Islamic African Empires
Overview
Islamic African Empires
The arrival of Islam on the continent of Africa in the seventh century CE resulted in the development of a series of Islamic empires across sub-Saharan Africa.
Learning Objectives
Assess how Trans-Atlantic trade affected the social and political development in Africa and the Americas.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Soninke people: the founders of the ancient empire of Ghana c. 750–1240 CE
Almoravids: a Berber imperial dynasty of Morocco that formed an empire in the 11th century that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus (Spain)
Mansa: a Mandinka word meaning “sultan” (king) or “emperor,” particularly associated with the Keita dynasty of the Mali Empire, which dominated West Africa from the 13th century to the 15th century
Sahel: the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south (Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.)
Bantu expansion: a postulated millennia-long series of migrations of original proto-Bantu language speakers ( Attempts to trace the exact route of the migrations, to correlate it with archaeological evidence and genetic evidence, have not been conclusive. The Bantu traveled in two waves, and it is likely that the migration of the Bantu-speaking people from their core region in West Africa began around 1000 BCE.)
Shona: a group of Bantu people in Zimbabwe and some neighboring countries, the main part of which is divided into five major clans and adjacent to some people of very similar culture and languages; the peoples who created empires and states on the Zimbabwe plateau
Islamic African Empires
Control of trade routes across the Sahara resulted in a series of empires in western Africa. These empires used the revenues from this trade to build their armies and bureaucracies. The first of these empires was Ghana (990 – 1180 CE). The rulers of this empire converted to Islam and even imported Arab clerics as administrators, but their subjects still practiced their native polytheistic religions.
Another such great empire was Mali. Under its greatest king, Mansa Musa, the capital of this empire, Timbuktu, became a center of Islamic scholarship and the home of a university. In 1324, Mansa Musa travelled to the Islamic holy city of Mecca on a pilgrimage and astounded fellow Muslim pilgrims with the vast quantities of gold that he distributed as gifts. In the 15th century CE with the decline of Mali, the empire of Songhai arose with its capital at the trading city of Gao.
Islam and trade also resulted in the emergence of Swahili trading cities along the east coast of Africa, along the Indian Ocean. In the first century CE, Bantu peoples from Central Africa began migrating to East Africa and South Africa. Bantu peoples shared a common language, iron technology, and an economy focused on cattle raising. With the rise of Islam, Arab merchants sailed down the coast of East Africa and established trading posts. The mixture of Bantu and Arab culture in these trading posts resulted in a distinctive Swahili culture. The trading posts developed into large city-states by 1200, which were ruled by "Sultans”.
The growth of these Swahili city-states sparked the emergence of an advanced culture in South Africa—in modern Zimbabwe and Zambia. Swahili merchants along the east coast traded with the Bantu peoples of the interior for cattle hides, salt, and gold. Between 900 and 1500 CE, the rulers of the Shona established powerful kingdoms in this region that drew revenue from this trade. Shona kings built massive stone palaces (Zimbabwe) whose ruins still impress visitors today. The Shona did not convert to Islam. They instead continued to practice their polytheistic religion and revere their kings as gods.
The Ghana Empire
The Ghana Empire, called the Wagadou (or Wagadu) Empire by its rulers, was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania, western Mali, and eastern Senegal. It derived its power from the control of trans-Saharan trade, particularly the gold trade. There is no consensus on when precisely it originated, but its development is linked to the changes in trade that emerged after the introduction of the camel to the western Sahara. By the time of the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century, the camel had changed the earlier, more irregular trade routes into a trade network running from Morocco to the Niger River. This regular and intensified trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and ivory allowed for the development of larger urban centers and encouraged territorial expansion to gain control over different trade routes.
The Ghana ruling dynasty was first mentioned in written records in 830, and thus the 9th century is sometimes identified as the empire’s beginning. In the medieval Arabic sources, the word “Ghana” can refer to a royal title, the name of a capital city, or a kingdom. From the 9th century, Arab authors mention the Ghana Empire in connection with the trans-Saharan gold trade. Al-Bakri, who wrote in the 11th century, described the capital of Ghana as consisting of two towns six miles apart, one inhabited by Muslim merchants and the other by the king of Ghana. According to the tradition of the Soninke people, they migrated to southeastern Mauritania in the 1st century, and as early as around 100 CE created a settlement that would eventually develop into the Ghana Empire. Other sources identify the beginnings of the empire sometime between the 4th century and the mid-8th century.
