Post by franklin on Apr 20, 2010 20:30:04 GMT -5
My thesis has been, of course, has been that the people of the "Sudan" were able to exert considerable influence in the world through military, economic and cultural imperialism and that in the west there was a historical dependency of Muslims on "Pagan" rulers, while in later times empires like Takrur and Mali, who were Muslims, were still able to exert considerable influence in the Muslim world.
Note about the Christian empires that these empires were influenced by other Muslim empires in the "Sudan" too
It is already widely known that Abyssinia exerted a great deal of cultural influence on the Muslim world, but this is interesting because the presence of these people living abroad could further the imperial designs of the empires that they came from. Concerning economics this is very clearly similar to "West Africa". In both the cases of the East and the West scholars were willing to admit to the supremacy of these "Sudanese" .
The very nature of the trade shown bellow strongly suggests that for most of history the "Sudanese" traveled throughout the world rather than movement being mostly people form outside traveling to vast "Sudan". The high level of "Sudanese" manufactures, industries and crafts would force people to be reliant on them, (in terms of agriculture Africans were often believed to surpass the Chinese) and many people traveled to places in "Sudan" to make money because it was known as a land of riches, but the "Sudanese" could travel anywhere in the world without restriction. Obviously the monopoly on the trade with the African "interior" would also be a major factor in these empires forcing people to be reliant on them, and while "white men" were welcome in Mali they were still in the dark as to most of Africa
“Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World: A Reconsideration of the Baqt Treaty” by Jay Spaulding
www.jstor.org/pss/221175
page 589 of the journal (the actual article isn’t that many pages).
[ 758, when the new Abbasid governor of Egypt wrote to the Makurian monarch: “[Here] no obstacle is placed between your merchants and what they want – [they are] safe and contented wherever they go in our land. You, however… behave otherwise… nore are our merchants safe with you.”]
On the next page Spaulding says that over time the “Nubians” (including states other than Makuria) gradually allowed northern merchants certain rights and some established places specifically for foreigners. This is why he refers to a “northern zone of special status” bellow
Page 590 we also learn some about “Nubian” merchants
[Meanwhile some Nubian subjects themselves, especially from the northern zone of special status, had also become private merchants and had begun to conduct their own commercial ventures northward into Egypt. The Nubian king attempted to maintain his hold over subjects living abroad, and to profit from their private commerce, by negotiating an arrangement according to when a royal Makurian agent was authorized to reside and to travel within the Islamic caliphate in order to collect taxes from the Nubians living abroad.]
The below from the same article gives good reason to believe that many of the soldiers in these armies were not slaves (although the author of the article doesn't see it this way). It should also be emphasized that "Sudanese" were known throughout the world as great seamen and navigators so on top of excellent guards and soldiers navigators would be another factor in the dependency thing (navigators not mentioned in article) .
Page 593
[ No figures whatsoever exist concerning the magnitude of this trade at any period; yet without such data, no remotely plausible assessment of total slave exports is possible. Even in the absence of absolute numbers, however, it is possible to challenge the assertion by Cliometricians that most slaves exported from the Northeast Africa to the Islamic Orient were female, for the claim is difficult to reconcile with a source literature from medieval Egypt in which corps of black male military slaves are conspicuous while Africa females are not. The actual primary evidence on the question is perhaps instructive; the one known baqt shipment in the form of slaves by an independent Makurian monarch comprised one male and one female.]
This is concerning brute force. the Encyclopedia is of course wrong but it does show how the Makurians had the ability to intimidate Muslims and thus manipulate them. Again I'd like to point out that Makurians were influenced by Muslim "Sudanese" empires so were not simply overtaken by "Arabs".
