Byzantine Empire’s rule over North Africa lasted from 533 to around 700. It is always linked to Justinian the Great (r. 527–565) and his famous military leader, Belisarius. The author Procopius wrote about how Belisarius defeated the earlier Vandal Empire in 533 and 534.
It was hard to beat the Vandals, but the Vandals’ resistance had already been weakened by Roman Christians leaving the cities in North Africa because they didn’t believe in Vandal Aryanism and by the independence of the native people, who the Romans called “Mauri” or “Berbers” but who were actually Moors.
Even though there isn’t a lot of written or archaeological evidence, it looks like there was a lot of continuity in local government between the Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine empires. This was true in the capital city of Carthage and in well-known towns like Cillium, Casae Calanae, Apisa Maius, Calama, Hippo Regius, Bagai, and Lepcis Magna. But we don’t know much about the language and racial makeup of the settlers or how these towns were run during the Byzantine era.
The Berbers were mostly herders, while most Byzantine farmers spoke Punic or Latin. There were probably only a few thousand troops, a few hundred government workers, and a few dozen merchants who came from Greece. When the Byzantine Empire had the most land, it was organized into four praetorian prefectures: Italy, Illyricum, the East, and most importantly, “Africa.”
Byzantine “Africa” was made up of what is now Tunisia, the eastern part of Algeria, and western Libya. It was split into six provinces, each with its own governor (or dux), and they were called Mauretania Caesariensis, Mauretania Stitifensis, Zeugitana, Byzacena, Tripolitania, and Numidia.
Byzantine Empire
There were about 10,000 people living in Byzantine Carthage at this time, making it the biggest city in all of Africa. When looked at as a whole, Justinian’s reaffirmation of Roman (the Byzantines always called themselves “Roman”) dominance in the Mediterranean needed a huge military and bureaucratic structure, which cost a lot of money. A ground tax, also known as a “tribute,” and the annona, which was a land tax, were placed on all people in the empire, even those in North Africa.
People say that the high cost of local taxes is one reason why the Berbers in North Africa will not give up their resistance to Byzantine rule. Newly discovered Byzantine fortifications show that the Byzantine Empire’s political power reached from the Mediterranean to the large Dorsal of Tripolitania, which includes the Mountains of Tebessa, the Aures Plateau, and Hodna. However, it didn’t have much of an effect on the Berbers who lived in the deep interior or the Atlas region (modern-day Morocco).
Beyond the coastal plain, Byzantine power relied on unstable alliances and gave administrative power to the leaders of friendly Berber tribes. In exchange for cash payments, these leaders sometimes collected taxes and helped keep the border area relatively orderly. When the Berbers came to attack, the Byzantines relied less on their forts (which were stronger than those of the Romans) and more on their soldiers (comitatenses and limitanei) being able to fight them in the field.
However, independent and obstinate tribe chieftains were in charge of the African Prefecture’s edges. There were violent uprisings in 539, 544–548 (again), and 563 (again), but the Byzantines put them down after a lot of work and loss of life and money. The terrible effects of the Bubonic Plague in 542–543 made people feel even more in trouble at the time. As Justinian’s rule came to an end and as new emperors took over, the Byzantine military garrison relied more and more on diplomacy and using one Berber subgroup against another.
During the Byzantine era, there was a lot of trade between North Africa and other parts of the empire, like Asia Minor. One important part of this trade was the sale of wheat, which formed a big part of the prefecture’s taxes to the imperial government in Constantinople. “Red Slip” pottery from Africa was another well-known item that was in high demand in many parts of the Mediterranean.
Byzantine Empire
In turn, Carthage brought silks, oils, and spices from the Near East. One reason Emperor Justin (Justinian’s uncle) went on the famous Red Sea expedition was to help the kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia invade Himyar in southwest Arabia in 524 and 525. He did this to take control of the eastern spice and silk trades at the expense of the Persians. During Justinian’s reign, there were more diplomatic and business contacts with Axum. The Byzantines followed Orthodoxy, while the Ethiopian Church followed the Monophysite doctrine. However, the emperors of the House of Justin always saw Axum as a brother Christian country and ally.
Scientists today are rethinking how much the Byzantine empire’s culture has affected Africa. The Greek language (often used with Latin) and the priests and leaders of the Orthodox Church played a big part in this. A new study shows that the North African Church and both Rome and Constantinople had an interesting and changing relationship.
It also shows that the Novidae people in Nubia in the Nile Valley were mostly converted to Christianity in the sixth century by Byzantine missionaries working for Constantinople and not by Coptic church priests in Egypt.
Even though Byzantium failed in its final attempt to replace the Persians as the dominant trade power between the Near East and Asia, the Byzantine Empire still controlled the Mediterranean Basin until the middle of the seventh century. This included Egypt, most of the northwest African coast, Dalmatia, northwest Italy, Crete, Corsica, Malta, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands.
Byzantine Empire
Even though Berber tribes were still raiding, the chronicles give the sense that Byzantine North Africa was mostly stable and doing well from 564 to the 640s. During the reigns of Emperors Maurice (582–602) and Heraclius (610–641), the empire’s borders were getting more and more strained. One sign of this was that the military, led by exarchs, took control of the important strategic prefectures of Italy and Africa, removing civilian administrators from those positions. Over the next few hundred years, these exarchates set the tone for the further militarization of local government.
It was attacked from the outside by the Persians in Asia, the Lombards in northern Italy, and the growing power of Islam in North Africa. These changes, however, were not enough to stop the loss of territory. In 647, a small group of Egyptian raiders beat an army led by exarch Gregory at Sufetula in Numidia. This was the first Arab attack on the eastern side of the African Exarchate.
The Byzantine Empire was still in North Africa after this and after an Arab force arrived by sea in 660. At least some of Byzantine “Africa’s” military backing came from the Berbers, who helped the kingdom hold out against repeated Arab attacks until Carthage fell in 698. Its last act wasn’t until 709–710, when Muslims marched on the port of Ceuta on their way across the Straits to Spain.
The Buganda Kingdom was an ancient kingdom in the East African interlacustrine area. People tell stories about Kintu, the first king, who is said to have been the kingdom’s founder. According to legend, Kintu came to Buganda from the northeast, bringing a group of clans. He did not find the land empty upon his arrival.
