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Gao Empire
The Gao Empire preceded the Songhai Empire in the region of the Middle Niger. It owes its name to the town of Gao located at the eastern Niger bend. In the ninth century CE, it was considered to be the most powerful West African kingdom. Gao was founded in the 7th century. Because of its placement along the Niger River, it was a profitable location for fisherman to settle. Gao is one of the oldest trading centers in western Africa. Because of the placement of Gao, Gao became the capital for the Songhai (or Songhay) Empire in the early 11th century. Gao was able to flourish as the capital of the Songhai Empire, most notably via the trans-Saharan trade of gold, copper, slaves, and salt. Gao was annexed by the rulers of the kingdom of Mali in 1325, but Songhai would eventually retain control of it 40 years later. There are no surviving indigenous written records that date from before the middle of the 17th century. Our knowledge of the early history of the town relies on the writing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, there is non-equivalence between different populations who have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples). There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" Empires. An important distinction has been between land empires mad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa ( ar, سجلماسة; ; also transliterated Sijilmassa, Sidjilmasa, Sidjilmassa and Sigilmassa) was a medieval Moroccan city and trade entrepôt at the northern edge of the Sahara in Morocco. The ruins of the town extend for five miles along the Ziz River, River Ziz in the Tafilalt oasis near the town of Rissani. The town's history was marked by several successive invasions by Berbers, Berber dynasty, dynasties. Up until the 14th century, as the northern terminus for the western trans-Saharan trade, trans-Sahara trade route, it was one of the most important trade centres in the Maghreb during the Middle Ages. History According to al-Bakri's ''Book of Routes and Places'', Sufrite Kharijites first settled the town in the wake of the Great Berber Revolt, Berber revolts against the Umayyads. Al-Bakri recounts that others joined these early settlers there, until they numbered around four thousand, at which point they laid the groundwork for the city. They elected a leader, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuat
Tuat, or Touat, is a natural region of desert in central Algeria that contains a string of small oases. In the past, the oases were important for caravans crossing the Sahara. Geography Tuat lies to the south of the Grand Erg Occidental, to the east of the Erg Chech and to the south west of the Tademaït Plateau. It contains a string of small oases strung out along the eastern edge of the Wadi Messaoud, a continuation of the Wadi Saoura. The oases extend over a distance of 160 km from the district of Bouda in the north to Reggane in the south. The largest town in the region is Adrar, 20 km south east of Bouda. Adrar was established by the French after their conquest in 1900 and had a population of 43,903 in 2002. Associated with each oasis are small walled villages called '' ksour'' (singular ''ksar'' or ''gsar''). There are also some forts ('' kasbahs''), most of which have been abandoned. There is almost no rainfall in the region and the agriculture depends o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Takedda
Takedda was a town and former kingdom located in present-day Niger. The archaeological site at Azelik wan Birni is believed to be the ruins of ancient Takedda. History Takedda was founded by the Sanhaja, a Berber tribal confederation inhabiting the Maghreb. In 1285, a court slave freed by Mari Djata, the founder of the Mali Empire, who had also served as a general, usurped the throne of the Mali Empire. In the 14th century (possibly also earlier and later) the Tuareg-controlled kingdom of Takedda, west of the Aïr Massif, played a prominent role in long-distance trade, notably owing to the importance of its copper mines. Takedda was visited by Ibn Battuta on his return trip from the Mali Empire in 1353. Evidence of copperworking have been found at the site dating to the first millennium BC. The French archeologist, Danilo Grébénart, has excavated the site and has studied the significance of this prehistoric non-ferrous metal industry. The reign of Mansa Sakoura (also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Battuta
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah (, ; 24 February 13041368/1369),; fully: ; Arabic: commonly known as Ibn Battuta, was a Berber Maghrebi scholar and explorer who travelled extensively in the lands of Afro-Eurasia, largely in the Muslim world. He travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history, totalling around , surpassing Zheng He with about and Marco Polo with . Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of southern Eurasia, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and the Iberian Peninsula. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled ''A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling'', but commonly known as ''The Rihla''. Name Ibn Battuta is a patronymic literally meaning "son of the duckling". His most common full name is given as Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta. In his travelogue, '' the Rihla'', he gives his full name as Shams al-Din Abu’Abdallah ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mali Empire
The Mali Empire (Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or Manden; ar, مالي, Mālī) was an empire in West Africa from 1226 to 1670. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita (c. 1214 – c. 1255) and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa (Musa Keita). The Manding languages were spoken in the empire. At its peak, Mali was the largest empire in West Africa, widely influencing the culture of the region through the spread of its language, laws and customs. Much of the recorded information about the Mali Empire comes from 14th-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun, 14th-century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and 16th-century Andalusian traveller Leo Africanus. The other major source of information is Mandinka oral tradition, as recorded by storytellers known as griots. The empire began a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Almoravids
The Almoravid dynasty ( ar, المرابطون, translit=Al-Murābiṭūn, lit=those from the ribats) was an imperial Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire in the 11th century that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, starting in the 1050s and lasting until its fall to the Almohads in 1147. The Almoravid capital was Marrakesh, a city founded by the Almoravid leader Abu Bakr ibn Umar circa 1070. The dynasty emerged from a coalition of the Lamtuna, Gudala, and Massufa, nomadic Berber tribes living in what is now Mauritania and the Western Sahara, traversing the territory between the Draa, the Niger, and the Senegal rivers. The Almoravids were crucial in preventing the fall of Al-Andalus (Muslim rule in Iberia) to the Iberian Christian kingdoms, when they decisively defeated a coalition of the Castilian and Aragonese armies at the Battle of Sagrajas in 1086. This enabled them to control an empire th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Za Dynasty
The Za dynasty or Zuwa dynasty were rulers of a medieval kingdom based in the towns of Kukiya and Gao on the Niger River in what is today modern Mali. The Songhai people at large all descended from this kingdom. The most notable of them being the Zarma people of Niger who derive their name "Zarma (Za Hama)" from this dynasty, which means "the descendants of Za". Oral history and the ''Tarikh al-Sudan'' Al-Sadi's seventeenth century chronicle, the '' Tarikh al-Sudan'', provides an early history of the Songhay as handed down by oral tradition. The chronicle reports that the legendary founder of the dynasty, Za Alayaman (also called Dialliaman), originally came from the Yemen and settled in the town of Kukiya. The town is believed to have been near the modern village of Bentiya on the eastern bank of the Niger River, north of the Fafa rapids, 134 km south east of Gao. Tombstones with Arabic inscriptions dating from the 14th and 15th centuries have been found in the area. Kukiya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tarikh Al-Fattash
The ''Tarikh al-fattash'' is a West African chronicle written in Arabic in the second half of the 17th century. It provides an account of the Songhay Empire from the reign of Sonni Ali (ruled 1464-1492) up to 1599 with a few references to events in the following century. The chronicle also mentions the earlier Mali Empire. It and the Tarikh al-Sudan, another 17th century chronicle giving a history of Songhay, are together known as the Timbuktu Chronicles. The French scholars Octave Houdas and Maurice Delafosse published a critical edition in 1913. It has been argued that this edition conflates the text from an early incomplete manuscript with that of a re-written forgery produced early in the 19th century. The ''Tarikh'' was originally believed to have been written by Mahmud Kati but this has been questioned and Ibn al-Mukhtar, a grandson of Mahmud Kati, is now believed to have been the author. Discovery and publication During his visit to Timbuktu in 1895 the French journal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
