Arab Supremacist Racism and the Arabizing of Africa

I could never until recently understand why it was so important to some Muslims in our community to identify with the Islamic causes even when I saw no benefit to us.Now it is clear that Islam was a cover for Arab conquest and supremacy under the guise of religion.After the fall of the Roman Empire Islam and Christianity became the two dominant forces filling the vacuum.In Europe the Roman Catholic Church ruled and spread its influence where intellects,and rulers used to.It was the same in the Arab world the same reason for spreading Islam wealth,power,land,subjects.The Arab world first gave the modern world the idea of a color based caste system where people which Arab features were the ideal.Like in the Indus Valley where the Northern Aryans set up a color based caste system and dark skin was seen as ugly or dirty it was and still is the same in the Middle East.Which leads to a bigger question why are so many Black people beholding to an institution where they are never to be at the top?Why would anyone let African culture die and put Arab culture as supreme?
Nigeria and West Africa Targeted by Islamic Extremist
Somalia and Northern Sudan are gone they show you what happens where cultural genocide takes place.Somalis and Sudanese are official Jihadis.Which means in jingoism and boast they identify with the Arab Supremacist.They are will pawns in the Arab conquest of Africa.Something for centuries they never could do thanks to great African Empires that ruled Africa.The Empires of Mali,Ghana,Songhai,Kenem/Bornou/ all had large cities,armies and learned men.They protected Africa from the vermin Arab conquest.Actually it was The British,Italian,French colonialism that created Arab rule in North Africa.The colonialist mistakenly thought Arabs were superior so they let them co govern at the expense of native Africans.This method was used all over the colonial world.Now it seems the Arab conquest continues with the recent proclamation by Ghaddafi in which he said Northern Nigeria should be split from the rest of Nigeria.Northern Nigeria has a mixed heritage of African and Arab and an Islamic culture which dominates much of the region.It is a prize to the Arab colonizers.Radical jihad groups are now being financed by Islamic fundamentalist in the Middle East.The following is an article by Ali Muzlan about the history of the Arab racist:


Submitted by Facts not Fantasy (Canada), May 6, 2008 at 09:03

A slave cult living in denial of its history of hypocrisy Tabari II:21 "Ham [Africans] begat all those who are black and curly-haired, while Japheth [Turks] begat all those who are full-faced with small eyes, and Shem [Arabs] begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair.

Noah prayed that the hair of Ham's descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his descendants met Shem's, the latter would enslave them." Tabari IX:69 "Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah's helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us.

As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in Allah's Cause. Killing him is a small matter to us." Tabari II:11 "Shem, the son of Noah was the father of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks; Ham was the father of the Black Africans; and Japheth was the father of the Turks and of Gog and Magog who were cousins of the Turks. Noah prayed that the prophets and apostles would be descended from Shem and kings would be from Japheth.

He prayed that the African's color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks." Ishaq:243 "I heard the Apostle say: 'Whoever wants to see Satan should look at Nabtal!' He was a black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks.... Allah sent down concerning him: 'To those who annoy the Prophet there is a painful doom." [9:61] "Gabriel came to Muhammad and said, 'If a black man comes to you, his heart is more gross than a donkey's.'" Ishaq:144 "A rock was put on a slave's chest.

When Abu Bakr complained, they said, 'You are the one who corrupted him, so save him from his plight.' I will do so,' said Bakr. 'I have a black slave, tougher and stronger than Bilal, who is a heathen. I will exchange him. The transaction was carried out." Qur'an 9:97 "The Arabs of the desert (Bedouins) are the worst in unbelief and hypocrisy, and most fitted to be in ignorance of the command which Allah hath sent down to His Messenger." (My tribe is better than your tribe.)

Bukhari: V9B89N256 "Allah's Apostle said,

'You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he is a black African slave whose head looks like a raisin.'" (Blacks are ugly compared with us Arabs.) Ishaq:450 "It is your folly to fight the Apostle, for Allah's army is bound to disgrace you. We brought them to the pit. Hell was their meeting place. We collected them there, black slaves, men of no descent." (Arab supremacist racism) Ishaq:374

"The black troops and slaves of the Meccans cried out and the Muslims replied, 'Allah destroy your sight, you impious rascals.'" (Allah's perfect religion...perfect in every way...did not outlaw slavery, but confirmed and institutionalized it. The caliphs also used slave armies. Slavery is "perfectly" Islamic...all the way to 80,000 slaves each in paradise.)

