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Ancient African Math/Science Shatters Stereotypes
Finally, more physical proof against the racist notion that Africans are culturally not all that science/math oriented, the old "dark Africa", "song-&-dance" routine. Thousands of books and manuscripts uncovered in what is now Mali, especially around Timbuktu, are just being studied, with stunning results: African scholars in an unfathomably wealthy civilization independently developing sophisticated math, astronomy, and other sciences, even while Europe was still crawling out of the Middle Ages...
From the world's oldest astronomical observatory to Timbuktu scholar Abul Abbas, who commented in 1723 on much earlier scholars' work in the same city - thus showing they were building an independent body of work (and whose conclusions show his lack of contact with, hence independence from, Europe), African mathematical and science achievements have heretofore been largely kept in the dark. All this, and so far only 14 out of more than 18,000 manuscripts have been translated and examined. Let the racists read it and weep...
An article in the New Scientist (unless you subscribe, you can't get the full article though) reports the discovery and recent restoration and study projects of thousands of ancient manuscripts, called the Timbuktu or Mali Manuscripts, in/around Timbuktu, the site of an unfathomably wealthy, sophisticated civilization.
"In just a handful of the documents translated so far they have overturned the received wisdom about early African science and astronomy. The scholars of Timbuktu, they have discovered, were way ahead of their time."
In 1591, Moroccan invaders destroyed many documents and raided schools and universities in the city, mainly after their wealth. Much was lost, but there are still thousands of documents, many of them hidden in walls and tombs, which are only recently being restored and studied, in large part thanks to the renowned astrophysicist from S. Africa, Thebe Medupe.
In the 2003 documentary film Cosmic Africa, Medupe travels throughout Africa, visiting various indigenous societies seeking to find out their knowledge and understanding in the field of Astronomy. More recently, he has been working on the Timbuctu Manuscript project, teaming with other scientists to study the texts for knowledge of science and math. The results are astounding.
"We can now say with confidence that sub-Saharan Africans were studying math and science over 300 years ago," says Dr. Medupe.
Medupe himself is the motivating power behind what has become a rather sudden and stunning revelation of African intellectual achievement and advanced civilization, long buried under what he calls "Eurocentric" history. As he said in an interview,
"...when I was 15, I started to question why everything was Eurocentric. Textbooks were using European things and so on. So I used to ask myself whether
it was because there was nothing Africa can offer. I refused to believe that. Itremained a very big question for me for a long time, until I came across areview on African ethnoastronomy. I was very excited." In making the film Cosmic Africa, he says:
We decided to select remote communities, where contact with the outside worldwas minimal, but also living communities where you could clearly and graphicallyshow that astronomy was an important part of their lives. That's why we selected
the Bushmen, who live on the border of Botswana and Namibia, and the Dogonpeople of Mali, West Africa. The Dogons still live the way they did 500 yearsago. They were dignified, and very hospitable. At the beginning, it was not easyto get information from them — that's how they protect their culture from beingeroded. But once we won their trust, it was very pleasant to live among them.
. We also read about a stone observatory—stone structures in the Sahara desert insouthern Egypt that were erected more than 6000 years ago; that's more than athousand years before the Pyramids. The stones were erected to mark thedirections of north and of the summer solstice sunrise.
One evening with the Dogons, I went with two old people to look at the stars. Iasked them what was the most important constellation for them. They said thePleiades, a star cluster, which is very important throughout the whole ofAfrica, actually. The stars are used for planting and agriculture. I asked thisguy [for] positions of the stars, and he gave me the rising times and positionsat different times of the year. I checked with my laptop, and he was very muchcorrect. To me that proved he knew what he was talking about.
The Egyptian stones apparently contain alignments similar to those done a thousand or so years later at Stonehenge in Great Britain, but they are smaller in size. The Bushmen made out constellations just like the ancient Greeks and other peoples. To me, it shows the commonality between Africa and the rest of the world.
Medupe just discovered the tip of the great civilizations that were Africa, full and rich civilizations with original advancements in such fields as astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and climatology.
Timbuktu ... was one of the major cities of West Africa from 800 until just over400 years ago. It was very prosperous, and had many learning centers, withpeople collecting and writing books on law, poetry, astronomy, optics,mathematics. This history of scholarship in Africa extended over large parts of the continent. Ancient manuscripts are found all over West Africa and even inEast Africa. They are written in Arabic and in local African languages. ...InMali alone, there are around 200 private libraries, and literally hundreds ofthousands of books.
But most powerful in their refutation of the Eurocentric view of scientific development perhaps are the Mali manuscripts, some dating back 600 years, including beautifully drawn diagrams of the orbits of the planets in a geocentric universe, which demonstrate complex mathematical calculations and algorithms that were as accurate in some cases as anything we have today. And when as Muslims they needed to accurately determine the location of Timbuktu and Mecca, they surpassed the Greeks by inventing the functions of trigonometry.
This should be food for thought for the far right and racists, now apparently on the rise again, who try to delude the world into believing black intellectual and scientific accomplishment never existed or even cannot exist. But then, thought is something they avoid at all costs. And how can we expect non-thinking people to recognize higher intelligence?
______________________________ Islamic Manuscripts from Mali: Timbuktu-an Islamic Cultural Center
Timbuktu, the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa 900 years ago, is synonymous today for being utterly remote. This, however, was not always the case. For more than 600 years, Timbuktu was a significant religious, cultural, and commercial center whose residents traveled north across the Sahara through Morocco and Algeria to other parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia. Located on the edge of the Sahara Desert, Timbuktu was famous among the merchants of the Mediterranean basin as a market for obtaining the goods and products of Africa south of the desert. Many individuals traveled to Timbuktu to acquire wealth and political power.
Other individuals traveled to Timbuktu to acquire knowledge. It was a city famous for the education of important scholars whose reputations were pan-Islamic. Timbuktu’s most famous and long lasting contribution to Islamic–and world–civilization is its scholarship and the books that were written and copied there beginning from at least the 14th century. The brilliance of the University of Timbuktu was without equal in all of sub-Saharan Africa and was known throughout the Islamic world.
Over the past 1,200 years, the Western Sahara area has given birth to powerful empires: Ghana (8th-11th centuries), Mali (13th-17th centuries), and Songhai (15th-16th centuries). The influence of these empires transcends Mali’s current boundaries in its contributions to civilization and culture, particularly through Muslim scholarship. Many peoples, ideas, and goods passed through these empires by land and via the Niger River. Among travelers to the region were many Muslim scholars who came pursuing knowledge and whose scholarship survives in their manuscripts.
