Pre-colonial African History

These few notes aim to provide some historical background to better understand the events that have shaped the people I have met in the countries I visited in Africa.

A) Almohads

In 1121, Muhammad ibn Tumart, an Arab reformer was proclaimed Al Mahdi ("The Rightly Guided") in Morocco by a large following of disciples calling themselves "al-muwahhid" (those who proclaim the unity of God, hence the name Almohads). His successor the Berber Abd al-Mumin, conquered Morocco (1140-1147) and other parts of North Africa putting an end to the Almoravids. The Almohads also ruled Islamic Spain and Portugal from 1154 until the united kings of Castille, Aragón, and Navarre defeated them in the Battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Then, their power declined and finally came to an end in Spain in 1232 and in Africa in 1269.

A) Almoravids

Around 1050, a Muslim religious military brotherhood known as the hermits (Arabic al-murabit, hence the name Almoravids) began its expansion in northwestern Africa. Under the leadership of the Almoravid Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the nomadic Berbers of the Sanhage Confederation invaded Morocco in 1061, Mauritania in 1071 (destroying the Ghana Empire) and Spain in 1086. In 1147 the dynasty was overthrown by the Almohads, another Muslim reform movement.

A) Ashanti Empire

The Ashanti people occupied what is now southern Ghana in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their expansion began around 1670 when their King Osei Tutu crushed Denkyera and other nearby states and made Kumasi his capital. His authority was symbolized by a Golden Stool (sika 'dwa), on which all subsequent kings were enthroned. The Ashanti supplied slaves to British and Dutch traders on the coast in exchange for firearms with which to enforce their territorial expansion which reached its full extension around 1750. By 1800 the Ashanti Empire had become a strong centralized state, with an efficient bureaucracy recruited by merit and an excellent system of communications. The abolition of slavery by Great Britain in 1807, declining trade relations and disputes over the Fanti region caused friction that to warfare in the 1820s. The Ashanti defeated a British force in 1824 but made peace in 1831 and avoided further conflict for the next 30 years. In 1863, they again challenged the British by sending forces to occupy the coastal provinces which were regained by the British along with Elmina in 1869. In 1874 an expeditionary force invaded and held Kumasi for one day and the southern provinces were formally constituted the Gold Coast colony by the British later that year. The Ashanti Empire continued to decline until 1901 when it was annexed by the Gold Coast Colony.

D) Dahomey Kingdom

Founded in the early 17th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey gradually extended its domination around its capital of Abomey over most of what is now the southern part of Benin. King Agaja, who in the early 18th century established a corps of women soldiers, gained control of the coast and became a major supplier of slaves to European traders. After Agaja's death, Dahomey was eclipsed for a time by the neighboring Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, but its power was revived by King Gézo (1818-1858), who extended its frontiers northward. French penetration of the coastal region began in the 1850s. The last king, Béhanzin, tried to resist the French advance, but was defeated in 1893 and deported to Algeria (where he died in 1906). Dahomey became a French colony. The name Dahomey was also used by the independent government from 1960 to 1975, when the name of the country was changed to Benin.

D) Donatists

The Donatists were a Christian schismatic sect in North Africa that broke with the Roman Catholics in 312 over the election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage.The primate of Numidia, Secundus of Tigisi, who claimed the right of consecrating the bishop of Carthage, arrived with 70 bishops, declared Caecilian's election invalid and appointed Majorinus, to replace Caecilian. The Emperor Constantine the Great ordered arbitration of the controversy and finally gave a decision in favour of Caecilian in November 316. By that time, Majorinus had been replaced by Donatus, who gave his name to the schism which was to divide North Africa until the Arab invasion of 643.

F) Fulani Theocracy

The Fulani, a nomadic, pastoralist people expanded eastward from Senegal in the 14th century. By the 16th century they had spread over most of West Africa. Most remained nomads but many who penetrated the Hausa territories (now in north-west Nigeria) settled down there and were converted to Islam. In the 1790s a Fulani reformer, Usman dan Fodio encouraged the Hausa people to revolt against their kings whom he accused of being of being little more than pagans. He led Hausa and Fulani troops in holy war (jihad) which swept through the Hausa States and Yorubaland to the south and established a Theocratic Empire based in Sokoto (north-west Nigeria), that lasted until it was defeated by the British at the turn of the 20th century.