Bukhari:V4B52N137 "The Prophet said, 'Let the negro slave of Dinar perish. And if he is pierced with a thorn, let him not find anyone to take it out for him....(sadism) If he [the black slave] asks for anything it shall not be granted, and if he needs intercession [to get into paradise], his intercession will be denied.'"

Tabari II:11 "Shem, the son of Noah was the father of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks; Ham was the father of the Black Africans; and Japheth was the father of the Turks and of Gog and Magog who were cousins of the Turks. Noah prayed that the prophets and apostles would be descended from Shem and kings would be from Japheth. He prayed that the African's color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks." "The root of the beginning of slavery is prisoners of war; the bounties have become lawful to the nation of Mohammed."

Ibn Timiyya (Vol. 32, p. 89) "Slavery is justified because of the war itself; however, it is not permissible to enslave a free Muslim. It is lawful to kill the infidel or to enslave him, and it also makes it lawful to take his offspring into captivity."

Ibn Timiyya (Vol. 31, p. 380) So Islam not only allows for Muslim to capture slaves in wars, yet the sons and daughters of these slaves are also legal properties of the captor Muslim! "According to Islamic law of Sharia' concerning prisoners of war, the decision is left to the Muslim Imam. He has the choice either to kill them or to exchange them for Muslim captives, or to enslave them. This is in regard to men, but women and children are not permitted to be killed, but must be exchanged to redeem Muslim captives or enslaved - take them as slaves and maids."

Ibn Hashim: "Prophet's Biography" (Al-Road Al-Anf') (Part 4, p. 177) This question was delivered to Mufti Ibn Timiyya. "A man married a maid-slave who bore him a child. Would that child be free or would he be an owned slave?" Ibn Timiyya (Vol. 31, p. 376 - 377) Ibn Timiyya replied: "Her child whom she bore from him would be the property of her master according to all the Imams (heads of the four Islamic schools of law) because the child follows the status of his mother in freedom or slavery. If the child is not of the race of Arabs, then he is definitely an owned slave according to the scholars, but the scholars disputed his status among themselves if he was from the Arabs - whether he must be enslaved or not, because when A'isha (Mohammed's wife) had a maid-slave who was an Arab, Mohammed told A'isha, `Set this maid free because she is from the children of Ishmael.'"

Arab slaves had a higher status than African slaves. Let's talk about Mohammed The Slave Owner: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya "one of the greatest scholars of Islam" in "Zad al-Ma'ad" (his book) writes: "Mohammed had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves than he sold, especially after God empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. He once sold one black slave for two. His name was Jacob al-Mudbir. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold. He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out."

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in "Zad al-Ma'ad" (Part I, p. 160) As we see, Mohammed was not only a slave owner, but a frequent slave trader. The allegedly perfect actions of an allegedly perfect man. Mohammed's Male Slaves Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya relies on the prophet's biographies written by great ancient scholars; therefore, he is regarded by Muslims as an authority, a primary source and a leader among the students of Islam. "These were the names of Mohammed's male slaves: Yakan Abu Sharh, Aflah, Ubayd, Dhakwan, Tahman, Mirwan, Hunayn, Sanad, Fadala Yamamin, Anjasha, Al Hadi, Mad'am, Karkara, Abu Rafi', Thawban, Ab Kabsha, Salih, Rabah, Yara Nubyan, Fadila, Waqid, Mabur, Abu Waqid, Kasam, Abu 'Ayb, Abu Muwayhiba, Zayd Ibn Haritha, and also a black slave called Mahran, who was re-named (by Mohammed) to Safina (ship)."

