Haiti we stand with you. Text "Haiti" to 90999 to send $10 through the Red Cross or Text "Yele" to 501501 to send $5 through Wyclef Jean's charity.
Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
All politics they say are local. None more so than the politics of living . And dying.
When people we love leave us, there is a temporary hole. Since all of nature abhors a hole, we fill it with...whatever we have available.
The blackwoman is filling the hole left by a friendship that spanned four decades, two husbands, four states and at least five careers. That’s a lot of spanning. A lot of love. This then is my Valentine to my friend Sandy. I called her Tink.
(con't)
My friend was a big fan of Black Kos. She of blond hair and blue eyes, cheered whenever I called folk on racial bullshit.
She had grown up privileged in Greenwood Indiana , home of the KKK. She attended Oral Roberts University leaving in disappointment after her second year. By the age of 22 she had her own PR firm and later married the republican deputy mayor.
I met her on a bus ride that was one of the gifts with donation for the local PBS fund-raiser. I looked at her and my first thought upon looking at her decked in her perfect little suit, sporting her Lady President Rolex was "Bullshit". She was clearly a renegade.
She claimed to have looked at me with all this wild hair everywhere and thought "I’ve been busted."
I witnessed her growth and was amazed at how effortless her life seemed. She heard about the Institute of Noetic Science , moved to Mill Valley and got herself hired. She was one of the pioneers. All her contemporaries died. Of cancer.
She wrote a book that became a bestseller.
I was there when she decided to plant lavender. The first plantings were given one of the 99 beautiful names of God.
There is a tree she planted for me and named it Grace Abounding. A weeping cherry.
Once, a day after the ban on liquids, when I was taking a flight home, a TSA employee and I had serious words. He told me he didn’t like my attitude. I told him he had not seen my attitude. He then threatened to have me arrested. I assured him it would not be for this bullshit, it would be for kicking his sorry ass. His supervisor intervened. Luckily for him.
When I told my friend the story, she just laughed, called me the Rosa Parks of the new millennium and assured me that her trust fund was at my disposal.
When I got the call, I knew the end of her journey was near. We talked and laughed and looked at each other wordlessly saying what we always said to each other. I see you. I like what I see.
When she asked me what she could give me, I had only two requests. Over her toilet there is a signed photo of her and Dan Quayle. It will hang over my toilet in remembrance of the long journey I watched her take. The other thing was a pair of ruby slippers, striped socks that will go under the shed I will build this summer. She got a laugh about that one.
She insisted on my having a Persian rug ,money and stuff and such. She wanted to share her wealth. I understand this. I also understand that her real wealth was the friendship and sisterhood money cannot buy.
She and I had planned on buying property in Crazy Woman Wyoming . It was to be the Crazy Woman Spa and Ranch. On my ninetieth birthday she was going to fly in the Chippendales and give me basket filled with dollar bills. When I reminded her of this promise, she told me she had already taken care of everything.
She left me a crystal ball saying it would be our new telephone. She promised to be the best guardian angel ever.
I am filling the hole with all the love and laughter and joys and sorrows and adventures and secrets we shared. I was so lucky to have loved you. Her obituary called her the Goddess in Overalls. Nailed it.
She wrote poems. This one is one of my favorites.
In the eternity of the soul,
Faith is the first jewel, the eternal sapphire
adorning the emerald of courageous hope
and the ruby of transforming love.
If we walk by Faith and not sight,
If by Faith we can move a mountain,
If Faith is the evidence of things not seen,
of things hoped for,
Then Faith is the precious jewel that
teaches trust in dark places.
Faith is the Welcome sign on the
doorway to the unknown.
Faith is an ancient memory called to stir by
difficult moments and touch our hearts with a
dim, longing, familiar sense of Home
Faith sets the feet on a journey to God.
Faith is a celebration in the
presence of Beauty,
arising in the heart of compassion
for the mightiness of God
Faith is our humility, our utter nakedness.
