“The nomadic or settled Moors of the western Sahara, extending from Morocco to the Senegal (the Traza, the Brakna, etc.) speak Arabic and “Zenagha,” which is a Berber dialect.” “These are Berbers more or less crossed with Negro blodd. It must further be observed that the name of Moors is very wrongly applied to the Mussulmun inhabitants of the towns of Algeria and Tunis and to the Riffians of Morocco.”” The Fellaheen, Mussulmans (635,600 in 1894) of the lower valley of the Nile (as far as the first cataract), mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians, must be included among the Arabo-Berbers because they have preserved intact the type of the primitive Egyptians, fundamentally Ethiopian, so well represented on various monuments in the valley of the Nile.”
“The ancient Egyptian language is preserved, however, under the form of the Coptic dialect which, until quite recent times, served as the liturgicial language to the Christian section of the inhabitnts of lower Egypt, known by the name of the Copts (5000,000 in 1894; cephalic index 76, according to Chantre). We must likewise add to the Arabo-Berber group the Barabara (in the singular Berberi) inhabiting to the number of about 180,000 the part of the Nile Valley situated between the first and fourth cataract.”
“The peoples living between the Hausa on the east and the Mandingans on the west are still little known, and seem to be much mixed. Quite to the north, in the bend of the Niger, below Timbuctoo, are found the Songhai or Sonrhays, who speak a language apart, and in the north are mixed with the Ruma “Moors,” emigrants from Morocco, and in the south with the Fulahs.“
“The true zone in which the cowry circulates is, however, tropical Africa; the fact is explained by its rarity, for the shell not being known in the Atlantic, it is only by commercial relations that it could have been propagated from east to west across the continent, from Zanzibar to the Senegal, and these commercial relations must have existed for a long period, for Cadmosto and other Portuguese travellers of the fifteenth century mention the use of the cowry as money among the “Moors” of the Senegal.”
“Ghana 700-1240 Ghana was the first truly African state. Most Africans still lived in tribal village societies, but Ghana, a center of the gold trade, opened up new possibilities. The medieval kingdom of Ghana lay farther north, inland from today’s nation of Ghana. Its roots lay in the 300s when the African Soninke tribes were ruled by the Maga, a Berber clan from Morocco.”
“The Berbers had mastered trans-Saharan camel travel and traded salt for gold from the Soninke. When the Arabic Muslims invaded northern Africa there was an upsurge in the gold trade, and by 700, Ghana was rich and important as a trading center. In 770, the Soninke outsted the Maga, and built a nation under Kaya Maghan Sisse, who became Soninke king around 790. Ghana’s capital was the city of Koumbi Saleh, where Africans and Berbers met and traded. During the 800s, Arab traders described Ghana as “the land of gold.”
“The gold came from Ashanti and Senegal to the south and west, and trade routes led north and east to Morocco, Libya, and Aksum, and so on to Europe and Asia. Ghana grew rich on gold, making it the first African nation. Its capital, Koumbi Saleh, was very cosmopolitan. Gold was transported north to Morocco, Tunisia, the Nile, and Arabia. Ghana reached its peak during the 900s controlling both the gold and salt trades.”
“Other goods that passed through Ghana included woolen cloth and luxury items from Europe, and leather goods and slaves from the south. In 990, Ghana took over the neighboring Berber kingdom of Audagost–making Ghana 500 mi. (800 km) across. In 1076, however, it fell to the Almoravids, a puritanical Berber Muslim set.”
“The Almoravids ruled Morocco and Spain, but they fell in 1147, and power returned to Ghana until, in 1240, the country became part of a new African nation, Mali. Berber and Arab traders transported goods hundreds of miles across the Sahara Desert with camel caravans. WIthout traders, Ghana and its successors, Mali and Songhai, would not have become rich nations. “
“During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the great inducement that brought Europeans to the West Coast of Africa was not merely the trade in gold, ivory, camwood, and pepper, but it was first and foremost, slaves. Liberia, however, for reasons which will be shown, suffered perhaps less than most parts of the West African Coast, the adjoining district of the Ivory Coast having even greater immunity. Nevertheless, it was the slave trade that indirectly gave birth to Liberia as a recognized state, and it is, therefore, necessary to treat it to some extent as part of Liberian History. Negro slaves were used by the Ancient Egyptians, and from Egypt, in later days they were sent to Rome and to the Byzantine Empire.”
