African Civilizations and the Spread of Islam

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African Civilizations and the Spread of Islam

• Chapter 8

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African Development

• Differences in geography, language, religion, and
  politics contribute to Africas lack of political
  unity.
• No universal states, nor universal religions
• Christianity and Islam do find adherents in
  Africa, sometimes leading to large empires.

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Stateless Societies

• Organized around kinship
• Lacking the concentration of political power and
  authority normally associated with the state
• Little need to tax the peopleencouraged people
  to move to other sparsely populated areas to
  create their own community.
• External pressures make some of them move into
  state-building i.e. warfare(ex.pressure)

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Common Elements

• Bantu migrations offered a linguistic base for
  Africans
• Different dialects
• Animism belief in the power of natural forces
  personified as spirits or gods or even inanimate
  objects
• Witchcraft/Holy Men

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Economics of Africa

• North Africa involved in Mediterranean and Arab
  Trade system
• Sub-Saharan varies from one region to the next

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Arrival of Islam

• Northern Africa has always been part of the
  classical world
• After the age of the Pharaohs, Egypt was an
  important part of the Greek Empire, then later in
  the Roman Empire.

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Arrival of Islam

• Toward the end of the Roman Empire, Christianity
  had taken hold in Mediterranean Africa.
• Wars between the Vandals and Byzantines disrupt
  this
• Between 640 and 700 CE followers of Muhammad
  swept across Northern Africa.
• Ifriqiya (Africa) for Eastern North Africa and
  Maghrib for Western North Africa

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Arrival of Islam

• By 711 CE, Arab and Berber armies had crossed
  into Spain, defeated in France in 732 CE.
• Conversion was fast and easy in North Africa
• With Abbasid Empire but eventually breaks into
  smaller kingdoms (Muslim Kingdoms)

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What does Islam offer Africa?

• Equality
• Islamic tradition of uniting the powers of the
  state in a ruler reinforces the concept of the
  African King.
• the umma put Africans legally at the same level
  as the Arabs.

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However

• Practices differ considerably at the local level.
• Social Stratification(social classes)
• Ethnic divisions(tribes)
• Gender differences(male/female)
• Often led to reformist movements.

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North African Christianity

• Christian kingdom of Axum, with communities in
  Nubia and Egypt (Copts).
• Copts maintained religious connection with the
  Byzantine Empire. When Egypt was conquered by the
  Arabs and converted to Islam, the Copts were able
  to keep their religion.

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North African Christianity

• The Ethiopian kingdom that grew from Axum was the
  most important Christian outpost.
• In the 13th and 14th Century, an Ethiopian
  Christian State emerges.
• Constant struggle with Christian Ethiopia and
  Muslim Somalia

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Kingdoms of the Grasslands

• Merchants and travelers spread the word of Islam
  from North Africa across the Sahara towards the
  Savanna on the southern edge of the Sahara called
  the Sahel
• Camels for transportation
• Gold from W. African forests

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The Grasslands

• The SAHEL was the extensive grassland belt at the
  southern edge of the Sahara.
• TRADE
• Exchange gold from the forests of West Africa for
  salt from the Sahara (or goods from North Africa)
• Camels improved trade

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The Grasslands

• The SAHEL becomes an active coast of trade
  between the forests to the south and North
  Africa.
• States develop along with trading cities to take
  advantage of their position as intermediaries in
  the trade.
• Their position in the open plains of the dry
  Sahel also leaves them open to attack and drought.

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Ghana

• The first of the West African Kingdoms
• Rose to power in the 3rd Century CE by taxing the
  heavy Gold-Salt trade within its borders.
• By the 900s, its rulers converted to Islam and
  Ghana was at the height of its power.
• Almoravid armies invade Ghana in 1076, survives
  but in declined by 1300s new states emerge like
  Mali

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Ghana
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Common elements in Sudanic States

• Patriarch, or council of elders as leaders
• areas with peoples of the same linguistic or
  ethnic background
• Subordinates areas were conquered

• Rulers were sacred and were surrounded by
  rituals.
• Islam was used to reinforce indigenous ideas of
  kingship.
• Mali and Songhay ex. of Fusion cultures

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The West African Kingdoms
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Mali

• Malinke people
• Rulers supported Islam by building mosques,
  public prayers, and supporting preachers.
• In return, sermons would encourage loyalty to the
  king.
• Mali became a model of the Islamicized Sudanic
  Kingdoms

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Mali

• Economic base was agriculture
• Sundiata Malinke leader who led towards
  prosperity as the state of Mali.
• The Mansa, or emperor
• Crime was severely punished (as evidenced by Ibn
  Batuta, the Arab traveler).
• Security of travelers and trade was a key element
  to Malis success as a state where commerce plays
  such an important role

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Mali

• Sundiata dies around 1260 CE.
• Of his sucessors, Mansa Musa was the most famous
  (r. 1312-1337)
• Made pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324

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Mali

• Towns were like N. Africa but with W. African
  flavor
• Port cities flourish like Jenne and Timbuktu/

• By the 14th century Timbuktu had a population of
  50,000.
• Contained a library and university.
• 80 of the villagers lived by the agricultural
  lifestyle.