In 1960, when the former French Sudan–previously part of French West Africa–became independent from France, it took the name of a historic kingdom in the area that it covers, the empire of Mali. Today Mali is an independent, democratic, culturally diverse, predominately Muslim nation that sits at an important nexus of West African culture. The fabled city of Timbuktu lies in the Sahel–the southern edge of the Sahara, eight miles north of the Niger River in Mali.
In 1960, when the former French Sudan–previously part of French West Africa–became independent from France, it took the name of a historic kingdom in the area that it covers, the empire of Mali. Today Mali is an independent, democratic, culturally diverse, predominately Muslim nation that sits at an important nexus of West African culture. The fabled city of Timbuktu lies in the Sahel–the southern edge of the Sahara, eight miles north of the Niger River in Mali.
The texts and documents included in Islamic Manuscripts from Mali are the products of a tradition of book production reaching back almost 1,000 years. Although this practice is anchored in the methods of Islamic book production, it possesses features particular to West Africa. The bindings of manuscripts from Timbuktu, and West Africa in general, are unique in the Islamic world. Their decoration with incised markings is in a style characteristic of the area. Further, pages are not attached in any way to the binding–a practice different from all other Islamic manuscripts.
The form of Arabic script used in Timbuktu ultimately derives, as do all forms of the Arabic script, from the Kufic and Hijazi forms of Arabic writing developed in Iraq and the Hijaz during the eighth and ninth centuries. Western and Eastern style scripts developed from the Kufic script. The Western style, influenced by the Hijazi script as used in North Africa, evolved into the script known as Maghribi, or North African, beginning in the 11th century in North Africa, Spain, and Sicily. Western style script still is used in North Africa. From North Africa, this script crossed the Sahara Desert, came to Timbuktu, and spread throughout West Africa where scholars and scribes further developed the script. An exhibit of pages from these manuscripts is available at: .
The most commonly used form of script in these Timbuktu manuscripts is Saharan, named for the desert that borders the city. Another form of Arabic script used in Timbuktu is Sudani, which refers to the belt of open farmlands that extends from East Africa to the lands just south of Timbuktu in West Africa. The third West African form of Arabic writing is Suqi–literally the market script. Suqi letters are noticeably square compared to the more elongated forms of Maghribi, Sudani, and Saharan.
While many books were authored and copied in Timbuktu, its resident scholars also imported books from other parts of the Islamic world. Therefore, manuscripts found in Timbuktu are often written in Naskh, the most common book hand found in Arabic manuscripts from Egypt, Syria, and neighboring lands. Naskh developed from the Eastern style of the original Kufic script.
These works, whose subjects cover every topic of human endeavor, are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages and early modern period. They are also an important element of the culture of Mali, and West Africa in general, which survived the colonial experience.
Libraries in Timbuktu continue the tradition of the families who established them by preserving and making available these valuable works, which until recently were unknown outside Mali. Scholars in the fields of Islamic studies and African studies are awed by the wealth of information that these manuscripts provide. Indeed, the use of these works by scholars will likely result in rewriting Islamic, West African, and world history.
The ancient manuscripts preserved at Timbuktu’s Ahmed Baba Center and in its private family libraries, such as the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, a suburb of Timbuktu, serve as eloquent witnesses to the influence of Timbuktu beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries.
descriptive record icon enlarge image icon [Detail] Philosophical Exchange.(A Summary Explanation of the Pronouncements of the Scholars and Theologians).
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Sir, do you think historians are not aware of Timbuktu? The problem is its culture was not home-grown. All of the writings; its literature and math are in arabic. Arabs went into Timbuktu and taught the locals, writing, reading and rudimentary math. Timbuktu was a product of Arab-al_islam. The locals cannot take credit.
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wrong,the culture was african.civilization existed in mali before the arabs came there,and yes arabs introduce more updated learning,the mande built upon it and and made thier own advancements,and not all the writing was in arabic.arabic script was use for african language too,i guess you did not read that part. second arabic was use by the africans in the mali and songhay to further thier advancements . so the locals could take credit.
if you want to play that game then the arabs can't take credit for what they learn from the greeks,axumites,kushites,egyptian,indians etc.
so stop the non-sense. you are dead wrong.
read carefully quote-
From the world's oldest astronomical observatory to Timbuktu scholar Abul Abbas, who commented in 1723 on much earlier scholars' work in the same city - thus showing they were building an independent body of work (and whose conclusions show his lack of contact with, hence independence from, Europe), African mathematical and science achievements have heretofore been largely kept in the dark. All this, and so far only 14 out of more than 18,000 manuscripts have been translated and examined.
Timbuktu ... was one of the major cities of West Africa from 800 until just over400 years ago. It was very prosperous, and had many learning centers, withpeople collecting and writing books on law, poetry, astronomy, optics,mathematics. This history of scholarship in Africa extended over large parts of the continent. Ancient manuscripts are found all over West Africa and even inEast Africa. They are written in Arabic and in local African languages. ...InMali alone, there are around 200 private libraries, and literally hundreds ofthousands of books.
_____________
it says africans were building an independent body of work.in other words they build upon the arab work just like the arabs built upon the early africans and others in learning.
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"and yes arabs introduce more updated learning,the mande built upon it." The updated learning was writing and math. The culture that existed prior to Arab intervention was sub-civilized.
GAME OVER.
-------------------- Will destroy all Black Lies Posts: 2025 | Registered: Dec 2009
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One must recognise that Arabic was just a kind of lingua franca that many peoples used after groups of invaders--already Arabised and Islamised--entered North Africa. There was really nothing that bona fide Arabs from Arabia contributed to knowledge. Just as Latin was the language used by the scholars of Europe after the fall of Rome and the introduction of Christianity so too written Arabic--a language that derives ultimately from other written languages in neighbourhood.
The truth of the matter is that the Timbuktoo tradition was founded on the ancient knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks especially, whose scholarship was translated into Arabic then transported into Moorish Spain and conquered North Africa.
Timbuktoo shared in that ancient Egypto-Hellenic knowledge and built on it. Just as the Western intellectual tradition cannot be explained except by way of Ancient Egypt and its intellectual descendant Ancient Greece.
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I must say too though that the article is patronising. After all, the blacks scholars of Ancient Egypt and Kush were the inventors not only of writing but also of mathematics, empirical science,medicine, engineering, astronomy--in fact the very intellectual foundations of modern science.
