Europe, tries to claim it was the FIRST to do everything. Everywhere they went they found civlization THOUSANDS of years older than their own, yet they claim they are the OLD WORLD! Please. All of this is predicated on OMITTING most of the history of the world to that point in order to glorify in EUROCENTRIC fantasies of being the center of the universe as far as civilization is concerned. The truth is that the Muslim Empire laid the foundations for the European "Age of Discovery", from maps and charts on navigation learned in Al Andalus, to ancient tales of sailors and pirates in Africa and Asia, to the fabulous trade in exotic spices and fabrics from India and China. The European FOLLOWED in the footsteps of those who already had laid the course for them. But, in typical Eurocentric fashion, they will say they BLAZED the trail. Therefore, Marco Polo is the FIRST to hit China, even though the Muslims had been there LONG before. Columbus was the FIRST to discover America, even though there were written legends all over West Africa about a King from Timbuktu sailing over there hundreds of years before.....
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posted
Excellent article Takruri! I hope that more facts of history will soon be unearthed and brought to light. Salaam
Posts: 826 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Jun 2006
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By the way, does this African girl really have ancestry from Chinese explorers?
Have any DNA tests been done on her yet to confirm this?
On da real, and to add to that, didnt this girl get a scholarship to a chinese university or something?
Posts: 447 | From: Somewhere son... | Registered: Sep 2006
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m lookin for thread with img of chinese vis-a-vis portuguese ships
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
I see much of this info has been covered already...is there anything you Vets didn't cover...this will make my search even easier..again thanks. Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
Great Work Al-Takruri...Doug M..you hit it on the head...BUMP
As for my opinion the very idea of Eurocentrism is aburd but it still alive an well in todays society. I live in an area that has many Hispanic Americans of CLEARLY Native Meso-American(Myan, Aztec, etc.) Decent and when my class had a chance to present our Family's history its funny how most claim decent from a wandering Spaniard but ignore their Indian ancestors...
The same can be said for African Americans...Why is it that we fail to research the foundations laid down by our ancestors...We had the 3rd oldest university in the world, and other great History all over Africa but we make the excuse that Europe is some great civilized entity...
Keep up the good work..
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
Jari-Ankhamin wrote:We had the 3rd oldest university in the world.
Welcome back Jeri. first off I remember during the Skip gates documentery Wonders of the African world.. a Sudanese Scholar/archeologist saying one of the buildings at Meroe looks to be an ancient university...and that is some thing he was seriously considering. and not for notthing but the Temple Schools in Kush and Kemet were in fact Universities. so not the 3rd oldest but possibility the oldest.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
alTakruri...with all due respects...your topic is NOT off topic, nor is it irrelevant to African history (IE, Egyptology) ...we need more topics such as this...so don't confuse this topical and important contribution to this forum in the same light as actual off topic subjects as "the Dinkas are ugly (sic!)", "Vick back in the NFL"....
posted
And in line with the above^^ is there any evidence of contacts between pre-occupation Kemet...before the Greco/Roman period and China? even indirect contacts.
As per the link that Al.T gave concerning the possible location of Molin...one possible explaination could be Mogadeshu..it fits well as a port city and in land could be dry and desert like some of the people not eating pork...cold fit as Moslems remember somalis are amongst the first Africans to convert.
The article also mentions Chinese prisoners..who later became gold and silver smith but no mention of them being slaves..to the Arabs(just saying).
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
Wow, I'm truly humbled. I just wanted to compliment Bru Nansi's recent posts that was only lacking in images. I'd've never guessed this old thread from 3 years ago would be received so kindly. Thank you all very much and I wish you all a wonderful weekend.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Jari-Ankhamun wrote: ------------------------------------- As for my opinion the very idea of Eurocentrism is aburd but it still alive an well in todays society.