Most information about the economy of Ghana comes from al-Bakri. He noted that merchants had to pay a one gold dinar tax on imports of salt and two on exports of salt. Al-Bakri mentioned also copper and “other goods.” Imports probably included products such as textiles and ornaments. Many of the hand-crafted leather goods found in old Morocco originated from the Ghana Empire. Tribute was also received from various tributary states and chiefdoms at the empire’s periphery. The Ghana Empire lay in the Sahel region to the north of the West African gold fields and was able to profit from controlling the trans-Saharan gold trade. The early history of Ghana is unknown, but there is evidence that North Africa had begun importing gold from West Africa before the Arab conquest in the middle of the 7th century.
Much testimony on ancient Ghana comes from the recorded visits of foreign travelers, who could provide only a fragmentary picture. Islamic writers often commented on the social-political stability of the Empire based on the seemingly just actions and grandeur of the king. Al-Bakri questioned merchants who visited the empire in the 11th century and wrote of the king hearing grievances against officials and being surrounded by great wealth. Ghana appears to have had a central core region and was surrounded by vassal states. One of the earliest sources, al-Ya’qubi, writing in 889/890 (276 AH), noted that “under the king’s authority are a number of kings.” These “kings” were presumably the rulers of the territorial units often called kafu in Mandinka. In al-Bakri’s time, the rulers of Ghana had begun to incorporate more Muslims into government, including the treasurer, his interpreter, and “the majority of his officials.”
Given scarce Arabic sources and the ambiguity of the existing archaeological record, it is difficult to determine when and how Ghana declined and fell. According to Arab tradition, Ghana fell when it was sacked by the Almoravid movement in 1076 – 1077, but this interpretation has been questioned. Some historians have argued that the notion of any Almoravid military conquest is merely perpetuated folklore, derived from a misinterpretation of or limited reliance on Arabic sources. Other historians have maintained that Almoravid political agitation somehow contributed to Ghana’s demise. While the evidence for conquest is unclear, the influence and success of the Almoravid movement in securing West African gold and circulating it widely necessitated a high degree of political control. The archaeology of ancient Ghana, however, does not show signs of the rapid change and destruction that would be associated with any Almoravid-era military conquests.
Historians assume that this ensuing war pushed Ghana over the edge, ending the kingdom’s position as a commercial and military power by 1100. It collapsed into tribal groups and chieftaincies, some of which later assimilated into the Almoravids, while others founded the Mali Empire. Despite ambiguous evidence, it is clear that Ghana was incorporated into the Mali Empire around 1240.
Mali
The Mali Empire was an empire in West Africa that lasted from 1230 to 1600 and profoundly influenced the culture of the region through the spread of its language, laws, and customs along lands adjacent to the Niger River, as well as other areas consisting of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces. The Mali Empire, also historically referred to as the Manden Kurufaba, was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers.
Modern oral traditions recorded that the Mandinka kingdoms of Mali or Manden had already existed several centuries before their unification as small states just to the south of the Soninké empire of Wagadou (the Ghana Empire). This area was composed of mountains, savanna, and forest providing ideal protection and resources for the population of hunters. Those not living in the mountains formed small city-states, such as Toron, Ka-Ba, and Niani. In approximately 1140, the Sosso kingdom of Kaniaga, a former vassal of Wagadou, began conquering the lands of its old masters. By 1180, it had even subjugated Wagadou, forcing the Soninké to pay tribute. In 1203, the Sosso king Soumaoro of the Kanté clan came to power and reportedly terrorized much of Manden.
After many years in exile, first at the court of Wagadou and then at Mema, Sundiata, a prince who eventually became founder of the Mali Empire, was sought out by a Niani delegation and begged to combat the Sosso and free the kingdoms of Manden. Returning with the combined armies of Mema, Wagadou, and all the rebellious Mandinka city-states, Maghan Sundiata, or Sumanguru, led a revolt against the Kaniaga Kingdom around 1234. The combined forces of northern and southern Manden defeated the Sosso army at the Battle of Kirina (then known as Krina) in approximately 1235. This victory resulted in the fall of the Kaniaga kingdom and the rise of the Mali Empire. After the victory, King Soumaoro disappeared and the Mandinka stormed the last of the Sosso cities. Maghan Sundiata received the title “mansa,” which translates roughly to emperor. At the age of eighteen, he gained authority over all the twelve kingdoms in an alliance known as the Manden Kurufaba. He was crowned under the throne name Sunidata Keita, becoming the first Mandinka emperor. And so the name Keita became a clan/family and began its reign.
The Mali Empire covered a larger area for a longer period than any other West African state before or since. What made this possible was the decentralized nature of administration throughout the state and that the mansa managed to keep tax money and nominal control over the area without agitating his subjects into revolt. Officials at the village, town, city, and county levels were elected locally, and only at the state or provincial level was there any palpable interference from the central authority in Niani. Provinces picked their own governors via their own customs, but governors had to be approved by the mansa and were subject to his oversight.