That's why the Eurocentric concept of "sub-Saharan Africa"--increasingly used by whites but naively parroted by blacks is such an insidiously racist term. Because one you contextualise things in terms of "sub-Saharan Africa" and the rest of Africa you fall into the trap of having to think that there's some kind of novelty with blacks having some tradition in mathematics--as is the case with the Timbuktoo example.
The proper response to an article such as this one should be that "black scholars were engaged in research in mathematics, astronomy, etc. long before Timbuktoo. Timbuktoo is just the continuation of an old tradition".
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It should also be pointed out to whites who love to argue that Timbuktoo scholarship was a derived one, based on the Arabic language and an imported religion,that when their adopted Greek cultural kinsmen were writing and doing philosophy, the rest of Europe[ an artifical construct] lived a near Stone Age existence: no writing, no mathematics, no science, cave dwelling, wearing animal skins for clothing, rampant fornication and incest[read the Roman historians Tacitus and Livy]--the kind of existence that Europeans rarely want to talk about.
It was Greece, the child of Egypt and the conquering Romans that introduced writing and the arts to the heartland of Europe.
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^You have got to be kiddin me! The Arabs went in there, taught these people the language and math, plain and simple. Timbuktu existed during the time of Al_Islam expansion into interior Africa. They definitely exerted heavy pressure and influence on the cultrue.
-------------------- Will destroy all Black Lies Posts: 2025 | Registered: Dec 2009
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What Arabs are you referring to? Saudi Arabians? Hardly, given that they have made almost zero contributions to world intellectual history. Look at Arabia today. Despite a tiny population and billions of dollars from petroleum--which they could not exploit themselves--Saudi Arabia remains mired in ignorance, laziness, a childish dogmatic so-called religion and just mental torpor--despite all that cosmetic overlay of modernism.
Islam spread by default into North Africa--principally by maurauding gangs on horses--and terrified the inhabitants of North Africa into submission.
But when it comes to mature thought--it was just the Arabic language that conveyed the ancient Afro-Greek knowledge to other parts such as Moorish Spain.
My point is that I cxannot envisage bona fide Arabs from Arabia teaching anybody anything more sophisticated than silly prayers to a deaf deity.
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Al-Gebre? From Arabians? Hardly. The foundations of algebra are in Ancient Egypt(e.g. Rhind Papyrus), Babylon, and perhaps India. Among those who fell under the sway of Arabic language look to Persians and Baghdad for innovations. Not Arabia.
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Show me an al_gebraec function in an egyptian papyrus. Post it up.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: Al-Gebre? From Arabians? Hardly. The foundations of algebra are in Ancient Egypt(e.g. Rhind Papyrus), Babylon, and perhaps India. Among those who fell under the sway of Arabic language look to Persians and Baghdad for innovations. Not Arabia.
quote:Originally posted by Gigantic: Show me an al_gebraec function in an egyptian papyrus. Post it up.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: Al-Gebre? From Arabians? Hardly. The foundations of algebra are in Ancient Egypt(e.g. Rhind Papyrus), Babylon, and perhaps India. Among those who fell under the sway of Arabic language look to Persians and Baghdad for innovations. Not Arabia.
Check your pink arse hole sir, it is written all over there... Posts: 7419 | From: North America | Registered: Mar 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Gigantic: Sir, do you think historians are not aware of Timbuktu? The problem is its culture was not home-grown. All of the writings; its literature and math are in arabic. Arabs went into Timbuktu and taught the locals, writing, reading and rudimentary math. Timbuktu was a product of Arab-al_islam. The locals cannot take credit.
This is false. Arabic was spread all throughout the Islamic world to non-arabic cultures. Many of the great thinkers and intellectuals in Muslim history weren't even Arab (see Ibn Battutta, Ziryab, and al-Idrissi for instance). Also don't forget that Timbuktu was part of the larger West African complex which was purely African. With your analogy, it's like saying since America has been influenced by many different cultures anything that it produces can't be credited to it! Black Africans were learning, teaching, and spreading highly advanced knowledge long before the Europeans arrived. Period! The Timbuktu manuscripts will likely show eventually too that these same Black Africans also wrote on these scientific discoveries like any scholar would.
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quote:Originally posted by Gigantic: "and yes arabs introduce more updated learning,the mande built upon it." The updated learning was writing and math. The culture that existed prior to Arab intervention was sub-civilized.
quote:Originally posted by Gigantic: Sir, do you think historians are not aware of Timbuktu? The problem is its culture was not home-grown. All of the writings; its literature and math are in arabic. Arabs went into Timbuktu and taught the locals, writing, reading and rudimentary math. Timbuktu was a product of Arab-al_islam. The locals cannot take credit.
This is false. Arabic was spread all throughout the Islamic world to non-arabic cultures. Many of the great thinkers and intellectuals in Muslim history weren't even Arab (see Ibn Battutta, Ziryab, and al-Idrissi for instance). Also don't forget that Timbuktu was part of the larger West African complex which was purely African. With your analogy, it's like saying since America has been influenced by many different cultures anything that it produces can't be credited to it! Black Africans were learning, teaching, and spreading highly advanced knowledge long before the Europeans arrived. Period! The Timbuktu manuscripts will likely show eventually too that these same Black Africans also wrote on these scientific discoveries like any scholar would.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: I must say too though that the article is patronising. After all, the blacks scholars of Ancient Egypt and Kush were the inventors not only of writing but also of mathematics, empirical science,medicine, engineering, astronomy--in fact the very intellectual foundations of modern science.
That's why the Eurocentric concept of "sub-Saharan Africa"--increasingly used by whites but naively parroted by blacks is such an insidiously racist term. Because one you contextualise things in terms of "sub-Saharan Africa" and the rest of Africa you fall into the trap of having to think that there's some kind of novelty with blacks having some tradition in mathematics--as is the case with the Timbuktoo example.
The proper response to an article such as this one should be that "black scholars were engaged in research in mathematics, astronomy, etc. long before Timbuktoo. Timbuktoo is just the continuation of an old tradition".
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Nabta Playa was once a large basin in the Nubian Desert, located approximately 800 kilometers south of modern day Cairo[1] or about 100 kilometers west of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt,[2] 22° 32' north, 30° 42' east.[3] Today the region is characterized by numerous archaeological sites.[2]
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IT SEEMS THAT THE MALI EMPIRE WAS NEVER FULLY CONQURED BY THE SONGHAY. IT SEEMS that they remain free. a little first and what made Timbuktu what is was.
quote- At its peak, the Mali Empire extended across West Africa to the Atlantic Ocean and incorporated an estimated 40 to 50 million people. The administration of such an enormous territory was formidable and relied on the establishment of a government sensitive to the diversity of the land, population and cultures and accepting of the indigenous rulers and their customs. What distinguished the empires of West Africa, particularly Mali and later Songhay, was their ability to centralize political and military power while allowing the local rulers to maintain their identities along side Islam. The imperial powers were located in active commercial centers like Djenne, Timbuktu and Gao. _________________________________-
The Mali Empire or Manding Empire or Manden Kurufa (ߡߊ߲߬ߘߋ߲߬ ߞߙߎߝߓߊ) was a West African empire of the Mandinka from c. 1230 to c. 1600. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa I. The Mali Empire had many profound cultural influences on West Africa, allowing the spread of its language, laws and customs along the Niger River. The Mali empire extended over a large area and consisted of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces.
