There are several fallacies lives of Africans before the advent of European colonialism and American. According to some historians, the Africans are nothing more than savages whose only contribution to the world economy and took slaves. This is not true. In ancient Africa just as interesting, complex and difficult than any other ancient civilization, but almost without exception; it is only in Egypt, which receives consideration at all when writing history. Because of this mentality, European and American Historians have long held that Africa and its people were not in their culture and history, except what is given to them by external factors.
However, long before the colonization of Europeans, Africans and monuments built in the kingdom that rivaled any European monarchy. However, because of racial prejudice, many black African history has been distorted and ignored to justification for the enslavement of millions of financial results. This document will be discussed at the ancient African kingdoms of Meroe, Ghana and Swahili and a rich contribution to the pages of history.
kingdom of Meroe began around 1000 BC, when the Nubian rulers built a politically independent state known to the Egyptians as Kush. Finally, the rulers of Kush Nubia and move to establish the kingdom of Meroe (Davis & Gates, p. 30). These rulers of Meroe capital founded about 300 BC, the kingdom and held there for more than nine centuries.
However, some historians feel that because Meroitic culture so closely imitated the Egyptian culture, the culture of Meroitës did not bring your own to the pages of history. This is not true of the archaeological evidence discovered in North Sudan, which is over 2,500 years old, was an ancient civilization along the Nile River and the upper and lower Nubia (modern Sudan) that is older than the civilization of the North (Egypt). Furthermore, there is evidence to demonstrate that advanced stage of the known ancient Egyptian civilization is an even older civilization in the Sudan (Davis & Gates, p. 35).
This evidence shows that Meroe was culture and history, which is even older than the Egyptians. If anything, Egypt was a copy of Meroe. This kingdom had its own language. Most historians, however, due to the language and alphabet system of the Egyptians. It was a common belief that the ancient black Africans could not, and there was no written language. However, separate native alphabet subtitles appear already in the 2nd century B.C Meroe, which shows that these assumptions are not true (Davis & Gates, p. 110).
Meroitic The written language used in the 5th century, when the old Nubian finally in place. The widespread use of Meroitic monuments indicates that a significant percentage of the population was able to read. However, their meaning inscriptions remain unknown, as this is the hieroglyphic script from even untranslatable.
Another little know fact about the Meroitës that there was an unusually high number of
queens, who chose not to male attention. A queen, queen Amanirenus led the army against the Roman invasion of 24 BC. He won the first battle, and despite losing the second battle, the Romans had enough, they agreed to a truce and went back to Rome. Rome never conquered Meroe, and that the kingdom is still good even 200 years. Actually "queendom" would be more accurate, since the power level measuring device generally is a warrior queen, called "kandake", which means "queen mother", or simply "gore" ie "ruler" (Fairservis. P.60).
As for the economy, Meroe was famous for huge iron production, the first large-scale industry of its kind in the Nile Valley and an extensive trade in Greece and Rome. As the iron production was the army the right to use weapons in combat, and the farmers had the right to work in their fields axes and hoes. Meroitic traders exported ivory, leopard skins, ostrich feathers, ebony, gold and soon gained direct access to the growing trade in the Red Sea (Shillington, p. 40).
kingdom of Meroe finally began to decline. The reasons for the decline of the Meroitic Kingdom is still largely unknown. Because of the Meroitic kingdom faced formidable competition for the expansion Axum, a powerful Abyssinian modern state of Ethiopia to the east. About AD 350, an Axumite army captured and destroyed Meroe city, ending the kingdom of independent existence.
The West African empires of Ghana to another kingdom, which history loses attributed to external factors. Although the Berbers of Ghana was originally founded in the fifth century built on the southern edge of the Berber population. Over time, the land was dominated Soninke, a Mande-speaking people who lived in the region bordering the Sahara (McKissack & McKissack, p. 112). They were built in the capital, Kumba Saleh, right on the edge of the Sahara and the city soon became the center of a trans-Saharan trade routes.
Ghana accumulated great wealth, because the trans-Saharan trade routes. This property has allowed Ghana to conquer local chieftaincies and demand tribute from these subordinate states. This tribute, however, paled beside the wealth generated by trading goods passed West Africa, East and Egypt in the Middle East. This trade mainly gold, salt, and copper (Koslow, p. 70) concerned.
a hereditary king called on the Ghana Ghana prevailed. The kingdom was matrilineal (as with all monarchies Sahelian follow); brother of the king, the crown prince if (p 115 McKissack & McKissack.). In addition to military power, the king appears to be the supreme judge of the kingdom.
Although North Africa was dominated by Islam as the eighth century, the kingdom of Ghana has never converted (McKissack & McKissack, p. 120). However, the court allowed the Ghanaian Muslims to settle in cities, and even encouraged Muslim professionals to help manage the royal court and advise the government on legal matters.
The original founders of Ghana turned out to be a death. Unlike the Ghanaians, Berbers, now called themselves Almoravids, busily converting to Islam, and in 1075 was declared a holy war against the jihad or country of Ghana. Little is known about what exactly happened, but nevertheless, Ghana eliminated after the commercial or military power ultimately Almoravid 1100 Revolution ended the reign of Ghana.
