Africa - History

AFRICA - HISTORY The ancient history of Africa is shrouded in mystery and the earliest records of that continent and its people are far from trustworthy. See AFRICA, ROMAN EGYPT.

Phoenician and Greek Colonization.

Theword Africa was applied originally to the country in the immediate neighbour hood of Carthage, that part of the continent first known to the Romans, and it was subsequently extended with their increasing knowledge. The Arabs still confine the name Ifrikia to the terri tory of Tunisia. If ancient Egypt and Ethiopia (q.v.) be excluded, the story of Africa is largely a record of the doings of its Asiatic and European conquerors and colonizers, Abyssinia being the only State which throughout historic times has maintained its pendence. The countries bordering the Mediterranean were first exploited by the Phoenicians. Carthage, founded about Boo B.C., speedily grew into a city without rival in the Mediter ranean, and the Phoenicians, subduing the Berber tribes, who then, as now, formed the bulk of the population, became mas ters of all the habitable region of north Africa west of the Great Syrtis. Both Egyptians and Carthaginians made at tempts to reach the unknown parts of the continent by sea. The west coast was well known to the Phoenicians as far as Cape Nun, and c. 520 B.C. Hanno, a Cartha ginian, explored the coast at least as far as Sierra Leone.

Meantime the first European colonists had settled in Africa. Greeks founded the city of Cyrene (c. 631 B.c.) and exerted a powerful influence in Egypt. To Alexander the Great the city of Alexandria owes its foundation (332 B.c.), and under the Hellenistic dynasty of the Ptolemies attempts were made to penetrate southward, and in this way was obtained some knowledge of Abyssinia. Neither Cyrenaica nor Egypt was a serious rival to the Carthaginians, but all three Powers were eventually supplanted by the Romans after the fall of Carthage in 546 B.C. Under Rome the settled portions of the country were very prosperous, and a Latin strain was introduced into the land. Though Fezzan was occupied by them, the Romans elsewhere found the Sahara an impassable barrier. The utmost extent of geographical knowledge of the continent is shown in the writings of Ptolemy (2nd century A.D.), who guessed the existence of the great lake reservoirs of the Nile and had heard of the river Niger. (For the history of Africa under the empire, see ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER.) The Arab Conquest.—In the 7th century an Arab host, fol lowing the new faith of Mohammed, conquered the whole country from the Red sea to the Atlantic and entered Spain. Throughout north Africa Christianity well-nigh disappeared, save in Egypt (where the Coptic Church was suffered to exist), and Upper Nubia and Abyssinia, which were not subdued. In the 8th, 9th and loth centuries the Arabs in Africa were numerically weak ; but in the middle Niger regions fell under the influence of the Arabs and Berbers, but it was not until 1591 that Timbuktu—founded in the th century—became Muslim. That city had been reached in 1352 by the great Arab traveller Ibn Batuta, to whose journey to Mombasa and Quiloa (Kilwa) was due the first accurate know ledge of those flourishing Muslim cities on the east African sea board. Except along this sea-board, which was colonized directly from Asia, Arab progress southward was stopped by the broad belt of dense forest which, stretching almost across the continent somewhat south of o° N., barred their advance as effectually as had the Sahara that of their predecessors, and cut them off from knowledge of the Guinea coast and of all Africa beyond. One of the regions which came latest under Arab control was Nubia, where a Christian civilization and State existed up to the 14th century.

For a time the Muslim conquests in south Europe had virtually made of the Mediterranean an Arab lake, but in the iith century the Norman conquest of Sicily was followed by their descent on Tunisia and Tripoli. Somewhat later a busy trade with the African coast-lands, especially Egypt, was developed by the cities of north Italy. The Italians also, in the 54th and 15th centuries, traded with the countries of the Niger bend and were conversant with the routes across the Sahara. Some Europeans even traversed the desert, while one traveller—not a merchant—the Frenchman An selme d'Isalguier reached Gao on the Niger, in Meanwhile events were impending which were to have a profound effect on north-west Africa. By the end of the 15th century Spain had completely thrown off the Muslim yoke, but even while the Moors were still in Granada, Portugal was strong enough to carry the war into Africa. In 1415 a Portuguese force captured the citadel of Ceuta on the Moorish coast. From that time Portugal repeatedly interfered in the affairs of Morocco, while Spain acquired many ports in Algeria and Tunisia. Portugal, however, suffered a crush ing defeat in 1578 at al Kasr al Kebir, the Moors being led by Abd el Malek I. of the Sherifan dynasty. By that time the Span iards had lost almost all their African possessions. The Barbary States degenerated into mere communities of pirates, and under Turkish influence civilization and commerce declined. (X.)