The Fulani that remained nomadic herders are now widely dispersed in West Africa. The majority of them have preserved their original Animistic beliefs.

G) Ghana Empire

In the 5th century, the Soninke people established the Ghana Kingdom in Kumbi Sale in southeastern Mauritania. It gained hegemony over what is now southeastern Mauritania, southwestern Mali and northern Senegal and thrived on trade of gold and salt until it was overrun by the Muslim Berber Almoravids in 1078. It revived shortly until one of its former vassals, the Susu, destroyed Kumbi Saleh in 1203.

H) Hausa States

Hausa speaking people have been occupying the same territory in north-west Nigeria since the 10th century. They founded a number of city-states (Biram, Daura, Katsina, Zaria, Kano, Rano, and Gobir), connected by loose alliances while the Songhai Empire replaced the Mali Empire in the west and the Kanem-Bornu Empire flourished in the east. They accepted Islam which was introduced from the Kanem-Bornu Empire in the 14th century but apparently the ruling class retained some ancient Animist beliefs. This provoked the revolt of the Fulani reformer, Usman dan Fodio whose Jihad overran the Hausa and neighbouring states to establish a new elite of Hausa speaking Fulanis who ruled until the 20th century.

K) Kanem-Bornu Empire

The Kanem-Bornu Empire lasted for a thousand years, from the 9th to the 19th century. It was founded by the Kanuri, a mixed negroid and Berber people living east of Lake Chad, and was ruled by the Saifawa dynasty from its capital at Njiminear to-day's Mao. Based on trans-saharan trade, the state was subjected to the influence of Islam which became the accepted religion in the 11th century. Conquests during the next 200 years expanded the empire as far west as the Niger River and east to Wadai; to the north its power extended into the Fezzan. In the 14th century, wars with the Bulala people to the south forced the move to a new capital at Ngazargamu west of Bornu. The 16th century saw renewed expansion and power under Idris Alawmama who had acquired firearms from North Africa. The empire declined in the 18th century but was able to stop the advance of the Fulani Islamist jihad in 1810. It was finally absorbed by the Wadai kingdom in 1846.

M) Mali Empire

The agriculturally rich interior flood plain of the Niger River and its gold mines, which had been controlled by the Ghana Empire, passed to the Susu Kingdom in 1203 until it was defeated by the small Kangaba state led by the Mandika Sundiata Keita whose statesmanship unified the clans of a vast region that was to become the Mali Empire. At its zenith around 1300, Mali was a confederation of three independent, allied states (Mali, Mema, and Wagadou) that maintained garrisson in 12 provinces. Its great commercial cities, Djenné and Timbuktu grew rich controlling nearly all the trans-saharan trade in gold, salt and other goods. When court intrigue and succession disputes sapped the strength of the extended empire, vassal provinces revolted in the late 14th century of which the Songhai who began to build up their own empire around Gao and finally subjugated Djenné in 1471 eclipsing Mali .

M) Monophysites

The Monophysites were a Christian schismatic sect of the 5th and 6th centuries that maintained that Christ had only one (divine) nature, thereby opposing the orthodox christian doctrine that he was both divine and human. Monophysitism persists to this day in the modern Abyssinian church, the Coptic church, the Armenian church, the Georgian church and the Jacobite church.

M) Mossi States

Tribes moving in from present-day Ghana into southern Burkina Faso in the 14th century developed a number of Mossi States led by the Morho Naba (big lord) of Ouagadougou. Their authority was based on a strong administration and the concept of the divinity of their Kings. The kingdom of Ouagadougou became a vassal of the Songhai in the 15th century, recuperated its autonomy in the 16th and became a protectorate of the French in 1896.