"Man, past and present" By Augustus Henry Keane 1900
books.google.com/books?id=DDwLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA75&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[They were Christians, it should be remembered, for many centuries, and although the flourishing Christian Empire of Nubia, with its seventeen bishoprics and its thirteen viceroyalties, all governed by priests, was not founded, as is commonly supposed, by the renowned Silco, " King of the Noubads and of all the Ethiopians," it was strong enough frequently to invade Egypt in defence of their oppressed Greek and Koptic fellow-Christians. So early as 640 a combined army of Nubas and Bejas, said to have numbered 50,000 men with 1500 elephants, penetrated as far north as Oxyrhynchus (the Arab Bahnosa) where such a surprising store of Greek and other documents was discovered in 1897. Cultured peoples with such glorious records, and traditions going back even to pre-Christian times (Silco and Queen Candace, contemporary of Augustus]
The encyclopædia Britannica 1910
books.google.com/books?id=gT0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA415&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[at periods the Nubians gained the upper hand, as in 737 when Cyriacus, their then king, marched into Egypt with a large army to redress the grievances of the Copts. There is a record of an embassy sent by a king Zacharias in the 9th century to Bagdad concerning the tribute, while by the close of the l0th century the Nubians seem to have regained almost complete independence....
....Nevertheless, the Nubians were strong enough to invade upper Egypt during the reign of Nawaya Krcstos (1342-1372), because the governor of Cairo had thrown the patriarch of Alexandria into prison. The date usually assigned for the overthrow of the Christian kingdom 1351. Only the northern part of the country (as far as the 3rd cataract) came under the rule of Egypt. ]
"The Spread of Islam and the Nubian Dam” by David Ayalon
Pages 17-20 and page 22 cover the Nubian Dam
On page 19 he quotes Al-Masudi
books.google.com/books?id=LcsJosc239YC&lpg=PA22&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[“The people of Hijaz and Yemen and the rest of the Arabs learned archery from them (The Nubians)”]On page 20 the author wrote
books.google.com/books?id=LcsJosc239YC&lpg=PA22&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[ 3. The awe and respect that the Muslims had for their Nubian adversaries are reflected in the fact that even a rather late Umayyad caliph, ‘Umar b ‘Abd al- ‘Aziz (‘Umar II 717-720), is said to have ratified the Nubian-Muslim treaty out of fear for the safety of the Muslims (“he ratified the peace treaty out of consideration for the Muslims and out of to spare their lives”)]
Note about the Christian empires that these empires were influenced by other Muslim empires in the "Sudan" too
It is already widely known that Abyssinia exerted a great deal of cultural influence on the Muslim world, but this is interesting because the presence of these people living abroad could further the imperial designs of the empires that they came from. Concerning economics this is very clearly similar to "West Africa". In both the cases of the East and the West scholars were willing to admit to the supremacy of these "Sudanese" .
The very nature of the trade shown bellow strongly suggests that for most of history the "Sudanese" traveled throughout the world rather than movement being mostly people form outside traveling to vast "Sudan". The high level of "Sudanese" manufactures, industries and crafts would force people to be reliant on them, (in terms of agriculture Africans were often believed to surpass the Chinese) and many people traveled to places in "Sudan" to make money because it was known as a land of riches, but the "Sudanese" could travel anywhere in the world without restriction. Obviously the monopoly on the trade with the African "interior" would also be a major factor in these empires forcing people to be reliant on them, and while "white men" were welcome in Mali they were still in the dark as to most of Africa
“Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World: A Reconsideration of the Baqt Treaty” by Jay Spaulding
www.jstor.org/pss/221175
page 589 of the journal (the actual article isn’t that many pages).
[ 758, when the new Abbasid governor of Egypt wrote to the Makurian monarch: “[Here] no obstacle is placed between your merchants and what they want – [they are] safe and contented wherever they go in our land. You, however… behave otherwise… nore are our merchants safe with you.”]