Faith is the loving, reassuring caress of Mother
God whose nature is intimacy with the
dark places of creation.
Faith receives the hug and returns it
in spite of everything.
And Faith is the true blue
friend of the dying,
of every mortal being.
Faith is yes in the
face of no.
Faith propels as reach
becomes grasp.
By the pure Grace of Faith,
We are the light of the world.
Now run and tell that.
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Commentary
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
This man needs no introduction. He's an engineer, astronomer, and knowledgeable in agricultural matters. His name is Benjamin Banneker.
Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731 just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a slave. His grandfather had been a member of a royal family in Africa and was wise in agricultural endeavors. As a young man, he was allowed to enroll in a school run by Quakers and excelled in his studies, particularly in mathematics. Soon, he had progressed beyond the capabilities of his teacher and would often make up his own math problems in order to solve them.
One day his family was introduced to a man named Josef Levi who owned a watch. Young Benjamin was so fascinated by the object that Mr. Levi gave it to him to keep, explaining how it worked. Over the course of the next few days, Benjamin repeatedly took the watch apart and then put it back together. After borrowing a book on geometry and another on Isaac Newton's Principia (laws of motion) he made plans to build a larger version of the watch, mimicking a picture he had seen of a clock. After two years of designing the clock and carving each piece by hand, including the gears, Banneker had successfully created the first clock ever built in the United States. For the next thirty years, the clock kept perfect time.
In 1776, the Third Continental Congress met and submitted the Declaration of Independence from England. Soon thereafter, the Revolutionary War broke out and Banneker set out to grow crops of wheat in order to help feed American troops. His knowledge of soil gained from his grandfather allowed him to raise crops in areas which had previously stood barren for years......Read More>>
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This weeks news by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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Many blacks question Obama's approach to race. New York Times: For Obama, Nuance on Race Invites Questions.
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The civil rights movement will come alive in song at the White House on Wednesday night, when President Obama plans to celebrate Black History Month with a star-studded concert.
Representative Elijah E. Cummings said of Mr. Obama, "I think he could do more."
And it came alive in quiet conversation on Martin Luther King’s Birthday, when Mr. Obama installed a rare signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office and invited a small group of African-American elders and young people in for a private viewing.
The two events — a televised extravaganza with celebrities like Morgan Freeman and Queen Latifah, and an intimate discussion with people like Dorothy Height, the 97-year-old chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women — reflect the nuances in Mr. Obama’s handling of the often incendiary issue of race in America. He is using his platform to advance racial consciousness, even as he has steered clear of putting race front and center in his administration.
It is a balancing act that has frustrated some black leaders and scholars, who are starting to challenge Mr. Obama’s language and policies. read more here -->
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What the most recent U.S. Census report tells us now. The Root: A Portrait of Black America on the Eve of the 2010 Census.
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There are 40 million black Americans on the eve of the 2010 Census. We are 12.3 percent of the U.S. population down from 14.8 percent of the population in 2000. African Americans became the nation’s second-largest minority group in the first decade of the 21st century.
WHERE WE LIVE
More than half of black Americans live in the South.
New York had the largest black population of any state as of July 1, 2008 (3.5 million); Georgia had the largest numeric increase since July 1, 2007 (67,000). The District of Columbia had the highest percentage of blacks (56 percent), followed by Mississippi (38 percent).
read more here -->
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New York Times: Shani Davis, on Edge.
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As Shani Davis approached the starting line for a World Cup race in November, at an ice oval in the Dutch town of Heerenveen north of Amsterdam, a marching band that was circling the arena stopped playing, and the festive crowd — many of them dressed from head to toe in orange, the national color — roared in anticipation. Davis, who is 27 and poised to become one of the most decorated Winter Olympians ever to compete for the United States, is like an American jazzman in the 1950s — little known and poorly compensated at home but beloved in certain parts of Europe. Here, they understand his sport and perhaps, on some level, even Davis himself, who accumulates grievances and clings to them as if they were first-place medals. "We can see that Shani is someone who lives for speed skating, and we don’t care so much about all the rest of it," Irene Postma, a Dutch journalist who covers the sport, told me as we waited for the race to begin. "And he is so perfect, so beautiful when he races. I would know him just by his silhouette."