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya: "Zad al-Ma'ad" (his book) (part 1, p. 114, 115, and 116) Mohammed's Female Salves Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in "Zad al-Ma'ad" (his book) continues: "These are the names of Mohammed's Female slaves (Maid Slaves or Concubines): Salma Um Rafi', Maymuna daughter of Abu Asib, Maymuna daughter of Sa'd, Khadra, Radwa, Razina, Um Damira, Rayhana, Mary the Coptic, in addition to two other maid-slaves, one of them given to him as a present by his cousin, Zaynab, and the other one captured in a war." Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya: "Zad al-Ma'ad" (his book) (Volume One, p. 116)

So in addition to 21 wives, by average Mohammed also owned 11 concubines and female sex slaves. It is clear for all, where Mohammed, the Quran and Allah stand on slavery, and Africans. Al-Kisa'i writes in his chapter on Noah: "It is said that one day Noah came to his son and said, 'My son, I have not slept since I boarded the ark, and now I desire to sleep my fill." So saying, he put his head on Shem's lap and went to sleep. Suddenly a gust of wind uncovered Noah's genitals; Ham laughed, but Shem jumped up and covered him. When Noah awoke he said, "What was that laughter?" Shem told him what had happened, and Noah grew angry with Ham. "Do you laugh at your father's genitals?" he said.

"May God change your complexion and may your face turn black!" And that very instant his face did turn black. Turning to Shem, he said, "You covered your father: may God shield you from harm in this world and have mercy upon you in the next! May He make prophets and nobles of your progeny! May He make bondswomen and slaves of Ham's progeny until the Day of Resurrection! May He make tyrants, kings and emperors of Japheth's progeny!' And God knows best."

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya "one of the greatest scholars of Islam" in "Zad al-Ma'ad" (his book) writes: "Mohammed had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves than he sold, especially after God empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. He once sold one black slave for two. His name was Jacob al-Mudbir. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold. He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out."

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in "Zad al-Ma'ad" (Part I, p. 160) Ahmad Ibn Hanbal reported a saying attributed to the Prophet which in effect states that God created the white race (dhurriyyah baydâ) from the right shoulder of Adam and created the black race (dhurriyyah sawdâ) from Adam's left shoulder. Those of Adam's right shoulder would enter Paradise and those of the left, Perdition. Other equally racist sayings have been attributed to the Prophet in the traditions. In 889 AH, Ibn Qutaybah wrote that "Ham, son of Noah, was light-skinned and handsome.

Then God Most High changed his complexion and that of his progeny [into black] because of the curse [invoked by] his father." Elsewhere, he states, "They are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country. The heat overcooks them in the womb, and curls their hair." As Maqdisi wrote, "There is no marriage among them [genealogy or nasab being an issue of incredible importance to Arab-Muslims in particular]; the child does not know his father, and they eat human flesh--but God knows best. As for the Zanji, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence."

Nasir al-Din Tusi (d.1274 CE), a famous Iranian philosopher, wrote: "If various kinds of men are taken and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the South-most countries, the Negro does not differ from the animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth, except for what God wishes. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent."Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406CE) added that blacks are "only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings."

The reason for their characteristic "levity, excitability, and great emotionalism," according to Ibn Khaldun, is "due to the expansion and diffusion of the animal spirit" in them. Sa'id al-Andalusi (d. 1070CE) wrote that blacks are "More like animals than men," and that "the rule of virtue and stability in judgment" is lacking amongst them, such noble qualities being replaced by "foolishness and ignorance."

Even such luminaries as Ibn Sina considered blacks to be "people who are by their very nature slaves." Ibn Khaldun (d.808/ 1406), the celebrated and true father of sociology, says of blacks in the southernmost portion of Africa that "they are not to be numbered among humans."6 The early Meccan jurist, Ta'us (d.106/724), reportedly indulged the habit of refusing to attend weddings between a black and white because he deemed this to be "unnatural," in accordance with his understanding of Qur'an 4:119, which speaks of the Satanic impulse to "alter God's creation (taghyir khalq Allah)."

Numerous early Maliki jurists (reportedly on the authority of Malik) held that while under normal circumstances a valid marriage contract required that the woman be represented by a male relative (wali), there were instances in which this requirement could be relaxed, such as where the woman hailed from lowly origins, was ugly, or was black. This, they argued, was because blackness was an affliction that automatically reduced a woman's social standing.

"Muhammad owned and sold black slaves. Slavery, in fact, persists to this day in some Muslim countries, where Arabs continue to enslave black Africans. […] Unlike the West, the Muslim world has yet to offer an apology for slavery. The institution is ingrained in the Qur'an. To admit that it is a mistake would be to admit the fallibility of the Qur'an and bring its divine origin into question.

