Medieval Africa spotlighted in new exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum
An often unheralded part of the medieval world will be the focus of a new exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time opens on September 21st, and will showcase dozens of fascinating pieces highlighting the African continent during the Middle Ages.
How to Read Old Nubian?
This question may be more difficult to answer than initially appears. How is it possible to revive knowledge of a language than hasn’t been spoken over centuries, and to write its grammar today?
Trans-Saharan gold trade and Byzantine coinage
This article suggests that minting at Carthage of the Byzantine gold coins known as globular solidi was related to the acquisition of metal through developing trans-Saharan contacts.
Straight from the Pot: Cuisine and Power in West Africa and in the Epic of Sunjata
The Sunjata epic describes the founding of the Mande Empire of the thirteenth century and bears the name of its founder.
Symposium to share latest discoveries about medieval Saharan Africa
The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will host a week-long gathering of six archaeologists from Mali, Morocco, the U.K. and the U.S., working at the cutting-edge of research on medieval Africa.
In Search of Medieval Africa: Sources, Methods, and Traps
Since my talk today is the first in a series I’m going to begin by placing the study of medieval Africa in the larger context of the writing of African history since the 1960s
How the borders within Africa changed in the Middle Ages
Here are six videos that track the rise and fall of kingdoms and states within Africa during the Middle Ages.
Ahead of His Time: Mansa Mūsā and the Poli-Poetics of Dynastic Memory
The actual history of West Africa however could not be more divergent from occidental myths in fact West Africa was a region in motion politically, socially, culturally and perpetually so during the Common Era, if not before.
Sumanguru Kante: The King with two Mothers
The recently translated account of The Epic of Sumanguru Kante offers some fascinating stories, including a description of how this West African ruler was born to two mothers.
Researchers find first evidence of glassmaking in sub-Saharan Africa
Scholars from Rice University, University College London and the Field Museum have found the first direct evidence that glass was produced in sub-Saharan Africa centuries before the arrival of Europeans.
Black Death spread to sub-Saharan Africa, researcher finds
After three years of work, Gérard Chouin is adamant that the medieval-era bubonic plague epidemic, the Black Death, spread to Sub-Saharan Africa and killed many people there as it did in Europe and the Mediterranean basin in the 14th century.
Animals came with medieval trade in Indian Ocean, researchers find
The earliest introduction of domestic chickens and black rats from Asia to the east coast of Africa came via maritime routes between the 7th and 8th centuries AD.
Enforcing contracts for Valencian commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the first half of the fifteenth century
This paper tries to explore how contract enforcement was handled in the cross-religious environment of late medieval Christian Valencia, Muslim Granada and North Africa, given the fact that each religious community has usually been assumed to apply their own set of rules through their own community courts.
The Globalised World of the Middle Ages: An archaeologist’s view
This talk outlines how archaeologists can reveal the globalised world, with examples from medieval West Africa and the Indian Ocean. What can objects tell us about how our ancestors engaged with their immediate world, and the world beyond?
How Much Do You Know About Ancient and Medieval Africa?
Test your knowledge and see if you can guess these sites of ancient and medieval Africa
Why Did Valarte Die? Death of a Danish Knight during Expedition to West Africa in mid-15th Century
‘The fame of their affair having spread through the different parts of the world, it arrived at the Court of the King of Denmark and Sweden and Norway; and as you see how noble men venture themselves with the desire to see and know such things’
The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of Thirteenth-Century North Africa
Could one be a good mercenary and a good Christian at the same time?
Emperor Zar’a Ya’eqob (1434-68) And The Christianization Of Medieval Ethiopia
One of the most important figures in Ethiopian Christianity was the 15th century Emperor Zar’a Ya’eqob.
Medieval Morocco comes to the Louvre
The Louvre opened its Medieval Morocco: An Empire from Africa to Spain exhibition today, which will feature over 300 artefacts covering the North African kingdom’s history during the later Middle Ages.
Western relation with Ethiopia during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
By Hailu Kifle-Egzi
Dead and famous, or unknown but alive? Heroism and common sense in medieval Scandinavian and African tradition
Although some scholars see heroism as a characteristic of the whole Germanic tradition, a careful study of Scandinavian literature reveals that this is not the case
Did medieval sailors reach Australia?
Archaeologists hope to unravel the mystery of how coins dating back to the 10th century were found off the shores of Australia.
Black in Camelot: Race & Ethnicity in Arthurian Legend
Examining 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
While 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.