On the next page Spaulding says that over time the “Nubians” (including states other than Makuria) gradually allowed northern merchants certain rights and some established places specifically for foreigners. This is why he refers to a “northern zone of special status” bellow
Page 590 we also learn some about “Nubian” merchants
[Meanwhile some Nubian subjects themselves, especially from the northern zone of special status, had also become private merchants and had begun to conduct their own commercial ventures northward into Egypt. The Nubian king attempted to maintain his hold over subjects living abroad, and to profit from their private commerce, by negotiating an arrangement according to when a royal Makurian agent was authorized to reside and to travel within the Islamic caliphate in order to collect taxes from the Nubians living abroad.]
The below from the same article gives good reason to believe that many of the soldiers in these armies were not slaves (although the author of the article doesn't see it this way). It should also be emphasized that "Sudanese" were known throughout the world as great seamen and navigators so on top of excellent guards and soldiers navigators would be another factor in the dependency thing (navigators not mentioned in article) .
Page 593
[ No figures whatsoever exist concerning the magnitude of this trade at any period; yet without such data, no remotely plausible assessment of total slave exports is possible. Even in the absence of absolute numbers, however, it is possible to challenge the assertion by Cliometricians that most slaves exported from the Northeast Africa to the Islamic Orient were female, for the claim is difficult to reconcile with a source literature from medieval Egypt in which corps of black male military slaves are conspicuous while Africa females are not. The actual primary evidence on the question is perhaps instructive; the one known baqt shipment in the form of slaves by an independent Makurian monarch comprised one male and one female.]
This is concerning brute force. the Encyclopedia is of course wrong but it does show how the Makurians had the ability to intimidate Muslims and thus manipulate them. Again I'd like to point out that Makurians were influenced by Muslim "Sudanese" empires so were not simply overtaken by "Arabs".
"Man, past and present" By Augustus Henry Keane 1900
books.google.com/books?id=DDwLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA75&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[They were Christians, it should be remembered, for many centuries, and although the flourishing Christian Empire of Nubia, with its seventeen bishoprics and its thirteen viceroyalties, all governed by priests, was not founded, as is commonly supposed, by the renowned Silco, " King of the Noubads and of all the Ethiopians," it was strong enough frequently to invade Egypt in defence of their oppressed Greek and Koptic fellow-Christians. So early as 640 a combined army of Nubas and Bejas, said to have numbered 50,000 men with 1500 elephants, penetrated as far north as Oxyrhynchus (the Arab Bahnosa) where such a surprising store of Greek and other documents was discovered in 1897. Cultured peoples with such glorious records, and traditions going back even to pre-Christian times (Silco and Queen Candace, contemporary of Augustus]
The encyclopædia Britannica 1910
books.google.com/books?id=gT0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA415&dq=#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[at periods the Nubians gained the upper hand, as in 737 when Cyriacus, their then king, marched into Egypt with a large army to redress the grievances of the Copts. There is a record of an embassy sent by a king Zacharias in the 9th century to Bagdad concerning the tribute, while by the close of the l0th century the Nubians seem to have regained almost complete independence....
....Nevertheless, the Nubians were strong enough to invade upper Egypt during the reign of Nawaya Krcstos (1342-1372), because the governor of Cairo had thrown the patriarch of Alexandria into prison. The date usually assigned for the overthrow of the Christian kingdom 1351. Only the northern part of the country (as far as the 3rd cataract) came under the rule of Egypt. ]
"The Spread of Islam and the Nubian Dam” by David Ayalon
Pages 17-20 and page 22 cover the Nubian Dam
On page 19 he quotes Al-Masudi
books.google.com/books?id=LcsJosc239YC&lpg=PA22&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[“The people of Hijaz and Yemen and the rest of the Arabs learned archery from them (The Nubians)”]On page 20 the author wrote
books.google.com/books?id=LcsJosc239YC&lpg=PA22&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[ 3. The awe and respect that the Muslims had for their Nubian adversaries are reflected in the fact that even a rather late Umayyad caliph, ‘Umar b ‘Abd al- ‘Aziz (‘Umar II 717-720), is said to have ratified the Nubian-Muslim treaty out of fear for the safety of the Muslims (“he ratified the peace treaty out of consideration for the Muslims and out of to spare their lives”)]