Some Buganda clans referred to themselves as “banansangwawo,” which translates to “indigenous clans,” and claimed that they had been under the rule of at least 30 kings before Kintul arrived. Kintu was able to beat their last king, Bemba Musota. These lakeshores were most likely inhabited by Bantu-speaking people a very long time ago, perhaps even as early as the sixth century, according to the scant archeological evidence that is currently available.
The pottery they made was from the early Iron Age and is now called Urewe pottery. It was made between the sixth and twelfth centuries. By this time, Buganda is said to have been a very small country made up of only Kyadondo, Busiro, and Mawokota, the three counties in the middle. Many more clans came later, mostly from the east and across Lake Victoria, to join the other clans that were already there and settle down under Kintu’s rule.
Buganda Kingdom
According to these stories, Kintu was a huge, scary monster when it was first settled. They also say that Kintu fled without a trace after building the kingdom. Kintu was not the only important king. Kimera was also important. He may have come to Buganda from Bunyoro, which is to the west.
People say that he was in charge of a group of clans that went east when the Bachwezi hegemony in Bunyoro fell apart. A lot of people now think that Kimera may have started a new reign in the Buganda Kingdom. A common story, on the other hand, says that from Kintu to the current king, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, there have been 36 kings of Buganda in a straight line.
Some of these kings in the past were Muteesa I, who brought Christian missionaries to Uganda; Daniel Mwanga, who put to death early Christian converts who are now saints for rebellion; and Sir Edward Muteesa II, who was sent to Britain in 1953 for disobeying the colonial government and became president of Uganda in 1963 before Milton Obote deposed him and sent him back to England in 1966.
In the 1600s, the Buganda Kingdom began to take over more land after Bunyoro-Kitara had hit its peak and was starting to fall. The Buganda kingdom continued to grow well into the 1800s, but not all of this land was taken from the Bunyoro, as is often said.
There are also a number of Busoga principalities that were never a part of Bunyoro of Babito, though some of them might have had an influence from the Bachwezi hegemony, to which Bunyoro Kitara was the successor state. In just 400 years, the Buganda Kingdom grew from having three counties in the twelfth century to having at least twenty counties today.
The country grew a lot between the 17th and 18th centuries, especially during the reigns of three great Buganda kings: Kimbugwe, Katerega, and Mutebi. The kings Mawanda, Semakokiro, and Suna completed the borders of Buganda in the latter half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. This is how they looked when Europeans arrived in the 1800s.
The Buganda Kingdom took control of or joined some regions and partially independent chiefdoms. These include Budu (Bwera), Kkoki, the Sese and Buvuma islands, and parts of Kyagwe.
At the start of the 1800s, the Kabaka was in charge with three chief ministers and a prime minister (katikiro). Below them were a group of county chiefs who ran the kingdom’s districts. It looked like Buganda kings in the 1800s were cruel, but this changed as time went on. At the start of the 20th century, the group heads decided who would be the Kabaka.
Over the ages, these clan heads slowly lost their political power and control over their clansmen to the kings. This happened because clans changed from living together to being more social groups. As the kingdom grew, Buganda Kingdom’s neighborhoods became more socially diverse. This made family ties and other relationships useless for keeping the government in check.
One of the most important things that made the Buganda Kingdom the strong and united country it was in the 1800s was how the institution of kingship grew over time. The Baganda were very loyal to the country, and the rise of kingship was a big part of this process.
As a strict patrilineal society, each Muganda was connected to the throne through his or her clan. This was possible because of clever constitutional design and social engineering, which saw the king take the clan of his mother. Since Baganda clans did not marry within their own group, it became very rare for the same clan to produce kings in two straight reigns.
The Buganda Kingdom never had an exclusive royal clan like Bunyoro did, where the Babiito were separate from their non-Bahima people. Buganda was able to build a very strong force over time, which it used very well in its fights for expansion. In fact, many of the kings were directly involved in these military actions, and some of them died on the battlefield.
One of these wars was fought on the Buvuma Islands, where the Buganda king put his navy on Lake Victoria. Explorer H. M. Stanley saw and took part in the battle, which was easily won. There were also some problems with Buganda’s political system that made it hard for the country to grow and stay together politically.
The lack of a good system for passing on the throne was the most important of these problems. It looks like the throne was passed down from brother to brother at the start of the country instead of from father to son. In other words, each of the princes who were still alive had an equal chance to claim the throne.
The boys didn’t all come from the same mother, so it was clear that each one had the support of their mother’s clansmen, who were all eager to find the next king. Around the 18th century, many kings were taking power after killing all of their brothers.
As a result, the people were split into violent groups, and soon after a king died, wars of succession destroyed the country. After many of these wars, the winners and their nephew king took power and places of influence, which led to the scattering of people through clan persecution.
Borno History: Mai Idris Alooma was the greatest and most famous Kanuri ruler of Borno. It was during his rule that the empire hit its peak of glory. He took power after about 25 years of weak and incompetent rulers had been in charge.
He took the throne after the queen’s mother, Magira Aisha, who was a strong and powerful woman, ran the government for a short time. She saved young Idris from people who wanted to kill him and, while she was queen, taught her son the princely traits of bravery and energy in battle, along with fairness, that would help him become a good leader later on.
Idris Alooma was busy at home as a soldier, leader, and supporter of Islam. He was also a skilled diplomat and negotiator in international affairs, communicating with the major Islamic powers of his time. An important part of Borno’s success under Idris came from his army, which was made much more effective by many new ideas in transportation, supply, weapons, and command.
Borno History
It was Idris himself who led and planned Kanuri wins, even though he had good commanders in his corner. Soon after becoming king, he made peace with the rulers of North Africa, especially Tripoli. They gave him muskets and a group of skilled Turkish musketeers who helped him train his troops and decide the outcome of some of his most important fights.
Because there were so many caravans coming from North Africa with Arab horses and camels for sale, he was able to put together a big and well-equipped horse army. Because he was a capable commander and soldier, he provided his troops with weapons and made sure the Turks trained them well.
Idris Alooma led many battles to conquer and expand his empire in and around Lake Chad. He was very good at putting his troops to work. He put down the So (or Sao), a warlike people who had been a threat to Borno since the time of Mai Ali Ghaji, one of his predecessors, and took their capital of Damasak.
In the same way, he focused his troops on the troublesome Tetala and Kotoko and lessened their power and threat. After that, he went west to attack northern Hausaland, especially the province of Kano. His army tried to take Kano City but failed. In the northwest, he pushed back the Taureg and took down their region of Ahir.