A starter’s gun fired, and Davis sprinted off in the 1,000 meters, one of two distances at which he holds the world record, atop blades that were 17½ inches long and just one-sixteenth of an inch wide where they met the ice. Speed skating is a highly technical sport in which competitors want to be able to "feel" the ice and therefore have as little as possible between its surface and the nerve endings of their feet. Davis’s boots, like those of most elite speed skaters, were custom made from molds taken of his feet and surprisingly low-cut — not much higher on his ankles than a pair of Converse canvas sneakers. He wore no socks. He was skating, essentially, on two long knives fastened to a pair of snug-fitting slippers. read more here -->
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One often overlooked symptom of disasters are the huge internal migration they cause. The Globe and Mail: Exodus strains Haiti's countryside.
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The Rosier family was always close. Just not this close.
Twenty-five people – parents, grandparents, children, nephews, cousins and in-laws – have been living in the family patriarch's farmhouse in Haiti's Plateau Central for close to a month.
Standing outside, hacking his palm trees to pieces to build shacks for his growing household, patriarch Ilson Rosier smiles and shrugs.
"They're family – of course I have to take them in. We'll do what we can."
But his seven children and their families now sharing cooking, washing and living space are starting to worry how they'll make ends meet.
The Rosier brood is among the hundreds of thousands who have fled devastated Port-au-Prince to seek refuge in the provinces. read more here -->
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Sevilla la Nueva, the first European settlement in Jamaica, is home to the bittersweet story of the beginning of the Caribbean sugar trade. Smithsonian Magazine: Sugar Masters in a New World.
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Until the discovery of the New World in the late 15th century, Europeans hungered for sugar. So precious was the commodity that a medieval burgher could only afford to consume one teaspoon of the sweet granules per year. And even in Europe’s early Renaissance courts, the wealthy and powerful regarded the refined sweetener as a delicious extravagance. When Queen Isabella of Castile sought a Christmas present for her daughters, she chose a small box brimming with sugar.
The commodity’s preciousness came, of course, from its relative scarcity during this period. Sugar cane—the sole source of the sweetener—only really flourished in hot, humid regions where temperatures remained above 80 degrees Fahrenheit and where rain fell steadily or farmers had ample irrigation. This ruled out most of Europe. Moreover, sugar-mill owners required huge quantities of wood to fuel the boiling vats for transforming cane into sugar cones. By the early 16th century, sugar masters along the southern Mediterranean, from Italy to Spain, struggled to find enough cheap timber.
So European merchants and bankers were delighted by reports they received from Spanish mariners exploring the Caribbean. Jamaica possessed superb growing conditions for sugar cane, and by 1513, Spanish farmers in the island’s earliest European settlement, Sevilla la Nueva, tended fields bristling with the green stalks. But until very recently, historians and archaeologists largely overlooked the story of these early would-be sugar barons. Now a Canadian and Jamaican research team led by Robyn Woodward, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, has studied Sevilla la Nueva’s fledgling sugar industry and excavated its mill. "It’s the earliest known sugar mill in the New World," says Woodward.
Read more here -->
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February 11th, 1990! BBC: Remembering the day Nelson Mandela was freed.
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Just a week earlier South Africa's last white president, FW de Klerk, had announced to the world that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela would walk free from jail.
At the time, I was a cub reporter for the crusading anti-apartheid newspaper Vrye Weekblad. And I was breaking up with my long-term boyfriend and consolidating a relationship with someone else.
But my love-life took a back seat as one of the most exciting events in my personal and professional life began to unfold.
