African Empires

Timbuktu. Perhaps no place in the world has so vividly captured our imagination like this fabled desert city in the West African nation of Mali. Mysterious, otherworldly, so remote and difficult to reach most people don't even know if it truly exists. I have a deep connection to this part of the world. My own ancestry can be traced back to the desert nomads who settled Timbuktu centuries ago. Along the big bend of the Niger River where Savannah meets the Sahara, Timbuktu was an oasis in the vast desert. A vibrant city at the heart of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, merchants came here carrying gold from the south and salt from the north. They also brought scholarship creating an astonishing written record of intellectual achievement on par with the Italian Renaissance. With its renowned University, Timbuktu became a scientific inquiry and religious tolerance. And then there was the music. Musicians celebrated the region's deeply rooted musical traditions creating a sound so soul-stirring that it's transcended all boundaries and time. From this heart of Africa to the place I call home in the Delta, a music we now know around the world as the blues. The music is celebrated yearly at the world-famous Festival of the Desert where regional musicians share the stage with rock legends. This part of West Africa is like the cradle of music. It's like the Big Bang of all the music that we love. When Islam reached West Africa in the 8th century, Muslim historians began to write about West Africa as it spread throughout the area. Documents about the history of this region show Arab historians knew it as the Balad al-Sudan, the land of the blacks. The empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Timbuktu, and Gao became the first sub-Saharan people to accept Islam early as 850 AD. Commercial centers provided the first places of worship as traders began to have prayer areas in the towns. These centers of trade invariably became symbols of African civilization showcasing an Islamic learning dynasty. The community was governed under the Islamic Sharia system and scholars began gathering to share vast resources of knowledge. Al-Bakri, the Muslim geographer, provides an early account of ancient Ghana in his book, Roads and Kingdoms. He describes Ghana of 1068 as highly advanced. Al-Bakri writes, economically it was a prosperous country. The king had employed Muslim interpreters and most of his ministers and treasurers were also Muslims. The Muslim ministers were learned enough to record events in Arabic and corresponded on behalf of the king with other rulers. He gives the following picture of Islam in Ghana during that time. The city of Ghana consists of two towns lying on a plain, one of which is inhabited by Muslims and is large, possessing 12 mosques, one of which is a congregational mosque for Friday prayers. West African griots tell the story of a woman named Baktu who settled near the banks of the Niger early in the 11th century. She maintained a water well which became a social center and stopping place for caravans of travelers. A village was formed which was later named Tim Baktu. A supreme judge named Sheikh Sidi Abu al-Barakat Mahmoud, who had visited Mecca and Cairo, ordered that a mosque be built. With the financial backing of a wealthy Mandecan woman, they designed a mosque featuring an inner court with the exact dimensions of the Kaaba in Mecca. It would become a leading center of education. Tim Baktu had long been a destination or stop for merchants from the Middle East and North Africa. It wasn't long before ideas as well as merchandise began passing through the fabled city. Since most, if not all, these traders were Muslim, the mosque would see visitors constantly. The temple accumulated a wealth of books from throughout the Muslim world, becoming not only a center of worship but a center of learning. Books became more valuable than any other commodity in the city and private libraries sprouted up in the homes of local scholars. In addition to books, Tim Baktu accumulated navigational maps and logs from geographers throughout the world. During the 10th century, stories began to surface of sailors reaching a distant land. By the 14th century, West Africa had seen the rise of the Mali Empire, one of the largest in the world during that time. The king of Mali was Mansa Abu Bakari, who was the nephew of the empire's founder, Sandiata Kita. As a young man, Abu Bakari heard stories of a land across the Atlantic and dreamed of sailing off into the massive ocean. While studying at Sankore University, Abu Bakari encountered maps from Muslim geographers such as al-Masudi and Ali Drisi, who had concluded that the Atlantic Ocean was not the western edge of the world. He learned about ocean currents, studied navigational charts, and also heard amazing tales of Sudanese people who had ventured across the Atlantic some 2,000 years earlier. Abu Bakari had been assured by learned professors and Arab geographers that new lands lay on the other side of the Great Green Ocean. Sometime around 1304, Abu Bakari assembled a fleet of ships and sent them west across the Atlantic in search of the new land. Accounts of the expedition are documented in a book by 14th century Arab historian Al-Umari. According to his writings, Mansa Abu Bakari launched 200 ships filled with men and a further 200 ships amply stocked with food, gold, and water to last for two years. African griots, who are known as the oral historians of African civilization, tell the story of one of those ships returning and informing Abu Bakari of their journey. The captain told him of their success in reaching a beautiful new land. Upon the news, the African ruler would gather a fleet of 2,000 ships, which he would lead himself. Ready were his best sailors, farmers, and carpenters. And in the year 1311, he would