East Africa

Here we are considering Eritrea, Ethiopia to an extent, Somalia, Tanzania (including Zanjibar), Djibouti, islands of the Indian Ocean and Kenya.

As Sudanese development has more to do which Egyptian development, I discuss it along with Egypt’s (or at least separately from East Africa).

The Arabic name Zanj refers to the Negroid peoples of Tanzania and Kenya. The more northerly Hamitic peoples, although also black-skinned, were called Barbara (very like both Berber and Barbarian in origin). The Romans also made this distinction which may be a little too stark, however, to be useful to science. Within this area, Ethiopia remains a little unique having remained mainly Christian culturally (having also been the Christian kingdom that gave refuge to some of the earliest Muslims). It is clear that both trade and cultural contacts between coastal regions and islands across the very narrow Red Sea pre-date Islam.

We have five sources for our Arab history of East Africa: al-Mas’udi of Baghdad in the 10^th Century visited pre-Islamic Zanjibar (Zanzibar); al-Bakri the 11^th Century Andalusian and Moroccan; al-Idrisi in the 12^th Century; Ibn Sa’id in the 13^th Century; and Ibn Battuta who also visited Zanjibar (and also the Maldives) in the 14^th Century.

All the sources noted the poverty of all but the ruling classes in the region. The Arab trade in African slaves which occurred and was noted in these sources remains an issue today for some African nationalists.

This post is a little brief so I hope to expand it. If anybody wants to add information via the comments, please do so.