The first ruler from the Laye lineage was Kankan Musa (or, Moussa), also known as Kango Musa. After an entire year without word from Abubakari II, he was crowned Mansa Musa. Mansa Musa was one of the first truly devout Muslims to lead the Mali Empire. He attempted to make Islam the faith of the nobility,[22] but kept to the imperial tradition of not forcing it on the populace. He also made Eid celebrations at the end of Ramadan a national ceremony. He could read and write Arabic and took an interest in the scholarly city of Timbuktu, which he peaceably annexed in 1324. Via one of the royal ladies of his court, Musa transformed Sankore from an informal madrasah into an Islamic university. Islamic studies flourished thereafter. That same year a Mandinka general known as Sagmandir put down yet another rebellion in Gao.[22]
The most defining moment in Mahmud III’s reign is the final conflict between Mali and Songhai in 1545. Songhai forces under Askia Ishaq’s brother, Daoud, sack Niani and occupy the palace.[53] Mansa Mahmud III is forced to flee Niani for the mountains. Within a week, he regroups with his forces and launches a successful counter-attack forcing the Songhai out of Manden proper for good.[54] The Songhai Empire does keep Mali’s ambitions in check, but never fully conquers their old masters.
Mansa Mahmud IV (also known as Mansa Mamadou III, Mali Mansa Mamadou and Niani Mansa Mamadou) was the last emperor of Manden according to the Tarikh al-Sudan. It states that he launched an attack on the city of Djenné in 1599 with Fulani allies hoping to take advantage of Songhai’s defeat.[55] Moroccan fusiliers, deployed from Timbuktu, met them in battle exposing Mali to the same technology (firearms) that had destroyed Songhai. Despite heavy losses, the mansa’s army was not deterred and nearly carried the day.[55] However, the army inside Djenné intervened forcing Mansa Mahmud IV and his army to retreat to Kangaba.[51]
The mansa’s defeat actually won Manden the respect of Morocco and may have saved it from Songhai’s fate. It would be the Mandinka themselves that would cause the final destruction of the empire. Around 1610, Mahmud IV died. Oral tradition states that he had three sons who fought over Manden's remains. No single person ever ruled Manden after Mahmuud IV's death, resulting in the end of the Mali Empire.[56]
[edit] Manden Divided
The old core of the empire was divided into three spheres of influence. Kangaba, the de facto capital of Manden since the time of the last emperor, became the capital of the northern sphere. The Joma area, governed from Siguiri, controlled the central region, which encompassed Niani. Hamana or Amana, southwest of Joma, became the southern sphere with its capital at Kouroussa in modern Guinea.[56] Each ruler used the title of mansa, but their authority only extended as far as their own sphere of influence. Despite this disunity in the realm, the realm remained under Mandinka control into the mid 17th century. The three states warred on each other as much if not more than they did against outsiders, but rivalries generally stopped when faced with invasion. This trend would continue into colonial times against Tukulor enemies from the west.[57]
Then, in 1630, the Bamana of Djenné declared their version of holy war on all Muslim powers in present day Mali.[58] They targeted Moroccan Pashas still in Timbuktu and the mansas of Manden. In 1645, the Bamana attacked Manden seizing both banks of the Niger right up to Niani.[58] This campaign gutted Manden and destroyed any hope of the three mansas cooperating to free their land. The only Mandinka power spared from the campaign is Kangaba.
Mama Maghan, mansa of Kangaba, campaigned against the Bamana in 1667 and laid siege to Segou-Koro for a reported three years.[59] Segou, defended by Biton, successfully defended itself and Mama Maghan was forced to withdraw.[59] Either as a counter-attack or simply the progression of pre-planned assaults against the remnants of Mali, the Bamana sacked and burned Niani in 1670.[58] Their forces marched as far north as Kangaba where the mansa was obliged to make a peace with them, promising not to attack downstream of Mali. The Bamana, likewise, vowed not to advance farther upstream than Niamina.[60] Following this disastrous set of events, Mansa Mama Maghan abandoned the capital of Niani.
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The town was originally situated 2.5 km south-east of its present position at a site known as Djenné-Jéno or Djoboro.[14] The results from archaeological excavations suggest that Djenné-Jéno was first settled around 200 BC and had developed into a large walled urban complex by 850 AD.[15][16] After about 1100 AD the population of the town declined and by 1400 the site had been abandoned. Many smaller settlements within a few kilometres of Djenné-Jéno also appear to have been abandoned around this date. Preliminary archaeological excavations at sites within modern Djenné indicate that the present town was first settled after 1000 AD.[17]
During the fourteenth century the trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt and slaves grew in importance and moved eastwards from Oualata to Timbuktu.[18] The first possible mention of Djenné in the historical record is in connection with this trans-Saharan trade. In a letter written in Latin in 1447 by Antonio Malfante from the Saharan oasis of Tuwat to a merchant in Genoa, Malfante reports on what he had learnt from an informant about the trans-Saharan trade. He lists several 'states' including one called 'Geni' and describes the Niger River "Through these lands flows a very large river, which at certain times of the year inundates all these lands. This river passes by the gates of Thambet [Timbuktu]. ... There are many boats on it, by which they carry on trade."[19]
In addition to its commercial importance, Djenné, was also known as a center of Islamic learning and pilgrimage, attracting students and pilgrims from all over West Africa. Its Great Mosque dominates the large market square of Djenné. Tradition has it that the first mosque was built in 1240 by the sultan Koi Kunboro, who converted to Islam and turned his palace into a mosque. Very little is known about the appearance of the first mosque, but it was considered too sumptuous by Sheikh Amadou, the ruler of Djenné in the early nineteenth century. The Sheikh built a second mosque in the 1830's and allowed the first one to fall into disrepair. The present mosque, begun in 1906 and completed in 1907, was designed by the architect Ismaila Traoré, head of Djenné's guild of masons. At the time, Mali was controlled by the French, who may have offered some financial and political support for the construction of the mosque and a nearby religious school. _______________________________________________
djenne was really founded in 250 b.c.