The same can be said for African Americans...Why is it that we fail to research the foundations laid down by our ancestors...We had the 3rd oldest university in the world, and other great History all over Africa but we make the excuse that Europe is some great civilized entity... -------------------------------------
Well according to your dumb down posting history you believe whatever your white owners tell you.
According to them your ancestors do not come from Mali. Therefore why are you claiming it?
I'll post the thread if you want.
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_______________________________ BIG ASS CHINESE TREASURE SHIP vs. pooh-butt Iberian carrack ("cargo caravel")
Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
I have great respect for the Chinese and their Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism wisdom. The Chinese explored the American continent, Asia and Africa with their powerful fleet. They had the technology and power to conquered and colonized many places but they only trade with the natives and returned home.
Compare the Chinese with the western European barbarian who traveled the world to steal, genocide, enslaved and colonized African, American and Asian.
Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
The legendary Chinese seafarer the West* overlooks
* "the West" is convenient soft terminology for white Europe not geographic location
In the 1400s, Zheng He sailed thousands of miles around Asia and Africa in ships the size of soccer fields, spreading Chinese innovations like compasses and gunpowder in the process.
by Alissa Greenberg Friday, August 13, 2021 NOVA
A statue of Zheng He at the Sam Poo Kong Temple in Java, Indonesia. Image Credit: Budianto Santosa, Shutterstock
The Chinese admiral Zheng He must have made quite the impression when the 300 ships under his command arrived at a new destination. The biggest vessels, known as “treasure ships,” were by some estimates longer than a soccer field. Their rigging was festooned with yellow flags, sails dyed red with henna, hulls painted with huge, elaborate birds. Accompanying them were an array of support boats, including oceangoing stables for horses, aqueous farms for growing bean sprouts to keep scurvy away, and water taxis for local transportation. The 15th century citizens who received him in what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, and Yemen had never seen anything like it.
And that was before the 28,000 inhabitants of Zheng’s ships debarked to establish trade relations with the local government. They came bearing luxuries, from tools (axes, copper basins, porcelain) to cloth (fans, umbrellas, velvet) to food (lychees, raisins, salted meats). In return, they received [trade] goods to carry back to China, including spices and precious stones and—on a few notable occasions—ostriches, elephants, and giraffes.
Almost a century before Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus made voyages that kicked off the era of European colonialism, Zheng spent three decades plying the waters between China and the East Coast of Africa, setting up diplomatic relationships that would reshape Asian life. His seven expeditions challenged what humans could do at sea, pushing the limits with their boats’ size, complexity, and capacity for long-distance travel.
Zheng’s influence might have been yet more outsized if geopolitical pressures hadn’t changed China instead. But his legacy still lives on from the Swahili Coast to Yemen, Kolkata to Hong Kong. Michael Yamashita, a photographer and contributor to National Geographic, spent several years writing a book and producing a multipart documentary on the Chinese mariner. “He was the greatest explorer that the world had never heard of,” Yamashita says.
Performers parade in front of a replica of a treasure ship sailed by navigator Zheng He at a launching ceremony in 2006 (600 years Zheng's voyages) in Nanjing, China. Image Credit: China Photos, Getty Images
Zheng (known in early life as both Ma Sanbao and Ma He) was born around 1371 in Southwest China, his family part of a Muslim ethnic minority in an area still controlled by Mongols of the recently toppled Yuan dynasty. The battles that marked the transition from Yuan to Ming dynasty in the area were brutal and bloody. During one, Zheng (who was still a boy) saw his father murdered. He was left alive but captured and, as was common practice at the time, castrated and made a eunuch.
“It is almost incomprehensible that he managed to emerge from such relatively fringe or marginal socio-political positions to become the leader of this huge maritime enterprise,” Huang Jianli, a historian at the National University of Singapore, said in an email. But he did. Zheng was assigned to serve Zhu Di, a rebellious prince, and he was by his master’s side when Zhu Di installed himself as emperor in 1402.