Borno History
Through these and other military campaigns, he was able to wipe out all Kanuri opposition in the Lake Chad area, start the process of unifying Borno, and strengthen his control over the area. In terms of religion, Idris Alooma thought that spreading Islam was both his job and the need of the government. He made Islam the official religion of Borno for everyone who was important to him and everyone who lived there.
His good behavior set an example for his people and urged them to follow the rules of Islam very strictly. In the ninth year of his reign, Idris Alooma made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and there he built a hostel in the holy city for the use of Borno pilgrims. His many contacts with people in the Islamic world, including Turkey, earned him a lot of respect in that area and helped his empire become more well-known.
The Shari’a, or Islamic code of law, was used to run the courts in Borno when Mai Idris Alooma was in charge. The court became widely known around the world because it drew many Muslim scholars from North Africa. Idris made changes to his empire that were meant to make it more like other Islamic countries. The sights and experiences he had on his journey played a role in these changes.
A lot of things were changed so that Shari’a law replaced customary law. Cases were also taken over from the traditional rulers and given to Muslim judges, called qadis, who also acted as lawyers for the local leaders. Idris Alooma was a great leader for learning because he always supported the learned class, or ulama.
Borno History Borno History
Mosques made of brick were better than those made of reeds, especially in Idris Alooma’s home city of Ngazagarmu. Also, the growth of cities was sped up because Gambaru, a town about three miles east of Ngazagarmu, is thought to have been built during his rule. Overall, Idris Alooma made Borno and its people richer.
The Kanuri kingdom kept a tight grip on trade across the Sahara, which helped trade. Kanem Borno was able to keep control of the important trade route to Tripoli because he had beaten the Tuareg. He raised the second Borno kingdom to its peak of power and glory, giving it the most land and the most respect in central and western Sudan.
His accomplishment was even more impressive because it happened at the same time as the defeat of Songhai, which was Borno’s western rivalry. At the Battle of Tondibi in 1591, the Moroccans defeated Songhai. Askia Ishaq fled and went to Borno after the Moroccan forces defeated the Songhai forces, which is a crucial fact.
After 32 years of mostly successful rule, Idris Alooma was killed while on an expedition in a marsh called Aloo, near Maiduguri, in the northwest of what is now Nigeria. This was one of his many military operations. Many of the things we know about him now come from Ahmad ibn Fartuwa’s thorough records of him.
Evangelical Christianity in Britain and Enlightenment ideas on the continent served as inspiration for anti-slavery movements in Western Europe. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, wrote Thoughts on Slavery in 1744, one of the first moral tracts to oppose slavery. However, three people led the English parliamentary effort.
One was Granville Sharp, who won the 1772 Mansfield case that made slavery illegal in England. Thomas Clarkson wrote A Summary View of the Slave Trade and the Probable Causes of Its Abolition (1787). The third was famed parliamentary orator William Wilberforce. Cambridge evangelical preachers inspired Clarkson and Wilberforce.
J. Stephen, T. Babbington, Z. Macaulay, and ex-slave Olaudah Equiano joined them to form the Anti-Slave Trade Society. Due to its Methodist Church affiliation, strong organizing, pamphleteering, and large petitions to parliament, the society inspired other reform-minded pressure groups.
Anti-Slavery Movement
The group overcame the entrenched power of the West Indies sugar lobby and opposition in the House of Lords to outlaw the slave trade (for British citizens) and establish the Sierra Leone Colony in West Africa for freed slaves in 1807 with votes from the Irish bloc in the House of Commons and behind-the-scenes support from politicians like William Pitt and Lord Grenville.
Other nations banned slavery: Denmark in 1803, the US in 1808, Sweden in 1813, and the Netherlands in 1814. In its extreme phase (1793), the French National Assembly abolished the slave trade and slavery, but Napoleon reinstated it, and the French West Indies would not abolish it until the 1840s.
The Brazilian slave trade ended in the 1850s due to British diplomatic and naval pressure. T.F. Buxton created the Anti-Slavery Society in Exeter Hall, London, in 1823, revitalizing the British humanitarian movement.
Anti-Slavery Movement
The Montego Bay uprising and the gruesome planter retribution of 1831, which killed over 600 Africans, prompted British Caribbean slaves to rebel ten years before slavery was abolished. As before, these events sparked British public action. James Stephen, Jr.’s final 1833 Emancipation Bill, which the reformed 1832 parliament approved (subject to slave owners receiving compensation and former slaves serving a seven-year apprenticeship), required Jamaican legislature approval. Most ex-slaves, frustrated and disappointed, would cause more turmoil and insurrection in Jamaica.
Most European Caribbean possessions did not release slaves until 40 years after the British attempt. The British Anti-Slavery Society corresponded with American abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and New Englanders, until the Civil War in the 1860s.
Most of the great powers, including Britain, saw African internal slavery (sometimes called “domestic servitude”) differently from New World plantation slavery, so colonial governments moved slowly to avoid angering African rulers and upsetting indigenous social structures. However, British humanitarians swore to stop the interior slave trade and raiding.
Beginning with the River Niger expeditions of the 1840s and 1850s, Buxton and African preacher Samuel Ajayi Crowther promoted “legitimate trade” (primarily palm product exports) to replace them.
Anti-Slavery Movement
David Livingstone’s 1841–1873 expeditions and missionary work in east and southern Africa inspired late nineteenth-century African anti-slavery organizations. But this also prefaced and justified imperialism and territorial annexation during the “scramble for Africa.” Like most European nations, French colonial policy on abolishing slavery in Africa was inconsistent and uneven. The majority of colonial powers used strict labor recruitment and transport worker programs to perpetuate slavery.
Frederick Lugard (c. 1900) epitomized “abolitionist imperialism” in British colonial Africa by conquering the northern Nigerian Muslim emirates. Britain employed diplomatic influence, colonial administration, legal nonrecognition of slavery, and naval and military efforts to suppress the slave trade and slavery in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Most African countries abolished internal slavery over the previous century as former slaves assimilated into their host society. However, slave raiding and labor have returned in modern times. The humanitarian abolitionist movement continues at Anti-Slavery International.
The Somalis are an East Cushitic group of people who live in the Horn of Africa. They have a common background, culture, and ancestry. The Somali language is the mother tongue of all ethnic Somalis.