It may sound lofty now - but this political event was personal. read more here -->
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Nigeria's new president will have to live up to his name, as he takes over in murky circumstances. The Traditional Media has tended to "play up" Nigeria's recent problems without pointing out the power vacuum.Economist: Good luck, Jonathan
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WEARING the wide-brimmed hat favoured by tribal chiefs in his corner of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan this week assumed office as the country’s acting president. In a televised address to his 150m people, the erstwhile vice-president said that the "circumstances" that had led to his promotion were "uncommon, sober and reflective".
Until now, Africa’s most populous country had been leaderless for almost 80 days, since President Umaru Yar’Adua abruptly left for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. He failed formally to transfer power to Mr Jonathan before his departure, leaving Nigeria in a state of limbo. The president’s inner circle and cabinet repeatedly put off filling the vacuum, knowing that a change at the top could threaten their privileged positions. Investors and oil people grew querulous.
However, amid growing calls for action, Nigeria’s parliament has at last passed a resolution that transfers full power to Mr Jonathan until the president returns to work. The resolution used Mr Yar’Adua’s faltering BBC telephone interview last month as the official "sick note" to parliament that the constitution requires for a handover.
Mr Jonathan could now be in the top job until elections scheduled for next year. Although he has been the de facto leader since Mr Yar’Adua’s departure, he has been largely passive. Some attribute this silence to spinelessness, others to tactical guile. "If he had overdone it earlier, people would have said he was power-grabbing," says a businessman in Lagos, the commercial capital. "He has been clever." read more here -->
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One of modern literature's great mysteries. "Why did the acclaimed author of the classic Invisible Man never publish another book?" The Daily Beast: Stanley Crouch on the tortured brilliance of Ellison’s unfinished work and how America failed to appreciate him.
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Ralph Ellison was given the National Book Award in 1953 for his first and last finished novel, Invisible Man. Ellison was also the first Negro American writer to receive such a high level of recognition and it preceded nearly every citation of excellence being overwhelmed by or selling out to the politics of race, class, sex, and sexual preference, including the Nobel Prize.
Those forces continued to multiple in such numbers that, by the end of the 1960s, Ellison had become a marked man because of several things. The novelist had betrayed the national ethos of money and self-obsession expressed through career ambitions. He had not built upon his book award by writing more books, which greatly limited his career success, and he had become the sort of man Americans love to hate.
Ellison did not join the furious black propagandists in believing that protest was right as long as the target was in the wrong. The writer believed in the craft of fiction and was dedicated to unraveling the snarls of cultural yarn that made it so hard for Americans to comprehend themselves, their interconnected national identity, and the deeper meanings of their shared history. So Ellison was hated by certain white people because he knew much more about America and much more about Western literature than they usually did; and he was also hated by leftist ethnic nationalists who brought their narrow ideologies to the circumstances of race and class, where anything almost always goes, from the academy to the media. read more here -->
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For more than half a century the Scurlock Studio chronicled the rise of Washington's black middle class. The Smithsonian: The Scurlock Studio: Picture of Prosperity.
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Long before a black family moved into the president’s quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. was an African-American capital: as far back as Reconstruction, black families made their way to the city on their migration north. By the turn of the 20th century, the District of Columbia had a strong and aspiring black middle class, whose members plied almost every trade in town. Yet in 1894, a black business leader named Andrew F. Hilyer noted an absence: "There is a splendid opening for a first class Afro-American photographer as we all like to have our pictures taken."
Addison Scurlock filled the bill. He had come to Washington in 1900 from Fayetteville, North Carolina, with his parents and two siblings. Although he was only 17, he listed "photographer" as his profession in that year’s census. After apprenticing with a white photographer named Moses Rice from 1901 to 1904, Scurlock started a small studio in his parents’ house. By 1911, he had opened a storefront studio on U Street, the main street of Washington’s African-American community. He put his best portraits in the front window.
