Focus on Nigeria

29/05/2023

19/02/2023

25/12/2022

25/12/2022

25/12/2022

Learn more about our history of racial injustice.

24/12/2022

Meet Nasara James Dabo: 13 year old genius who solved 34 questions in 172 seconds to win International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) In the just concluded

24/12/2022

A statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney is set to be removed from the Capitol. Taney wrote the Dred Scott decision.

24/12/2022

Learn more about our history of racial injustice.

23/12/2022

The former Fort Worth police officer was convicted of manslaughter for shooting Jefferson through a window of her home.

23/12/2022

1600's Depiction of Abraham and his descendants including the Penitent Thief

23/12/2022

1400's depiction of Elijah's ascension into heaven. Russia

23/12/2022

A 17-year-old disabled artist uses his mouth to create amazing artwork 🤩

Our story about Lucas Mapheto, who never went to school and is passionate about art, inspired many readers this year.

“Art is the only thing that helps me keep my mind clear so I don’t overthink my situation,” he says.

Photo: Lucas Mapheto (Supplied)

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23/12/2022

This guy just got in the department in March and racked up two civil rights lawsuits.

22/12/2022

Saratu Dan-Azumi, a brilliant 13-year-old Nigerian girl with the mathematical intellect of a computer, has been awarded a scholarship by the World Bank up to

22/12/2022

NOK CULTURE, NORTH NIGERIA 🇳🇬

The Nok culture (or Nok civilization) is a population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928. The Nok Culture appeared in Nigeria around 1500 BC and vanished under unknown circumstances around 500 AD, having lasted approximately 2,000 years.

Iron use, in smelting and forging tools, appears in Nok culture by at least 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier. Data from historical linguistics suggest that iron smelting was independently discovered in the region by 1000 BC.Scientific field work began in 2005 to systematically investigate Nok archaeological sites and to better understand Nok terracotta sculptures within their Iron Age archaeological contex.

Origin

Breunig and Rupp hypothesized, "Their origin is unknown, but since the plants they used as crops (especially millet) are indigenous to the Sahel region, a northern homeland is more probable than any other." Breunig explains: "The people of the Nok Culture Must have come from somewhere else. So far, however, we have not found out what region, though we suspect the Sahel zone in West Africa."

The function of Nok terracotta sculptures is still unknown. For the most part, the terracotta is preserved in the form of scattered fragments. That is why Nok art is well known today only for the heads, both male and female, whose hairstyles are particularly detailed and refined. The statues are in fragments because the discoveries are usually made from alluvial mud, in terrain made by the erosion of water. The terracotta statues found there are hidden, rolled, polished, and broken. Rarely are works of great size conserved intact making them highly valued on the international art market.

The first Nok terracotta was discovered in 1928 by Colonel Dent Young, a co-owner of a mining partnership, near the village of Nok in Kaduna State, Nigeria.The terracotta was accidentally unearthed at a level of 24 feet (7 m) from an alluvial tin mine. Young presented the sculptures to the Museum of the Department of Mines in Jos.

Descendants

The area that became Nigeria has been occupied for thousands of years by early humans,with the first being the Nok cultural areas,followed by Lejja, in Enugu, now southeast Nigeria, dating over 3000BC. The first archeology of cultural significance down south of Nigeria that is linked to the present inhabitants was recorded at Igbo ukwu (8TH-9TH century AD) followed by Ile ife (12th century and) and then Benin bronzes (16-17th century AD).

As each share cultural and artistic similarity with the Nok culture found in Nok, Sokoto, and Katsina, the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba, Jukun, or Dakakari peoples may be descendants of the Nok peoples. Based on stylistic similarities with the Nok terracottas, the bronze figurines of the Yoruba kingdom of Ife and the Bini kingdom of Benin may also be continuations of the traditions of the earlier Nok culture.