It is in the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and most Somalis are Sunni Muslims. They are one of the biggest ethnic groups in Africa and live on one of the biggest parcels of land in Africa for a single ethnic group.
Origin of the Name Somali
Most people think that the name “Sumatran” comes from Irir Samaale, who is the oldest shared ancestor of many Somali clans. The word “Somali” is thought to come from the words “soo” and “maal,” which together mean “go and milk.”
This is a reference to the fact that most Somalis work as herders. Another possible origin theory says that the word “Somali” comes from the Arabic word for “rich” (dhawamaal), which again refers to the abundance of animals in Somalia.
In the 9th century, an ancient Chinese text called the northern Somali coast Po-pa-li. At that time, Arab geographers called it “Berbera” to honor the “Berber” (Cushitic) people who lived there. That being said, the first clear written use of the nickname Somali was in the 15th century. He had one of his court officials write a hymn to celebrate a military win over the Sultan of Ifat’s troops during the wars between the Solomonic Dynasty and the Ifat Sultanate based at Zeila.
Language Of The Somali People
Somalis speak a language called Af-Soomaali, which is a branch of the Cushitic language family and part of the bigger Afro-Asian language family. It is a Lowland East Cushitic language, just like the Afar and Saho languages, which are its closest cousins. Somali is the Cushitic language that has been studied the most, with the first academic papers being written in it before 1900.
Over 19 million Somalis live in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Kenya, and many more speak the Somali diaspora language. Somali is the second most common Cushitic language spoken after Oromo.
A few people and groups from nearby ethnic minorities also speak it as their second language. A majority of the people in the Federal Republic of Somalia speak Somali as their first language. It is also the national language of Djibouti and is used for work in the Somali area of Ethiopia.
Economy Of The Somali People
Somalis used to be nomadic farmers of cattle, and some of them later became fishermen. It is estimated that most Somalis work in agriculture. Somaliland’s farming can be broken down into three smaller areas. The first type is nomadic pastoralism, which is done away from farming places. This industry, which raises goats, sheep, camels, and cattle, is becoming more focused on the market.
The second sector is traditional agriculture, which consists primarily of small farmers engaged in subsistence farming. There are two types of traditional farming in this area: rain-fed farming in the south and northwest grows sorghum with a lot of animals, and small irrigated farms along the rivers grow corn (maize), sesame, cowpeas, and veggies and fruits near towns.
In the third sector, farming for the market is done on medium- and large-sized irrigated fields along the lower Jubba and Shabeelle rivers. Fruits and veggies, sugarcane, rice, cotton, grapefruit, mangoes, and papayas are the main crops there.
The thorny grassland in southern Somalia is home to acacia trees that are used to make charcoal and good wood. However, charcoal production has long gone beyond what is environmentally safe. It might be possible to get more scented gums if frankincense, myrrh, and other trees that release resin were handled more efficiently and carefully.
There is an industry, but it’s mostly small-scale and makes goods that are sold in local markets instead of sending them abroad. Somalia may be able to show other very poor third-world countries how to build an economy. In many ways, the lack of any participation from the government has been a good thing.
In the north, ethnic Somalis catch and can catch tunny (also called tuna) and mackerel as part of their small fishing industry. Small-scale inshore fishermen often catch sharks and sell them dried. In the southern part of Somalia, fresh fish and crabs are prepared to be exported. At the start of the 21st century, climate change, overfishing, and more piracy along the coasts of Somalia hurt the fishing business.
Most of Somalia’s foreign currency comes from Somalis who work and send money back to their home country, mostly in the Middle East. Once more, this is a big deal because there are no banks in the country. To handle these deals, an unofficial banking system has sprung up. The Somalis have shown that they can handle a lot.
Clan And Family Structure Of The Somali People
The Somali people live in large groups called clans. Belonging to a clan is an important part of Somali society and politics. Clans are passed down through male lineage and are further split into sub-clans and sub-sub-clans, which form extended families.
In most cases, they only show the parts of men in the family tree, unless the man has more than one wife and there is a difference between his sons by different wives. But this doesn’t mean that women don’t matter in these kinds of male structures. Instead, women have more subtle roles that vary from one ethnic group’s clan system to the next.
In Somali clans, a man can marry anyone: someone from his own clan or sub-clan, someone from any other clan or sub-clan, or someone who is not Somali. As Muslims, Somali men can have up to four wives at once, but because of their poor living situations, they usually can’t have more than one or two wives at a time. In some families, when a man dies, his brother will marry the widow to make sure she has money after the death.
Marriage between clans and subclans also serves important strategic purposes. When a small group from one clan enters territory that belongs to another clan, the men from the smaller clan should marry women from the larger clan, and the opposite is true for the larger clan. This keeps things peaceful.
It doesn’t matter how old the clan is or what place the founding father holds in the Somali family hierarchy. What matters is how big the clan or subclan is and how much money it has, which is usually shown by how many animals it owns. Small clans may have to merge with bigger clans in order to stay alive, and small clans often live for long periods of time within a larger clan, as if they were part of that clan.
“Somalis traditionally marry within their own ethnic group.” So, to strengthen alliances, people often marry someone else of the same racial group from a different clan. For example, a recent study looked at 89 marriages between men from the Dhulbahante clan. Of those, 55 (62%) were with women from different Dhulbahante sub-clans than their husbands; 30 (33.7%) were with women from nearby clans of other clan families (Isaaq, 28); and 3 (4.3%) were with women from other Darod clan families (Majeerteen 2, Ogaden 1).”
Classes and Castes Of The Somali People
The Samaal (Zumali) think that their family clan is better than the Saab. There is a caste system in the Saab clan that gives different groups of people different levels of standing based on their heritage or job.
The Digil and Rahanwayn put people into lower-class groups based on what they did for a living. The midgaan, a word used to insult them, were the largest group. They were barbers, circumcisers, and hunters. The Tumaal worked with metal and blacksmithing.
The Yibirs told fortunes and made charms and amulets to protect people. In the late 20th century, many people from these groups found work in towns and cities, which raised their standing. By the 1990s, most of the old arrangements where they worked for certain clans were gone.
Marriage
In Somalia, marriage has always been seen as a link between more than just a man and a woman. It’s also seen as a link between clans and families. Most Somali marriages were set up not long ago. They were usually between an older guy with money and the father of a young woman he wanted to marry.
People still do these things in many rural places in the twenty-first century. A bride’s price is something the man gives to the woman’s family. It’s usually animals or money. Samaals usually marry someone from a different family lineage, or at least six generations away from the man if they marry someone from the same family bloodline.
