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Zanj
Zanj ( ar, زَنْج, adj. , ''Zanjī''; fa, زنگی, Zangi) was a name used by medieval Muslim geographers to refer to both a certain portion of Southeast Africa (primarily the Swahili Coast) and to its Bantu inhabitants. This word is also the origin of the place-names Zanzibar ("coast of the Zanji") and the Sea of Zanj. The latinization Zingium serves as an archaic name for the coastal area in modern Kenya and Tanzania in southern East Africa. The architecture of these commercial urban settlements are now a subject of study for urban planning. For centuries the coastal settlements were a source of ivory, gold, and slaves, from sections of the conquered hinterland, to the Indian Ocean world. Etymology ''Zanj'' in Arabic means the "country of the blacks". Other transliteration include Zenj, Zinj, and Zang.. Anthony Christie argued that the word ''zanj'' or ''zang'' may not be Arabic in origin, a Chinese form (僧祇 ''sēngqí'') is recorded as early as 607 AD. Chr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East African Slave Trade
The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade or Arab slave trade, was multi-directional slave trade and has changed over time. Africans were sent as slaves to the Middle East, to Indian Ocean islands (including Madagascar), to the Indian subcontinent, and later to the Americas. History Early Indian Ocean slave trade Slave trading in the Indian Ocean goes back to 2500 BCE. Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, various Indian groups and Persians all traded slaves on small scale across the Indian Ocean (and sometimes the Red Sea). Slave trading in the Red Sea around the time of Alexander the Great is described by Agatharchides. Strabo's '' Geographica'' (completed after 23 CE) mentions Greeks from Egypt trading slaves at the port of Adulis and other ports on the Horn African coast. Pliny the Elder's '' Natural History'' (published in 77 CE) also describes Indian Ocean slave trading. In the 1st century CE, ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Of Zanj
The Sea of Zanj ( ar, بحر زنج) is a former name for that portion of the western Indian Ocean adjacent to the region in the African Great Lakes referred to by medieval Arab geographers as Zanj. Article in Islamic World Encyclopedia The Sea of Zanj was deemed a fearful zone by Arab mariners and legends regarding dangers in the waters abounded, especially near its far southern limits., ''Meadows of Gold and Mines of Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zanzibar
Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site. Zanzibar's main industries are spices, raffia and tourism. In particular, the islands produce cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper. For this reason, the Zanzibar Archipelago, together with Tanzania's Mafia Island, are sometimes referred to locally as the "Spice Islands". Tourism in Zanzibar is a more recent activity, driven by government promotion that caused an increase from 19,000 tourists in 1985, to 376,000 in 2016. The islands are accessible via 5 ports and the Abeid Amani Karume International Airpor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara (region)
Barbaria was the name used by the ancient Greeks for littoral northeast Africa. The corresponding Arabic term, ''bilad al-Barbar'' (land of the Barbar), was used in the Middle Ages.Michael Peppard, "A Letter Concerning Boats in Berenike and Trade on the Red Sea", ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'' 171 (2009), pp. 193–198. The name of Barbaria is preserved today in the name of the Somali city of Berbera, the city known to the Greeks as Malao.David M. Goldenberg, "Geographia Rabbinica: The Toponym Barbaria", ''Journal of Jewish Studies'' 50, 1 (1999), pp. 67–69. Greek sources According to the '' Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'', a 1st-century travelogue written by a Greek merchant based in Alexandria, Barbaria extended from the border of Egypt just south of Berenice Troglodytica to just north of Ptolemais Theron. From there to the Bab-el-Mandeb was the kingdom ruled by Zoskales (possibly Aksum), after which the "rest of Barbaria" extended to Opone. This seco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania. According to the United Nations, Tanzania has a population of million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator. Many important hominid fossils have been found in Tanzania, such as 6-million-year-old Pliocene hominid fossils. The genus Australopithecus ranged across Africa between 4 and 2 million years ago, and the oldest remains of the genus '' Homo'' are found near Lake Olduvai. Following the rise of '' Homo erectus'' 1.8 million years ago, humanit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Peoples
The Bantu peoples, or Bantu, are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. They are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the people of Rwanda and Burundi (25 million), the Bagandapeople of Uganda (10 million as of 2019), the Shona of Zimbabwe (15 million ), the Zulu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese People
The Chinese people or simply Chinese, are people or ethnic groups identified with China, usually through ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, or other affiliation. Chinese people are known as Zhongguoren () or as Huaren () by speakers of standard Chinese, including those living in Greater China as well as overseas Chinese. Although both terms both refer to Chinese people, their usage depends on the person and context. The former term is commonly used to refer to the citizens of the People's Republic of China - especially mainland China. The term Huaren is used to refer to ethnic Chinese, and is more often used for those who reside overseas or are non-citizens of China. The Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in China, comprising approximately 92% of its Mainland population.CIA Factbook "Han Chinese 91.6%" out of a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Habash
Al-Habash ( ar, الحبشة, al-habāsha) was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.Sven Rubenson, The survival of Ethiopian independence, (Tsehai, 2003), p.30. Origin The term derives from Semitic languages: Ge'ez: Ḥabäśät, first written in the vowelless Ge'ez Abjad as ሐበሠተ, romanized: ḤBŚT; Sabaean: ḤBS²T, Arabic: حبشة, romanized: ḥabaša.Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'': D-Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. p. 948. One of the earliest known local uses of the term dates to the second or third century Sabaean inscription recounting the nəgus ("king") GDRT of Aksum and ḤBŠT. The Ezana Stone also has an early mention of HBŚT. The early Semitic term appears to refer to a group of peoples, rather than a specific ethnicity. The Al-Habash were known in Islamic literature as being rulers of a Christian kingdom, guaranteeing its a historical exonym for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethiopian Empire
The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that historically spanned the geographical area of present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea from the establishment of the Solomonic dynasty by Yekuno Amlak approximately in 1270 until the 1974 coup d'etat of Emperor Haile Selassie by the Derg. By 1896, the Empire incorporated other regions such as Hararghe, Gurage and Wolayita, and saw its largest expansion with the federation of Eritrea in 1952. Throughout much of its existence, it was surrounded by hostile forces in the African Horn; however, it managed to develop and preserve a kingdom based on its ancient form of Christianity. Founded in 1270 by the Solomonic Dynasty nobleman Yekuno Amlak, who claimed to descend from the last Aksumite king and ultimately the Biblical Menelik I and the Queen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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