The Mali Empire flourished because of trade above all else. It contained three immense gold mines within its borders, and the empire taxed every ounce of gold or salt that entered its borders. By the beginning of the 14th century, Mali was the source of almost half the Old World’s gold, exported from mines in Bambuk, Boure, and Galam. There was no standard currency throughout the realm, but several forms were prominent by region. The towns of the Mali Empire were organized as both staging posts in the long-distance caravan trade and trading centers for the various West African products (e.g., salt, copper). Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveler and scholar, observed the employment of slave labor. During most of his journey, Ibn Battuta traveled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded themselves. On the return to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, which suggests that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire.
Thanks to steady tax revenue and a stable government beginning in the last quarter of the 13th century, the Mali Empire was able to project its power throughout its own extensive domain and beyond. The empire maintained a semi-professional full-time army in order to defend its borders. The entire nation was mobilized, with each clan obligated to provide a quota of fighting-age men. Historians who lived during the height and decline of the Mali Empire consistently recorded its army at 100,000, with 10,000 of that number being made up of cavalry.
The Mali Empire reached its largest size under the Laye Keita mansas (1312 – 1389). The empire’s total area included nearly all the land between the Sahara Desert and the coastal forests. It spanned modern-day Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, northern Burkina Faso, western Niger, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and northern Ghana. The first ruler from the Laye lineage was Kankan Musa Keita (or Moussa), also known as Mansa Musa. He embarked on a large building program, raising mosques and madrasas (Muslim schools) in Timbuktu and Gao. He also transformed Sankore from an informal madrasah into an Islamic university. By the end of Mansa Musa’s reign, the Sankoré University had been converted into a fully staffed university, with a large collection of books. During this period, there was an advanced level of urban living in the major centers of the Mali. Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus was laid the foundation of an urban civilization. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated.”
Mansa Mahmud Keita IV was the last emperor of Manden. He launched an unsuccessful attack on the city of Djenné in 1599. The battle marked the effective end of the great Mali Empire and set the stage for a large number of smaller West African states to emerge. Around 1610, Mahmud Keita IV died. Oral tradition states that he had three sons who fought over Manden’s remains. No single Keita ever ruled Manden after Mahmud Keita IV’s death, thus his death marked the end of the Mali Empire.
Songhai
The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th centuries. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical name, derived from its leading ethnic group and ruling elite, the Songhai. Sonni Ali established Gao as the capital of the empire, although a Songhai state had existed in and around Gao since the 11th century. Other important cities in the empire were Timbuktu and Djenné, conquered in 1468 and 1475 respectively, where urban-centered trade flourished. Initially, the empire was ruled by the Sonni dynasty (c. 1464 – 1493), but it was later replaced by the Askiya dynasty (1493 – 1591).
During the second half of the 13th century, Gao and the surrounding region had grown into an important trading center and attracted the interest of the expanding Mali Empire. Mali conquered Gao towards the end of the 13th century and the town would remain under Malian hegemony until the late 14th century. But as the Mali Empire started to disintegrate, the Songhai reasserted control of Gao. Songhai rulers subsequently took advantage of the weakened Mali Empire to expand Songhai rule.
In the second half of the 14th century, disputes over succession weakened the Mali Empire and in the 1430s, Songhai, previously a Mali dependency, gained independence under the Sonni Dynasty. Around thirty years later, Sonni Sulayman Dama attacked Mema, the Mali province west of Timbuktu, paving the way for his successor, Sonni Ali, to turn his country into one of the greatest empires sub-Saharan Africa has ever seen.
Sonni Ali reigned from 1464 to 1492. Like Songhai kings before him, he was a Muslim. In the late 1460s, he conquered many of the Songhai’s neighboring states, including what remained of the Mali Empire. He was arguably the empire’s most formidable military strategist and conqueror. Under his rule, Songhai reached a size of over 1,400,000 square kilometers. During his campaigns for expansion, Ali conquered many lands, repelling attacks from the Mossi to the south and overcoming the Dogon people to the north. He annexed Timbuktu in 1468, after Islamic leaders of the town requested his assistance in overthrowing marauding Tuaregs (Berber people with a traditionally nomadic pastoralist lifestyle) who had taken the city following the decline of Mali. However, Ali met stark resistance after setting his sights on the wealthy and renowned trading town of Djenné (also known as Jenne). After a persistent seven-year siege, he was able to forcefully incorporate it into his vast empire in 1473, but only after having starved its citizens into surrender
Oral traditions present a conflicted image of Sonni Ali. On the one hand, the invasion of Timbuktu destroyed the city, and Ali was described as an intolerant tyrant who conducted a repressive policy against the scholars of Timbuktu, especially those of the Sankore region who were associated with the Tuareg. On the other hand, his control of critical trade routes and cities brought great wealth. He is thus often presented as a powerful politician and great military commander and under his reign, Djenné and Timbuktu became great centers of learning.