Europeans and Arabs alike have been depicted in the history of the kingdom of Swahili as one of the Muslim-Arab domination, the African people and the rulers play a passive role in the process. However, recent archaeological evidence suggests that he had found the descendants of the Bantu Swahili speaking people who settled on the East African coast in the first millennium (Horton & Middleton, p. 70). While both the Arabs and the Persians were married in Swahili, any of these cultures had nothing to do with the establishment of Swahili civilization. These ancient cultures were absorbed into Bantu Africans, founded by the already thriving African civilization.
The east coast of Africa changed radically around the close of the first millennium. During this time, the Bantu-speaking Africans migrated to the interior and along the coast of Kenya settled in South Africa. Then the merchants and traders in the Muslim world has recognized the strategic importance of the eastern coast of Africa trade and settled there (Horton & Middleton, p. 72). Bantu marriage of men and women created in the Middle East and glued rich Swahili culture, fusing religious, rural architecture, textile, food and purchasing power. 900 A. D, the east coast of Africa saw an influx of Shirazi Arabs from the Persian Gulf and even small settlements of Indians. The Arabs in the region of al-Zanjan, "Blacks" and the coastal areas has been slow, controlled by Muslim traders from Arabia and Persia (Horton & Middleton, p. 75). In the 1300s, the major east African ports Mombaza north of Sofala in the south has become a thoroughly Islamic cities and cultural centers.
The language grew out of this civilization is one of the most common and widespread in the lingua franca: the lingua franca is a secondary language combinations of two or more languages. Swahili or Kiswahili is derived from the Arabic word sawahil, which means "shore." Swahili belongs to the northeast coast of Sabaki subgroup of the Bantu languages. This is closely related to MIJIN Kenda language groups, Pokomo and Ngazija (Horton & Middleton, page 110). At least a thousand years of intense and varied interaction with the Middle East, where Swahili-rich infusion of loanwords wide range of languages. Even with the considerable number of Arabic loanwords present in Swahili, a Bantu language actually.
southern extension of the Swahili civilization until they reached Kilwa Zanzibar (from the Arabic word al-Zan). Later inhabitants carved out a small area further south around Sofala in Zimbabwe (Horton & Middleton, p. 140). While the northern cities remained localized and only a slight effect on African culture inland from the coast, the Sofalans actively pursued its domestic and spread of Islam and the Islamic culture deep in African territory (Horton & Middleton, p. 150).
The main Swahili city states were Mogadishu, Barawa, Mombasa (Kenya), Gedi, Pate, Malindi, Zanzibar, Kilwa and Sofala south (Horton & Middleton, p. 155). It was Kilwa is the most famous of these city-states and particularly rich because they controlled the southern port of Sofala, which was available in the gold produced in the interior (almost "Great Zimbabwe"), and the location of the farthest point south when the ships hope India, to sail and return a single monsoon .
These countries are very cosmopolitan city time, and they are all politically independent. In fact, they were as competitive companies or firms, each vying for the lion's share of African trade. The main export was ivory, sandalwood, ebony and gold. India textiles and porcelain from China also brought the Arab traders (Horton & Middleton, p. 175). While the Arabs and the Persians played a role in the growth of Swahili civilization, the nobility was of African descent, and ran the city-states (Horton & Middleton p.195). However, the nobility were Muslims, and it was the Muslims who controlled the wealth. Below the nobility were the commoners and the resident foreigners, who make up the bulk of the citizens.
However, Islam itself is penetrated from the inside, very few hunters, herders and farmers. One of the areas on the coast, close to the commercial cities relatively untouched (Horton & Middleton p.198). In cities, mud and thatch houses around the public non-Muslim peoples of the stone and coral buildings of the Muslim elite, and it seems that most followers of Islam rich, not poor.
Still, the Swahili culture emerged that fused African and Islamic elements. Family tradition, for example, can be traced both the maternal line, which controlled properties, is an African practice, and the paternal line, which in Muslim tradition. Swahili culture was a strong Islamic influence but has retained many of African descent.
These city-states began to decline in the sixteenth century; With the advent of Portuguese trade and disturbed the old trade routes made the Swahili commercial centers obsolete. The Portuguese wanted native Africans to have no share in African trade and the east coast busily set about conquering the Islamic city-states (Horton & Middleton, p.225). In the late seventeenth century, the imam (religious leader) of Oman led the Portuguese coast, and gradually formed the power to shore.
The existence of these ancient black African civilizations proves once and for all that Africa was the culture and history of its own other than the Egyptian to centuries before the advent of external factors. In the kingdom of Meroe ruled centuries before the Egyptians, and deserves its rightful place as one of the premier ancient civilizations of the world. In the kingdom of Ghana it has proved that Africans were able to manage their own affairs without the intervention of Europeans. It was the Swahili language and centuries before Arabs and others "discovered" them.
These were the civilizations before their own culture, language and commercial release of the Europeans and the Muslims, the world does not know anything about them and most of Africa. This is a major crime against the study of history, and hopefully, the more archeological studies and writings, a rich and interesting history of these magnificent civilizations will say, and treasured for future generations.