(TGT) African Civilizations and the Arrival of Islam, continued Lesson
African Civilizations and the Arrival of Islam, continued Lesson
Political and Social Life in the Sudanic States
Larger states were ruled by a dominant group. Islam provided a universal faith and a fixed law that served common interests. Indigenous political and social patterns persisted in the unified states. Rulers reinforced authority through Muslim officials and ideology, but existing traditions continued to be vital, since many of their subjects were not Muslims. The fusion of traditions shows in the status of women. Many Sudanic societies were matrilineal and did not seclude women. Slavery and a slave trade to the Islamic world lasting more than 700 years had a major effect on women and children. All individuals might become slaves, but the demand for concubines and eunuchs increased demand for women and children.
Peoples of the Forest and Plains
While colonies in North America were comprised of Spanish, French, and British powers, it was the background of British influence which became the foundation for the United States.
Artists and Kings: Yoruba and Benin
In the central Nigerian forests, the Nok culture flourished between 500 B.C.E. and 200 C.E. Its members developed a realistic art style; they practiced agriculture and used iron tools. After Nok disappeared, there is a long hiatus before the reappearance of regional artistic traditions after 1000 C.E. Non–Bantu-speaking peoples, the Yoruba, were highly urbanized agriculturists organized into small city-states, each controlling a radius of about 50 miles. The city-states were under the authority of regional divine kings presiding over elaborate courts. The kings' power was limited by other societal forces. At Oyo, for example, local lineages controlled provinces while paying tribute to the ruler. In the capital, a council of state and a secret society advised the ruler. Ile-Ife was the holiest Yoruba city; its subjects after 1200 created terra-cotta and bronze portrait heads that rank among the greatest achievements of African art. Similar organizational patterns are found among the Edo peoples to the east. They formed the city-state of Benin in the fourteenth century under the ruler Ewuare. They ruled from the Niger River to the coast near Lagos. Benin's artists are renowned for their work in ivory and cast bronze.
Central African Kingdoms
By the thirteenth century C.E., Bantu speakers were approaching the southern tip of Africa. By around 1000, they were forming states where kinship patterns were replaced by political authority based on kingship. The Luba peoples, in Katanga, created a form of divine kingship in which the ruler had powers ensuring the fertility of people and crops. A hereditary bureaucracy formed to administer the state, thus allowing the integrating of many people into one political unit.
The Kingdoms of the Kongo and Mwene Mutapa
The kingdom of the Kongo flourished along the lower Congo River by the late fifteenth century. It was an agricultural society whose people were skilled in weaving, pottery making, blacksmithing, and carving. There was a sharp gender division of labor: women dominated crop cultivation and domestic tasks; men cleared the forest, hunted, and traded. The population resided in small, family-based villages; the area around the capital, Mbanza Kongo, by the sixteenth century included up to 100,000 people. A hereditary central kingship ruled over local nonhereditary chiefs. The Kongo was a federation of states grouped into eight major provinces. To the east, in central Africa, Shona-speaking peoples in the region between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers by the ninth century began building royal stone courts (zimbabwe). The largest, Great Zimbabwe, was the center of a state flourishing by the eleventh century. Massive stone buildings and walls were constructed. Its ruler, the Mwene Mutapa, controlled a large territory reaching to the Indian Ocean. Zimbabwe dominated gold sources and trade with coastal ports of the Indian Ocean network. Internal divisions split Zimbabwe during the sixteenth century.
Global Connections: Internal Development and External Contacts
The spread of Islam had brought large areas of Africa into the global community. The most pronounced contacts south of the Sahara were in the Sudanic states and East Africa where a fusion of Islamic and African cultures created an important synthesis. Most of Africa evolved in regions free of Islamic contact. In Benin, the Yoruba states, Great Zimbabwe, and the Kongo, Africans developed their own concepts of kingship and the state. Many other Africans organized their lives in stateless societies .
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