Following Ali’s reign, Askia the Great strengthened the Songhai Empire and made it the largest empire in West Africa’s history. At its peak under his reign, the Songhai Empire encompassed the Hausa states as far as Kano (in present-day Nigeria) and much of the territory that had belonged to the Songhai empire in the west. His policies resulted in a rapid expansion of trade with Europe and Asia, the creation of many schools, and the establishment of Islam as an integral part of the empire. Askia opened religious schools, constructed mosques, and extended his court to scholars and poets from throughout the Muslim world. He was also tolerant of other religions and did not force Islam on his people. Among his great accomplishments was an interest in astronomical knowledge, which led to the development of astronomy and observatories in the capital.
Not only was Askia a patron of Islam but he was also gifted in administration and encouraging trade. He centralized the administration of the empire and established an efficient bureaucracy that was responsible for, among other things, tax collection and the administration of justice. He also demanded that canals be built in order to enhance agriculture, which would eventually increase trade. More importantly than anything Askia did for trade was the introduction of weights and measures and the appointment of an inspector for each of Songhai’s important trading centers. During his reign, Islam became more widely entrenched, trans-Saharan trade flourished, and Saharan salt mines were brought within the boundaries of the empire.
However, as Askia the Great grew older, his power declined. In 1528, his sons revolted against him and declared Musa, one of Askia’s many sons, as king. Following Musa’s overthrow in 1531, Songhai’s empire went into decline. Multiple attempts at governing the empire by Askia’s sons and grandsons failed and between the political chaos and multiple civil wars within the empire Ahmed al-Mansur—the Sultan of Morocco—invaded Songhai. The main reason for the Moroccan invasion of Songhai was to seize control and revive the trans-Saharan trade in salt and gold. The Songhai military, during Askia’s reign, consisted of full-time soldiers, but the king never modernized his army. The Empire fell to the Moroccans and their firearms in 1591.
Before the collapse of the Songhai Empire in the 16th century, the Songhai city of Timbuktu at its peak was a thriving cultural and commercial center where Arab, Italian, and Jewish merchants all gathered for trade. Trade existed throughout the empire due to the Songhai standing army stationed in the provinces. Central to this trade were the independent gold fields of this empire since gold was one of the empire’s major exports. The Julla (merchants) would form partnerships, and the state would protect these merchants and the port cities of the Niger.
The Songhai economy was based on a clan system. The clan a person belonged to ultimately decided one’s occupation. The most common were metalworkers, fishermen, and carpenters. Lower caste participants consisted of mostly non-farm working immigrants, who at times were provided special privileges and held high positions in society. At the top were noblemen and direct descendants of the original Songhai people, followed by freemen and traders. At the bottom were war captives and European slaves obligated to labor, especially in farming.
Criminal justice in Songhai was based mainly, if not entirely, on Islamic principles, especially during the rule of Askia the Great. Upper classes in society converted to Islam while lower classes often continued to follow traditional religions. Sermons emphasized obedience to the king. Sonni Ali established a system of government under the royal court, later to be expanded by Askia, which appointed governors to preside over local tributary states situated around the Niger valley. Local chiefs were still granted authority over their respective domains as long as they did not undermine Songhai policy.
Tax was imposed onto peripheral chiefdoms and provinces to ensure the dominance of Songhai, and in return these provinces were given almost complete autonomy. Songhai rulers only intervened in the affairs of these neighboring states when a situation became volatile, which was usually an isolated incident. Each town was represented by government officials, holding positions and bureaucratic responsibilities.
The Kanem Empire
At its height, the Kanem Empire (c. 700 – 1376) encompassed an area covering Chad, parts of southern Libya and eastern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, and northern Cameroon. The history of the empire is mainly known from the Royal Chronicle, or Girgam, discovered in 1851 by the German traveler Heinrich Barth.
The empire of Kanem began forming around 300 CE under the nomadic Tebu-speaking Kanembu. The Kanembu eventually abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and founded a capital around 700 CE under the first documented Kanembu king (mai), known as Sef of Saif. The capital of Njimi grew in power and influence under Sef’s son, Dugu. This transition marked the beginning of the Duguwa dynasty. The mais of the Duguwa were regarded as divine kings and belonged to the ruling establishment known as the magumi. Despite changes in dynastic power, the magumi and the title of mai would persevere for over a thousand years.
