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The Bantu
Before the age of empires Sub-Saharan
Africa
was extremely
diversified. Unlike parts of
Europe
,
Asia
, and north
Africa, it was never united under a universal religion or empire/state.
Some
African societies were stateless, organized around kinship and family
obligation with no centralized authority.
Government in these societies was never a full time occupation;
there were no large armies, no large-scale political organization, no
large building projects, nor were there conditions to conduct
long-distant trade with other people.
What
similarities there were resulted from the earlier migration of the Bantu
people. Their root language
created common structure and vocabularies across African languages and
dialects; this allowed some mutual understanding among various tribes.
Most
African tribes also had similarities in their belief systems.
They were animistic, believing in a world controlled by spiritual
forces and gods. These
forces had to be dealt with through a specialist who would proscribe
rituals, sacrifices, or some other form of religious practice to affect
events. These beliefs
created a view of how the universe worked and how one should ethically
relate oneself to it. Their
dead ancestors, the first settlers of the land, were the true owners of
the land, and had a role in harvests and fertility.
Thus land was more than just a source of agriculture; it took on
religious significance.
As
far as the economies of
Africa
are concerned, the north was fully integrated
with the
Mediterranean
and Arab worlds of trade.
The Sub-Saharan was a completely different.
Its economies were primarily local and regional and varied so
much that it is impossible to generalize about them.
The Christian
Kingdoms:
Nubia
and
Ethiopia
As
Islam spread across north Africa, there remained “islands” of
Christianity in the midst of its civilizations.
Christianity came to
Africa
before Islam.
Nubia
and
Ethiopia
(originally
known as
Axum
or
Aksum
) had had
Christian communities for several centuries before the Muslims came.
Originally tied to Byzantine Christianity, they eventually split
from them and developed their own unique Christian practices (known as
Coptic). When the Muslims
came, they tolerated the Coptic communities and gave them some limited
rights.
The
most important Christian community in
Africa
was
Ethiopia
.
Surrounded by Muslims and pagans, they took to the highland areas
and became self-sufficient. They
famously carved churches out of the mountain rock (see picture to the
right).
In the 16th century, the Ethiopian Christians were
threatened by a neighboring Muslim state.
The Portuguese arrived and drove the Muslims back and in return
attempted to convert the Ethiopians to Roman Catholicism.
This failed and
Ethiopia
remained an
isolated, Christian, and fiercely independent civilization.
The
Golden Age Empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhai
Ghana
The best known of the Iron Age states is
Ghana
(no direct connection or geographic overlap with the modern nation of
Ghana
that gain its independence from
Britain
in 1957.
Trans-Saharan trade was revolutionized between the
3rd-5th centuries when the Berber people
introduced the camel to the region.
The traders from the
Ghana
area formed the link between the important resources of salt from the
northern part of
Africa
, and the gold from the sub-Saharan region. This connection integrated
them into the Mediterranean world and its trade connections with the
other (now weakening) classical civilizations.
After the 7th century their trading
partners to the north were Muslims.
Islam was at first only tolerated but by the 11th
century it seems the
Ghana
kings converted. However,
this did not lead to the wider acceptance of Islam by the population.
Kings seemed to have understood the economic benefits of
tolerating Islam since it put them on good terms with their trading
partners to the north.
The ruling kings of
Ghana
were from the Soninke family whose power depended on their claim that
the Soninke king personally had rights over all gold nuggets (as opposed
to gold dust). This became
an automatic form of taxation which helped them stay in power.
Mali
In the early 1200s the chief of the Malinke people
challenged the authority of the ruling Soninke family.
The king Sundiata triumphed over the Soninke people and
established the most legendary West African empire of all,
Mali
. The story of Sundiata,
also called the Lion Prince, is the most famous epic from
Africa
, forming a rich literary tradition in the same way that Homer did for
the Greeks and the legend of King Author did for the English. (A
reference to the epic of Sundiata can be found in the opening of chapter
19 in your textbook.) This
story forms a good example for the syncretic nature of African religion:
Sundiata is described as a devout Muslim but is still concerned with
pleasing the traditional spirits as well.
The empire of
Mali
stretched for thousands of miles from the west Atlantic coast of
Africa
across the sub-Saharan savanna. The
empire was more developed and oversaw much more extensive agriculture
than
Ghana
did.
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