Even today, Muslims act as if Islamic slavery was a favor done to the millions of unfortunate men, women and children who were forcibly uprooted from their native lands and sent to lives of sexual and menial servitude deep in the Islamic world." (-Kola Boof, the Sudanese-born writer sentenced in a fatwa to death by beheading for writings judged to be blasphemous, says she won't stop her campaign to expose the wrongs committed against black African Sudanese at the hands of their Arab Muslim compatriots. She is now living in hiding in the U.S.)

Moslems deny the clear meaning of such texts as the above: Islam cannot be separated from slavery and Arab supremacist racism. This death cult ("We love death.") destroys independent thought in its victims through fear of torture and violent death in order to impose mind control and information control over the world. Islam's attitude to slavery and racism is very hypocritical and impresses no one, not even Moslems. Six million black Africans are leaving Islam every year. There will be half as many black Moslems in 20 years.

JoJi, you could have found all these texts yourself. I hope you are capable of feeling ashamed after you have read them.

A look at Africa's history up to around 1500 ad

African Empires to 1500 CE

Satilite image of africa

East African young woman

East African

Ancient Zimbabwe Ruins


The Kingdom of Aksum

In the sixth century, the kingdom of Aksum (Axum) was doing what many elsewhere had been doing: pursuing trade and empire. Despite the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the 400s and the decline in world trade, Aksum's trade increased during that century. Its exports of ivory, glass crystal, brass and copper items, and perhaps slaves, among other things, had brought prosperity to the kingdom. Some people had become wealthy and cosmopolitan. Aksum's port city on the Red Sea, Adulis, bustled with activity. Its agriculture and cattle breeding flourished, and Aksum extended its rule to Nubia, across the Red Sea to Yemen, and it had extended its rule to the northern Ethiopian Highlands and along the coast to Cape Guardafui.

From Aksum's beginnings in the third century, Christianity there had spread. But at the peak of Christianity's success, Aksum began its decline. In the late 600s, Aksum's trade was diminished by the clash between Constantinople and the Sassanid Empire. The Sassanid Empire clashed with Constantinople over trade on the Red Sea and expanded into Yemen, driving Aksum out of Arabia. Then Islam united Arabia and began expanding. In the 700s, Muslim Arabs occupied the Dahlak Islands just off the coast of Adulis, which had been ruled by Aksum. The Arabs moved into the port city of Adulis, and Aksum's trade by sea ended.

Aksum was now cut off from much of the world. Greek- the language of trade - declined there. Minted coins became rare. Paganism revived and mixed with Christianity. And it has been surmised that the productivity of soil in the area was being diminished by over-exploitation and the cutting down of trees. Taking advantage of Aksum's weakness, the Bedja people, who had been living just north of Aksum, moved in. The people of Aksum, in turn, migrated into the Ethiopian Highlands, where they overran small farmers and settled at Amhara, among other nearby places. And with this migration a new Ethiopian civilization began.
West Africa

In West Africa, trade was giving rise to towns. There, on the fringes of the Sahara, arose a kingdom and empire that its rulers called Wagadu. The people of this kingdom were the Soninke - black people who spoke the language of Mande. Their king was called Ghana, and Ghana became the name by which this kingdom and empire became known - ancient Ghana rather than the modern state also called Ghana.

The kings of ancient Ghana were authoritarian. They inherited rule through their mother's side of the family - matrilineal rather than patrilineal as with kings in Europe at the time - and they claimed descent from an original ancestor whom they believed had first settled the land. Ghana's king was the leader of a religious cult that was served by devoted priests, and the king's subjects were obliged to view him as divine and as too exalted to communicate directly with them.

Ghana's kings had enhanced their power and enriched themselves by exploiting the trade passing through their territory. From the perspective of merchants they were not unlike highway bandits, forcing from tradesmen a tax on the gold they carried. But the tax was shrewder than robbery: a continual robbery would have ended the arrival of tradesmen carrying gold.

As Ghana's kings grew richer they conquered, forcing obedience from the kings of other tribes, from whom they exacted tribute. They extended their rule to the gold producing regions to their south, and they imposed a tax on gold production.