The major factor that later influenced the history of the state of Kanem was the early penetration of Islam that came with North African traders: Berbers and Arabs. In 1085, a Muslim noble by the name of Hummay removed the last Duguwa king, Selma, from power and thus established the new dynasty of the Sefuwa. The introduction of the Sefuwa dynasty meant radical changes for the Kanem Empire. First, it meant the adoption of Islam and Muslim religious practices by the court and in state policies. Second, the identification of founders had to be revised. Islam offered the Sayfawa rulers the advantage of new ideas from Arabia and the Mediterranean world, as well as literacy, in the form of the Arabic language. But many people resisted the new religion, favoring traditional beliefs and practices.
Kanem’s expansion peaked during the long and energetic reign of Mai Dunama Dabbalemi (ca. 1221 – 1259), also of the Sayfawa dynasty. Dabbalemi initiated diplomatic exchanges with sultans in North Africa and apparently arranged for the establishment of a special hostel in Cairo to facilitate pilgrimages to Mecca. During his reign, he declared jihad or “holy war” against the surrounding tribes and initiated an extended period of conquest. However, he also destroyed the local Mune cult, which was centered around a mysterious sacred object that was revered by the people. This action sparked widespread revolt, resulting in the uprising of the Tubu and the Bulala. The former was quenched, but the latter lingered on, finally leading to the retreat of the Sayfuwa from Kanem to Bornu c. 1380.
By the end of the 14th century, internal struggles and external attacks had torn Kanem apart. Between 1359 and 1383, seven mais reigned, but Bulala invaders (from the area around Lake Fitri to the east) killed five of them. This proliferation of mais resulted in numerous claimants to the throne and a series of destructive wars. Finally, around 1380, the Bulala forced Mai Umar Idrismi to abandon Njimi and move the Kanembu people to Bornu on the western edge of Lake Chad. Over time, the intermarriage of the Kanembu and Bornu peoples created a new people and language, the Kanuri.
Even in Bornu, the Sayfawa dynasty’s troubles persisted. During the first three-quarters of the 15th century, for example, fifteen mais occupied the throne. Around 1460, Mai Ali Dunamami defeated his rivals and began the consolidation of Bornu. He built a fortified capital at Ngazargamu, to the west of Lake Chad (in present-day Niger), the first permanent home a Sayfawa mai had enjoyed in a century. The Sayfawa rejuvenation was so successful that by the early 16th century, Mai Idris Katakarmabe (1487 – 1509) was able to defeat the Bulala and retake Njimi, the former capital. The empire’s leaders, however, remained at Ngazargamu because its lands were more agriculturally productive and better suited to the raising of cattle.
With control over both capitals, the Sayfawa dynasty became more powerful than ever. The two states were merged, but political authority still rested in Bornu. Kanem-Bornu peaked during the reign of the statesman Mai Idris Alwma (also spelled Alooma or Alawma) in the last decades of the 16th/the beginning of the 17th century. Alwma introduced a number of legal and administrative reforms based on his religious beliefs and Islamic law (sharia). He sponsored the construction of numerous mosques and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he arranged for the establishment of a hostel to be used by pilgrims from his empire. Alwma’s reformist goals led him to seek loyal and competent advisers and allies, and he frequently relied on slaves who had been educated in noble homes. He required major political figures to live at the court, and he reinforced political alliances through appropriate marriages.
Kanem-Bornu under Alwma was strong and wealthy. Government revenue came from tribute (or booty, if the recalcitrant people had to be conquered), sales of slaves, and duties on and participation in trans-Saharan trade. Unlike West Africa, the Chadian region did not have gold. Still, it was central to one of the most convenient trans-Saharan routes. Between Lake Chad and Fezzan lay a sequence of well-spaced wells and oases, and from Fezzan in Libya there were easy connections to North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Many products were sent north, including natron (sodium carbonate), cotton, kola nuts, ivory, ostrich feathers, perfume, wax, and hides. However, the most significant export of all were slaves. Imports included salt, horses, silks, glass, muskets, and copper.
Somali Sultanates and Islam
After the arrival of Islam in East Africa in the seventh century, the territory of modern Somalia witnessed the emergence and decline of several powerful sultanates that dominated the regional trade. At no point was the region centralized as one state, and the development of all the sultanates was linked to the central role that Islam played in the area. The oldest mosque in the city of Zeila, a major port/trading center, dates to the 7th century. In the late 9th century, Muslims were living along the northern Somali seaboard, and evidence suggests that Zeila was already the headquarters of a Muslim sultanate in the 9th or 10th century. This state was governed by local dynasties consisting of Somalized Arabs or Arabized Somalis, who also ruled over the Sultanate of Mogadishu in the Benadir region to the south.