“Carthage also procured Negroes for the Roman galleys, possibly from Tripoli. Under Islam, however, the modern trade in Negro slaves as we know it really began. The Arab wars of conquest in the Egyptian Sudan and along the East African Coast, and Arab and Berber raids across the Sahara Desert from North Africa to the regions of the Niger,rapidly led to the dispatch of Negro slaves to Southern Persia, Western India, the coast of Arabia, Egypt, the whole of North Africa, and most parts of the Turkish Empire.”
“Negro slaves were occasionally imported into Italy as curiosities during the Middle Ages. The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco.”
“He, therefore, ordered that they should be given a chance of ransoming themselves. One of these Moors explained that he was a nobleman by birth and state that he could give five or six Negroes for his own ransom and another five for the freedom of those amongst his fellow captives who were also men of position. The result was that Antao Goncalvez, their captor, on returning to the Rio de Oro, received ten Negroes, a little gold-dust, a shield of ox hide and a number of ostrich eggs as ransom.”
“The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. It was already appreciated that the Negro as a captive was a far more tractable and manageable person than anyone akin to the white man in race. Consequently, during the first hundred years of their African exploration, the Portuguese picked up Negroes by purchase from the Fula and Mandingo chiefs of Senegambia, and also by kidnapping them occasionally on the peninsula of Sierra Leone and on the Liberian Coast. They traded for them on the Gold Coast, in the Congo and Angola countries.”
“These slaves were mostly sent to Portugal as curiosities, quite as much as for domestic service. Care was generally taken to have them baptized and even to a certain extent educated. Meantime, North and South America had been discovered and the West India Islands settled by Spaniards. As early as 1501, only nine years since the West Indian Islands had been discovered by Christopher Columbus, it was found that the wretched inhabitants of the Antilles were dying out under the treatment of the colonizing Spaniards. In 1502, therefore, it was decided to export from Spain and Portugal to the West Indies some of the Negro slaves who had been reached converted to Christianity.”
“By 1503 there were already quite a number of Negroes in Hispaniola (Hait–San Domingo). In 1510 the King of Spain (Ferdinand) dispatched more Negro slaves, obtained through the Portuguese from West Africa, to the mines in the island. The celebrated Bartolomeo de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa in Hispaniola, came to Spain in 1517, to the court of the young King-Emperor Charles V., to protest against the wicked treatment which the West Indian indigenes were enduring at the hands of the Spaniards.”
“As a remedy he proposed that the hardier Negroes of West Africa should be imported directly into the West Indies, to furnish the unskilled labor for which the native Americans were unsuited by their constitution. Charles V. had, however, already anticipated this idea, and a year or two previously had granted licenses to Flemish courtiers to recruit Negroes in West Africa for dispatch to the West Indies. One of these patents issued by Charles gave the exclusive right to a Flemish courtier named Lebrassa to supply four thousand Negroes annually to Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamacia, and Puerto Rico.”
“This Fleming sold his patent to a group of Genoese merchants, who then struck a bargain with the Portuguese to supply the slaves. But the trade did not get into full swing till after the middle of the sixteenth century, when, amongst others, the English seaman John Hawkins took up a concession for the supply of Negroes from Guinea to the West Indies. He mad in all three voyages, the first of which was undertaken in 1562. He obtained his slaves first from the rives between the Gambia and the confines of Liberia, visiting Sierra Leone amongst other places.”
“One the last of these journeys he was accompanied by Drake. (afterward Sir Francis), then a mere youth. They probably touched at the Liberian coast for water on their way to Elmina, where two hundred slaves were obtained by joining a native king in a raid. The coast of Liberia was not so much ravaged by the slave trade as were the regions between the Gambia and Sierra Leone, the Dahome or Slave Coast, the Niger Delta, Old Calabar, Loango, and Congo. Perhaps in all the ravages which the over-sea slave trade brought about, the Niger Delta and the Lower Congo suffered the worst.”
“What damage was done to the coast of Liberia seems to be chiefly attributed to the English, who had already begun to visit that coast at the close of the sixteenth century, and were very busy there all through the seventeenth, The French traveler Villault de Bellefonds mentions repeatedly in his writings the damage the English did on the Grain Coast (Liberia) in attacking the natives for little or no cause, and in carrying them off as slaves.”
“In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggressions on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”
Batalla del Puig del retablo del Centenar de la Ploma de Marxal de Sax
Dana Reynolds-Marniche provided several sources defining the original Berbers. Original Berbers here correspond with the Berbers imported into the Americas branded in slave legislation under the term “Negroes” in legislation like the Negro Law of South Caroline 1790. The distinction must be made because several groups now living in north Africa identity under designations that correspond with the term “Berber” such as the modern Amazigh tribes in North Africa.