As is customary in Arab culture, Saab women marry within their father’s family tree. First cousins often get married. When a Somali woman gets married, she usually moves in with her husband’s family while her parents take care of the house and all the things she needs. But she keeps her family name.
Weddings are happy events, but in Somalia, it is usual for the couple to agree to give the bride a certain amount of property if they get divorced. Her husband is holding it in trust for her. According to tradition, if the wife files for divorce, she must give up her right to the land.
Sharia law says that a man can have up to four wives as long as he can support all of them and their children equally. When a man tells his wife three times, “I divorce you,” the couple is officially divorced. The wife does have three months to get married, though, in case she gets pregnant. Many Somalis who live in cities today choose a partner based on love and shared hobbies instead of getting married because it was arranged.
Kinship Group
Somali society is based on families that are part of a clan. The Samaal (or Samale) and the Saab (or Sab) are the two main clan groups. They were named after two brothers who are said to have been from the Quraysh of Arabia, the tribe of the prophet Muhammad. Many Somalis think that Noah’s son Ham was their relative from the time of the Bible.
About three-quarters of Somalis are Samaal, who are split into four main clan families: the Dir, the Daarood, the Isaaq, and the Hawiye. The Saab are split into two groups: the Digil and the Rahanwayn. There can be thousands of people in a major group, and all of them claim to be related to the same ancestor.
These clans are further broken down into subclans and main bloodline groups. Somali men are members of a clan family because their fathers were members of that family for at least twelve generations. The most respected clan groups are the ones with the longest lines of ancestry. The land that a clan or subclan lives on for most of the year is linked to them.
In Somalia, families have always been the most important political block. Dia-paying groups are made up of a few small lineages, with between a few hundred and a few thousand people in each. They can trace their roots back four to eight generations.
Members have a social contract with each other that says they will help each other with their legal and political duties. This includes giving and getting dia, or blood compensation (mag in Somali). When someone does something bad to or against a dia-paying group, they have to pay for it. This includes blood compensation if someone gets hurt or dies.
Religious Belief
The vast majority of Somalis are Muslims, and they follow the Sunni branch of Islam and the Shafi’i school of Islamic law. However, some Somalis also follow the Shia Muslim sect. Sufism, the spiritual side of Islam, is also well-established, and there are many local jama’a (zawiya), or groups of people from different tariiqa or Sufi orders. In the same way, Somalia’s constitution says that Islam is the official faith of the Somali Republic and that Islamic Sharia is the main source of national law.
At the request of Prophet Muhummad, a group of oppressed Muslims crossed the Red Sea to find safety in the Horn of Africa. This was the first time Islam came to the area. This means that Islam may have come to Somalia a long time before it became popular in its home country. At first, Somalian women were not allowed to join the many religious orders that were mostly made up of men. However, in the late 1800s, the all-female school Abay Siti was created, combining Somali tradition with Islam.
Over the ages, the Somali community has also produced many important Islamic figures. Many of these people have had a big impact on how Muslims learn and practice their religion in the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and other places. One of these Islamic teachers is Uthman bin Ali Zayla’i of Zeila, a Somali theologian and jurist who lived in the 1400s.
He wrote the Tabayin al-Haqa’iq li Sharh Kanz al-Daqa’iq, which is a collection of four volumes and is considered the most authoritative work on the Hanafi school of Islam. Over 1,000 people in Somalia practice Christianity, but it is a small group.
Religious Practitioners
Somali Muslims are different from other Muslims because they think that both religion and secular leaders can bless and curse people. Baraka is the word for this power, which people think comes from Allah. Baraka is thought to stay at the tombs of Somali saints and can heal people who visit the tombs or solve other problems. A lot of people who follow Islam are teachers and people who work in mosques (Islam doesn’t have priests).
Dervishes are Somalis who follow Sufism and give up everything to live a religious life. They teach Islam and don’t own anything. The Sufi are also known for building jamaat, which are farming communities and religious sites in the southern part of Somalia.
A respected male leader or religious follower might be named Wadad by nomads. He is in charge of leading prayers and making sacrifices as part of religious ceremonies on holidays and other special days. He also learns folk astronomy, which is used to find out when people should move, heal, and make predictions.
One more group of religious people is the Yibir clan of the Saab. Yibir practitioners are asked to get rid of ghosts and bring people health, luck, or wealth again through ceremonies and prayers, which may include killing animals.
Rituals And Holy Places
In every city and town in Somalia, you can find a mosque. Nomads pray and read the Qur’an separately for men and women, no matter where they are. Islamic law says that Somalis must face Mecca and pray five times a day. They should say the Islamic faith and, if they can, do zakat, which means giving to the poor. Also, they should fast during Ramadan and make the trip to Mecca at least once.
The graves of the Somali holy men, or sheiks, who are revered as saints have been turned into national shrines. People come to see the saint on his yearly feast day, which is usually in the month he was born, because that’s when people think his power is strongest.
These are some religious holidays: Id al-Fitr (the Little Feast); the First of Muharram (when an angel is said to shake the tree of life and death); Maulid an-Nabi (the birth of the prophet Muhammad); and Id al-Adha (which remembers the story of Abraham and his son Ishmael).
The Islamic calendar shows that different events happen at different times of the year. People enjoy holidays by eating, telling stories, visiting graves, giving to the poor, and having parades, plays, and ceremonies.
Death And The Afterlife
Somalis are Muslims, and they believe that Allah will judge everyone in the next life. They also think that there is a tree that stands for all Muslims at the line between Earth and Heaven. Some people think that this line is on the moon.
A leaf on the tree stands for each person. In Islam, the first day of the new year, or Muharram, is when an angel shakes the tree. It is said that those whose leaves fall off will die in the next year. They also think that Allah blesses people even more if they die while fasting during Ramadan.
People in Somalia feast and celebrate when someone dies, just like they do when someone is born. According to Islamic law, a Somali wife who loses her husband must stay at home and mourn alone for four months and ten days.
Zimbabwe History: The Incursions Of Ngoni and Ndebele
Zimbabwe History Zimbabwe History
Zimbabwe History: Before the 1830s, a number of Shona-speaking states and cultures ruled the southwest region of what is now Zimbabwe. The Kalanga line of the Shona were the main group of people living in the area until this time. In the late 1600s, the Changamire Rozvi, a Shona state in the northeast, took over this area.
