Were the Ancient Egyptians black? And… Were the Ancient Egyptians African? These are controversial questions. To answer the questions, we need to agree certain things first. We even need to agree “Who are Africans?” for instance, as odd as that may seem? In modern logic, Africans tend to be those who are either first, …
The Almoravid dynasty was a Berber Muslim dynasty, based around central Morocco. While it came from humble beginnings, established in the 11th century, eventually this empire would come to control large swaths of the western Maghreb (Northern Africa) and Al-Andalus (Southern Spain and Portugal). It was founded by Abdallah ibn Yasin, a charismatic leader, who …
Between 6,000 to 9,000 years ago, North Africa went through a humid phase in their climate. This was known as the African Humid period. A German explorer Heinrich Barth discovered paintings from that time depicting a very different African landscape, filled with elephants, antelopes, giraffe, and other wildlife, being pursued by hunters. The incongruence of …
The Kingdom of Altava was a Berber Kingdom, with the city of Altava as its capital. It existed from the year 578 AD to 708 AD. It was located in Northern Africa, in present-day Algeria. It was called a Berber kingdom as its majority population belonged to the Berber ethnicity, which is an ethnic group …
The Christian Kingdom of Altava (578 AD – 708 AD), Algeria Read More »
Myths about Africa: the hunter gatherers were not smart Travellers, anthropologists and historians from 1500 CE to 1800 CE that wrote about Africa sometimes recounted that some African people lived as hunter gatherers, when Europeans came across them. It must be remembered that not all Africans lived this way; based on the eye-witness accounts of …
Myths about Africa: the hunter gatherers were not smart (200 BCE – 1950 CE) Read More »
Democracy literally means Rule by the people and is seen as a relatively recent Western phenomenon. However, democracy has been practiced in parts of Africa for many millenia. One such example is the Oromo Gada system practiced by the Oromo people in Ethiopia. It is an ancient system that is democratic in nature. Oromo Nation …
African Pre-Colonial Democracies: The Gada System of the Oromo Read More »
The Kingdom of Mauretania came into existence around 225 BC, in the third century. Its inhabitants come from Berber ancestry, based on modern day ethnic taxonomies, and currently it belongs to the Western part of present day Algeria. Formation Mauretania was a kingdom of the Berber Mauri people, who would become renowned in history. It …
Many non-Africans think Africa is a country with most of the continent covered in grasslands. The stereotypical image is white Africans live North of the Sahara and black Africans live south of the Sahara. This image is mainly due to the television content, on-demand video content and film content that non-Africans get their information from. …
All through the First and Second World Wars, multitudes of African fighters battled with regards to European interests, while being consigned to frontier status and gaining almost no ground toward picking up freedom of their own. The Senegalese Tirailleurs are among the numerous indigenous people groups who served in the French armed forces amid the World Wars. By 1918, France had enrolled somewhere in the range of 192,000 Tirailleurs Sénégalais all through French West Africa and 134,000 of them got involved in combat roles – some in the European theatre.
The Fatimid caliphate was an Islamic kingdom that stretched over North Africa from 909 AD to 1171 AD. The caliphate promulgated the Seveners (or Ismāʿīlism) branch of Shia Islam and its geography spread from the Red Sea (to the East) to the Atlantic Ocean (to the West). It covered a total area of 4,100,000 square …
The Fatimid Caliphate: Contributions to Arts and Sciences Read More »