Ghana's major competitor was the Berber dominated city of Awdaghost to the northwest - a city with an ample supply of water, surrounded by herds of cattle and where millet, wheat, grapes, dates and figs were grown. The Berbers who dominated that city had wanted to make it the major point of passage for caravan trading across the western Sahara. But in 990 Ghana conquered the city, putting Ghana at the peak of its power.
Muslim Incursions

During Ghana's days of glory, Muslim tradesmen were coming south in caravans from places like Sijilmasa, Tunis and Tripoli. From Sijilmasa the caravans had been going through Taghaza to Awdaghost. From Tunis and Tripoli they had been going to Hausaland and the Lake Chad region. They had been bringing salt southward, and they also carried cloth, copper, steel, cowry shells, glass beads, dates and figs. And they brought slaves for sale.

The Muslims were literate while the Soninke and their kings were not. The Soninke left no record of the doings of their kings. It was through Muslim writers that modern historians would gather what information they could about Ghana.

The Muslims were offended to find people worshiping their king as a divinity rather than worshiping Allah. The Muslims complained of people believing their kings to be the source of life, sickness, health and death. The Muslim writer al-Bakre described a Ghana king as having an army of 200,000 men, 40,000 of whom were archers. And he described the presence in Ghana of small horses.

Among the Soninke, the town of Kumbi had become a commercial center alongside a town of round mud-brick huts. Muslim tradesmen living there built stone houses and a number of mosques. Some Muslims there served as ministers at the king's palace, and the town of Kumbi became an intellectual center for western Africa.

Muslim writers described one king of Ghana as renowned for his great wealth and the splendor of his court. The king held audience wearing fine fabrics and gold ornaments and bedecked his animals and retainers in gold. People in the north of Africa spoke of the king of Ghana as the richest monarch in the world.

But the power of the kings of Ghana was destined to end. Muslims in western Africa united behind the Almoravids - a Muslim dynasty that ruled in Morocco and Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. A religious movement among the Muslims known as the Sanhaja inspired the Almoravids and others to a jihad (holy war), and Muslim Berbers in the Sahara joined an effort toward conversions and war against Ghana. The leader of the Sanhaja movement and army in the Sahara area, Abu Bakr, captured Awdaghost in 1054. And in 1076, after many battles, he captured the city of Kumbi.

Almoravid domination of Ghana lasted only a few years, but the Almoravids held onto control of the desert trade that had been dominated by Ghana. Without control of the gold trade, the power of Ghana's kings declined further. They had, meanwhile, converted to Islam - while holding onto the religious rituals and myths that justified their rule to their subjects. Ghana's kings allowed Berber herdsmen to move into Soninke homelands, and these herdsmen began overgrazing Ghana's lands. Ghana's agricultural land became worn and less able to support as many people as before. Subject kings and tribes broke away from Ghana's rule. The king of the Sosso people, in neighboring Kaniaga, turned the tables on Ghana, and in 1203 the Sosso overran Ghana's capital city, Kumbi.
The Mandingo Empire

After their victory over Ghana, the Sosso expanded against the Mandingo (or Mande) - a people who spoke Mande and lived on fertile farmland around Wangara. The Sosso king, Sumaguru Kante, put to death all of the sons of the Mandingo ruler but one, Sundjata, who appeared to be an insignificant cripple. But Sundjata rallied the Mandingo. A guerrilla army built by Sundjata overwhelmed the Sosso and in 1235 killed their king, Sumaguru Kante. Sundjata annexed Ghana in 1240, and he took control of the gold trade routes. Merchants moved out of Kumbi to another commercial city farther north: Walata. And in small groups the Soninke people began emigrating from what had been their homeland.

The empire that Sundjata created, called Mali, controlled the salt trade from Taghaza and the copper trade across the Sahara. The gold trade was a source of wealth for Mali, and so too was trade in food: sorghum, millet and rice. And regarding trade, Mali dominated the town of Timbuktu, nine miles north of the Niger River, which had risen a century or two before as a point of trade for desert caravans.

After Sundjata's death in 1255 more conquests were made by his successors - Mansa Uli and then Sakura. Sakura had been a freed slave serving in the royal household and had seized power after the ruling family had become weakened by quarreling among themselves. It is surmised that Sakura was responsible for Mali's expansion to Tekrur in the west and to Gao in the east.

