African Civilizations
1500 BC-AD 700
Setting the Stage
• Africa spreads across the equator. It includes a
broad range of Earth’s environments-from coastal
plains to mountains. Some parts of Africa suffer
from constant drought, while others receive over
200 inches of rain a year! Vegetation varies from
sand dunes and rocky wastelands to dense green
rain forests. Interaction with the African
environment has created unique cultures and
societies. Each group found ways to adapt to the
land and the resources that it offers.
Africa’s Geography
• Africa is the 2nd largest continent; it stretches 4600
miles from east to west and 5000 miles from north
to south, it occupies 1/5 of Earth’s land surface.
• Each African environment offers its own
challenges:
– Desert-Sahara and Kalahari are largely unsuitable for
human life and hamper movement.
– Rain forest-partly uninhabitable because of the dense
forests and the tsetse fly.
– Savanna-grassy plains where most people live; support
abundant agricultural production.
– See p.214
Migration
• Migration is a permanent move from one
country or region to another.
• Migration is usually caused by push-pull
factors-what pushes people out of one area
or pulls them to another?
• Migration falls into 3 main categories:
–
–
–
–
Environmental
Economic
Political
Look at p.221 Chart
Migration
• Early Africans made some of the greatest
migrations in history, settling throughout the
continent and spreading their languages and
culture.
• The Bantu-speaking peoples originally
lived south of the Sahara and moved further
south and east.
• The Bantu peoples were farmers, nomadic
herders, iron workers, etc.
Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Benin
http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/um/painting06.jpg
• Many trade routes crossed the savanna through the region
farmed by the Soninke people.
• The Soninke called their leader Ghana, or war chief.
• By the 700s, Ghana was a kingdom, and its rulers were
growing rich by taxing the goods that traders carried
through their territory.
• The two most important trade items were gold and salt.
– Gold came from a forest region between the Niger and Senegal
Rivers.
– Salt came from the Sahara Desert.
• By 800, Ghana had become an empire.
• The king of Ghana:
– Controlled trade by storing large amounts of gold and salt that only
he had the power over.
– Commanded a large army
– Demanded taxes and gifts from chiefs of surrounding lands, and
would allow them to live in peace if payments were made,
– And acted as a religious leader and the chief judge
Ghana developed in West Africa
between the Niger and the
Gambia Rivers. It was an
important kingdom there from
about AD 300 to about 1100. The
rivers helped Ghana to grow rich
because they were used to
transport goods and develop
trade. Ghana also collected taxes
from traders who passed through
the kingdom. The people called
their nation Wagadu; we know it
as Ghana --that was the word for
war chief.
http://www.nevadasurveyor.com/africa/web/pages/niger_river.htm
•The kingdom of Ghana probably began
when several clans of the Soninke
people of west Africa came together
under the leadership of a great king
named Dinga Cisse.
•Ghana had few natural resources
except salt and gold.
•They were also very good at making
things from iron.
•Ghanaian warriors used iron tipped
spears to subdue their neighbors,
who fought with weapons made of
stone, bone, and wood.
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/center/mm/eng/mm_rs_01.htm
"The King . . .(wears). . . necklaces round
his neck and bracelets on his forearms and
he puts on a high cap decorated with gold
and wrapped in a turban of fine cotton.
He (meets people) in a domed pavilion
around which stand ten horses covered
with gold-embroidered materials…and on
his right, are the sons of the (lesser)
kings of his country, wearing splendid
garments and their hair plaited with gold.
At the door of the pavilion are dogs of
excellent pedigree. Round their necks they
wear collars of gold and silver, studded
with a number of balls of the same
metals."
10th century geographer Al-Bakri, quoted in Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West
African History.
This is a
primary source
that describes
the court of one
king of Ghana.
•Ghana became a rich and powerful nation,
especially when the camel began to be used as a
source of transport.
•Ghana relied on trade and their trade was made
faster and better with the use of the camel.
http://es.encarta.msn.com/media_461532998_761558787_-1_1/Caravana_de_camellos.html
news.nationalgeographic.com/. ../salt/photo6.html
Islamic
Mosque
in Ghana
blankbluesky.com/ travel/ghana/
•After 700 AD, the religion of Islam began to spread over
northern Africa.
•Followers of this religion are called Muslims. Muslim warriors
came into Ghana and fought with the non-Islamic people there.
•Local warriors then decided to break away from the power of
Ghana and form their own local kingdoms.
•This ended many of the trade networks and eventually weakened
the civilization of Ancient Ghana.
http://www.btsadventures.com/img/mosque.jpg
• By 1235 the kingdom
of Mali had emerged.
• Its founders were
Mande-speaking
people, who lived
south of Ghana.
• Mali’s wealth was also
built on gold.
•A powerful king named Sundiata ruled
Mali from around 1230-1255 AD. He
became known as a mansa, or emperor.
•He led the people in conquering and
expanding his kingdom to be as great as
Ghana had been.
•Mali had 7 rulers in the
50 years between
Sundiata and Mansa
Musa.
•Perhaps the greatest
king of Mali was Mansa
Musa (1312-1337). He
developed the gold and
salt trade of Mali and his
kingdom became very
powerful and rich. Mansu Musa: Lord of the Negroes of Guinea. (Photo courtesy of History of Africa)
•Mansa Musa was a Muslim; he
built many beautiful mosques, or
Islamic temples in western Africa
as well as attending public
prayers, and supporting holy men.
http://travel.u.nu/pic/ml/djenne.jpg
•In 1324 Mansa Musa made a hajj, or pilgrimage ( a journey
to a holy place) to Mecca, which is a holy city in Arabia.