Over time, the newcomers became part of the Kalanga people. It was the 1820s, and the Rozvi were losing land to the Tswana in the southwest and the Tsonga in the southeast. To make matters worse, Nguni and Sotho groups from south of the Limpopo River in what is now South Africa frequently attacked this region in the middle to late 1830s.
Historians have had a lot of disagreements about what caused these invasions in southern Africa in the 1820s and 1830s. Large groups of people may have gone north during this time, going as far as present-day Malawi and southern Tanzania. This could have been because the Zulu state was growing, there was a drought, or the colonists were funding raids.
Ngoni are northern Nguni (Zulu)-speaking groups that went north of Limpopo in the early 1830s. People like Zwangendaba, Ngwana Maseko, and Nyamazana were in charge of them. The Ngoni’s main strength was their military system, which was based on age groups that didn’t care about local ties. This made it easier to integrate the people they had conquered.
Zimbabwe History
The Ngoni attacked the Rozvi to get cattle and other foods. They used short spears that could stab and shock. It is said that they killed Chirisamhuru, the Rozvi mambo (ruler). The Ngoni raiders did cause damage, but the Rozvi fought back and pushed them farther north and east. In 1835, their main group of several thousand people crossed the Zambezi River.
The Ndebele, who were also northern Nguni speakers who came from south of Limpopo, changed the area in a more lasting way. Early in the 1820s, Mzilikazi led the core of the Ndebele state north of the Drakensberg Mountains. It had been in the Pongola River area before.
For at least ten years, the Ndebele were the most powerful group in the South African Highveld. They took in many Sotho people and made them part of their group. In 1836 and 1837, groups of Boer hikers going north from the Cape Colony beat them. At this point, they had moved further north across the Limpopo.
The Ndebele split into two groups during this move. Mzilikazi led the smaller group, and Gundwane led the larger group. They planned to meet up again. In 1838 and 1839, Gundwane’s group went to the Umzingwani Valley, where the local Rozvi people fought them hard.
But when Mzilikazi’s group came and added to their strength, the Ndebele took over the area. Not like the Ngoni, the Ndebele did not attack and scare the Kalanga people, who they relied on for food. Mzilikazi took over as the Kalanga people’s leader in the area, replacing the Rozvi.
Zimbabwe History
Because the Ngoni took many Rozvi cattle, the Rozvi even agreed to give the Ndebele young men to join their armies in exchange for stolen animals that the Ndebele would take care of in exchange for milk. The Ndebele clearly had the upper hand in this relationship because they could take back their cattle if the Rozvi didn’t like them, but the Rozvi couldn’t take back their young men.
The Rozvi were angry that Mzilikazi was taking their young men, so in the early 1850s, they tried to take back control of the area by raiding Ndebele land. During the great raids of 1854 and 1855, the Ndebele fought back and destroyed the Rozvi state. This caused the Rozvi to give up in 1857.
But Mzilikazi couldn’t expand his power to the northeast because it was hard for him to attack the Rozvi mountain fortresses. During the 1860s, the Ndebele kept attacking Shona groups. In 1866, they beat the Rozvi again, who were no longer a strong force.
This put the Ndebele in charge of the trade routes in the area. In the 1870s, they were very powerful, and many Shona states were their allies. Through the trade in ivory and employment in the diamond mines south of Limpopo, various Shona states had acquired many guns by 1879.
Because the Portuguese were moving west from Mozambique, they gave the Shona weapons. This made it much easier for the Shona hill strongholds to defend themselves against Ndebele raids. Following this, Lobengula, Mzilikazi’s son, lost control of the Ndebele state, which was at that point in the region.
Zimbabwe History
In the late 1880s, the Ndebele were no longer able to go on raids into the central Shona land from the northeast. In the middle to late 1800s, colonial writers said that the Ndebele ruled and attacked the Shona, which was not true. The British South Africa Company (BSAC), Cecil Rhodes’ chartered company, produced advertising that inspired this idea. In 1888, the BSAC fraudulently got a concession from Lobengula that let it take over Mashonaland.
Some tributary states on the Ndebele king’s line gave him power over most of this area, but the BSAC position in what would become the colony of Southern Rhodesia was based on the idea that he did. As part of the settlement of Mashonaland, propaganda said that it was necessary to protect the Shona people from Ndebele raids, which were seen as harmful.
Sierra Leone History: One of the first people to live in Sierra Leone were 411 black people who came on a British military ship on May 10, 1787. These people had been poor and out of work in Britain, where private charities didn’t help them much, and they usually couldn’t get “poor relief” because they didn’t have a parish of settlement.
They ended up moving to Sierra Leone because of the kindness of a group of British abolitionists, such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, and Granville Sharp. These people who wanted to end slavery were part of the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, which cared about the suffering of black people in London after the American Revolution, in which many black people fought with the British.
Black people were thought to have a better chance of being free in Sierra Leone, which was a free community built on Christian values. The British government paid for the first voyage. Two more groups of refugees came to the Sierra Leone settlement. A group of about 1,200 black people went from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1792.
It looked like safety, land, and freedom would be better in West Africa, so they moved there. The third group of black people who moved to Sierra Leone were maroons who had been sent away from Jamaica after the Maroon War in 1795. After the war was over, they were sent back to Nova Scotia, but they asked to be sent to Africa instead.
Because of this, in 1800, about 550 maroons were sent to Sierra Leone. The settlement in Sierra Leone started out with good intentions. Sharp wrote a constitution for the settlers in 1787. It said that they would follow the rules, traditions, and customs of Britain.
He set up a way for settlers to make rules through common councils and choose a governor and a governing council. He said that the government should be based on the old English system of frankpledge. These were the steps that the first settlers took.
They chose Richard Weaver to be their first governor and split the settlement into tithings, which were groups of ten families. Each tithing had a leader who was chosen every year and was known as a “tithingman.” Their first town was called Granville Town, after Sharp. Slavery and the trade of slaves were illegal.
Sierra Leone History Sierra Leone History
But there were problems over and over again in the first few years of the Sierra Leone deal. More important problems, like staying alive and working the land, got in the way of plans for the government. Half of the first black residents of Britain died on the trip or in the first four months after they arrived. They died of different diseases, mostly dysentery.
