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Africa Archive
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Did medieval sailors reach Australia?
Posted on May 29, 2013 | No CommentsArchaeologists hope to unravel the mystery of how coins dating back to the 10th century were found off the shores of Australia. -
Black in Camelot (Africans in Arthurian Legend)
Posted on May 16, 2013 | No CommentsExamining depictions of Africans in medieval and contemporary Arthurian literature, television and film. -
Kongo Ambassadors, Papal Politics, and Italian Images of Black Africans in the Early 1600s
Posted on April 17, 2013 | No CommentsWhile the political and economic power of Italian states was declining in the Seventeenth Century, Italy’s cultural authority remained influential, especially in the visual arts and, of course, religion, even though Europe had been split into faith-based fragments by the Protestant Reformation after 1517. -
The European Reconquest of North Africa
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe chief structural features of Africa Minor are simple. The territory consists of a long strip of land bounded on the north by the Mediterranean,on the south by the Sahara, on the east by the Gulf of Tripoli and the Libyan Desert, on the west by the Atlantic. -
The Death Toll of Justinian’s Plague and Its Effects on the Byzantine Empire
Posted on April 4, 2013 | No CommentsIn 541 a plague arrived in Egypt and rapidly began to spread. The following account of the beginning of the plague, while clearly an exaggeration still shows the impact of the disease. -
Archeological and Historical Approaches to Complex Societies: The Islamic States of Medieval Morocco
Posted on March 20, 2013 | No CommentsWe postulate that during the Medieval period two widely different sociopolitical contexts existed, giving rise to diverse urban patterns. Most importantly, we argue that the second of these patterns represents a widespread situation that is inadequately treated in the literature. -
The Cone of Africa . . . Took Shape in Lisbon
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsThe year that Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic and Isabel and Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Spain, an unheralded event took place. A cartographer in Lisbon, Portugal, drew an amazing map detailing the coasts of Europe, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and western Africa. -
The Trebuchet
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time -
Rebaptism as a Ritual of Cultural Integration in Vandal Africa
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsMidway through the first book of his History of the Vandal Persecution, Victor of Vita narrates the story of a Vandal master who deemed it appropriate to allow his two Roman slaves, Martinianus and Maxima, to marry. -
Conversion and Empire: Byzantine Missionaries, Foreign Rulers, and Christian Narratives (ca. 300-900)
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsFor a broader modern audience today, if taken somewhat journalistically, Pusicius’ story is an example that cuts along cultural and religious lines that presumably originate in ancient, political divisions and confirm a “clash of civilizations” thesis. -
Avorio d’ogni ragione: the supply of elephant ivory to northern Europe in the Gothic era
Posted on December 1, 2012 | No CommentsWhy, after a scarcity of elephant ivory in northern Europe during the twelfth century, was there sudden access to such large tusks around 1240? -
Light through the dark ages: The Arabist contribution to Western ophthalmology
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsBecause blindness was a major cause of morbidity in the medieval Arab world, as is the case in the developing world today, Arabist physicians developed much exposure to ophthalmological conditions, and nearly every major medical work written at the time had a chapter on diseases of the eye. -
Mandeville’s Intolerance: The Contest for Souls and Sacred Sites in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Posted on October 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhile Chaucer‟s knight has traveled to and fought in Spain, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia Minor, Sir John claims to have visited the entire known world from Constantinople and the Holy Land to the farthest reaches of Asia. -
Singers, advisers, and servants: role of eunuchs from a historical context
Posted on September 24, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to the Book of Matthew, Jesus said that there were eunuchs made of men, who had made them- selves by their fathers to be that way for heaven’s sake, and if they have received such a procedure, then let them keep it. Jesus referred to castration as an infallible way to achieve celibacy. And records of Christian history indicate that many Christian religious figures were castrated. -
The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBy the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities. -
Ancient DNA analysis indicates the first English lions originated from North Africa
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough the Royal Menagerie and its animals are known from documentary records, few physical re- mains survive (O’Regan et al., 2005). Amongst the rare exceptions are two lion skulls that were recovered from the moat of the Tower of London during excava- tions in 1936-1937. These skulls were recently radio- carbon-dated to AD1280-1385 and AD1420-1480. -
The Black in Medieval Science: What Significance?
Posted on July 27, 2012 | No CommentsHow, for example, did an artist produce the staggeringly realistic portrait of a negro warrior in the mid 13th century on the cathedral at Magdeburg, and what ideas lay behind this? -
ARABIC CONFLUENCE FROM CONSTANTINE TO HERACLIUS: The Preparation for a 7th Century Religio-Racial Explosion
Posted on July 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper's argument is purposeless without the reader knowing the seventh century events of the so-called explosion of Islam, and the interpretation of which I find so contentious. Thus a brief description of the episode is necessary. -
A Goliard Witness: The De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella in the Methamorphosis Golye Episcopi
Posted on July 13, 2012 | No CommentsAnother twelfth-century poem in the same goliardic metre as the two lines just cited, the Methamorphosis go lye episcopi, goes far beyond this passing mention of Martianus and makes a most unexpected use of the De Nuptiis. -
The Quest for Prester John
Posted on June 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe legend of Prester John is one of the most fascinating and powerful myths of all time. To say that Medieval Europeans knew little about the world outside of their native continent is truly an understatement. It was an age in which much was assumed rather than ascertained about the exotic lands beyond. -
The African Paradise of Cardinal Carvajal: New Light on the “Kunstmann II Map,” 1502-1506
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsThe Kunstmann II map (99 x 110.5 cm) records the discoveries made in the New World by Miguel Corte-Real and Amerigo Vespucci in 1501–1502. -
Two French Views of Monstrous Peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough the existence of these peoples was increasingly put into question during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they had not yet vanished from the face of the earth. -
Black Africans’ Religious and Cultural Assimilation to, or Appropriation of, Catholicism in Italy, 1470-1520
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsCurrent scholarship emphasizes that the old model of conversion—of, say, Christianity being actively forced onto passive and subordinate peoples—is no longer satisfactory, and instead prefers to frame the issue around concepts of cultural interaction or cultural transmission, and selective appropriation of the host religion. -
Beleaguered Muslim fortresses and Ethiopian imperial expansion from the 13th to the 16th century
Posted on May 23, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis challenges this common conception by demonstrating that throughout Ethiopia's medieval period (1270-1555), the time of greatest conflict between the Ethiopian Empire and its Muslim neighbors, Muslim forces did not besiege the Ethiopian Empire. -
Paradise in Africa: The History of a Geographical Myth from its Origins in Medieval Thought to its Gradual Demise in Early Modern Europe
Posted on May 19, 2012 | No CommentsWhere was Paradise to be found? In this regard, a considerable number of different locations have been proposed.