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World History 1

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	In the seventh century CE, the region of the <OpenstaxTerm>Middle Niger</OpenstaxTerm> was home to a number of different peoples including the <OpenstaxTerm>Gabibi</OpenstaxTerm>, <OpenstaxTerm>Gow</OpenstaxTerm>, and <OpenstaxTerm>Sorko</OpenstaxTerm>, all of whom had migrated to the area to live off its abundant resources. Each group exploited the region for different reasons: the Gabibi were settled agriculturalists who farmed the fertile banks along the Niger; the Gow hunted the river’s animals, including crocodile; the Sorko were warrior fishers and hunters of hippopotamus. The different purposes for which these peoples used the river and its resources ensured a relative balance between themselves and their environment.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Of these groups, the Sorko were best positioned to exercise control over the area. The canoes from which they hunted and fished gave them mastery of the river, which they used as a trading route to exchange food along this section of the Niger. They soon extended their territory upstream toward the Niger bend, establishing villages along the banks to help facilitate trade. From these trading post villages, the Sorko dominated the nearby communities of Gabibi farmers, raiding their granaries and pillaging their settlements. The dynamic in the region changed sometime in the ninth century, with the arrival of a nomadic horse-riding people who spoke <OpenstaxTerm>Songhai</OpenstaxTerm>, a dialect of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Gradually, the Sorko, Gabibi, and Gow peoples adopted the language of their conquerors, and collectively their cultures formed the basis of Songhai identity and the state of Songhai, with its capital at <OpenstaxTerm>Kukiya</OpenstaxTerm>. As the emerging Songhai state coalesced, its people were in steady contact with Muslim traders at <OpenstaxTerm>Gao</OpenstaxTerm> in the north.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	At the eastern edge of the Niger bend, an area of historical significance to both the Ghana and Mali Empires, the trading city of Gao was founded in the seventh century by African and Egyptian merchants attracted by the Bambuk gold trade in Ghana. It soon became an important link in the trans-Saharan trade of gold, copper, enslaved captives, and salt in the eastern and central regions of the Sahara. The earliest mention of Gao dates from the ninth century; by the 870s, it had already grown into a regional power.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	By the tenth century, Arab travelers had noted Gao’s strategic location as a hub in the trans-Saharan trade route between <OpenstaxTerm>Egypt</OpenstaxTerm> and ancient <OpenstaxTerm>Ghana</OpenstaxTerm>. As Gao grew, so too did its needs. Songhai farmers and fishers provided the city’s merchants with food in exchange for salt, cloth, and other products from North Africa. As a result of their contacts with Muslim traders, the rulers of Songhai were exposed to <OpenstaxTerm>Islam</OpenstaxTerm> and converted in the eleventh century, making theirs one of the first West African states to do so. This conversion marks the beginning of the Gao imperial period.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The earliest dynasty of kings of the Songhai state was the <OpenstaxTerm>Za</OpenstaxTerm> dynasty, which tradition and later historical record suggest ruled the kingdom during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Za are an obscure dynasty; what evidence exists comes to us in the form of myths and legends, the seventeenth-century <OpenstaxEm>History of the Sudan</OpenstaxEm>, the oral tradition of the Songhai written down by Abd <OpenstaxTerm>al-Sadi</OpenstaxTerm>, and some tombstone inscriptions dating to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. According to al-Sadi’s history, the mythical founder of the dynasty was <OpenstaxTerm>Za Alayaman</OpenstaxTerm>, who settled in Kukiya sometime before the eleventh century. Za Alayaman and his immediate successors bore the title <OpenstaxEm>malik</OpenstaxEm> or “king.” Evidence suggests that later rulers, possibly a second dynasty, bore the title <OpenstaxEm>zuwa</OpenstaxEm>, hence the name <OpenstaxTerm>Zuwa</OpenstaxTerm> dynasty.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Tradition holds that the first fourteen rulers of the Songhai state, which was initially centered on Kukiya, were <OpenstaxEm>jahiliyyah</OpenstaxEm> (literally “in ignorance [of Islam]”). Sometime in the 1000s, the dynasty Islamized, possibly under Za Kusay, whom the <OpenstaxEm>History of the Sudan</OpenstaxEm> remembers as the first Muslim ruler of Songhai. This timeline is contested, however. Modern scholars believe the <OpenstaxTerm>Islamization</OpenstaxTerm> of the Songhai rulers occurred toward the end of the eleventh century with the arrival of the Sanhaja Almoravids from Morocco. In any event, it was sometime during this period that the political focus of the kingdom shifted from Kukiya to Gao. Due in large part to its position as a terminus in the caravan route connecting the northern Sahara, Gao became the center of a significant Islamized kingdom (<a href="#fig-00001">Figure 15.17</a>).