________
quote- Several great centers of Islamic learning were also established during the Kingdom of Mali. Among them were the legendary Timbuktu, Djenne, and Gao. Scholars came from all over the Muslim world to study at these places, which have a long and rich history of learning in religion, mathematics, music, law, and literature. Although many people in Mali maintained their indigenous religions during this time, Islam was becoming well established throughout the kingdom.
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early history before the middle ages [edit] The History
Descended from ancient Central Saharan people, akin to the Bafour or Imraguen of Mauritania, the Mandé are an identifiable group of peoples spread throughout the West Africa. They are known as having been among the first on the continent to produce woven textiles (by a process known as strip-weaving), and as the founders of the Ghana Empire and Mali Empire, as well as being responsible for the expansion of the Songhai Empire across West Africa. However, archaeological testimony also supports that they were among the first peoples on the continent, outside the Nile region and Ethiopia, to produce stone settlement civilizations. These were built on the rocky promontories of the Tichitt-Walata and Tagant cliffs of Southern Mauritania between ca. 2000 and 700 BC., likely by a sub-group of the(Mande speaking) Soninke, where hundreds of stone masonry settlements, with clear street layouts, have been found. Some settlements had massive surrounding walls, while others were less fortified. In a deteriorating environment, where arable land and pasturage were at a premium, the population grew and relatively large-scale political organizations and, ultimately, military hierarchical aristocracies emerged. With a mixed farming economy—millet production combined with the rearing of livestock —this copper-based agro-pastoral society traded in jewelry and semi-precious stones from distant parts of the Sahara and Sahel. They are also believed to be the first to domesticate African rice. In the words of one archaeologist, these abandoned sites represent “a great wealth of rather spectacular prehistoric ruins” and “perhaps the most remarkable group of Neolithic settlements in the world” (Mauny 1971: 70).
Between 200 BC and 100 AD, the entire Sudan experienced significant dry episodes, which were part of the general drying trend that had been seriously underway since before 2000 BC. As the desert began to expand, the population headed South.
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here is some older info,not has updated has the one i posted above since we have more info about west africa today then 2004 but good info anyway.
THE DUAL LEGACY OF CLASSICAL TIMBUKTU: AFRICANITY AND ISLAM
by
Ali A. Mazrui
Keynote address at symposium on the theme, “Bridging to Connect: African Roots in Islam and History,” sponsored by the Timbuktu Education Foundation, and held in Hayward (near San Francisco), California, Saturday, November 6, 2004.
For several centuries before European colonization, much of West Africa was a product of two civilizations – indigenous African culture and the impact of Islam. This duality included the great Mali Empire which flourished at its height from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The dual legacy of Africanity and Islam also included the Songhai Empire which flourished from 1325 until the Moroccan invasion of 1588-91. Geographically, Songhai once extended from today’s Republic of Mali to today’s Nigeria. Songhai’s history overlapped with the history of the Mali Empire.
The most historically significant city produced by these two empires was the city of Timbuktu, which over the centuries has commanded more fascination among historians than almost any other intellectual center in the history of Black Africa. Timbuktu became the best positive celebration in the Black world of that old triumvirate of “God, gold and glory.” This triumvirate was in subsequent centuries to be usurped by European imperial colonization, but from the fourteenth century to the 1590s God, gold and cultural glory converged onto the destiny of Timbuktu. The foundations of the culture was the dual legacy of Africanity and Islam.
We define the classical period of Timbuktu as the era when Timbuktu flourished under the aegis of the Songhai empire (1325 to 1591) and the Mali Empire (1100 to 1700) – two overlapping imperial periods. But the legacy of scholarship in Timbuktu continued in subsequent centuries as well.
The interaction between Africanity and Islam was greatly facilitated by the continuing links between West African Empires and the Maghreb in North Africa, especially with Morocco. The links were often intellectually precious, but the links also included such moments of hostility and greed as the Moroccan invasion of 1588-1591.
Let us now put Timbuktu in a wider setting of interaction between Islamic scholarship and African intellectual foundations. The most famous classical centers of Islamic learning in Africa were three – Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the collective scholarly academy in Timbuktu and the oldest Qarawiyin university in Morocco in Fez. Al-Azhar University and the Qarawiyin mosque and University were older than Timbuktu, but they were also older than any Western university in existence. Today Al-Azhar is more than a thousand years old –which makes it older than almost any existing Western center of learning.
The triumvirate cities of Islamic learning – Cairo, Timbuktu and Fez – were, in medieval times, interdependent. There were scholars from Timbuktu who taught at Al-Azhar and in Fez – and vice-versa. New forms of scholarly interdependence were emerging in these academic exchanges of the ancient world.
There were centuries when Timbuktu was indeed a celebration of “God, gold and glory.” God was represented by two religious traditions – Indigenous African and Islamic. The gold featured in the trans-Saharan trade which was Timbuktu’s first exposure to international trade. The glory was for centuries partly scholarly. As a French author once observed:
The scholars of Timbuktu yielded nothing to the sojourns [and academics] in the foreign universities of Fez, Tunis and Cairo. The Blacks astounded the learned men of Islam in their erudition. That these Negroes [Blacks] were on a level with the Arabian savants [scholars] is proved by the fact that they were installed as professors in Morocco and Egypt, in contrast to this we find that Arabs were not always equal to the requirements of Sankore [in Timbuktu].[1]
Timbuktu became part of the Mali Empire. The Mail Empire produced one pilgrimage which was itself a symbol of “God, gold and glory.” Mali Emperor Mansa Moussa decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca in a huge caravan of “God, gold and glory.” The trip to Mecca was overland through Cairo. Mansa Moussa is reported to have arrived in Cairo with an entourage of 60,000 people, 80 camels carrying over two tons of gold for distribution to the poor and the pious. Mansa Moussa was so lavish in his generosity in Egypt that the value of gold almost collapsed on the Egyptian gold market.
When in our own times the second millennium was coming to an end in the year 1999, Life magazine included Mansa Moussa’s pilgrimage to Mecca in the fourteenth century among the great events of the whole millennium – a remarkable celebration indeed of “God, gold and glory.”
Mansa Moussa’s pilgrimage was a matter of recorded history. But there is an element about the Mali Empire which is a matter more of historical speculation than of historical confirmation. Did Abubakari II of Mali [Emperor Bakari II] launch a fleet to cross the Atlantic generations before Christopher Columbus traversed the ocean blue in 1492? Did the Emprie which produced the glories of Timbuktu also produce the glories of a Black trans-Atlantic crossing long before Christopher Columbus? This latter claim is more hotly debated than Mansa Moussa’s trans-Saharan odyssey. But both have entered the grand legends of the Black Experience.