Notably, Professor Marniche demonstrates that the pre-modern applications of the term “Amazigh” correspond with the Tamashek or Tuareg*, i.e. “Mazikes” and their vassal castes composed mainly of Songhai or Soninke, Zaghai or Ahel Gara (Jarawa) and that these peoples are the Ancient Ethiopians mentioned by the Greeks and Romans and that they correspond with the Mauri or Maure groups called “Mauri Mazazeces” and “Mazices” in Tripolitania of the Byzantine writers. Her blog also provides that:
“the Tuareg whose noble castes despise the plough as we have shown are direct descendants of the largely nomadic ancient Levathes Mauri still bearing their names. Among them are the modern Inusamani (“Nasamones”), Ifran (“Yafran”) and Iforas (“Ifuraces”), Imoshagh (“Mazax” or “Mazices”) and Imakitan or (“Micateni”), Imaqqoren (“Machruas”), and Kel Cadenit (“Silcadenit”) whom retain customs of the more nomadic and war-like ancient Libyans such as the Nasamonian practice of sleeping near ancestral tombs of their ancestors and prophesying through dreams. Al-Bekri said the Tuareg were strangers to agriculture, and even bread, living entirely off of the meat and milk of their herds. Ya’aqubi also said they had no cereal or grain.”
American Moors and people who are interested in this history need to understand that just as the Americans of the 1400s are not the majority representation of America in 2019, the same goes for Morocco or any modern nation-state in North Africa today. The average Citizen of the United States does not descend from the indigenous peoples of North America. The same understanding must be acknowledged as to North Africa. We see the examples of these facts with the Europeanization of Africa and America. Dana Reynolds-Marniche has also provided direct references that proves from a scholarly review that the “Songhai” were recognized as Berber tribes long before the modern notoin that they were simply “Black Africans” or “Sub-Saharan Africans”. These references dead the “moot” issue among the African Americans or even Non-Black Muslims who attempt to remove the “Moor” and “Berber” identity from “Berber founded Empires” like “Songhai” and ancient “Ghana”. I provide a few of the limitless heavy hitting references cited in Dana Reynolds-Marniche blog titled:
“As for the Zaghawa, according to specialist Harold MacMichael “..witness is borne to this connection of the Zaghawa with the Berbers by Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) who in speaking of the Tuwarek (‘mulethamin” – “veiled ones”) says they are a section of the Sanhaga Berbers, who include the kindred tribes of the Lamtuna, Zaghawa, and Lamta, and have frequented the tracts separating the country of the Berbers from the blacks…” However, the word Ibn Khaldun used “Zanj” is here translated as “the blacks” and by doing so the reality that the Zaghawa were also pretty much black is obscured, as were the other Berbers named.”
” …in the old sources, the terms Berber, Sanhaja, Massufa, Lamtuna and Tuareg are often used interchangeably” Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle ( 2009). Timbuktu: The Sahara’s Fabled city of Gold, p. 271.”
“Gabriel Camps the specialist on the archaeological history of the Maghreb proposed in his Berberes: Aux Marges de’l’Histoire that name Bavares or Bavari was an early form of the name Barbars (Baadj, Amar S., p. 11). David Goldenberg, one of the West’s more trustworthy historians (in my opinion : ) when it comes to things related to “race” in the ancient world has written – “Barbares is a variant form of the name Bavares, a people of Mauretania Tingitana and/or Caesarensis, who possibly appear also under the name Babari. Note the association of Barbares with Mauretania in the Laterculus Veronensis (Riese, p. 129): ‘Item gentes quae in Mauretania sunt: Mauri [Quinque]gentiani, Mauri Mazices, Mauri Barbares, Mauri Bacuates….”” See pdf of Rabbinic Knowledge of Black Africa published in 1998 in the Jewish Quarterly, 5. The mountains of the Bavares were also known as the Grand and Petit Babors, the latter including Little Kabylia.”