By the 1300s, Mali's kings had converted to Islam, which gave them advantages of good will in diplomacy and commerce. But, again, the pagan rituals and artifacts that were a part of the ideology and justification of rule were maintained. And the king's loyal subjects continued their traditional prostrations and covering themselves with dust to display their humility.

By the 1300s, Muslim Mandingo merchants were trading as far east as the city-states in Hausaland and beyond to Lake Chad. Islam was spreading with the trade of its merchants, and it appears that in the 1300s or 1400s the kings of Hausaland converted to Islam. But when a Mali king tried to pressure people in the gold mining region around Wangara to convert, a disruption in the production of gold was threatened, and the pressure to convert was withdrawn.

One well known Mali emperor who was Muslim was Mansa Musa, who ruled from 1312-1337. On record is Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca, his entourage described as including 500 slaves with gold staffs and 100 camels each with 300 pounds of gold. Mansa Mura is described as spending lavishly in the bazaars of Cairo and his spending is said to have increased the supply of gold to an extent that its price depreciated on the Cairo exchange. And, as usual, scholars were not immune from being influenced by wealth, Mansa Musa bringing a collection of them back with him from Mecca. Mali was literate, but only insofar as it employed Muslim scribes at the court of its kings. As in Europe, the common people of Mali were not yet expected to read and write.
The Songhai Rebellion and Mali's Decline

Mali reached its peak in fame and fortune in the 1300s. Then weak and incompetent kings inherited power. Late in the 1300s the old problem of dynastic succession brought quarrels that weakened the Mali kingship and gave others opportunity.

The others in this instance were the Songhai people, who lived along the middle of the Niger River and monopolized fishing and canoe transport there. Trade at Gao had brought Islam to the Songhai. Some Songhai royalty had converted to Islam, as had an unknown percentage of Songhai commoners. Mali control over the Songhai capital, Gao, had always been tentative, and the spirit of independence had not died among Songhai kings. A Songhai king led his people in rebellion. The rebellion disrupted Mali's trade on the Niger River. Mali's empire suffered as the Songhai sacked and occupied Timbuktu in 1433-34. In 1464 a Songhai king, Sonni 'Ali took power, and again Timbuktu was attacked, Sonni 'Ali capturing the city after a great loss of life. Five years later, Sonni 'Ali conquered the town of Jenne which had been thought impregnable. In his twenty-eight years of military campaigning, the victorious Songhai king won the title King of Kings. He dominated trade routes and the great grain producing region of the Niger river delta. Sonni 'Ali's competitor, the Mali empire, was deteriorating, and the Mali empire was to die in the 1600s.
Benin Exports Slaves

Benin was a city that dated back to the eleventh century - and no relation to the West African nation of Benin of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Benin was a large city for its time - a walled city several kilometers wide in a forested region inland from where the Niger River emptied into the Atlantic. In the mid-1400s the ruler of Benin, Ewuare, built up his military and began expanding. Captives taken in battle he traded to the Portuguese. Benin's empire reached about 190 miles (300 kilometers) in width by the early 1500s. Then it stopped expanding, and with this it had no more captives to sell as slaves, while selling slaves to the Portuguese was being taken up by others.
South Central Africa

Some scholars theorize that Bantu speaking people had moved south from around the Benue River in western Africa into south-central Africa. By the 900s, the pastoral and Hamitic speaking Tutsi were migrating southward, into east-central Africa, to Rwanda, near Ukerewe, in centuries to come to be known as Lake Victoria. There, it is said, the Tutsi introduced cattle raising, iron-working, new crops, kingship and caste divisions. The people whom the Tutsi overran were Bantu speakers - the Hutu - and the Tutsi made vassals of some of the Hutu, giving them cattle in exchange for services and loyalty.

Before the 1100s agriculture was practiced in much of south-central Africa, except in the interior of southern Angola, close to the Kalahari Desert. In south-central Africa, bananas were grown. This was tropical woodland and savana, where yams and sugar cane were grown. Beans, groundnuts, sorghum and other millets were cultivated in areas of savanna. And people augmented their food production by hunting, fishing, gathering grubs and by raising chickens, pigs and, in a few places, cattle. There was also pottery making, wickerwork and salt production. At Munza were iron mines. People in this region of Africa preferred using salt and metal, including copper, as currency for trading. By the 1300s, communities in Katanga were uniting into a kingdom of farmers, fishermen and crafts people, and they were trading in dry fish and products made of metal.