There is a third huge topic which touches upon the historical interaction between the people of the southern margins of the Sahara like Mali and Niger and those of northern Sahara like Moroccans, Tunisians and Egyptians. Are we to trace the origins of the name “Africa” to the historic interaction between so-called Berber people of northern Sahara and the trans-Saharan Tuareg all the way to Mali?
What is clear is that the name “Africa” was first applied only to North Africa and the term, “Blacklands” (Arabic “Sudan”) was first applied to Mali. Timbuktu’s interaction with Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt might gradually have helped to create the name of our continent, “Africa.”
Another major connection we need to associate with Timbuktu is the link between religion and science. In the African context, the scholars of ancient Timbuktu were among the first to synthesize the twin studies of religion and science. A similar trend was occurring in the West at the same time.
Another major connection we need to associate with Timbuktu is the link between religion and science. In the African context, the scholars of ancient Timbuktu were among the first to synthesize the twin studies of religion and science. A similar trend was occurring in the West at the same time.
__________________ Dualization is the strategy which Timbuktu and Al-Azhar University took as each evolved into a dual university – one part still religious and basically sacred and the other part of Timbuktu and Al-Azhar as secular and modern.
__________________
But neither the secularization of Oxford and Harvard nor the dualization of Al-Azhar and Timbuktu happened at once. There were stages on the way. For example, while Harvard was secularizing the subject-matter being studied within its walls, it was still discriminating on religious grounds in its admissions policy. _______________ The history of Islamic civilization as a whole was indeed once a fusion of religious vision and scientific advancement. Timbuktu was part of this vanguard. We must not forget that words like algebra, zero, tariff, are of Arabic derivation. And the numerals we use are still called Arabic numerals – though they are partly also Indian. Religion and science were also once linked in the academy in Timbuktu in ancient times. Timbuktu was using the Arabic numerals long before this hemisphere knew how to write down the numerals 1492 or 1776. The scholarly foundations of classical Timbuktu continued to be the dual legacy of Africanity and Islam.
Conclusion
We have mentioned Timbuktu’s relationship with North Africa. One of Africa’s greatest travelers was Ibn Battuta (1304 to 1368), who testified to the scholarship of Timbuktu. North Africa had earlier contributed to Christian thought through the scholar St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine was one of the most brilliant theologians in the history of Christianity.
North Africa has also contributed to global scholarship the Tunisian Ibn Khaldun, after whom a number of Chairs in the United States have been named. Ibu Khaldun was stimulated by Timbuktu. American University in Washington, D.C. currently has an Ibn Khaldun Chair.
The interaction between North Africa and West Africa stimulated not just awareness of God and the pursuit of gold. It also stimulated the glories of the mind. These were not just moments in history. They were advances for all time. Timbuktu is part of this grand panorama of human achievement;. The dual legacy of Africanity and Islam turned classical Timbuktu into a remarkable triumph of cultural synthesis, a meeting point of civilizations.
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so it seems that certain west african civiliations were more advance then north africa and east africa or nubia in the late middle ages and early modern period because the on going process of advancing knowledge in the middle ages and early modern period,while nubia for example had a bit more advance technology,more developed cities,west africa had more advance knowledge.
at least large parts of it had more advance knowledge,so overall west africa became more advanced it seems since we are now learning more about it's early history before the modern period.
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Don't know why Mazrui throughout his career(quixotic in parts) has been pushing this African dualism. Sometimes this leads to great exaggerations and half truths.
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correction, new up to date learning,writing, etc came into timbuktu from the mande of djenne,another major city of learning.
Origins Timbuktu was established by the nomadic Tuareg as early as the 10th century. Although Tuaregs founded Timbuktu, it was only as a seasonal settlement. Roaming the desert during the wet months, in summer they stayed near the flood plains of the Inner Niger Delta. Since the terrain directly at the water wasn’t suitable due to mosquitoes, a well was dug a few miles from the river.[5][6]
[edit] Permanent Settlements In the eleventh century merchants from Djenne set up the various markets and built permanent dwellings in the town, establishing the site as a meeting place for people traveling by camel. They also introduced the Islam and reading, through the Qur'an. Before Islam, the population worshiped Ouagadou-Bida, a mythical water-serpent of the Niger River.[7] With the rise of the Ghana Empire, several Trans Saharan trade routes had been established. Salt from Mediterranean Africa was traded with West-African gold and ivory, and large numbers of slaves. Halfway through the eleventh century, however, new goldmines near Bure made for an eastward shift of the trade routes. This development made Timbuktu a prosperous city where goods from camels were loaded on boats on the Niger.
______________________________- [edit] The manuscripts and libraries of Timbuktu The most outstanding treasure at Timbuktu are the 100,000 manuscripts kept by the great families from the town.[40]. These manuscripts, some of them dated from pre-Islamic times and 12th century, have been preserved as family secrets in the town and in other villages nearby. The majority were written in Arabic or Fulani, by wise men coming from the Mali Empire. Their contents are didactic, especially in the subjects of astronomy, music, and botany. More recent manuscripts deal with law, sciences and history (with the important 17th century chronicles, Tarikh al-fattash and Tarikh al-Sudan), religion, trade, etc.
The Ahmed Baba Institute (Cedrab), founded in 1970 by the government of Mali, with collaboration of Unesco, holds some of these manuscripts in order to restore and digitize them. More than 18,000 manuscripts have been collected by the Ahmed Baba centre, but there are an estimated 300,000-700,000 manuscripts in the region.[41]
The collection of ancient manuscripts at the University of Sankore and other sites around Timbuktu document the magnificence of the institution, as well as the city itself, while enabling scholars to reconstruct the past in fairly intimate detail. Dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, these manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans at the time. In testament to the glory of Timbuktu, for example, a West African Islamic proverb states that "Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom come from Timbuktu."