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Songhay

• Songhay begins to form around the 7th century. By
  1010, a capital had been established at Geo on
  the Niger River.
• Rulers became Muslim
• Dominated by Mali for a while
• By 1370s, had established themselves as an
  independent state

• Under the leadership of Sunni Ali (1464-1492) the
  Empire of Songhay began.
• Tactical commander
• Ruthless leader.
• Successors known as askias.
• Muhammad the Great expanded the borders of the
  empire.
• By the 1600s, Songhay dominated the central Sudan

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Songhay

• Remained the dominant power in the region until
  the end of the 16th century.
• In 1591, a Muslim army with muskets crossed the
  Sahara and defeated the larger forces of Songhay.
• Songhay split up, but other groups experienced
  success in the Western Sudan

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Political Life in the Sudan

• Unified states allowed the various communities,
  clans, and ethnic groups to coexist.
• Movement and fusion of populations was constant
  in the Sudan
• Common religion and law provided solidarity and
  trust to the merchants.
• Organized under Muslim concept of a ruler who
  united civil and religious authority.

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Political Life in the Sudan

• Formation of large state heightened social
  differences and made societies more hierarchical.
• Islam tended to accommodate pagan practices and
  beliefs. Large populations of Mali and Songhay
  never converted.
• Many Sudanic states were matrilineal, which is
  contrary to patrilineal lines of kinship in the
  Sharia, or Islamic law.

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Slavery

• Slave trade between Africa and the Islamic World
  predated the arrival of Islam
• Muslims viewed slavery as a stage in the process
  of conversion.
• Slaves were used as domestic servants, laborers,
  soldiers, eunuchs, concubines.
• Concentration on women and children across the
  Sahel to the East African coast.

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The Swahili Coast of East Africa

• From the Horn of Africa to modern-day Mozambique
  lay a string of Islamicized trading cities with
  contacts from Arabia, Persia, India, and China.
• As in the Savanna Kingdoms of West Africa, Islam
  was slow to reach the general population in East
  Africa, and when it did, it was a fusion of
  indigenous beliefs and the new Islamic faith.

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East Africa

• Coastal cities developed from the mixture of
  Bantu migrants, as well as with Indonesian
  seaborne migrants.
• Settled on the island of Madagascar, introducing
  bananas and coconuts.
• Coastal villages of fishers, farmers dotted the
  coast

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East Africa

• Zanj Arabic for the East African Coast.
• 13th Century urbanized East African trading
  ports develop.
• Shared Bantu-based and Arabic Influenced Swahili
  (coastal) language.

• Different Muslim ruling families, but similar
  language united them in trade.
• Towns such as Mogadishu, Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa,
  and Zanzibar.

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East Africa

• Kilwa was wealthy because of its control over
  Sofala
• Access to the Gold produced in the interior
• Farthest point south in which Indian ships could
  reach in one monsoon season

• Many port towns were tied to each other in an
  active trade network.
• 1300s-1400s large state sponsored sailing
  expeditions stopped at the East African coast for
  ivory, and gold.
• After 1431, only the Arabs and Indians continued
  this trade.

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Central/Southern Africa

• While the impact of trade and Islam radically
  altered the West/North/East African coasts,
  Central and Southern Africa was developing on its
  own trajectory.
• By 1000 CE, still small agricultural societies,
  preliterate, but with great strides in arts,
  building, and statecraftwithout writing.

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Artists

• Terra Cotta objects discovered in Nok, in the
  forests of Central Nigeria dating to 500-200 BCE.
• Terra Cotta and bronze portrait heads were found
  among the Yoruba people of Nigeria

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The Yoruba

• Agricultural society supported by a peasantry and
  dominated by a ruling family and aristocracy.
• Spoke a non-Bantu language and recognized a
  relationship with the Hausa, who spoke Afro-Asian
  language.
• Small city-states, each controlling about 50
  miles.
• Highly urbanized.

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Benin

• Similar settlement patterns as the Yoruba can be
  found among Edo people who formed the state of
  Benin.
• Ewuare the Great (r. 1440-1473) extended Benins
  control from the Niger River to the Coast.
• The Oba, or ruler, lived in a huge royal
  compound.

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Central African Kingdoms

• By the 5th Century CE, Bantu farmers and fishers
  reach beyond the Zambezi
• 13th Century, they were approaching the southern
  end of the continent.
• Beyond the scope of Islam
• By 1000 CE, many of these groups were forming
  states.

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Kongo

• Late 15th Century, the Kongo was forming along
  the lower Congo River.
• Agricultural base, with skills of weaving,
  pottery, blacksmithing, and carving.

• Men
• Clearing the forest, producing palm oil and palm
  wine, building houses, hunting, long-distance
  trade.
• Women
• Cultivation, care of animals, household duties,
  made salt from seawater, collected seashells
  which were used as currency.

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Kongo
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Great Zimbabwe

• Farther to the east, among the farming and
  cattle-herding Shona-speaking peoples.
• Creation of GREAT stone enclaves to serve as the
  capital town area.

• By the 15th century, a centralized state had
  begun to form controlling central Africa to the
  Indian Ocean.

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Great Zimbabwe
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Vocabulary Chapter 8

• Almoravids
• Bantu Migration
• Hausa States
• Kingdom of Kongo
• Yoruba
• Stateless Societies
• Almohadis
• Sharia

• Sundiata
• Sunni Ali
• Benin
• Axum
• Zanj
• Griots
• Nok
• Askia Muhammad