O) Oyo Kingdom

The Yoruba are a Sudanic-speaking sedentary people inhabiting southwest Nigeria. Their religion was Animistic and they worshiped numerous gods. By the 17th century the Yoruba had succeeded in establishing a strong and flourishing state, the kingdom of Oyo, in the region between Dahomey and the Niger River. Oyo disintegrated into numerous petty kingdoms during the first half of the 19th century. Toward the end of the 19th century the Yoruba came under British control. They now make up about 21 percent of the population of Nigeria, living chiefly in the city of Ibadan.

S) Semitic Tribes

About 3500 BC, Semitic-speaking tribes of Arabian origin migrated into the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia where they overcame the Sumerians and developped the Akkadian language and culture. A second wave of Semitic migrants left Arabia about 2500 BC and settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to become the Canaanites who dominated the lowlands between the Jordan river, the Mediterranean and the Sinai desert. The Canaanites were soon followed by the Amorites who settled what is today Lebanon an Syria and mingled with Mesopotamians to give rise to the Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.

A third wave tribes that started to migrate out of Arabia around 1 500 BC gave rise to the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans and the Hebrews. The Phoenicians displaced Amorites from the coast of what is now Lebanon and became seafarers. The Aramaeans took over some Amorite territory in Syria and northern Jordan and became agriculturalists. The Hebrew tribes infiltrated into Canaan lands around 1400 BC.

Other tribes left the desert to settle into the better watered southwest corner of the arabian peninsula, where they gave rise to states that developed the  Amharic language. One of these, was the Sabaean Kingdom  (1000 BC to 400 AD) whose Queen Sheba is said to have visited Solomon in the 10th century BC and that eventually gave rise to the Abyssinian Empire . Finally, the tribes that remained in northern Arabia gave rise to several states of which the Nabataeans (900 BC to 100 AD) whose script evolved into the Arab used in the Koran.

S) Songhai Empire

The Songhai people who originated in the Dendi region of northwestern Nigeria, gradually expanded upstream on the Niger River in the 8th century. By 800 they had established a flourishing market town at Gao. They accepted Islam around 1000. For some centuries they dominated the smaller adjacent states while being in turn controlled by the powerful Mali Empire to the west. In the late 14th century, the Songhai Sunni dynasty gradually their gained independence as internal strife was weakening Mali's power. Songhai expansion was most aggressively advanced by Sunni Ali, who overran Djenné and incorporated the eastern part of Mali into his empire in 1471. He was followed by Muhammad, of the Askia dynasty, who further extended Songhai's influence and made Timbuktu again a thriving cultural center. After his reign, dynastic rivalry, revolts and raids from neighboring states weakened the empire and invasion by Berber Moroccan forces equipped with firearms put an end to the Songhai Empire in 1591.

T) Tuareg

The Tuareg are Berber-speaking pastoralists who inhabit a large area covering parts of Algeria, Libya, Mali and Niger. They are estimated to number almost one million and their political organizations extend across national boundaries. The Tuareg consist of confederations including the Ahaggar (Hoggar) and Azjer (Ajjer) in the north and the Asben (Aïr Tuareg), Ifora, Itesen (Kel Geres), Aulliminden, and Kel Tademaket in the south. Tuareg society is traditionally feudal, ranging from nobles, through clergy, vassals, and artisans, to laborers (once slaves). The conventional Tuareg dwelling is a tent of red-dyed skin and their traditional weapons include two-edged swords, sheathed daggers, iron lances, and leather shields. Conservative adult males wear the traditional blue veil, speak Tamachek and use an ancient Berber script called Tifinagh.

T) Tukulor Empire

Umar, called al-Hajj founded the Tukulor Empire of the Senegambia region. The son of a Tukolor Muslim scholar, he was given a good education, joined the Tijaniyya brotherhood, and made a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1820s. He returned with the mission to spread Islam, gathered a large following, armed them with guns and launched a jihad in 1852. He conquered several non-Islamic Bambara and Malinké states in the Sénégal and Niger basins and turned eastward to take Ségou in 1861 and Massina in 1862. In 1863 he captured Timbuktu but was repulsed by the Tuaregs who destroyed his army and killed him in 1864 with the help of revolting Fulani from Massina. The Tukulor Empire passed to his son Ahmadu who was finally overcome by the French in 1893.