From 60 to 80 private libraries in the town have been preserving these manuscripts: Mamma Haidara Library; Fondo Kati Library (with approximately 3,000 records from Andalusian origin, the oldest dated from 14th and 15th centuries); Al-Wangari Library; and Mohamed Tahar Library, among them. These libraries are considered part of the "African Ink Road" that stretched from West Africa connecting North Africa and East Africa. At one time there were 120 libraries with manuscripts in Timbuktu and surrounding areas. There are more than one million objects preserved in Mali with an additional 20 million in other parts of Africa, the largest concentration of which is in Sokoto, Nigeria, although the full extent of the manuscripts is unknown. During the colonial era efforts were made to conceal the documents after a number of entire libraries were taken to Paris, London and other parts of Europe. Some manuscripts were buried underground, while others were hidden in the desert or in caves. Many are still hidden today. The United States Library of Congress microfilmed a sampling of the manuscripts during an exhibition there in June 2003. In February 2006 a joint South African/Malian effort began investigating the Timbuktu manuscripts to assess the level of scientific knowledge in Timbuktu and in the other regions of West Africa.[42]
____________________ Centre of learning University of Sankore
During the early 15th century, a number of Islamic institutions were erected. The most famous of these is the Sankore mosque, also known as the University of Sankore.
While Islam was practiced in the cities, the local rural majority were non-Muslim traditionalists. Often the leaders were nominal Muslims in the interest of economic advancement while the masses were traditionalists.
Sankore, as it stands now, was built in 1581 AD (= 989 A. H.) on a much older site (probably from the 13th or 14th century) and became the center of the Islamic scholarly community in Timbuktu. The "University of Sankore" was a madrassah, very different in organization from the universities of medieval Europe. It was composed of several entirely independent schools or colleges, each run by a single master or imam. Students associated themselves with a single teacher, and courses took place in the open courtyards of mosque complexes or private residences. The primary focus of these schools was the teaching of the Qur'an, although broader instruction in fields such as logic, astronomy, and history also took place. Scholars wrote their own books as part of a socioeconomic model based on scholarship. The profit made by buying and selling of books was only second to the gold-salt trade. Among the most formidable scholars, professors and lecturers was Ahmed Baba – a highly distinguished historian frequently quoted in the Tarikh al-Sudan and other works. _____________________________________________
keep in mind that timbuktu was not the only major center of learning,there were others in in mali,but timbuktu was just more ahead for awhile oveall. __________________________-
The geography that has doomed Timbuktu to obscurity in the popular imagination for half a millennium was once the reason for its greatness. It was founded as a trading post by nomads in the 11th century and later became part of the vast Mali Empire, then ultimately came under the control of the Songhai Empire.
For centuries it flourished because it sat between the great superhighways of the era — the Sahara, with its caravan routes carrying salt, cloth, spices and other riches from the north, and the Niger River, which carried gold and slaves from the rest of West Africa.
Traders brought books and manuscripts from across the Mediterranean and Middle East, and books were bought and sold in Timbuktu — in Arabic and local languages like Songhai and Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg people.
Timbuktu was home to the University of Sankore, which at its height had 25,000 scholars. An army of scribes, gifted in calligraphy, earned their living copying the manuscripts brought by travelers. Prominent families added those copies to their own libraries. As a result, Timbuktu became a repository of an extensive and eclectic collection of manuscripts.
“Astronomy, botany, pharmacology, geometry, geography, chemistry, biology,” said Ali Imam Ben Essayouti, the descendant of a family of imams that keeps a vast library in one of the city’s mosques. “There is Islamic law, family law, women’s rights, human rights, laws regarding livestock, children’s rights. All subjects under the sun, they are represented here.”
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The lost script By Kenneth J. Cooper January 10, 2010
It’s a writing system called Ajami, it’s a thousand years old, and a Boston University professor thinks it could help unlock the story of a continent
One day while he was living near Seattle, the Senegal-born linguistics professor Fallou Ngom forgot to close a window before a rainstorm passed through, and the next morning discovered the wind had blown some of his papers to the floor. On one of them, a sheet several years old, his late father had recorded a debt.
Ngom’s father was considered illiterate because he couldn’t read and write in the country’s official language, French. But like many Senegalese had for centuries, he wrote daily information in his native tongue using a modified form of Arabic script known as Ajami. Ngom was struck by the irony: Here was his “illiterate” father communicating with him years after his death, in writing.
Ngom realized that this was more than just a touching personal moment. It also represented an immense opportunity. Ajami script had been widely used across Africa for day-to-day writing in a dozen languages, and Ngom knew those writings had been largely overlooked in the official story of the continent - in part because so few historians could read them. How many other documents like this existed across the continent? How many had simply been missed, or ignored?
Within a year, Ngom shifted his research from French linguistics, his specialty at Western Washington University, to the handwritten script of his father. Today Ngom is director of the African Languages Program at Boston University, and is training the first generation of American scholars capable of reading Ajami.
What Ngom hopes is nothing less than to lay the groundwork for a reinterpretation of much of African history, using this widespread but little understood writing system to unearth new information about the daily life of Africans, the spread of Islam, the continent’s literary traditions, the Atlantic slave trade, and who knows what else.
Could one writing system have that much influence? Not all scholars of Africa agree that the impact of Ajami
studies will be so continental. Some say that since the script was used primarily to record everyday, local concerns such as business deals and cultural practices, it is unlikely to be the source of significant new revelations.
But for Ngom, what little is known about Ajami texts is reason enough to push deeper. To study Ajami, as he sees it, is to open the door to a different side of Africa, unlocking an oral tradition widely assumed to have vanished with its speakers, and offering an important corrective to the way Africa’s story has been told.
“What Ajami tells us about Africa is yet to be known,” Ngom says.
The study of Africa’s history, particularly the region below the Sahara Desert, has traditionally reflected not only the biases of its historians, but also the limits of the written sources available to them. Official African documents tend to be in the languages of the outsiders who held power - either the Arab invaders who began arriving on the continent in the seventh century, or the Europeans who colonized it starting about a millennium later. These outsiders were there to convert the locals, trade them as slaves, and mine their natural resources, and colonial writings helped justify those commercial and religious interests, portraying sub-Sahara Africa as lacking literacy, history, and civilization.Continued...
The African-American assertion of black pride in the 1960s brought new attention to African achievements in art, technology, and governance, with student protests forcing some revision of college history curriculums. But the assumptions behind the principal sources of African history have continued to shape scholarship, as well as broader perceptions of the continent. The documents preserved in African archives, for the most part, are still the ones written by its colonizers.
But they aren’t the only writings that were produced in Africa. Starting at least in the 10th century, African holy men who had converted to Islam and learned Arabic began to modify Arabic writing to enable them to spread the religion more easily. The resulting Ajami script - the name comes from the Arabic word for stranger - helped make Islam accessible to shepherds and other commoners who could not understand Arabic. In Koranic schools that espoused Africanized versions of the religion, Ajami displaced Arabic, to the displeasure of traditionalists.