22/12/2022

ANCIENT AFRICANS IN INDIA

Marco Polo wrote... "The darkest man is here, the most esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth, these people portray and depict their Gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I described."
-(Marco Polo, after visiting the Pandiyan Kingdom in 1288 CE)

Ancient presence of Africans who had moved out from the eastern parts of the continent to Asia had influenced the life of the early people of India, to an extent that an African king, known as 'Ganges' had a river running across India named after him. This river(river Ganges), had also influenced religious worship and rites in India, a situation that stretched into the medieval era when Marco Polo visited Pandiyan.
The descendants of these Africans are left today on the lower rungs of the Indian society. A great number of them can be presently found in Andaman, with black shinny skin that is as black as tar and with fizzled hair. An example is the Jarawa people of India.

The presence of these ancient Africans in India, also influenced local architecture of groups in some parts of India, as can be seen in the image. This sort of architecture is predominantly African in origin, right from antiquity.



The History of Africa Magazine

Image: An Indian village, 2018/The History of Africa Magazine/image gallery.

22/12/2022

There are many fascinating and little-known facts about African Jews, also known as the Beta Israel community.

21/12/2022

21/12/2022

Though the black Jew community is unable to back with documentary proof which of the 12 tribes of Israel they belongs to, oral tradition handed over from generation to generation had transmitted knowledge of the observe of Jewish customs with regard to the observance of Shabbat, circumcision of thei...

21/12/2022

Ethiopian became a king in India.
Malik Ambar was among the tens of thousands of men, women, and children captured in Africa and sold into slavery in the Middle East and India over nearly nine centuries. His story is also an indication of the ability of some in the predominantly Muslim Indian Ocean world to rise far above their initial servile status. Born Chapu in 1548 in Harar Province, Ethiopia, Ambar (as he was later called) was stripped of his family, his name, and permanently removed from his homeland. Nevertheless, half a century later he had transformed himself into a king-maker in southern India’s interior region known as the Deccan where he led the area’s most powerful army against Mughal rule.

Traveling first by caravan, and then by dhow, young Ambar was taken across the Red Sea to the port of Mocha in southern Arabia (Yemen). He was re-sold and sent to Baghdad, where he was educated before being sent to India to serve Chengiz Khan, the Regent Minister of the Sultan of Nizam Shahi in Ahmadnagar. For twenty years, the Ethiopian, now a Muslim, loyally served Khan, an Ethiopian like himself who converted to Islam, but—unlike Ambar—was no longer enslaved. Over this period Ambar assumed increasing responsibility in the Nizam’s court where he observed and learned diplomacy, military strategy, and political organization, crucial training that he carried into his life as a free man.

Upon Khan’s death in approximately 1594, Ambar was manumitted and soon launched one of the most formidable careers in the political history of the Deccan. Initially working as a mercenary, by 1595, he commanded a cavalry force of 1500 men, and began organizing a rebel army which quickly grew into the thousands. By 1600 the African, now a full-fledged mercenary general, emerged as the leading figure in the resistance movement against the spread of the Mughal Empire into the Deccan. Defeating in battle the armies of two Mughal emperors, Akbar and Jahangir, Ambar’s armies were for a quarter of a century the inspiration for those resisting the attempted Mughal occupation of southern India.

By 1620, Ambar’s army numbered fifty thousand men; forty thousand Marathas (Hindu warriors) and ten thousand Habshi (fellow Africans). By then he had already installed two young princes to the Nizam’s throne in succession, each time making himself Regent Minister, and, unlike his former master, functioning as de facto ruler.

Ambar also forged alliances along India’s western coast with the African-descended sailors-turned-rulers of Janjira Island. His innovative techniques in guerrilla warfare including the use of British-manufactured artillery, prevented the Mughals from occupying the southern half of India, endlessly frustrating the empire’s rulers, who referred to their indomitable foe as the “rebel of black fortune.”

In approximately 1619, Ambar founded the city of Khadki (the future site of Aurangabad), where he built several palaces, developed an irrigation system, patronized Hindu and Muslim craftsmen and artists (including the great portrait artist Hashim), and married his daughter and son into the families of Indian nobility—thus integrating Africans into elite South Asian society. When Ambar died in 1627, he was known across the Deccan as one of the greatest leaders of the region.



Rare Africa