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00001" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/745df427b2fbab07c8496d6a61121619dfe7939b" alt="A map of Africa is shown with land highlighted beige and water highlighted blue. The Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar are shown in the north along with the Suez Canal. The Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea show in the west, and the Indian Ocean and the Mozambique Channel are located in the southeast. The Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden are shown in the east. The following waters are labelled in Africa, from north to south: Nile R., Lake Nasser, Lake Tana, Blue Nile R., White Nile R., Lake Chad, Senegal R., Benue R., Lake Turkana, Congo R., Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Malawi, Zambezi R., Victoria Falls, Cubango R., Limpapo R., and the Orange R. Europe is labelled in the north and Asia is labelled in the east. A horizontal strip of land with a point in the middle sticking up north and one on the east sticking up north east is highlighted yellow and labelled “Songhai Empire” in western Africa." mediaType="image/jpg" width="901" height="1081" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="901">
	<strong>Figure 15.17</strong> This map shows the location of the medieval Songhai Empire in West Africa. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
</OpenstaxFigureText>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	As goods such as kola nuts, dates, enslaved captives, ivory, salt, leather, and of course gold passed through the capital on their way to and from the kingdom of <OpenstaxTerm>Ghana</OpenstaxTerm>, traders and merchants, including the Songhai themselves, prospered. Gao’s prosperity also drew the attention of the new and expansionist West African kingdom of <OpenstaxTerm>Mali</OpenstaxTerm>, which annexed <OpenstaxTerm>Gao</OpenstaxTerm> around 1325. This was the golden age of imperial Mali, and for the next century, its rulers profited from Gao’s trade and collected taxes from its kings. When the explorer <OpenstaxTerm>Ibn Battuta</OpenstaxTerm> arrived at Gao from Timbuktu in 1353, he described it as a “great town on the Nile [Niger], one of the finest, biggest, and most fertile cities of the Sudan.”
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The annexation of Gao greatly expanded the Mali Empire, but only temporarily. Periodic rebellions by the peoples of Timbuktu, <OpenstaxTerm>Takedda</OpenstaxTerm>, and Gao, coupled with civil war, a struggling economy, and incursions by Almoravids from the north, caused Gao’s Malian rulers to withdraw in the 1430s. The leader of the <OpenstaxTerm>Songhai</OpenstaxTerm> rebels, <OpenstaxTerm>Sunni Ali</OpenstaxTerm>, became the first king of the Songhai Empire. Under him, Songhai became one of the greatest empires of medieval Africa. From his capital at Gao in the heart of the kingdom, Sunni Ali engaged in a war of conquest against his Muslim neighbors. Marshaling his massive cavalry and fleet of war canoes, the king extended his empire deep into the desert in the north and as far as Djenné in the southwest. His near-constant harassment and pursuit of the Tuareg nomads resulted in his capture of Mali’s great religious and scholarly center in <OpenstaxTerm>Timbuktu</OpenstaxTerm>, the trading town of <OpenstaxTerm>Djenné</OpenstaxTerm>, and almost the whole of the Middle Niger floodplain and the Bandiagara uplands.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Despite being Muslim himself, Sunni Ali campaigned against Muslim forces. This and his general lack of respect for <OpenstaxTerm>Islam</OpenstaxTerm> led to his being highly criticized by Arabic historians. In the <OpenstaxEm>History of the Sudan</OpenstaxEm>, al-Sadi characterized Sunni Ali as “a great oppressor and notorious evil-doer” and reported that he “tyrannized the scholars and holy men, killing them, insulting them, and humiliating them.” As a result, many of the scholars in Timbuktu fled to Oualata, leading to a significant diminishment in Islamic scholarship in the city (<a href="#fig-00002">Figure 15.18</a>). Nevertheless, in Songhai oral tradition, Sunni Ali is remembered as a great general and conquering hero, as well as the founder of the Songhai Empire. Through his domination of important trade routes and urban areas, he enriched his kingdom and enabled it to become even wealthier than Mali.