In some of the more remote parts of south-central Africa were villages that were still egalitarian, but in the more densely populated areas monarchs had arisen. These monarchs associated their rule with spirits, and their rule was supported by rituals and priests not totally removed from sorcery, divination, healing and fertility rites. And those supporting monarchical rule believed in the sacredness of lineage and royal blood of their monarchs. A monarch had underlings who advised him and went with him in his visits to the villages where he claimed rule. He had the keepers of emblems, a military chief and warriors to support his rule. He had slaves. And from his subjects the monarch received taxes with which to maintain his operation and to buy what he needed to maintain what he considered an appropriate lifestyle.

By the 1400s small empires thrived in south-central Africa. One was centered at Luba , built by iron-working farmers in a place well-suited for agricultural surpluses: with fertile land and sufficient rainfall. And there were woodlands, lakes and rivers for supplementary hunting and fishing. Another empire was centered at Lunda , its center about 400 kilometers southwest of the center of Luba's empire. It was less densely populated than Luba and not quite as agricultural, and where, it appears, people learned metal working from Luba. A third empire was centered in the kingdom of the Kongo, which dominated areas such as Loango, Kakong, Ngoi and Kisama.
Eastern Africa

Those who remained in Nubia after conquests by the Soba and by the Aksumites lived for long periods in peace and cooperation with Egypt, including returning to Egypt runaway slaves. They traded with Egypt, and some genetic diffusion with the Egyptians occurred. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, Nubia became more Arabic and more Muslim. And blacks from Nubia filled the ranks of Egypt's military.

Egypt went through rule by the Fatimids, followed by the turmoil of the Christian crusades and rule by Saladin and his Ayubbid dynasty. In 1172 Christian Nubia joined Europe's Crusaders by attacking the Ayubbids, and an Ayubbid army successfully counterattacked. In 1250 the Mamelukes replaced the Ayubbids, and the more aggressive Mamelukes warred frequently, their armies diminishing Nubian populations and taking many slaves from Nubia. Nubia split into two kingdoms, Makouria and Alwa. In the 1300s Makouria collapsed. Then in the 1400s, pastoralists from Egypt overran Alwa, and this was followed by civil war there. The Muslim invasions were accompanied by anti-Christian violence, and by 1500 little Christianity was left in what had been Nubia.
Christianity and Islam in Ethiopia

In the 700s and 800s, Arab traders looking for opportunity moved southward into coastal towns such as Mogadishu , Merca and Brava . They participated in the trade that traversed the Indian Ocean. Intermarriages with local blacks occurred. Arab tradesmen made themselves dominant in the region, and a few Arabs migrated farther south along the coast, the island of Pemba becoming part Muslim by the 900s.

Since the 900s, people in and around the Ethiopian highlands had been benefiting from trade with port cities such as Adulis on the Red Sea, Zeila and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, and Mogadishu, Merca and Brava on the shore of the Indian Ocean. Inland were Muslim and Christian communities, often neighboring each other. The Muslims had a strong sense of community and generally participated more in trade than the Christians - trade being largely in Muslim hands. The Christians were under various chiefdoms. Many were farmers, and a few were prosperous and had slaves.

In the area was also a Jewish community, the Falashas, who spoke Ge'ez and knew no Hebrew. They were unfamiliar with the Talmuds that had been produced in West Asia, but they claimed to be descended from the ten tribes banished from Israel.

Around the year 1270, at Amhara, in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, a new Christian dynasty, the Solomonids, was founded by Yikunno-Amlak, a conqueror who was described as a king of kings. His dynasty was believed to be a continuation of the Christian kingdom that had been in Aksum centuries before. Yikunno-Amlak was to be described as descended from Solomon's son, Manelik and the Queen of Sheba. His Christian subjects believed that they were God's chosen people, that they were maintaining purity in Christian belief, and that they were members of a second Israel.