“According to Lewicki, in fact, Bavares is also thought to be the name of the people that came to be called the Bafour. “According to some traditions Bafour were whites … belonging to the Berber group of the Zenata. According to non-Muslim tradition the autochthonous inhabitants of Adrar Tmar were agriculturalists…The Bafour, might we think, be identified with the Libyan (Moorish) tribe of the Bavares, active in western part of North Africa in the third to fourth centuries of the Christian era” (Lewicki, Tadeusz, p. 313)”
“A recent government document in Mauritania sheds some light on the Bafour/Bavari connections of the Soninke or Wangara. It reads -“From the 3rd to 7th centuries, the migration of Berber tribes from North Africa displaced the Bafours, the original inhabitants of present-day Mauritania and the ancestors of the Soninke. Continued Arab-Berber migration drove indigenous black Africans south to the Senegal River or enslaved them. By 1076, Islamic warrior monks (Almoravid or Al Murabitun) completed the conquest of southern Mauritania, defeating the ancient Ghana empire.” See (2000) Mauritania, Mineral, and Mining Sector Investment and Business Guide, Volume 1, Strategic Business Guide, p. 19.”
“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.”
“The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”
In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote
“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’).
These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean“
The previous statements give credence to the suggestion by earlier colonial historians that the Jarawa or Garawan of North Africa were the Wangara or Wakore of the Sudan, and that the name of Djanawa is in fact derived from the traditional Berber ancestor “Djana”. Yves Moderan in Les Maures et l”Afrique Romain has said they were agriculturalists having some pastoralists, rather than camel nomads. “D’une part, en effet, tous les Zénètes ne peuvent être assimilés à de grands nomades chameliers : les plus célèbres, les Djarâwa, étaient, nous l’avons vu, des agriculteurs autant que des pasteurs”. The Mauri and Roman Africa link
Dana Reynolds Marniche commented in a post on Andalusia that certain groups claimed descent from the Jews and in particular Aaron and Jethro in Tarikh el-Fattach
“The Tuareg Inaden blacksmiths caste who are mostly Soninke in fact claims descent from the Jews of Wargla. Similarly the Wangara/Garawan (Soninke) related groups further west and south had traditions of Jewish origin.
‘In today’s Mauretania, endogamous groups of blacksmiths claim Jewish descent and some oral traditions maintain that it’s early inhabitants, the Bafur, were Jews from Wadi Nun…. Other traditions from Mali document the prevalence of Jews in the pre-Islamic period, some claiming that Maghribi Jews from the Dra’a and the Sus regions shared with the Mande their knowledge of blacksmithing.
The History of African Jews, one of the most understudied chapters in African history, would extend back to the days of king Solomon…. By the eighth century there were communities of Jews in most major oases on the desert edge such as Sijilmasa, Tu’at, Gurara, Ghadamis, Sus, and Wadi Nun ” (Lydon, Ghislaine, 2009, p. 66). ‘”
The so-called Maghreb jews were the WaKore and Wa’Kara/Wa’n’Gara.Beriberi, Soninke, “El-Berabir” or the ancient Berbers, and the earliest Jews in Africa were but one people. They were the people of the Niger bend, and many parts of West Africa, i.e. the Negro. Believe it, – or do not!”
“The author of the the book Aghram Nadharif, (2003), “According to the stereotyped image, the Garamantes are a black people (e.g. Ptolemy, 1.8.5; cf. Snowden 2001: 260-261 with full bibliography; Mattingly 2003: 89), part of the larger ethnic group of the Aethiopes (Desanges and Camps 1985). They are naked (nudi Garamantes: Lucan, Bellum civile IV 334) and burned by the sun…” (Mariano, Liverani, 2003, p. 432). : Ahel Gara is a general Tuareg name for people that were cultivators, though often seminomadic found throughout North Africa, the Sahara and Sahel. They originally occupied places like Gara Mez- Zawaga in the Dahkhla Oasis west of the Nile and Gara Krima in the Wargla Oasis of the Mz’ab (Algeria) and towns named Garama or Jerma in Libya. These Djerma came to be known as DJerma or Zarma Songhai and were descendants of an ancient “Ethiopian” people named “Garamantes”. The author or the “Garamantian Kingdom and their Southern Border” writes: “According to the stereotyped image, the Garamantes are a black people (e.g. Ptolemy, I.8.5; cf. Snowden 2001: 260-261 with full bibliography; Mattingly 2003: 89), part of the larger ethnic group of the Aethiopes (Désanges and Camps 1985). They are naked (nudi Garamantes: Lucan, Bellum civile IV 334) and burned by the sun …” (Mariano, Liverani, 2003, p. 432).”