"There’d be a picture of somebody’s cousin there," Scurlock’s son George would recall much later, "and they would say, ‘Hey, if you can make him look that good, you can make me look better.’ " Making all his subjects look good would remain a Scurlock hallmark, carried on by George and his brother Robert. Read more here -->
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Consider this part two of the Henrietta Lacks cancer story from Tuesday's chile. Race Talk: Can we say "Informed consent?"
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Informed consent is a concept that guides present day practitioners to inform participants, in research or a procedure, what they are signing up for. You are responsible for communicating your methods in a way that participants can understand so that they can make a decision about whether they want to be a part of your study.
Oftentimes, you are required to highlight the benefits and risks of being involved in the research. For example, when I am conducting research about racial discrimination, I suggest that benefits of being a part of the research could include reflecting on personal experience in a way that might be healing and helping to document the persistence of racism.
However, drawbacks might include some psychological distress from recalling and reflecting on negative events. Full disclosure is expected and deception is only allowed after an in-depth scrutiny. Any compensation offered must be clearly stated and be appropriate. All of these factors are reviewed before data collection can begin. Supposedly.
The recent review I read on the "Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot reminded me why I should humbly accept the frustration that often comes along with the review process. The scientific community has a long history of abusing its power. Therefore, the checks, although tedious at times, are necessary. Ms. Lacks, an African American woman, died from an aggressive cervical cancer after her cells were harvested during treatment at Johns Hopkins University. Subsequently, her cells, commonly known as HeLa, were used for medical research- namely the polio, Parkinson’s and chemotherapy.
What struck me the most when reading Ms. Lack’s story was that it did not end with her. The actions of the medical community continue to fuel mistrust. Ms. Lacks’ descendants, without offer for compensation, have been asked to contribute samples furthering the exploitation.
African Americans, in particular, have been exploited in the name of advancing science. The Tuskegee study has long been held up as a prime example- rightfully so given its longstanding atrocities. read more here -->
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--- THE HISTORY OF EAST AFRICA PART 2 by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor ---
Nubia
Today Nubia is simply a region that runs from the south of Egypt along the Nile into northern Sudan. But in ancient times it was an independent kingdom. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt.
Early History
In 2300 BC, Nubia was first mentioned in Old Kingdom Egyptian accounts of trade missions. From Aswan (right above the First Cataract) the southern limit of Egyptian control at the time, Egyptians imported gold, incense, ebony, ivory, and exotic animals from tropical Africa through Nubia. As trade between Egypt and Nubia increased so did wealth and stability. By the Egyptian 6th dynasty, Nubia was divided into a series of small kingdoms. There is debate over whether these C-Group peoples (archeologist haven't named these groups yet using only letters), who flourished from c. 2240 BC to c. 2150 BC, were natives or invaders. There are definite similarities between the pottery of A-Group and C-Group, so it may be a return of the ousted Group-As, or an internal revival of lost arts. At this time, the Sahara Desert was becoming too arid to support human beings, and it is possible that there was a sudden influx of Saharan nomads. C-Group pottery is characterized by all-over incised geometric lines with white infill and impressed imitations of basketry.
During the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (c. 2040-1640 BC), Egypt began expanding into Nubia to gain more control over the trade routes in Northern Nubia and to gain direct access to trade with Southern Nubia. They erected a chain of forts down the Nile below the Second Cataract. These garrisons seemed to have peaceful relations with the local Nubian people but little interaction during the period.
A contemporaneous but distinct culture from the C-Group was the Pan Grave culture, so called because of their shallow graves. The Pan Graves are associated with the East bank of the Nile, but the Pan Graves and C-Group definitely interacted. Their pottery is characterized by incised lines of a more limited character than those of the C-Group, generally having interspersed undecorated spaces within the geometric scheme.