Zhu Di had expansive ideas about China’s role in the world and the way it could use trade and widespread diplomacy to assert its power. He assigned his trusted confidante a leadership role, naming him admiral. Starting in 1405, they worked together to establish a far-reaching web of [trade] relationships with 48 countries, city-states, and kingdoms all over Asia. Zheng, who according to reports was almost seven feet tall, became a towering figure in both stature and status.
The scale of the boats he sailed was equally remarkable. China had been building mind-bogglingly enormous ships for at least a century before Zheng came along. Both Marco Polo and the Moroccan explorer Ibn Batuta wrote of seeing huge seagoing vessels in their visits to the East. Some experts believe the treasure ships Zheng sailed were 400 feet long, or five times the size of Columbus’ ships, with 70,000 square-foot decks, though those numbers remain in debate. But “even if we take the estimates most people think are too small, those are twice what the Europeans used to sail around the world,” says Travis Shutz, a historian of maritime China at SUNY Binghamton.
Both the treasure ships and the support vessels—battleships, boats carrying grain and horses, local transportation—featured divided hulls with several watertight compartments. This engineering innovation had roots in early Chinese seafaring. It allowed Zheng and other Chinese mariners to take unprecedented amounts of drinking water on long voyages, while also adding much-needed ballast, balance, and stability.
But for Shutz, what made the armada most impressive was the sheer logistics necessary to build and command it. Under Zheng’s instruction, workers in six provinces along China’s coast and inland along the Pearl River cut down trees, processed lumber, and built shipyards in order to construct scores of vessels. In inland cities, an additional team focused on dredging the river once the treasure ships were ready to float out to sea. “That’s something that makes it really impressive, how they mustered so many resources,” Shutz says.
A partial replica of one of Zheng He's treasure ships at the Maritime Experiential Museum in Singapore displays its below-deck cargo. Image Credit: Choo Yut Shing, Flickr
For his National Geographic documentary, Yamashita spent years tracing Zheng’s seven voyages, following the trade winds and stopping nearly everywhere the giant eunuch went. In Indonesia, Yamashita visited some of the same sulfur mines recorded in Zheng’s ship’s log, as well as temples devoted to his spirit. In Melaka, Malaysia, he visited the enormous storehouses Zheng built to house goods going to and from points further afield. The communities that grew up around the storehouses were among the first of many permanent overseas Chinese populations that would dot the continent and eventually grow to a majority in nearby Singapore. In India, Yamashita followed Zheng to the famed pepper markets of the Malabar Coast; the spice flooded China so quickly after Zheng’s visit that it transformed from a top-shelf luxury to an everyday additive.
And after stopovers in Sri Lanka and Yemen, Yamashita visited the islands off of Kenya’s Swahili Coast, where he found people fishing with Chinese-style nets. Local legend has it that several of Zheng’s ships wrecked there, caught in some of the world’s most extreme tides, and the mariners on board married into the population. “We found lots of Ming pottery all over the place,” Yamashita says. “They used it to decorate the houses.”
But, Shutz says, after decades of travel and trade, the sheer logistical and labor costs of maintaining what amounted to a floating metropolis began to wear on Emperor Zhu Di—especially as the Mongols began threatening from the north, forcing the Chinese capital to move to Beijing. Producing and stocking giant ships became prohibitively expensive. Zheng’s last voyages were mostly focused on returning foreign trade envoys to their homelands.
Then Zhu Di died, and a new ruler with deeply different priorities replaced him. Eunuchs like Zheng, who valued trying new things, enriching imperial coffers, and building China’s world reputation, suddenly had much less power. Instead, more conservative Confucian courtiers had the new emperor’s ear. They were more focused inward, on protecting China from the Mongols with the construction and expansion of the Great Wall.
Zheng embarked on his last voyage in 1431, and he died en route in what is now Kolkata (... [yte ppl tried to renamed it] Calcutta]. He was buried at sea. Soon after, the new emperor outlawed most formal maritime trade. Forget soccer-field-sized boats: the Chinese state wouldn’t finance any voyages again for several hundred years. When they returned to the ocean, the world would be a very different place.