The Solomonids addressed the problem of monarchical succession by putting Yikunno-Amlak's male descendants in a mountain retreat guarded by several hundred warriors. There Yikunno-Amlak's descendants remained in isolation, studied their faith, wrote poetry and composed sacred music as they awaited selection as heir to the throne.

It was under Yikunno-Amlak's grandson, Amda Seyon (1314-44), that the Solomonids gained military dominance in Ethiopia - Solomonid rule stretching from Adulis in the north to Bali in the south. The success of Christians against Muslims in Ethiopia did not sit well with the Muslims of Egypt. In Ethiopia, Amda-Seyon became concerned about retributions against his fellow Christians in Egypt. He demanded freedom of worship and other civil rights for Christians in Egypt, and he was prepared to fight Egypt and to ally himself with Christian Europe to end Muslim supremacy in West Asia, but no such war took place. The Mamelukes of Egypt remained interested primarily in events in the eastern Mediterranean. Christians in Egypt were becoming more outnumbered by Muslims, and this would continue into the 1400s, with the Muslim majority increasingly blaming Christians and other minorities for their troubles.

In the 1400s the power of the Solomonids in Ethiopia declined as various Muslim communities rebelled against it. Under the king Beide-Maryan (1468-78), the Solomonids suffered their first serious military defeat. And after 1478 the Solomonids were weakened by a conflict over succession - their attempt to solve the problem of succession apparently having failed. War between two Solomonid princes continued for several years. Muslims took advantage of Solomonid weakness, declared a holy war, and the Solomonid Empire collapsed. But a Solomonid king remained, a local king rather than a king of kings, the Solomonids would rise again, the last of them to be Haile Selassie in the 20th century.
Farther South

Below Mogadishu, Merca and Brava, Africa remained predominately black. There were hunters, fishermen, growers of sorghum, millet, rice, cucumbers, coconuts, sugar and bananas, and some were raising cattle. Some hunter-gatherers integrated with the cattle herders or agriculturists, into societies ruled by kings who believed that they were divine but also feared assassination if they became too oppressive.

Inland, about 180 miles from the eastern coast, on a plateau sparse in trees, was Zimbabwe, where Bantu speakers were living sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries - the Bantu speaking people having replaced the Sa (Bushmen) whom they had driven into the desert. The Bantu speakers had come in two waves, the last wave being a pastoral and agricultural people who built the stone structures that were to be known in the 20th century as the ruins of Zimbabwe, of an architecture unknown to any people elsewhere in the world - the oldest of which dated from the 700s.

Gold that was mined near Zimbabwe was taken to trading towns along the coast. So too were leopard skins, rhinoceros horn, ambergris, slaves and ivory - the ivory of the African elephant more in demand than the harder ivory of the Indian elephant. Joining this trade was iron taken from deposits around the towns of Mombasa and Malindi. Traders on the eastern coast of Africa, many of them blacks, profited from a rise in trade with Asia, and from India the Africans imported silks, cottons and glassware.

From the 1100s, Arabs began arriving in greater number in this coastal area. In the 1200s Mombasa became staunchly Muslim, and a Muslim dynasty was established at Kilwa. By the mid-1200s, Kilwa controlled the trade from Sofala to its south, Sofala being a point of departure for gold from inland.

Meanwhile, economic activity in Zimbabwe was predominantly cattle raising, while the wealth of its king grew from trade in gold. With his wealth the king was able to maintain a powerful army and to extend his authority across a variety of principalities - a hundred miles to the west and to the Indian Ocean in the east. During the 1300s and into the 1400s Zimbabwe was the richest state on Africa's eastern coast, but it was also declining: Zimbabwe was losing its timber. Its lands were overgrazed and farmlands were eroding. Zimbabwe declined as a power, and it was abandoned around 1450. Successor states arose: Torwa to its west, Changamire just to its north, and Mutapa on the Zambezi River. Mutapa's economy was also based on cattle and wealth from the gold trade, and Mutapa expanded locally by military conquest.

Toward the end of the 1400s, Kilwa's preeminence on the east coast was fading as dynastic struggles sapped its strength. Kilwa was losing the trade in gold from Sofala to Mutaba. And Mutaba's gold trading attracted the Portuguese, who had begun sailing along Africa's eastern coast. Trade between Africans and the Europeans was on the rise, in slaves as well as gold.