From the Negroes proper of the Sudan have descended most American Negroes See U.S. Immigration Commission Dictionary of races or peoples. The name Sudan is probably a confusing term, especially to modern learners of history as it is a recent name given to the current Republic of Sudan governed by its capital city Khartoum. Geographically, it is the area bordered by Ethiopia and Eritrea from the East, Egypt and Libya from the North, Chad and Central Africa from the West and Zaire, Uganda and Kenya from the South. With reference to ancient facts of history, to give any piece of information about ancient history of Western Sudan, it is necessary to point out to two important historical facts. First, the origin of the term Sudan and the source from which it is derived. Second, what part of Africa is said to be known as Sudan in ancient history.
“1099 Cristen soudan. Although modern, secular readers will not see anything amiss here, the original audience would perceive this as a contradiction. Today, we read “sultan” as a social and political title and “Christian” as a religious and spiritual one. Drawing on a number of works, especially romances, MED defines “soudan” primarily as a Moslem or Saracen leader; with such a strong connotation, a Christian sultan would appear to be an oxymoron.”
“The American Negro is a new biological and cultural product, his ancestors from Africa represented tribes as divergent as the several peoples of Europe. They were captured from provinces covering large parts of Central and West Africa, Guinea, the Ivory, Slave, and Gold Coasts, a great part of what is now French West Africa, the vast stretches of the Niger Valley, the Cameroons, the Congo, the Benguela. Among them [their ancestors] were Arabs and Moors from the northerly coast, the small yellow Hottentots from the South, the Bantu tribes from the equatorial regions. Members of these diverse tribes captured of an area as large as the Continent of Europe were completely mixed in the process of transport to African slave ports to the West Indies to American marts and in their distribution to the New World. “
AFRICA MAP EARLY ENGLISH GEOGRAPHY ABYSSINIA ZANGUEBAR ANTIQUE HAND COLORED MAP ORIGINAL HISTORICAL EPHEMERA EARLY ENGLISH GEOGRAPHY AFRICA THE GREAT SAHARA DESSERT LARGE SOUDAN REAGION, ABYSSINIA, NUBIA, ZANGUEBAR, HOTENTOES, THE CAPE COLONY & MORE ANTIQUE HAND COLORED GRAPHIC ENGRAVING ILLUSTRATED MAP PRINT 1870s
“The Sudan is the name given to a geographic region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western to eastern Central Africa. The states of the Sudan The early kingdoms and empires of the western Sudan In the 10th century the kings of Ghana extended their sway over the Ṣanhājah, the congeries of Amazigh nomadic tribes living around Audaghost, just north of their kingdom, who supplied them with salt and North African goods (see map). This move must have upset the economic balance between agricultural Ghana and the pastoral Ṣanhājah, and ultimately it provoked a reaction. Like the North African Imazighen, the Ṣanhājah tribes were already to some extent Islamized, and they shortly found in a militant, puritanical version of Islam the means to eliminate their tribal differences and to unite in the movement known to history as the Almoravids. In the middle of the 11th century they began to expand into the productive lands on either side of the western Sahara, and it would seem that later in the century Ghana became dominated by them.”
“The medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai that controlled the western Sudan had no fixed geopolitical boundaries or singular ethnic or national identities. Although each empire possessed important political and economic centers, such as Ghana’s Kumbi Saleh and Songhai’s Gao, it is not certain that these were permanent capitals. Instead, the empires may have had “floating” capitals that shifted between a number of urbanized centers or traveled with their ruling monarchs. Above all, the empires of the western Sudan were unified by strong leadership, kin-based societies, and the trade routes they sought to dominate. Trans-Saharan Trade The importance that contact with the Islamic world held for these empires cannot be understated. While extensive trading networks undoubtedly predated Arabic involvement, the development of trans-Saharan commerce in the seventh century by Arabs and Berbers intensified and expanded the trading networks that made the empires of the western Sudan possible.”
“West Sudanian savanna (green) inWest AfricaThe Western Sudan is a historic region in the northern part of West Africa. Traditionally, the Western Sudan extends from the Atlantic Ocean across to the basin of Lake Chad (which is sometimes associated with a region called “Central Sudan” or other times with the Western Sudan) and includes the savanna and Sahel lands north of the West African tropical rainforest belt. It includes the rivers of the Senegal, Gambia and Niger systems, as well as the highlands of Fouta Djallon from which these rivers flow. West Sudanian savanna (green) in West Africa Historians have considered the Western Sudan as a land of great empires, since at least the seventh century, when the Empire of Ghana flourished, there have been a succession of empires: Ghana (seventh to eleventh century), Mali (thirteenth to fifteenth century), Songhai(1464–1591) are the three best known, but smaller large scale polities have also been important, the Empire of Great Foula (late sixteenth to early eighteenth century), the Bamana Empire (late seventeenth to early nineteenth century), and the nineteenth century empires of El Hajj Umar Tal and Samori Toure. In fact, since the fourteenth century at least, local historians of the region have seen its history in terms of a succession of empires. This cycle is discernible in the historical accounts of shaykh Uthman, whose history was told to the historian ibn Khaldun while on the Muslim Pilgrimage in 1397. It can also be found in the great Sudanese chronicle, Tarikh al-Fettash. Modern historians have followed suit, and the imperial tradition can be found in textbooks today.”