hand over the government and the title of Mansa to his brother Kankan Musa and fulfill his lifelong dream to sail across the Atlantic. People from what was then the Mali Empire took off. It's almost certain they took off. The big debate is whether they arrived in the Americas. So there's a considerable agreement that they took off in order to cross the Atlantic. And then there are elements of sculpture, as you know, in Mexico, which has so-called Negroid features. And we know the sculpture goes back 2,000 years. So obviously that sculpture must have had models long before Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean blue. Mansa Kankan Musa was the grandson of Sundiata Kida. After assuming the throne from his brother, he led Mali to become the largest and richest realm of Africa. Unlike Abu Bakr, Musa was interested in extending the borders of the empire to the east toward Cairo. He captured the neighboring kingdom of Songhai and its major city, Timbuktu. Mali already had firm control of the trade routes to the southern lands of gold and the northern lands of salt. Musa brought a large part of the Western Sudan within a single system of law and order. This was a big political success and made Mansa Musa one of the greatest statesmen in the history of Africa. In 1375, Spanish mapmakers are charting the known world. On a map of North Africa, they draw a picture of a man who has status, more gold than anyone else, and he makes all the rules. The text says, so abundant is the gold which is found in his country, that he is the richest and most noble king in the land. His name is Mansa Musa. In 1312, when he takes power, he inherits a string of titles. King of Kings, Lion of Mali, and perhaps most important of all, Lord of the Mines. A survey put Mansa Musa as the world's richest man of all time. They estimated his fortune at some 400 billion dollars. For comparison, Bill Gates came 12th on the list, with something close to a quarter of Mansa Musa's wealth. Mansa Musa is one of the most incredible characters in history, and few of us have ever heard of him. Musa rules an immense African Empire. The Empire of Mali had the largest resources of gold known in the world Great African empires of the Middle Ages provided the ivory and gold that fueled the Renaissance in Europe. Yet in later centuries, Arabs and Europeans, the very people who benefited most from Africa's bounty, conspired to deny the continent its great legacy. White explorers refused to believe black Africans were capable of anything more than mud huts and pagan beliefs. To justify their exploitation of the dark continent, white colonizers claimed Africa's lost civilizations for white ancestors. There is definitely a deeply ingrained idea in the Western world that Africans are a people without history. Even the Regis Professor of Modern History in my old University, Oxford, in my own lifetime could address a mass audience in the United Kingdom through the media and say, maybe in the future there will be African history. But at the moment, there is none. There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness, and darkness is not a subject of history. The great African civilizations relied on an oral tradition to pass on their ancient legends of mighty chiefs and tribal conflicts. Generation after generation heard these stories, but gradually the memories faded. Even the names of kings were forgotten. With no written record, the mighty empires of Africa's past became as vulnerable as their land. Eight hundred years ago, this rugged terrain near the South African border with Zimbabwe was the site of one such kingdom. All outward signs of their civilization have long vanished, yet the local Venda people know, through whispers from their ancestors, that great kings and queens were once buried here, high above the bushveld, on the summit of a cliff. A burial ground created with thousands of tons of soil carried here to cover the bare rock of the clifftop. Each body was adorned with gold treasures before the royal graves were sealed. This civilization was ancient, it was prosperous, and it was black. But what happened to these people remains a mystery. Perhaps they drove their cattle herds further north to the lusher pastures and cooler climate of higher ground, or perhaps they became the long-sought ancestors of another African kingdom. For only 100 years later, 200 miles beyond the Popo River, one of the greatest African empires would be founded. While Europe was in the Middle Ages, southern Africa was dominated by the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe. Their kings ruled from a court enclosed by a colossal circular wall, over 25 feet high and 16 feet thick. Little is known about the empire, even the names of their kings are now forgotten. We do know they owned thousands of head of cattle and provided ivory and gold to Swahili merchants on the east coast. The first link into Africa's trade network were the world. Today, the country of Zimbabwe takes its name from this ancient kingdom. Zimbabwe means great house of stone. Until recently, its real history was denied by white people. They were convinced that black Africans could not have created such monumental structures. For centuries, Great Zimbabwe has suffered an entirely fictitious history. But what was this great African kingdom really like? In its heyday during the 14th century, Great Zimbabwe was a thriving metropolis, unique in all of Africa. It was as big as London at the time, with a population as large as 18,000 crammed into just a few square miles. Inside its great stone walls was sub-Saharan Africa's oldest known urban culture. The noise must have been overwhelming. Smoke from hundreds of cooking fires would have darkened the sky. It was the capital of an empire that stretched for thousands of miles and contained hundreds of mini Zimbabwe's, each with its