From the C-Group culture, the first kingdom to unify much of the region arose, the Kingdom of Kerma, named for its presumed capital at Kerma, one of the earliest urban centers in tropical Africa. By 1750 BC, the kings of Kerma were powerful enough to organize the labor for monumental walls and structures of mud brick, and had rich tombs with possessions for the afterlife and large human sacrifices. The craftsmen were skilled in metalworking and their pottery surpassed in skill that of Egypt. When Egyptian power revived under the New Kingdom (c.1532-1070 BC) they began to expand further southwards. Destroying the kingdom and capital of Kerma they expanded to the Fourth Cataract. By the end of the reign of Thutmose I in 1520 BC, all of northern Nubia had been annexed. They built a new administrative center at Napata, and used the area to produce gold which made Egypt the prime source of gold in the Middle East
When the Egyptians pulled out, they left a lasting legacy that was merged with indigenous customs forming the kingdom of Kush. Kush adopted many Egyptian practices such as their religion and the practice of building pyramids. The kingdom of Kush survived longer than that of Egypt, even invading and controlling Egypt itself for a period (the Kushite dynasty) in the 8th century BC. Kush was never annexed by the Romans. The Kushites did trade with the Romans, and were also a source of mercenaries.
During this time, the different parts of the region divided into smaller groups with individual leaders, or generals, each commanding small armies of mercenaries. They fought for control of what is now Nubia and its surrounding territories, leaving the entire region weak and vulnerable to attack.
At some point, Kush was conquered by the Noba people, from which the name Nubia may derive (another possibility is that it comes from Nub, the Egyptian word for gold). From then on, the Romans referred to the area as the Nobatae. Indeed, recent studies in population genetics suggest that there was a south-north gene flow through the Nile Valley. Similarly, linguistic evidence suggests that the Nubians from the Nile Valley originally came from the south or southwest. Historical comparative research into the Nubian language group has indicated that the Nile-Nubian languages must have split off from the Nubian languages still spoken in the Nuba Mountains in Kordofan, Sudan, at least 2500 years ago.
Christian Nubia
Around AD 350 the area was invaded by the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum and the kingdom collapsed. Eventually three smaller kingdoms replaced it: northernmost was Nobatia between the first and second cataract of the Nile River, with its capital at Pachoras (modern day Faras); in the middle was Makuria, with its capital at Old Dongola; and southernmost was Alodia, with its capital at Soba (near Khartoum). King Silko of Nobatia crushed the Blemmyes, and recorded his victory in a Greek inscription carved in the wall of the temple of Talmis (modern Kalabsha) around AD 500.
While bishop Athanasius of Alexandria consecrated one Marcus as bishop of Philae before his death in 373, showing that Christianity had penetrated the region by the fourth century, John of Ephesus records that a Monophysite priest named Julian converted the king and his nobles of Nobatia around 545. John of Ephesus also writes that the kingdom of Alodia was converted around 569. However, John of Bisclorum records that the kingdom of Makuria was converted to Roman Catholicism the same year, suggesting that John of Ephesus might be mistaken. Further doubt is cast on John's testimony by an entry in the chronicle of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Eutychius, which states that in 719 the church of Nubia transferred its allegiance from the Greek Orthodox to the Coptic Church.
By the 7th century Makuria expanded becoming the dominant power in the region. It was strong enough to halt the southern expansion of Islam after the Arabs had taken Egypt. After several failed invasions the new rulers agreed to a treaty with Dongola allowing for peaceful coexistence and trade. This treaty held for six hundred years. Over time the influx of Arab traders introduced Islam to Nubia and it gradually supplanted Christianity. While there are records of a bishop at Qasr Ibrim in 1372, his see had come to include that located at Faras. It is also clear that the "Royal" church at Dongola had been converted to a mosque around 1350.
Somalilands (Djibouti, Somalia)
Most historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and other researchers believe that the modern Somalis are descendants of migrants from the northwest in what is today Ethiopia, while others support theories that include an indigenous origin for most Somalis. The Somalis, as a Cushitic-speaking people form a part of a diverse continuum of the larger Afro-Asiatic peoples, but do bear close ties to other Eastern Cushitic peoples including the Oromo, Afar, and Sidama.
