The empire of Ghana was a wealthy trading empire in West Africa located south of the Sahara Desert. Made up of a federation of the Soninke people, its richest historical record spans from about 750 until 1076 CE, due to the writings of Arab travelers and geographers from that period. The author explains what we know about this mysterious and fascinating empire, whose main city Kumbi Saleh was a link on the Saharan trade routes. Readers learn about the traditions, beliefs, and lifestyle of the Soninke and other indigenous peoples, as well as the effects of contact with Islam.
The empire of Ghana was a wealthy trading empire in West Africa located south of the Sahara Desert. Made up of a federation of the Soninke people, its richest historical record spans from about 750 until 1076 CE, due to the writings of Arab travelers and geographers from that period. The author explains what we know about this mysterious and fascinating empire, whose main city Kumbi Saleh was a link on the Saharan trade routes. Readers learn about the traditions, beliefs, and lifestyle of the Soninke and other indigenous peoples, as well as the effects of contact with Islam.
This book explains the shift from the government of empires to that of NGOs in the region just south of the Sahara. It describes the ambitions of newly independent African states, their political experiments, and the challenges they faced. No other book places black American activism, Amnesty International, and CARE together in the history of African politics.
Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.
A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region’s history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam’s growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste—long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.
"The book first places Africa in the context of world history at the opening of the seventh century, before examining the general impact of Islamic penetration, the continuing expansion of the Bantu-speaking peoples, and the growth of civilizations in the Sudanic zones of West Africa"--Back cover.
Issued in conjunction with the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, held January 26, 2019-July 21, 2019, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