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00002" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/badea056b580591f9f5894ced5c456519f1ed60e" alt="An image is shown of blue sky over the background of a large tiered stone city with three large towers. In front of the far away city is landscape with sparse green bushes. In the front is a caravan of people walking and riding animals – horses, camels, and donkeys. The people are heading to the right, wearing long white or dark robes, carrying spears, and dark skin. No facial features are seen. In front of them at the right, stand a group of people in white short robes, wearing helmets, and holding spears. In the right foreground are short, dark bushes on the dark brown landscape." mediaType="image/jpg" width="1100" height="675" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="1100">
	<strong>Figure 15.18</strong> This artist’s rendering shows the German scholar and explorer Heinrich Barth approaching Timbuktu in 1853, one of the first Europeans to do so. Note the city’s baked-mud mosques and centers of learning in the background. The image was published in Barth’s famous five-volume travel journal of Africa. (credit: “Timbuktu seen from a distance by Heinrich Barth’s party, September 7, 1853” by Heinrich Barth, Reisen und Entdeckungen. Gotha 1858, vol. 4./Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
</OpenstaxFigureText>
<OpenstaxNote>
	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> In Their Own Words </OpenstaxNoteTitle> <OpenstaxH3> Timbuktu in the Sixteenth Century </OpenstaxH3>
	<OpenstaxParagraph>
		Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Zayyati, known as <OpenstaxTerm>Leo Africanus</OpenstaxTerm>, was born in Spain in 1485, educated in Fez (a city in present-day Morocco), and traveled widely in North Africa, including Ghana. Returning from Mecca in 1518, he was captured and enslaved by Christian pirates before being presented to Pope Leo X because of his education and abilities. Leo X baptized him and commissioned him to write a detailed survey of Africa in Italian. This survey, published in 1526, was the basis of European knowledge of Africa for the next several centuries.
	</OpenstaxParagraph>
	<OpenstaxBlockquote>
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			The houses of Timbuktu are huts made of clay-covered wattles with thatched roofs. In the center of the city is a temple built of stone and mortar, built by an architect named Granata, and in addition there is a large palace, constructed by the same architect, where the king lives. The shops of the artisans, the merchants, and especially weavers of cotton cloth are very numerous. Fabrics are also imported from Europe to Timbuktu, borne by Amazigh merchants.
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			The women of the city maintain the custom of veiling their faces, except for the slaves who sell all the foodstuffs. The inhabitants are very rich. [. . .] There are many wells containing [fresh] water in Timbuktu; and in addition, when the Niger is in flood, canals deliver the water to the city. Grain and animals are abundant, so that the consumption of milk and butter is considerable. But salt is in very short supply because it is carried here from Tegaza, some five hundred miles from Timbuktu. [. . .]
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			The royal court is magnificent and very well organized. When the king goes from one city to another with the people of his court, he rides a camel and the horses are led by hand by servants. [. . .] When someone wishes to speak to the king, he must kneel before him and bow down; but this is only required of those who have never before spoken to the king, or of ambassadors. The king has about three thousand horsemen and infinity of foot-soldiers armed with bows made of wild fennel which they use to shoot poisoned arrows. This king makes war only upon neighboring enemies and upon those who do not want to pay him tribute. When he has gained a victory, he has all of them—even the children—sold in the market at Timbuktu. [. . .]
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			The people of Timbuktu are of a peaceful nature. They have a custom of almost continuously walking about the city in the evening (except for those that sell gold), between 10 pm and 1 am, playing musical instruments and dancing. The citizens have at their service many slaves, both men and women.
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			—Leo Africanus, <OpenstaxEm>Description of Africa</OpenstaxEm>
		</OpenstaxParagraph>
	</OpenstaxBlockquote>
	<OpenstaxUl>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			What can you tell about Timbuktu from this description?
		</OpenstaxLi>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			What can you tell about the economic connections between Timbuktu and North Africa and Europe?
		</OpenstaxLi>
	</OpenstaxUl>
</OpenstaxNote>