The English seeds that were brought to Sierra Leone to start a successful farming business did not work out. Settlers and Africans who lived in the area got into fights over who could use the land. In 1790, Africans burned down a native village near Granville Town as a response. Because of these issues, British abolitionists, who had helped start the St. George’s Bay Company, worked to spread Christianity, trade, and Western culture in Sierra Leone by 1790. In 1791, the company sent Alexander Falconbridge to establish the settlement.
He built a new town called Granville near Fourah Bay and helped the residents plant crops. He passed away in 1792. When the black followers from Nova Scotia came to Sierra Leone, things got even worse. The naval officer in charge of this group of people was John Clarkson, who was the brother of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson.
In 1792, when the St. George’s Bay Company changed its name to the Sierra Leone Company, he was put in charge of it. But the people who moved to Sierra Leone weren’t as hardworking as he had thought. He also had to deal with unpleasant councilors and people stealing from stores. As governor of the Sierra Leone Company in 1792, he was given more power and worked hard to make the company work.
The owners of Sharp’s company, however, sent Clarkson back to Britain in 1793 because they disapproved of his proposal to give settlers free land in accordance with Sharp’s constitution. In 1794–1795 and again in 1796–1799, Zachary Macaulay was governor. He tried to rebuild Sierra Leone but had trouble. He had been a bookkeeper and manager on a Jamaican slave farm.
Sierra Leone History Sierra Leone History Sierra Leone History
Britain sent too few rations and building materials. A French naval fleet attacked Sierra Leone for two weeks in September 1794 and destroyed the whole country. A new rule from the Sierra Leone Company, which said that settlers had to pay one shilling for every acre of land they used, caused arguments between the settlers and the government after 1796.
When Macaulay went back to Britain in April 1799, the British crown gave the Sierra Leone Company a new charter that gave the company and its manager back their power. Nova Scotians rose up against the Sierra Leone Company in 1800. They were angry that their democratic government was falling apart and that they had not been given the free land they had been promised.
The company chose not to send any more black people to West Africa after putting down the revolt. The company also got into fights with the Koya Temne, whose land had been sold to newcomers.
The Temne struck the company’s fort on Thornton Hill on November 18, 1801. In response, the company’s troops destroyed many Temne bases. The Temne gave up all rights to colony land when they signed a peace treaty with the British in 1807. Ghana was made a crown colony on January 1, 1808.
Sierra Leone History Sierra Leone History
The British government wanted to build a naval base in West Africa and thought that a new constitution would fix some of the problems with politics and money that had been common in Sierra Leone for the first 21 years.
Mandinka Tribe Facts You Didn’t Know. Mandinka, which is also called Mandingo, is the language of the West African Mandinka people. That being said, only 1.3 million people speak it, and it’s not even usually thought of when people talk about the main African languages. It doesn’t change the fact that Mandinka is a powerful and important language, though. Five things about this language that everyone should know:
1. It is native to ten different nations.
Because the native people who speak Mandinka, who share the same name as the language, are from West Africa, the majority of the countries where native speakers of Mandinka can be found are in this part of Africa.
Mandinka Tribe Facts
Native Mandinka speakers can be found in Mali, Chad, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and six other countries, and it is a recognized minority language in Senegal. Because it is spoken in so many different nations, there are numerous dialects of Mandinka, some of which are as distinct as Spanish and Portuguese.
2. Mandinka is written using three separate writing systems.
Despite the fact that it has three separate writing systems: a Latin system, an Arabic system, and the N’Ko system (also used for other Mande family languages), it’s fairly rare for a native Mandinka speaker to be unable to write.
Mandinka Tribe Facts
The Mandinka people have been using the Arabic-based writing system most frequently for the longest time. The N’Ko system is actually quite new, having been developed in 1949.
3. The Mandinka people have a fascinating history.
The Mandinka people are originally from West Africa, and their forefathers were part of the Mali Empire. Later, the Mandinka established their own empire to the west of the Niger River, which was an ideal location for farming at the time. Mandinka people and their language are now considered minorities in all countries except Gambia, where they are the majority ethnic group.
4. In Mandinka culture, oral tradition is extremely significant.
The Mandinka people have an extremely rich culture that places a significant focus on music and storytelling. Songs and stories help children learn about their heritage. Although storytelling is popular, most Mandinka prefer to hear their stories told through music. Griots are those who sing this form of music, and their singing is accompanied by the kora, a traditional Mandinka instrument.
5. Mandinka reached the U.S.
Many West Africans were captured and sold into slavery in the New World during the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Many of these people were original Mandinka speakers who observed their native tongue evolve into various pidgins and creoles.
Mandinka Tribe Facts
Terms like “mumbo jumbo” that African Americans frequently use still reflect Mandinka’s influence. Furthermore, some Mandinka native speakers can be found in the United States, as they continue to move from West Africa to the United States and other nations across the world.
When Leopold Sedar Senghor was born in Joal on October 9, 1906, the alienation characteristic of colonial areas had started to affect the interior of Senegal. Senghor later cried out poetically that it was “white hands that pulled the triggers that destroyed the empires” of traditional Africa, “white hands that cut down the black forest to make railroad ties.”
The advent of the Franco-Senegalese railroad propelled Africans into a world of economic progress and a time of acute social change. Leopold Sedar Senghor’s first seven years, spent in traditional villages, were the only happy ones of his life until he rediscovered traditional Africa in books (in Paris) and developed his theory of Négritude.
Throughout the rest of his life, he wished for “the paradise” of his African childhood, which kept him “innocent of Europe.” Sent to a Catholic mission school by his father so that he might become “civilized,” Senghor later wrote that he was “torn away from the mother tongue, from the ancestor’s skull, from the tom-tom of my soul.” Senghor was, nevertheless, a good student.
When he was 13, Leopold Sedar Senghor felt “the calling” and began preparing to enter the Catholic priesthood; his assimilation of Western culture was well under way. In 1922, at Dakar, the colonial capital of French West Africa, Senghor joined the seminary and plunged into Catholic theology and philosophy. He believed deeply in his calling, but his African pride made him protest against the racism of the Father Superior, who one day called Léopold’s parents “primitives” and “savages.”
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Obliged to leave the seminary in 1926, the adolescent Leopold Sedar joined the public secondary school in Dakar. In 1928, he earned his high school degree with honors. Placing his faith in Senghor’s intelligence, his classical languages teacher made much effort to persuade the colonial government to grant Senghor a scholarship to do what no African had previously been allowed to do: pursue literary studies in France.