•He traveled with 60,000 servants and followers and 80
camels carrying more than 4,000 pounds of gold to be
distributed among the poor. Of the 12,000 servants 500
carried a staff of pure gold. This showed his power and
wealth to the other people he visited.
•After returning he ordered mosques to be built in the major
cities of Timbuktu and Gao.
http://bseleck.bei.t-online.de/timbuktu/img_tim/mansamusag.gif
•When Mansa Musa died there were no kings as powerful
as he was to follow.
•The great kingdom of Mali weakened.
•Eventually a group of people known as Berbers came
into the area and other people came up from the south
to claim territory that was once part of the kingdom.
•Although Mali fell, another advanced African kingdom
took its place, the kingdom of Songhai.
http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/mp-site/plaisanceplan/graphics/berbers.jpg
The Berbers still
live in North
Africa. This
picture, taken in
1893, shows a
Berber group.
http://www.exzooberance.com
• As Mali declined in the 1400s, people under
its control began to break away.
• Among these were the Songhai people to
the east.
• They built up an army, extended their
territory to the Niger River, and gained
control of important trade routes.
• The Songhai had two very important
leaders, Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad.
The picture above is one artist’s idea of what the great Songhai
leader, Sunni Ali might have looked like.
•Sunni Ali saw that the kingdom of Mali was weakening and he led
his soldiers to conquer the area. He began the kingdom of Songhai.
He also set up a complex government to rule all the lands he had
conquered.
http://www.abcorpaffairs.com/gallery/
•Sunni Ali died in 1492.
•His son took over the rule of
Songhai but he did not accept
Islam as a religion.
This is a photo of a mosque,
or place of worship for
Muslims, in western Africa.
Many mosques were built of
local materials.
•One of Sunni Ali’s generals,
named Askia Muhammad,
overthrew the new king and
made himself king of Songhai.
•He was a follower of Islam and
continued with Islam as the
religion of his kingdom.
http://www.thewoz.ca/ghana/_larabanga1.jpg
•Songhai remained a rich and
strong kingdom under Askia
Muhammad’s rule.
•It had a complex government
centered in the city of Gao,
and great centers of learning.
•In the late 1500s, Morocco
invaded Songhai to take its
rich trade routes.
•Moroccans had a new
weapon, the gun, and the
army of Songhai did not. This
led to the fall of Songhai.
(Photo courtesy of African Origin of Civilization by Cheikh Anta Diop)
• To the south and west, was the kingdom of Benin.
• The oba or kings of Benin date from the 1200s
and the rulers based their right to rule on descent
from the first kings of Africa.
• In the 1400s the oba made Benin into a major
western state.
• The oba built up a powerful army, walled cities,
and huge palaces with magnificent artwork.
• In the 1480s Portuguese trading ships began to sail
into Benin’s ports, trading for pepper, animal
skins, ivory, and slaves.
• This began centuries of European interference in
Africa.
• By 1100, Bantu peoples had migrated to the
eastern coast of Africa.
• Slowly the coastal villages grew into major
seaports; trading with Arabia, Persia, and
India.
• As trade increased, many Muslim Arabs and
Persian traders settled in these port cities.
• Arabic blended with the Bantu language,
creating the Swahili language.
• By 1300, there were more than 35 major
port cities along the eastern coast
• In 1331, Ibn Battuta, a traveler and
historian from N. Africa, came to the city of
Kilwa.
– He admired the great wealth of the Muslim
merchants and their families.
• In 1488, the first Portuguese ships rounded
the Southern tip of Africa, looking for a
route to India.
• Instead they found the port cities of Kilwa,
Sofala, Mombasa; the Portuguese
conquered these cities and re-established
them as their own ports.
• Muslim traders introduced Islam to the East
African coast, and the growth of commerce
caused the religion to spread.
• A Muslim sultan or ruler governed most
cities, and most gov’t officials and wealthy
merchants were Muslim as well.
• Most Africans kept their traditional
religious beliefs, however.
• Along with luxury goods, Muslim
merchants exported enslaved persons to
India and China.
•
[...] Owing to the native abundance of cheap labor in Asia, Asian demand for
East African slaves always remained low. So, unlike the trans-Atlantic slave
trade, Indian ocean slave traffic was sporadic and small in volume with two
exceptions during the eighth to ninth centuries and the nineteenth century.
During the 8th and 9th centuries labor demands increased with the
reclamation of marsh land in Southern Iraq. In the 19th century the volume of
slave traffic began to rise due to the demand for slaves on plantations on
Zanzibar, Pemba, Reunion, Mauritius and Madagascar. In contrast to the
trans-Atlantic slave trade the documentation for the total amount of slaves
taken out of East Africa is fragmentary and uneven with the exception of the
nineteenth century trade. Consequently, estimates for the total period are at
best educated guesses. Some scholars estimate the total volume of the trade at
four million with a constant yearly traffic of about five hundred to seven
hundred. These figures spiked during the 7th and 9th centuries and the 19th
century. During the 19th century the yearly traffic ranged from 3,000 to twenty
thousand per year.[...]
• In southeastern Africa the Shona people
established a city called Great Zimbabwe, which
grew into a gold-trade empire.
• Around 1000, the Shona gained control of many
trade routes with the ability to tax whoever
traveled through.
• Great Zimbabwe soon became the economic,
political, and religious center of the empire.
• By 1450, Great Zimbabwe was abandoned. All we
know of the culture comes from the city’s amazing
ruins.
– Look at p.426
• According to Shona tradition, a man named
Mutota left Great Zimbabwe around 1420
in search of a new source of salt.
• He founded a new state, which became
known as the Mutapa Empire.
• Gradually, the Portuguese began to interfere
here as well.