Numerous old theories regarding origins in Arabia and other places, in part based upon local beliefs, have largely been discarded as increasing evidence now supports a more indigenous Somali existence in the region that can be traced back to the 1st millennium BCE. The ancient ancestors of the Somali people appear to have split off from an early Cushitic group, whose geographic origins remain largely speculative, and are referred to as the Sam who were themselves a sub-type of the Omo-Tana and are believed to have lived in an area roughly corresponding to modern northern Kenya and southern Somalia over 2,000 years ago. These proto-Sam peoples evolved into the bulk of the Somalis as the Sam transitioned into Somaal and later the Somali people. The Somali people are believed to have moved into the Zeila region by at least 750 CE and then expanded into all of what is today Somalia by displacing the Oromo.
It's very likely that Somalis were already influenced with Islam through a small group of persecuted Muslims who settled in parts of East Africa during the time when the Great Ethiopian Emperor Amrah of Aksum gave sanctuary to the Prophet's followers, but it wasn't until the coming of Arab traders in the 10th century CE that would significantly shape much of modern Somali culture. Trading communities that were already present since the first century AD according to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea began to trade with the Arabian Peninsula and it significantly altered Somali society as the vast majority converted to Islam. Arabic culture greatly influenced the Somalis as their language borrowed a significant amount of Arabic vocabulary and came to be written using Arabic script. Due to the conversion of the Somalis to Islam, conflict with the neighboring Christians of Ethiopia led to numerous wars from the 13th to the 16th century. After the Somali Ajuuraan Dynasty collapsed in the 18th century Omani rule started as a trade network spanning much of the Arabian Sea from Zanzibar to Arabia making Somalia an important center of early trade. In-spite of Arab rule along the coast, the Somali tribes of the interior exercised almost total independence and often raided the coastal settlements until the Arabs began to withdraw by the 19th century. Egypt and Britain both attempted to colonize Somalia with the British having been successful in forming a protectorate over northern Somaliland. Italy later claimed the southern portions of Somalia.
Eritrea
The oldest written source of the territory currently known as Eritrea is the chronicled expedition launched to the fabled Punt (or "Ta Netjeru," meaning land of the Gods) by the Ancient Egyptians in the 25th century BC under Pharao Sahure[5]. Later sources from the Pharao Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC present a more detailed portrayal of an expedition in search of incense. The geographical location of the missions to Punt is described as roughly corresponding to the southern west coast of the Red Sea.
The earliest evidence of agricultural settlement, urbanism, trade and agriculture is found in the region inhabited by people dating back to 3500 BC in the archaeological sites called the Gash group. Based on the archaeological evidence, there seems to have been a connection between the peoples of the Gash group and the civilizations of the Nile Valley namely Ancient Egypt and Nubia.[8] Ancient Egyptian sources also give references to cities and trading posts along the southwestern Red Sea coast, roughly corresponding to modern day Eritrea, calling this the land of Punt famed for its incense. Expeditions to this very land were launched by the Ancient Egyptians as early as the 25th century BC and were chronicled in detail.
In the highlands, in one of the capital city Asmara's suburbs Sembel at the mouth of the river Anseba, another site was found from the 9th century BC of another agricultural and urban settlement which traded both with the Sabeans across the Red Sea and with the civilizations of the Nile Valley further west along caravan routes that followed the Anseba River. Around this time, several cities with a high amount of Sabean remains (inscriptions, artifacts, monuments, architecture etc) seem to emerge in the central highlands and along the central coast including one called Saba. Some are undoubtedly built on top of older sites.