own ruler. In Great Zimbabwe, a king's influence carried on long after he died. Spirits of ancestors remained an ongoing presence, both as powerful rulers and spiritual advisors. Today, the local Shona people are thought to be descendants of the people that built Great Zimbabwe. In modern Shona culture, the spirits of ancestors are still regularly contacted through a ceremony performed by a medium in a cave below the Acropolis ruins. The Shona are very religious people. They believe strongly that their ancestors are not dead and gone forever, that they are alive. Through their mediums, they can punish them, they can bless them, they can pray for them. And therefore, if you don't follow what they say, you are likely to come into misfortune. Stan Mudinge, a Zimbabwean government minister, has studied the ancestors of the Shona people. Usually, the spirits of the ruler, the dead rulers, were the most powerful spirits on matters of state. And these spirits possess mediums, and they become, in every respect, the emperor back in human form. High on the Acropolis overlooking the kingdom is a sacred enclosure, where we can imagine what used to happen. During times of trouble, the king would come here to pay tribute to his ancestors and ask for guidance from his spirit medium. The medium would work himself into a trance and be taken over by the spirit of a long-dead ruler. This supernatural link between the king and the nation's founding fathers was fundamental to the culture. Through his medium, the king exerted influence over the spirit mediums of lesser rulers. In addition to military might, he wielded a powerful spiritual control over any who would challenge him. You didn't need a huge army to control. You had control psychologically. You could make people peaceful. You could make the pronouncements which people will follow and will obey. These great stone birds were symbols of that power and are among the few icons to be salvaged from this sacred place. This was a civilization which represented the highest achievement of the Bantu-speaking people in this part of Africa. Great Zimbabwe was constructed over several centuries by a devoted people. One million stone blocks were shaped just to build the outer wall. Each subject paid tribute to the chief with seven days of labor each month, not slave labor. They built this monument to honor their king and provider. The original builders of these walls came to granite outcrops like this one. Today they still quarry blocks as they have for centuries to repair the broken walls of their ancestors. By heating the granite with fire and throwing water along the fault lines, the rock shatters into thick slabs. Then begins the slow process of breaking and shaping the rocks for the dry stone walls. Although it's easy to understand how they built these walls, why they built them is the subject of fierce debate. Was the great enclosure a fortress or a palace? The narrow passage between these towering walls has generated lurid theories. Many believe it stopped men from spying during female initiation ceremonies. Most likely though, it was simply to maintain absolute privacy for the royal household. A chief's status was based on the number of cattle he owned. A rich man would have many cattle so he could afford many wives who would bear him many children who would provide more labor to cultivate more land. During the dry season when there was little work, farmers became gold miners. Digging for gold in these narrow mine shafts was so dangerous laborers had to be bribed to go underground. Most preferred tanning in the riverbeds. Gold was the monopoly of the king. He paid his miners and cattle, reserving the gold for himself for exchange and barter with the Swahili merchants of the East African coast. At the height of their power, the great Zimbabwe rulers controlled the flow of gold and ivory to the trading ports of East Africa. And this trade would fuel construction of some of the most magnificent cities in the ancient world. In the 14th century, Africa's Swahili coast was an exotic place, described by Arab sailors as vibrant and affluent with the most beautiful and well constructed towns in the world. This was the setting for the legendary adventures of Sinbad and the Arabian Nights. Persian carpets were exchanged for African ivory. Porcelain was traded for gold. Merchants who came from India and Arabia, even from the Far East, had to deal with Swahili brokers, medieval middlemen who were their only link to goods from Africa's interior. The Swahili built and sailed the dhows and navigated the treacherous channels to the many trading ports. By controlling the sea, they maintained firm control over all commerce in the region. Every year, hundreds of boats awaited the monsoon winds to carry their goods back to the Middle East. By the 10th century, gold, ivory, and quartz were pouring into the Mediterranean, commerce on a scale not seen since Greek and Roman times. This prosperous coastline had ports and cities that stretched 1,800 miles from present-day Somalia to Mozambique. Their trade networks extended from Arabia to India and on to China. In the 15th century, the Swahili even exported a giraffe to China, causing a sensation at the imperial court. This extensive contact with other cultures produced a cosmopolitan society, influenced by both Arab and Indian traditions. Yet despite their widespread success, this region of Africa has also suffered a history denied. The confusion can be traced back to the first Arab traders and the introduction of Islam. The Swahili adopted Islam a thousand years ago, and this shared religious code helped create mutual trust in business deals. The call to prayer would have brought together the Arab traders and the African merchants. They would have washed in cisterns like these, then entered mosques as grand as the medieval cathedrals of Europe.