The Sultanate of Mogadishu was an important trading empire that lasted from the 10th century to the 16th century. It rose as one of the pre-eminent powers in the Horn of Africa over the course of the 12th to 14th centuries, before becoming part of the expanding Ajuran Empire. The Mogadishu Sultanate maintained a vast trading network, dominated the regional gold trade, minted its own Mogadishu currency, and left an extensive architectural legacy in present-day southern Somalia. Its first dynasty was established by Sultan Fakr ad-Din. This ruling house was succeeded by the Muzaffar dynasty, and the kingdom subsequently became closely linked with the Ajuran Sultanate. For many years, Mogadishu stood as the pre-eminent city in what is known as the Land of the Berbers, which was the medieval Arab term for the Somali coast. Contemporary historians suggest that the Berbers were ancestors of the modern Somalis. During his travels, Ibn Sa’id al-Maghribi (1213 – 1286) noted that the city had already become the leading Islamic center in the region. By the time of the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta’s appearance on the Somali coast in 1331, the city was at the zenith of its prosperity. He described Mogadishu as “an exceedingly large city” with many rich merchants that was famous for its high-quality fabric that it exported to Egypt, among other places.
The Ajuran Sultanate ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa between the 13th and late 17th centuries. Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance toward invaders, it successfully resisted, from the west, an Oromo invasion (a series of expansions in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Oromo people from parts of Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia) and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuran-Portuguese wars. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished, with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the Near East, North Africa, and East Africa.
The Ajuran Sultanate left an extensive architectural legacy, being one of the major medieval Somali powers engaged in castle and fortress building. Many of the ruined fortifications dotting the landscapes of southern Somalia today are attributed to the Ajuran Sultanate’s engineers. During the Ajuran period, many regions and people in the southern part of the Horn of Africa converted to Islam because of the influence of Ajuran Islamic government. The royal family, the House of Garen, expanded its territories and established its hegemonic rule through a skillful combination of warfare, trade linkages, and alliances.
As a hydraulic empire, the Ajuran monopolized the water resources of the Shebelle and Jubba rivers. It also constructed many of the limestone wells and cisterns of the state that are still in use today. The rulers developed new systems for agriculture and taxation, which continued to be used in parts of the Horn of Africa as late as the 19th century. The tyrannical rule of the later Ajuran rulers caused multiple rebellions to break out in the sultanate, and at the end of the 17th century the Ajuran state disintegrated into several successor kingdoms and states.
The Warsangali Sultanate was a kingdom centered in northeastern and in some parts of southeastern Somalia. It was one of the largest sultanates ever established in the territory, and, at the height of its power, included the Sanaag region and parts of the northeastern Bari region of the country, an area historically known as Maakhir or the Maakhir Coast. The Sultanate was founded in the late 13th century in northern Somalia by a group of Somalis from the Warsangali branch of the Darod clan.
The Sultanate of Ifat was a medieval Muslim Sultanate in the Horn of Africa. Led by the Walashma dynasty, it was centered in the ancient cities of Zeila and Shewa. The sultanate ruled over parts of what are now eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti, and northern Somalia. Ifat first emerged in the 13th century, when Sultan Umar Walashma (or his son Ali, according to another source) is recorded as having conquered the Sultanate of Showa in 1285. Sultan Umar’s military action was an effort to consolidate the Muslim territories in the Horn of Africa in much the same way as the Abyssinian Emperor Yekuno Amlak was attempting to consolidate the Christian territories in the highlands during the same period. These two states inevitably came into conflict over Shewa and territories further south. A lengthy war ensued, but the Muslim sultanates of the time were not strongly unified. Ifat was finally defeated by Emperor Amda Seyon I of Abyssinia in 1332.
Despite this setback, the Muslim rulers of Ifat continued their campaign. The Ethiopian emperor branded the Muslims of the surrounding area “enemies of the Lord” and invaded Ifat in the early 15th century. After much struggle, Ifat’s troops were defeated. Ifat eventually disappeared as a distinct polity following the conquest by Abyssinia led by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi and the subsequent Oromo migrations into the area. Its name is preserved in the modern-day Ethiopian district of Yifat, situated in Shewa.
