Black Experience | Page 6

until the sixteenth century, after almost a thousand years of
pressure, did Islam gain supremacy in western Sudan. Ethiopia, shortly
after defeating Kush, also became Christianized, and survived as a

African only Christian island in a Moslem sea. In fact, Ethiopia has
remained an independent, self-governing state until the present, with
the brief exception of the Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941.
The development of man and civilization in Africa was not limited
merely to the area in the Northeast. There is much evidence of cultural
contact between people in all parts of the continent. When the Sahara
began to dry out about 2000 B.C., the population was pushed out from
there in all directions, thereby forcing the spread of both people and
cultures. Even then, the Sahara did not become a block to
communication as has been thought. There is clear evidence that trade
routes continued to be used even after the Sahara became a desert.
Scholars also have found that, shortly after the Iron Age reached North
Africa, iron tools began to appear throughout the entire continent, and,
within few centuries, iron production was being carried on at a number
of different locations. At about the same time, sailors from the far East
brought the yam and the banana to the shores of Africa. These fruits
spread rapidly from the east coast across most of the continent,
becoming basic staples in the African diet. New tools and new crops
rapidly expanded the food supply and thereby provided a better way of
life.
West African Empires
Although West Africa had been inhabited since the earliest times, about
two thousand years ago several events occurred which injected new
vigor into the area. The first event had been thedrying of the Sahara,
which had driven new immigrants into West Africa and, from the
admixture of these new people with the previous inhabitants, a new
vitality developed. Then, the introduction of the yam and the banana, as
previously noted, significantly increased the food supply. Finally, the
developments of iron tools and of iron work further increased the food
supply and also provided better weapons. This permitted increased
military power and political expansion. These were the necessary
ingredients that led to the building of three large and powerful empires:
Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Commerce was another factor which
contributed to their development. Governmental control of a thriving
trade in both gold and salt provided the wealth and power necessary for
establishing these large empires.
Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history is

severely limited by the lack of written records from that period. In
recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing amounts
of material which contribute to our knowledge of early Africa. West
Africans tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as
wood, mud, and grass. The area does have a rich oral tradition,
including special groups of trained men dedicated to its development
and maintenance. As oral history is always open to modification and
embellishment, with no means available for checking the original
version, this material must be used cautiously. Nevertheless, when
employed in conjunction with other sources, it does provide a rich
source of information.
The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed
close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that, West Africans
began using Arabic themselves to record their own history. In the
middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with
West Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources. While
most of these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their
records are still valuable to the student of history.
Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political
and social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A,D. An
Arabic map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other
contemporary Arabic sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold. From
this time on, a thriving trade developed between Ghana and the world
of Islam, including the beginnings of a slave trade. However, this early
slave trade was a two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a contemporary Arab writer,
was impressed with the display of power and affluence of the Ghanaian
king. According to him, the king had an army of two hundred thousand
warriors which included about forty thousand men with bows and
arrows. (Modern scholars know that the real power of the Ghanaian
army was due not to its large numbers as much as to its iron- pointed
spears.) Al- Bakri also described an official audience at the royal palace
in which the king, the Ghana, was surrounded by lavish trappings of
gold and silver and was attended by many pages, servants, large
numbers of faithful officials, provincial rulers, and mayors of cities. On
such occasions, the king heard the grievances of