Online course on Medieval Africa to begin next year
It will run from January 11 to February 26, 2021, and is aimed at K-12 educators.
Medieval African monastery reconstructed virtually
How did medieval monasteries in Africa look? A new project from the University of Warsaw has been able to digitally reconstruct a monastery from Nubia.
Trade Networks and Empires: African Art’s Many Golden Ages
We know we know about Nubia. We know about Egypt. We know about Carthage in the classical era. But the Berber, the Almohads, the Almoravids, and the kingdoms of Ghana and Songhai, and the great many other cultures that rose up and thrived on the western edges of the Sahara in the period of the medieval
‘Caravans of Gold’ app allows global audience to learn about medieval Africa
The groundbreaking touring exhibition “Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time” can now be accessed through a new free app.
The Gold Route to Timbuktu: Tracing Medieval Camel Caravan Networks from Morocco to Mali
Sam Nixon explores the development of the medieval-era camel caravan trade across the Sahara which gave rise to Timbuktu
Research reveals diverse diet in medieval Ethiopian communities
Early Muslim communities in Africa ate a cosmopolitan diet as the region became a trading centre for luxury goods, the discovery of thousands of medieval animal bones has shown.
The Berber Queen who defied the Caliphate: Al-Kahina and the Islamic Conquest of North Africa
Seventh-century North Africa would see the rise of a warrior queen named al-Kahina. Who was she and how was she able to wage a war against the Umayyad Caliphate?
The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John’s Discovery of Europe, 1306-1458
This article examines the dynamics of interaction between Italian elites and Ethiopian travelers throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
A Coptic Center in Medieval West Africa: Reframing Prester John and Early Global Trade
This paper explores the importance of new technologies in the art historical study of Medieval West Africa and how related methodologies both help us understand the important art and architectural landscape here in this period, and how Africa and the eastern Coptic Christian world helped to reshape Africa in this era.
The Lion Of Mali: The Hajj of Mansa Musa
A recounting of the fabled Hajj of Mali emperor Mansa Musa in 1324.
Medieval Africa at the Aga Khan Museum
The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada has unveiled a new exhibition: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa. Danièle took in the exhibition and spoke with Michael Chagnon, the Curator of the museum. They talk about medieval Africa, its connections with the wider world, and what you can see at the Aga Khan Museum.
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.