The Adal Sultanate or Kingdom of Adal was founded after the fall of the Sultanate of Ifat. It flourished from around 1415 to 1577. The sultanate was established predominately by local Somali tribes, as well as Afars, Arabs, and Hararis. At its height, the polity controlled large parts of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. During its existence, Adal had relations and engaged in trade with other polities in northeast Africa, the Near East, Europe, and South Asia. Many of the historic cities in the Horn of Africa, such as Abasa and Berbera, flourished under its reign, with courtyard houses, mosques, shrines, walled enclosures, and cisterns. Adal attained its peak in the 14th century, trading in slaves, ivory, and other commodities with Abyssinia and kingdoms in Arabia through its chief port of Zeila.
Bantu and Swahili Culture
Swahili culture is the culture of the people inhabiting the Swahili Coast, encompassing today’s Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros and some parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Malawi. They speak Swahili as their native language, which belongs to the Niger-Congo family. Swahili culture is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region.
As with the Swahili language, Swahili culture has a Bantu core, with some foreign influences. Around 3,000 years ago, speakers of the proto-Bantu language group began a millennia-long series of migrations eastward from their homeland between West Africa and Central Africa, at the border of eastern Nigeria and Cameroon. This Bantu expansion first introduced Bantu peoples to central, southern, and southeastern Africa—regions from which they had previously been absent. The Swahili people are mainly united under the mother tongue of Kiswahili, a Bantu language. This also extends to Arab, Persian, and other migrants who reached the coast around the 7th and 8th centuries, providing considerable cultural infusion and numerous loan words from Arabic and Persian.
Bantu settlements straddled the Southeast African coast as early as the beginning of the 1st millennium. They evolved gradually from the 7th century onward to accommodate for an increase in trade (mainly with Arab merchants), population growth, and further centralized urbanization. These developed into what would later become known as the Swahili city-states. European archaeologists once assumed during the 19th century that Arab or Persian colonizers brought stone architecture and urban civilization to the Swahili Coast. Today we know that it was local populations who developed the Swahili coast. Swahili architecture exhibits a range of influences and innovations, and diverse forms and histories interlock and overlap to create densely layered structures that cannot be broken down into distinct stylistic parts.
Swahili City-States
Around the 8th century, the Bantu people began trading with the Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian peoples—a process known as the Indian Ocean trade. As a consequence of long-distance trading routes crossing the Indian Ocean, the emerging Swahili culture was influenced by Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Chinese cultures. During the 10th century, several city-states flourished along the Swahili Coast and adjacent islands, including Kilwa, Malindi, Gedi, Pate, Comoros, and Zanzibar. These early Swahili city-states were Muslim, cosmopolitan, and politically independent of one another. They grew in wealth because the Bantu Swahili people served as intermediaries and facilitators to local, Arab, Persian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese merchants. They all competed against one another for the best of the Great Lakes region’s (modern Uganda, Rwanda) trade business, and their chief exports were salt, ebony, gold, ivory, and sandalwood. They were also involved in the slave trade. These city-states began to decline towards the 16th century, mainly as a consequence of the arrival of the Portuguese. Eventually, Swahili trading centers went out of business, and commerce between Africa and Asia on the Indian Ocean collapsed.
The Kilwa Sultanate was one of the more prominent of these sultanates, centered at Kilwa (an island off modern-day Tanzania). At its height, the Kilwa Sultanate’s authority stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast. It was founded in the 10th century by Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi, a Persian prince of Shiraz. His family ruled the Sultanate until 1277, when it was replaced by the Arab family of Abu Moaheb. The latter was overthrown by a Portuguese invasion in 1505. By 1513, the sultanate was already fragmented into smaller states, many of which became protectorates of the Sultanate of Oman.
Despite its origin as a Persian colony, extensive inter-marriage and conversion of local Bantu inhabitants, and later Arab immigration, turned the Kilwa Sultanate into a diverse state not ethnically differentiable from the mainland. It was the mixture of Perso-Arab and Bantu cultures in Kilwa that is credited for creating Swahili as a distinctive East African culture and language. Nonetheless, the Muslims of Kilwa (whatever their ethnicity) would often refer to themselves generally as Shirazi or Arabs, and to the unconverted Bantu peoples of the mainland as Zanj or Khaffirs (infidels).
The Kilwa Sultanate was almost wholly dependent on external commerce. Effectively, it was a confederation of urban settlements, and there was little to no agriculture carried on in within the boundaries of the sultanate. Grains (principally millet and rice), meats (cattle and poultry), and other supplies necessary to feed the large city populations had to be purchased from the Bantu peoples of the interior. Kilwan traders from the coast encouraged the development of market towns in the Bantu-dominated highlands of what are now Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. The Kilwan mode of living was as middlemen traders, importing manufactured goods (e.g. cloth) from Arabia and India—which were then swapped in the highland market towns for Bantu-produced agricultural commodities (grain, meats)—and precious raw materials (gold, ivory) that they would export back to Asia.