Performers atop a replica of a treasure ship sailed by Zheng He at a 2006 launching ceremony in Nanjing, China. Image Credit: China Photos, Getty Images
In the decades that followed, any suggestion of China returning to the high seas was firmly rejected. Many of the records of Zheng’s voyages were reportedly destroyed during political fights or simply lost to the vagaries of time. The loss of those documents has left a hole in what we know about Zheng, leading to academic arguments about everything from exactly how big his boats were (we know they were significantly larger than Columbus’, but how large?) to why he went where he did (was it proto-colonialism or just posturing?). The author Gavin Menzies even found success publishing “1421: The Year China Discovered the World,” a best-selling—but now widely debunked—book that claimed Zheng actually circumnavigated the globe in his sixth voyage.
What we do know is that Zheng’s voyages had a lasting impact on Asia, setting up patterns of migration and cultural exchange that continue today. After the state abandoned virtually all maritime trade, coastal communities stepped back in, some residents turning to smuggling and piracy to meet market demand. Other families instead emigrated to one of the many new overseas Chinese communities taking root in places like Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Many of those new communities sprang up at nodes where Zheng had stopped to develop trade relationships. That’s one reason Southeast Asia is dotted with temples devoted to him.
Those trade networks, Shutz says, were also essential to the spread of two Chinese technologies that helped build our modern world: gunpowder and compasses. Both items were conceived and commonly used for different purposes in China: compasses for divination practices and gunpowder for firecrackers. Thanks to the trade relationships Zheng helped establish, they were much more widely taken up for navigation and warfare across Asia and Africa—and eventually used by Western colonial powers to reshape the world for the next several centuries.
Yamashita also sees Zheng, a Muslim wielding power in a mostly Buddhist society, as a man with “really modern thinking” about equality. In particular, he cites a set of stone tablets Zheng left behind in a temple in Sri Lanka as evidence of this mindset. The trilingual carvings mark offerings to Buddha in Chinese, to Hindu deities in Tamil, and to Allah in Persian. In these carvings, Yamashita sees a legacy of tolerance—a message, he says, of “equal gifts for all; all gods exactly the same.”
Gallery of Admiral Zheng He in Melaka, Malaysia. Image Credit: Chongkian, Wikimedia Commons
Historians like to imagine what might have happened if Chinese voyages hadn’t stopped with Zheng. “What if they had still been in Mozambique when the Portuguese showed up?” Shutz wonders. Would the two powers have traded or gone to war? How would that have affected the violence European powers inflicted as they divided up the world for colonization? “It would have been a different path for sure,” he says.
Instead, for centuries, Zheng’s voyages “remained a testimony of China’s maritime capability if and when it wished to summon,” Huang says. It’s a reminder that’s become increasingly pertinent in the past few decades as China has reasserted itself in world economics and politics.
Now, Huang sees in Zheng’s rise and fall a warning for the United States as it continues to pour money into maritime military maneuvers in Asia and Russia. These ventures “are extremely costly to the state coffer and people’s welfare,” he writes—one reason they were ultimately halted in China in Zheng’s time. “Instead of building more aircraft carriers and staging endless military exercises the world over, U.S.A. should spend its hard-earned money on its failing domestic infrastructure and solving its deep socio-economic problems.”
Even so, until recently Zheng’s accomplishments either received only a passing mention or weren’t taught at all in [white] history curricula, Shutz says. While he didn’t learn about Zheng during his own schooling some 20 years ago, Shutz’s younger sister learned about him in her junior high school history class in 2015. In this small change, Shutz sees the beginning of a bigger trend in the American approach to world history. “It’s much less focused on [whites] and more focused on the world writ large,” he says, “letting all these varying cultures speak for themselves.”
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My returned thanks to both Djehuti and Yonis. Your notes of
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