SAHARAN TRADE & POWER
Strategically positioned between the Senegal and Niger river systems, this medieval empire became a powerful middleman in the West African gold trade. Its prestige was such that a modern African country adopted its name in 1957.
What is the Empire of Ghana?
Meaning roughly “people of the frontier fortress,” this reform movement combined religious purification, military expansion, and eventually imperial rule across North Africa and Iberia.
Who are the Almoravids?
His 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca advertised Mali’s wealth so spectacularly that his distribution of gold was said to have depressed its value in Cairo for years.
Who is Mansa Musa?
Their predictable seasonal reversal allowed ships to travel rapidly between East Africa and India, helping create the commercial world of the Swahili coast.
What are the monsoon winds?
More than a million stone blocks were used to construct monumental walls here without mortar, demonstrating an indigenous southern African architectural tradition.
What is Great Zimbabwe?
Adopted by Saharan peoples centuries before the rise of the great medieval empires, this animal transformed the Sahara from a formidable barrier into a major commercial route.
What is the camel?
Begun in Fez in 859 and traditionally associated with one of two sisters who migrated from Kairouan in Tunisia, this mosque became one of the medieval Islamic world’s great centers of learning.
What is the Kairaouine, or al-Qarawiyyin?
According to the documentary, roughly three-quarters of the gold entering North African and European markets during the medieval period originated in this West African empire.
What is Mali?
This fundamentally African language, enriched by Arabic loanwords, developed along an East African coast shaped by centuries of trade, migration, and cultural exchange.
What is Kiswahili, or Swahili?
Despite their conventional name, many of the famous “Benin Bronzes” were actually cast primarily from this copper alloy.
What is brass?
Mined in slabs within the Sahara and scarce in much of sub-Saharan West Africa, this commodity was essential because it functioned as the “refrigeration” of the medieval world.
What is salt?
Europeans imagined this fabulously wealthy Christian ruler as a descendant of one of the Three Magi and believed his kingdom might be located in Africa. Ethiopian rulers eventually claimed the legend as their own.
Who is Prester John?
The extensive manuscript collections preserved in this city complicate the older assumption that African history before European colonization was primarily oral and lacked major traditions of written scholarship.
What is Timbuktu?
Located near the southern limit that ships exploiting Indian Ocean monsoon winds could easily reach, this city profited enormously from its position as an intermediary between inland African trade and overseas merchants.
What is Kilwa?
Ewuare the Great expanded this enormous system around Benin City and surrounding settlements, using controlled gates not only for defense but also to regulate the movement of his subjects.
What are the Benin earthworks or walls?
This Almoravid religious reformer was notorious for harsh discipline: forgetting part of a prayer, standing incorrectly, or failing to observe religious obligations could result in flogging.
Who is Abdallah Ibn Yasin?
Its restrained exterior conceals elaborate decoration resembling the Great Mosque of Córdoba. This Marrakesh structure therefore provides material evidence against the claim that the Almoravids were indifferent to aesthetics.
What is the Koubba?
Produced in 1375, this European map famously depicts Mansa Musa holding gold, demonstrating that Mali and its ruler were already incorporated into medieval European geographical knowledge.
What is the Catalan Atlas?
Built for Sultan al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman, this enormous Kilwa palace contained some 70 rooms, an elaborate audience court, and even a large swimming pool.
What is Husuni Kubwa?
Marrakesh sat between the Sahara and Mediterranean trade worlds; Kilwa occupied a crucial point in the monsoon system; Great Zimbabwe stood between gold-producing regions and overseas markets. Their prosperity therefore illustrates the importance of this geographical factor.
What is strategic location?
Before Portuguese influence became associated with conquest, rulers of this West African kingdom incorporated Portuguese soldiers into their own military campaigns and political expansion.
What is Benin?
The architecture of the Koubba resulted from cooperation between North African patrons and artisans employing techniques associated with this Muslim-ruled region of medieval Spain.
What is al-Andalus?
Unable to accept that the extraordinarily naturalistic heads he encountered at Ile-Ife had been produced by Africans, this German ethnographer attributed them to a lost Greek colony associated with Atlantis.
Who is Leo Frobenius?
Shards of this luxury import found at Great Zimbabwe provide archaeological evidence connecting southern Africa through Indian Ocean trade networks all the way to China.
What is Ming Dynasty porcelain?
Rejecting the idea that civilizations must leave written documents, archaeologist Edward Matenga argues that this monumental site itself should be understood as “a text” communicating social and political meaning.
What is Great Zimbabwe?