The diverse history of the Swahili Coast has also resulted in multicultural influences on Swahili arts, including furniture and architecture. The Swahili do not often use designs with images of living beings due to their Muslim heritage. Instead, Swahili designs are primarily geometric. The most typical musical genre of Swahili culture is taarab (or tarabu), sung in the Swahili language. Its melodies and orchestration have Arab and Indian influences. Swahili architecture, a term used to designate a whole range of diverse building traditions practiced or once practiced along the eastern and southeastern coasts of Africa, is in many ways an extension of mainland African traditions. Structural elements, such as domes and barrel vaulting clearly connect, however, to the Persian Gulf area and South Asian building traditions. Exotic ornament and design elements also connected the architecture of the Swahili coast to other Islamic port cities. In fact, many of the classic mansions and palaces of the Swahili Coast belonged to wealthy merchants and landowners, who played a key role in the mercantile economy of the region.
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city in the southeastern hills of today’s Zimbabwe in southern Africa. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Construction on the monument began in the 11th century and continued until the 15th century. The exact identity of the Great Zimbabwe builders is at present unknown. The most popular modern archaeological theory is that the edifices were erected by the ancestral Shona people.
The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and largest structures in Southern Africa; they are the second oldest after nearby Mapungubwe in South Africa. The most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, is the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert. The city and its state, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, flourished from 1200 to 1500. Its growth has been linked to the decline of Mapungubwe from around 1300, due to climatic change or the greater availability of gold in the hinterland of Great Zimbabwe. At its peak, estimates are that Great Zimbabwe had as many as 18,000 inhabitants. The ruins that survive are built entirely of stone, and they span 730 ha (1,800 acres).
This kingdom taxed other rulers throughout the region. It was composed of over 150 tributaries headquartered in their own minor zimbabwes (stone structures). The kingdom controlled the ivory and gold trade from the interior to the southeastern coast of Africa. The Great Zimbabwe people mined copper and iron in addition to gold.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Great Zimbabwe became a center for international trading, with a trade network linked to the Kilwa Sultanate and extending as far as China. This international trade was mainly in gold and ivory. Some estimates indicate that more than 20 million ounces of gold were extracted from the ground. That international commerce was in addition to the local agricultural trade, in which cattle were especially important. The large cattle herd that supplied the city moved seasonally and was managed by the court. Archaeological evidence also suggests a high degree of social stratification, with poorer residents living outside of the city. Chinese pottery shards, coins from Arabia, glass beads, and other non-local items have been excavated. Despite these strong international trade links, there is no evidence to suggest exchange of architectural concepts between Great Zimbabwe and other centers such as Kilwa. The rulers of Zimbabwe brought artistic and stone masonry traditions from Mapungubwe. In the early 11th century, people from the Kingdom of Mapungubwe in Southern Africa are believed to have settled on the Zimbabwe plateau. There, they would establish the Kingdom of Zimbabwe around 1220. The construction of elaborate stone buildings and walls reached its apex in the Kingdom of Zimbabwe.
Around 1430, prince Nyatsimba Mutota from Great Zimbabwe traveled north in search of salt among the Shona-Tavara. He defeated the Tonga and Tavara with his army and established his dynasty at Chitakochangonya Hill. The land he conquered would become the Kingdom of Mutapa. Within a generation, Mutapa eclipsed Great Zimbabwe as the economic and political power in Zimbabwe. By 1450, the capital and most of the kingdom had been abandoned. Causes suggested for the decline and ultimate abandonment of the city of Great Zimbabwe have included a decline in trade compared to sites further north, the exhaustion of the gold mines, political instability, or famine and water shortages induced by climatic change.
The end of the kingdom resulted in a fragmentation of Shona power. Two bases emerged along a north-south axis. In the north, the Kingdom of Mutapa carried on and even improved upon Zimbabwe’s administrative structure. However, it did not carry on the stone masonry tradition to the extent of its predecessor. In the south, the Kingdom of Butua was established as a smaller but nearly identical version of Zimbabwe. Both states were eventually absorbed into the Rozwi Empire in the 17th century.
Attributions
Title Image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donkeys,_Timbuktu.jpg
Great Mosque of Timbuktu, Mali - Flickr user: Emilio Labrador Santiago de Chile https://www.flickr.com/people/3059349393/, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Adapted from:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/west-african-empires/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/central-african-empires/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/east-african-empires/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/southern-african-states/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/