Leopold Sedar Senghor’s second move began when he started his trip to Paris. He met up with some of France’s smartest students at the Lycée Louis-le Grand. From December 1928 on, Georges Pompidou, who would become president of France in 1969, was his best friend. The French university schooling was the last step in his “Frenchification,” and his biggest goal was to become a “black-skinned Frenchman.”
Not long after, though, he understood that this was not possible. He fought against assimilation and began his search for “Africanness,” or Négritude. In the 1930s, avant-garde Paris fell in love with jazz, the African American singer Josephine Baker, and African art. This style and a very famous Colonial Exhibition in the Parc de Vincennes made Senghor fall in love with Africa again after a long time of putting it off.
He found his “childhood kingdom” and his “pagan sap that mounted, pranced, and danced” again. He begged the “protecting spirits” not to let his blood “fade” like the blood of a completely integrated person, like the blood of a “civilized man.”
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Leopold Sedar worked hard to give this emotional trip back to Africa a solid academic base by reading a lot of anthropologists’ and anti-rationalist artists’ and thinkers’ work. He also read a lot of the writings that African Americans made during the Harlem Renaissance. He walked with them as they firmly rejected cultural assimilation and fought for civil rights and political integration at the same time. He wouldn’t really go in a different direction until 1958.
With confidence in his new ideas, Leopold Sedar asked God to forgive “those who have hunted thy children like wild elephants and broken them in with whips, (and) who have given them black hands where white hands were.”
He came up with the idea of a new universal culture in which modern Western society would acknowledge its debt to African music and art and modern black society would use European technology to speed up African progress. “Oh, New York!” I call it New York! If you let the black blood flow into your blood, it will help your steel joints stay in good shape.
This Négritude thing was talked about in a 50-page introduction to Leopold Sedar’s first big book, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache de Langue Francaise precedee de Orphee Noir by J.-P. Sartre, which came out in 1948. It was called “The Anthology of New Black and Malagasy Poetry in the French Language Following Black Orpheus by Jean-Paul Sartre.” Three years ago, Senghor added a political element to his academic and writing careers, which were just starting out.
After World War II, Senghor, who had lived in France since 1928, was given the chance to run for a place in the French parliament and return to Senegal. As part of its colonial strategy, France made sure that Africa had some kind of representation, and Senghor joined the African caucus in the Assemblée Nationale. Anticolonialism around the world helped Senghor and other Africans get more and better rights, which led to all Africans living in French overseas regions becoming full French citizens.
He was able to make a small hole in the colonial system’s wall, which he then slowly made bigger. The way Senghor planned to attack the French system wasn’t from the front. Instead, he worked to improve civil rights instead of pushing for freedom. His goal until 1958 was to become a full state, like Hawaii did when it joined the United States.
Léopold Sédar Senghor
In contrast to Kwame Nkrumah, who was the leader of the British West African colony of the Gold Coast (which later became Ghana), Senghor did not push for freedom. Senghor did not agree with full integration into France, even though he did not want freedom. Instead, he pushed for a new governmental federation that would make France and Africa equal partners.
Senghor thought of nationalism as “an old weapon… an old hunting gun.” An equals-based union of people from various continents and races was going to take its place. Some European politicians didn’t like how much it would cost to raise African incomes to European levels, and African nationalists who wanted to break away from their old master didn’t like his “Eurafrica” either.
It was impossible to fight the winds of change that brought freedom to dozens of former colonies. At the end of September 1960, Senghor gave in to “micronationalism” and became Senegal’s first president. During his time as president, Senghor worked on his theory of African socialism. It was a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas.
Radical Marxist economists were very critical of Senghor, but he did a good job of making his country’s economy more stable. French funding continued to help him with his development plans. Senghor stepped down as president of Senegal in 1981, after 20 years in office. He wanted to take people to a “promised land” where there would be no racism, poverty, nationalism, or war.
As part of that work, he was elected as the first black member of the Académie Francaise, a group of France’s most famous intellectuals known as “the Immortals.” The group has been around for almost 400 years. He was 95 years old when he died on December 20, 2001.
1. The Georgian calendar is not the same as the Ethiopian calendar. Based on the Ethiopian calendar, which has thirteen months, we are now in 2015.
2. The Ethiopians also use a different method to keep track of the hours because they believe the clock starts when the day does. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has 13 months in a year. Ethiopia’s calendar is seven years behind the rest of the world’s.
3. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that has never been a colony. The Italians tried, but they failed horribly, and the strong Ethiopian forces beat them.
4. The oldest and most unique Bible in the world is in Ethiopia.
Facts About Ethiopia
5. One of the best coffees in the world comes from Ethiopia. In fact, Ethiopia grows a lot of coffee.
6. Some archeological finds say that Ethiopia 🇦🇲 is where humans evolve. It’s true that lifè originated in Ethiopia.
7. Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia was the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal in 1960. He won by running without shoes.
8. The name Addis Ababa comes from the Amharic language and means “New Flower.” It’s one of the world’s greatest cities.
9. In Ethiopia, you can find some of the best, healthiest, and most varied foods in all of Africa.
10. Timket, Ethiopia’s biggest holiday, is held every year over three days to honor Jesus Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River. Every year, it’s one of the biggest events in the world. Millions of people from all over the world come to the event.
Facts About Ethiopia
11. There are more UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ethiopia than anywhere else in Africa. Ethiopia has the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites of any country in Africa. All together, there are nine of them, ranging from natural places to religious sites. There is Simien National Park, the Konso Cultural Landscape, and buildings made out of rock.
12. More than 80 different languages are spoken in Ethiopia. Over 80 languages are spoken, including English, which is used in schools, and many local languages, such as Oromo, Amharic, Somali, and Tigrinya.
13. Ethiopia is home to more than half of Africa’s mountains. Ethiopia is very important culturally and historically, and its natural beauty is out of this world. Ethiopia has a beautiful scenery of low deserts and volcanic plateaus, and it also has a lot of mountains. In fact, Ethiopia is home to about 70% of Africa’s mountains.
Facts About Ethiopia
14. The oldest country in Africa is Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the oldest separate country in Africa. It was founded in 980 B.C. Ethiopia is also one of the most important places in the world for archaeology because it has the remains of some of the world’s oldest humans that date back millions of years. Plus, with more than 106 million people, it is the second-most populous country in the world.
15. Ethiopia is the only country in the world that has its own alphabet.