The script became widespread across the continent’s north-central waist, the so-called Sudanic belt, and was adapted for uses far outside Islamic education. Traders would record business transactions in Ajami, while other people would write secular poems or compile medical encyclopedias of indigenous treatments. It was used to write about a dozen languages, including the Wolof spoken by Ngom’s father, in what today are nearly 20 countries. Though most of its uses were unofficial, some sultans corresponded with provincial administrators in the script, Ngom says, meaning that government records may exist in Ajami. By now, it has been used continuously for more than 1,000 years.
But officially speaking, it has also been widely ignored. Uncounted Ajami manuscripts squirreled away across the continent have gone untranslated, even unseen, by scholars. Even in African countries where it is still used, the script lacks government recognition. In French colonial archives from Africa, Ngom says, Ajami documents remain classified as “unreadable Arabic” - based on the mistaken notion that writing in African languages simply did not exist. Some of this misclassification may have even been intentional.
“One of the reasons the documents have not been available has to do with colonial politics and the suspicion in which these documents were held, because the colonizers couldn’t read them,” says Jennifer Yanco, US director of the West African Research Association, based at BU. “During the colonial era, a lot of people hid their libraries.”
So the documents were buried, Yanco says, or concealed in false adobe walls. She says African scholars have discovered many, and recognized them as Ajami, in Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali. Many are religious, she says, but not all: Some of the documents are lineages, travelogues, and records of events.
Ngom says he knows of no African universities that teach Ajami to students. “It’s just a colonial tradition. There are only a few countries where African languages are taught,” he says; and when they are taught, it is done in Latin script. John Hutchinson, Ngom’s predecessor as director of the African Languages Program, cites just one other university anywhere with an Ajami program: the School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London, which teaches Hausa Ajami.
Still, Ajami is starting to make headway in some corners of academia. Some African scholars who, like Ngom, learned Ajami on their own, have been translating and publishing Ajami texts, according to Yanco and Bruce S. Hall, a history professor at Duke University who focuses on Mali. Those Africans outnumber the handful of professors at American universities doing similar work. For the last five years, Ngom has been plodding away at his research on Ajami literature in Senegal.
The BU program, several specialists say, offers more instruction in Ajami than any other traditional institution of higher education. Under his leadership since 2008, the African Languages Program has been a pioneer in offering instruction in both Ajami and Latin scripts. This year, about 30 BU students are learning Wolof, Hausa, or Pular. Most are graduate students in other departments - such as anthropology, history, or health - who will undergo five years of language training, supported primarily by grants from the US Department of Education. In the future, the program plans to teach Swahili and Amharic, the language of Ethiopia, in Ajami.
What nobody knows yet is what kind of information might be out there. Ngom’s hopes are high. He says he has already found an information-rich genealogy written in Ajami that goes back to the 12th century, and that other Ajami texts include Islamic edicts, business records, eulogies, letters from rulers, legal documents, and poems. From more recent times, he says, “You also have political satires, criticisms of colonial governments and traditional leaders.” Content of that last sort drove Ajami underground.
“I haven’t read one-tenth of one-thousandth of what’s out there,” Ngom says. “We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s exciting.”
Others are less optimistic about Ajami’s potential to change the study of the continent. “Ajami may well have been set aside for the mundane tasks of life,” says James McCann, a BU historian who specializes in Ethiopia. He says the writings probably focus on “the texture and movement and rhythms of local life,” such as marriages, debts, business transactions, and social issues.
Hall of Duke University says the Ajami documents are vastly outnumbered by standard Arabic texts authored in Africa by Africans which are, with philanthropic help, slowly being cataloged, preserved, and translated in Timbuktu. The many thousands of ancient documents found in the onetime center of higher learning in Mali include some in Ajami.
“How much is there to learn about history, per se? I don’t know,” Hall says. “I don’t think they’re going to provide chronicles of events. I don’t think they’re going to provide diaries of particular individuals, or military or political histories.”
But Hall suggests that Ajami texts can at least reveal much about the script’s original purpose - to spread Islam. “There’s a lot there to learn, I think,” he says. “We don’t have a great sense of how these ideas were diffused and how Islam spread among nonelites.”
Ngom, who is Muslim, argues that the script was far more than a tool of religious conversion, also providing a important way for Africans to record their culture and the details of their lives safely out of view of Arab Muslims and European colonists. “The average village Joe” writing in Ajami, he says, would have felt free to cover topics left out of African texts in standard Arabic because they were blasphemous under traditional Islam, such as indigenous use of amulets to ward off dangerous spirits. “Ajami does contain things from Arabic literature, but the reverse is not true,” he says.
In talking about Ajami’s potential to change our picture of Africa, Ngom makes a comparison to how the Western estimation of Arab society, at first considered backward and barbarous, went up once the outsiders learned to read Arabic and could grasp the Arab contributions to mathematics, science, geography, and literature.
Language can loom large in the interpretation of history of a place and a people, even as it can carry personal messages, like alerting a son to paying his late father’s debt. One by one, Ngom says, those kinds of communications accumulate into a larger story, and perhaps one never before heard.
“From Senegal to Tanzania, if you want to know how people think, how people heal, how they farm - their way of life,” he says, “you have to read their own literature.”
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^ Kenndo, why do you waste your time arguing with Gigantic-Morons?? Everyone with even the most elementary knowledge of African history knows that Timbuktu was founded by Africans NOT Arabs. The very name was African not Arabic. At first it was thought that Timbuktu was a trading post founded by Tuareg but recent evidence shows it was actually a trading town first inhabited by native Malians.
As for astronomical knowledge. Such scientific knowledge was known my many peoples around the globe and Africans were no exception. The stars and other heavenly bodies of the night sky were one of the constant and most fascinating aspects of the natural world. Such features are used to estimate time and the seasons. In fact much of the ancient Egyptian knowledge of the stars is actually a continuation of a tradition of astronomical knowledge known by peoples of the Sahara and Sudan. Also, Africa possessed among the most advanced medical and biological science. Again most of our knowledge of ancient African medicine and biology comes from Egypt, but there is much circumstantial evidence to again point to a continuation with Saharan and Sudanic peoples and thus many other Africans. Even the practice of vaccinations against disease which is credited to Europeans like Jenner or Wright was a tradition among many African peoples. Africans were the earliest people to perform surgery as well with first historically recorded cases coming from Egypt.
As far as mathematics, I suggest you look here for the traditions of mathematics in Africa.
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^ What, for fun? Gigantic-ahole doesn't seem that fun to me no more than YOU are yet, you as a troll seems to obsess over me like all the haters in real life do. Oh well.
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