Around the 8th century BC, a kingdom known as D'mt was established in what is today northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, with its capital at Yeha in northern Ethiopia and which had extensive relations with the Sabeans in present day Yemen across the Red Sea. After D'mt's decline around the 5th century BC, the state of Aksum arose in the northern Abyssinian plateau. It grew during the 4th century BC and came into prominence during the first century AD, minting its own coins by the 3rd century, converting in the 4th century to Christianity, as the second official Christian state (after Armenia) and the first country to feature the cross on its coins. According to Mani, it grew to be one of the four greatest civilizations in the world, on a par with China, Persia, and Rome. In the 7th century AD; with the advent of Islam across the Red Sea in Arabia, Aksum's trade and power on the Red Sea began to decline and the center moved farther inland to the highlands of what is today Ethiopia and the state was eventually defeated by Islamic as well as other internal forces circa 850 or 950 AD
During the medieval period, contemporary with and following the disintegration of the Axumite state, several states as well as tribal and clan lands emerged in the area known today as Eritrea. Between the 8th and 13th century, northern and western Eritrea had largely come under the domination of the Beja, an Islamic, Cushitic people from northeastern Sudan. They formed five independent kingdoms known as: Naqis, Baqlin, Bazin, Jarin and Qata. The Beja brought Islam to large parts of Eritrea and connected the region to the greater Islamic world dominated by the Ummayad Caliphate, followed by the Abbasid (and Mamluk) and later the Ottoman Empire. The Ummayads were already in direct possession of small stretches of the Eritrean coastline and the Dahlak archipelago by the 8th century. The Beja imposed themselves as rulers but did not impose their cushitic language or culture on their subjects but rather adopted the local Ge'ez based language. This language evolved over time into the Tigre language which to this day is the lingua franca of the predominantly Muslim lowlands and northern coast of Eritrea. Later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, northern Eritrea and its coastline were taken over completely by the Ottomans who were to remain there for over 300 years and govern it from the port of Massawa. Meanwhile, the central highlands and adjacent coastline became the site of a Christian Kingdom called Midre Bahri or Midre Bahr meaning sea-land in Tigrinya and Tigre respectively, and ruled by the Bahr Negash or Bahr negus (meaning king of the sea) that was loosely affiliated with the Abyssinian kingdoms of the south (but at times also became involved in conflict with them in alliance with the Ottomans). The domain of the kingdom was for most of its history restricted to north of the perennial river Mareb and which still serves as a natural boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia today. The other Abyssinian kingdoms south of the river therefor commonly referred to Midre Bahri as Mareb Mellash meaning 'beyond Mareb' (in the Amharic language of the Amhara who had come to dominate Abyssinia since the 13th century). The feudal authority of the Bahr Negash later waned and was replaced by a Republic known as Hamasien, which was based on a land-owning peasantry (citizenry) in the central highlands who ruled by elders councils or shimagile and maintained it's entire young and able male population as a standing army. The southern coastline meanwhile was populated by the Afar and Saho speaking Islamic chiefdoms or clan lands which by the 16th century had evolved into the centralized Adal Sultanate (along with territories currently in eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti and Northern Somalia).
An Ottoman invading force under Suleiman I conquered Massawa in 1577, building what is now considered the 'old town' of Massawa on Batsi island. They also conquered the towns of Hergigo, and Debarwa, the capital city of the contemporary Bahr negus (ruler), Yeshaq. Suleiman's forces fought as far south as southeastern Tigray before being repulsed. Yeshaq was able to retake much of what the Ottomans captured with Abyssinian (Ethiopian) assistance, but he later twice revolted against the Emperor of Abyssinia with Ottoman support in an attempt to take the Abyssinian throne. By 1578, all revolts had ended, leaving the Ottomans in control of the important ports of Massawa and Hergigo and their environs, and leaving the province of Habesh to Beja Na'ibs (deputies). The Ottomans maintained their dominion over the northern coastal areas for nearly 300 years. Their possessions were left to their Egyptian heirs in 1865 and were taken over by the Italians in 1885.
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