“To the north of the region lies the Sahel, a more arid Acaciasavanna region which in turn borders the Sahara desert further north, and to the east the Ethiopian Highlands (called al-Ḥabašah in Arabic).”
The people of the Sudan region share similar lifestyles, dictated by the geography of the region. The economy is largely pastoral, whilesorghum and rice are cultivated in the southern parts of the region. The region was governed in colonial times by the French, as part of their African colonial empire, but the countries of the region achieved independence in the latter half of the 20th century.
Soudan
Soudan may refer to:
The French name (and former English name) for Sudan
“During its golden age, there was a flourishing of mathematics, astronomy, literature, and art. At its peak in 1300, the Mali Empire covered an area about twice the size of modern-day France and stretched to the west coast of Africa. In the late 19th century, during the Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali, making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the Mali Federation. Shortly thereafter, following Senegal’s withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new constitution and the establishment of Mali as a democratic, multi-party state. Significant portions of its legislation is derived from sharia law.”
“The pages above are from Timbuktu Manuscripts written in Sudani script (a form of Arabic) from the Mali Empire showing established knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Today there are close to a million of these manuscripts found in Timbuktu alone. Sudanese tourists by the Meroë pyramids in various types of clothing.At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai. King Piyeattempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian kingSargon II. The name derives from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān (بلاد السودان), or “the lands of the Blacks“, an expression denoting West Africa and northern-Central Africa.”
“International Association for the History of Religions (1959), Numen, Leiden: EJ Brill, p. 131, West Africa may be taken as the country stretching from Senegal in the west, to the Cameroons in the east; sometimes it has been called the central and western Sudan, the Bilad as-Sūdan, ‘Land of the Blacks’, [or]of the Arabs. By the 6th century, fifty states had emerged as the political and cultural heirs of the Meroitic Kingdom. Nobatia in the north, also known as Ballanah, had its capital at Faras; the central kingdom, Muqurra (Makuria), was centred at Tungul (Old Dongola), about 13 kilometres (8 miles) south of modern Dunqulah; and Alawa (Alodia), in the heartland of old Meroë, which had its capital at Sawba (Soba) (now a suburb of modern-day Khartoum). In all three kingdoms, warrior aristocracies ruled Meroitic populations from royal courts where functionaries bore Greek titles in emulation of the Byzantine court. A missionary sent by Byzantine empress Theodora arrived in Nobatia and started preaching Christianity about 540 AD. The Nubian kings became Monophysite Christians. However, Makuria was of the Melkite Christian faith, unlike Nobatia and Alodia.”
“After many attempts at military conquest failed, the Arab commander in Egypt concluded the first in a series of regularly renewed treaties known as al-baqṭ (pactum) with the Nubians that governed relations between the two peoples for more than 678 years. Islam progressed in the area over a long period of time through intermarriage and contacts with Arab merchants and settlers. Additionally, exemption from taxation in regions under Muslim rule were also a powerful incentive for conversion.[22] In 1093, a Muslim prince of Nubian royal blood ascended the throne of Dunqulah as king. The two most important Arab tribes to emerge in Nubia were the Jaali and the Juhayna. Today’s northern Sudanese culture often combines Nubian and Arabic elements. During the 16th century, a people called the Funj, under a leader named Amara Dunqus, appeared in southern Nubia and supplanted the remnants of the old Christian kingdom of Alwa, establishing As-Saltana az-Zarqa (the Blue Sultanate), also called the Sultanate of Sennar. The Blue Sultanate eventually became the keystone of the Funj Empire. By the mid-16th century, Sennar controlled Al Jazirah and commanded the allegiance of vassal states and tribal districts north to the Third Cataract and south to the rainforests. The government was substantially weakened by a series of succession arguments and coups within the royal family. In 1820, Muhammad Ali of Egypt sent 4,000 troops to invade Sudan. His forces accepted Sennar’s surrender from the last Funj sultan, Badi VII.”