15.3.1 The Gao Dynasty and Early Songhai

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life after College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Early Humans

2.1 Early Human Evolution and Migration

2.1.1 Human Evolution

2.1.2 Why Did Humans Move and Where Did They Go?

2.1.3 Early Human Technologies

2.2 People in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.1 Ice, Ice, and More Ice

2.2.2 Life in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.3 Diverse Paleolithic Peoples

2.3 The Neolithic Revolution

2.3.1 The Development of Agriculture

2.3.2 How Farming Changed the Human Experience

2.3.3 Neolithic Peoples

3 Early Civilizations and Urban Societies

3.1 Early Civilizations

3.1.1 Attributes of Early Civilizations

3.1.2 The First Urban Societies

3.2 Ancient Mesopotamia

3.2.1 The Rise and Eclipse of Sumer

3.2.2 The Rise of the World’s First Empire

3.2.3 Later Empires in Mesopotamia

3.2.4 Society and Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

3.3 Ancient Egypt

3.3.1 The Origins of Ancient Egypt

3.3.2 The Age of Pyramid Building

3.3.3 A Second Age of Egyptian Greatness

3.4 The Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.1 The Origins of the Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.2 Trade, Writing, and Religion

3.4.3 The Era of Decline

4 The Near East

4.1 From Old Babylon to the Medes

4.1.1 Power Politics in the Near East

4.1.2 Foreign Affairs and Trade

4.1.3 Daily Life and the Family in the Near East

4.2 Egypt’s New Kingdom

4.2.1 The Hyksos in Egypt

4.2.2 The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom

4.2.3 Egypt’s Foreign Policy

4.3 The Persian Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of Persia

4.3.2 Darius I and the Reorganization of the Empire

4.3.3 Persian Culture and Daily Life

4.4 The Hebrews

4.4.1 The History of the Hebrews

4.4.2 The Culture of the Hebrews

5 Asia in Ancient Times

5.1 Ancient China

5.1.1 Prehistoric China

5.1.2 Early Dynastic China

5.1.3 The Zhou Dynasty

5.1.4 The Warring States Era and Qin Unification

5.2 The Steppes

5.2.1 The Nomadic Culture of the Steppes

5.2.2 Tribes, Confederations, and Settled Neighbors

5.3 Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia

5.3.1 Ancient Korea

5.3.2 Ancient Japan

5.4 Vedic India to the Fall of the Maurya Empire

5.4.1 Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro

5.4.2 The Aryans and Brahmanism

5.4.3 Buddhism

5.4.4 The Mauryan Empire

5.4.5 The Gupta Dynasty

6 Mediterranean Peoples

6.1 Early Mediterranean Peoples

6.1.1 The Late Bronze Age World

6.1.2 Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans

6.2 Ancient Greece

6.2.1 Archaic Greece

6.2.2 Sparta and Athens

6.2.3 Classical Greece

6.3 The Hellenistic Era

6.3.1 The Kingdom of Macedon

6.3.2 Hellenistic Culture

6.4 The Roman Republic

6.4.1 The Foundation and Function of the Roman Republic

6.4.2 The Expansion of the Roman Republic

6.5 The Age of Augustus

6.5.1 The First Triumvirate

6.5.2 From Republic to Principate

7 Experiencing the Roman Empire

7.1 The Daily Life of a Roman Family

7.1.1 The Structure of Roman Families

7.1.2 A Day in the Life of a Roman Family

7.1.3 What Family Meant in Rome