Isaac Samuel posts
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Dan and Dangbe: a history of the serpent deities of the African Atlantic
"The Serpent is in Ouidah a superior and excellent Divinity. He looks after and into everything, everybody appeals to him for advice, for rain, for good weather or in case of sickness or war, for trade, for harvest, for weddings."Reverend Father Labat, 1730.Serpents may have a negative reputation in Abrahamic r...
Books and Articles on Nsibidi (Updated)
Updated essay: The Nsibidi script ca. 600-1909 CE: a history of an African writing system(New books and articles)Compass - Comparative Literature in Africaedited by Maduka, Chidi T., Ekpo, DenisTranslation of ; Étude typographique du système d’écriture nsibidi, des pictos-idéogrammes du Nigeriaby Morgane Pierson(...
please vote to unlock this essay
Hi folks, I have been offline for the past three days attending the funeral of my father, who sadly passed away this Tuesday. I was hoping to unlock this 3-year-old essay on the Nsibidi scriptfor the general audience on substack this Sunday, only if the majority of you vote to make it free for all.
The rural castles and fortifications of west Africa's Kassena and Bètammaribè.
The Koutammakoulandscape in northern Togo and Benin has the unusual distinction of being one of the few UNESCO world heritage sites that are known more to tourists than to historians of Africa. Towering above this undulating landscape are hundreds of fortified multi-story houses resembling small medieval castles built ...
Books and Articles on the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of west Africa
Essay:A complete history of the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of west AfricaMaking and Remaking Mosques in SenegalBy Cleo CantoneTracing history in Dia, in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali : archaeology, oral traditions and written sources by N. AraziAl-Sahili : the historian's myth of architectural technology transfe...
West Africa between Rome and medieval Mali: the pre-Islamic sites of Loropeni, Kissi, and Oursi in Burkina Faso.
In 1996, the discovery of an elite necropolis at Kissi in Burkina Faso containing grave goods that included Roman items dated to the early 1st millennium CE provided the first definitive evidence for long-distance trade in luxury goods in pre-Islamic West Africa.In the early 2000s, excavations uncovered evidence for pr...
Books and Articles on the Meroitic script of Kush.
Essay: The Meroitic script and the documents of ancient Kush (ca. 300BC-450CE)The Meroitic Language and Writing SystemBy Claude Rilly, Alex de VoogtKaranòg : the Meroitic inscriptions of Shablul and Karanògby Francis Llewellyn Griffith.Meroitic, grammatical and lexical data, linguistic affliation. Vol. I[in French] b...
Nubian priests in the ancient Roman world
Among the ruins of the Roman town of Herculaneum which was buried after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79CE are two well-preserved frescos depicting several aithiopianpriests as central figures in a ceremony dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis.Across the Mediterranean and up the Nile to the southernmost border of R...
Books and Articles on the intellectual history of Ethiopia & Eritrea
Essay: The intellectual history of Ethiopia and Eritrea: Ge'ez manuscripts and scholars (ca. 200-1900CE)The Traditional Teaching of the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahedo ChurchBy Christine Chaillot The Ethiopian Royal Chroniclesby Richard PankhurstThe Glorious Victories of 'Āmda S̥eyon, King of Ethiopiaby George W...
The war elephants of ancient Aksum and kush (ca. 300 BC- 600 CE)
The grand dionysiac procession of the Greco-Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Philadelphus, which occured around the year 276 BC, includes an unusual scene depicting elephants dragging a chariot along with tribute bearers, some of whom came from the kingdom of Kush whose armies had lost the region of lower Nubia to Philadelphus&#...
Books and Articles on the intellectual history of East Africa
Essay:The intellectual history of East Africa (ca. 900-1950 CE): from the Swahili coast to Buganda to Eastern Congo.Renewers of the Age: Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial BenaadirBy Scott ReeseIslamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940)By Anne K. BangMuslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century...
Life and works of Mtoro Bakari; a 'hidden founder' of African studies in Europe (1869-1927).
"Teaching students is hard work for little reward, because when students qualify, the teacher does not always get his pay." - Mtoro Mwinyi Bakari, 1903.In 1903, one of the earliest foundational works on the anthropology of East African societies was written by a little-known African scholar named Mtoro bin Mwin...
Books and Articles on the history of the Horse in the southern half of Africa
Essay: A history of Horses in the southern half of Africa ca. 1498-1900.Riding High: Horses, Humans and History in South Africaby Sandra Scott SwartThe Impact of the Horse on the AmaTola 'Bushmen'” New Identity in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of Southern Africaby W ChallisHorse Nations: The Worldwide Impa...
Cloth trade and production in the great textile belt of central Africa. ca. 1500-1900
The region extending from the Atlantic coast of Congo to the western shores of Lake Tanganyika was home to what is arguably the largest contiguous cloth-producing region on the continent, known as the 'Central African textile belt'.The Portuguese visitors to 16th-century Kongo described its textiles as "so ...
Books and Articles for my critique of AJR's 'Why Nations Fail'.
my article: Acemoglu in Kongo: a critique of 'Why Nations Fail' and its wilful ignorance of African history.Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and PovertyBy Daron Acemoglu, James A. RobinsonThe Kingdom of Kongoby Anne Hilton That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea S...
The Guns of Benin: a history of firearms in the military systems and cultural traditions of the Benin kingdom. ca. 1514-1897.
Among the vast corpus of celebrated artworks from Benin are a handful of sculptures depicting soldiers carrying muskets and a plaque decorated with a miniature cannon. These artworks, which may be the earliest images of firearms in Africa, were produced during one of the most pivotal moments in the continent's hist...
Books and articles on the Textile Industry of the Sokoto empire
Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern NigeriaBy Elisha P. Renne Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern NigeriaBy Michael J. Watts.Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectivesedited by Anne Haour, Benedetta RossiBig Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of...
Books and Articles on the ancient city of Meroe
Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudanby P. L. ShinnieThe Double Kingdom Under Taharqo: Studies in the History of Kush and Egypt, c. 690 – 664 BCby Jeremy W. PopeHellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia 300 B.C. - AD 250 and Its Egyptian Models: A Study in "Acculturation"by László TörökThe Oxford Handbook of Ancient ...
The pre-Aksumite civilization of Ethiopia and Eritrea ca. 1000 BC-50 CE
Centuries before the Aksumite empire dominated the Red Sea region, the northern Horn of Africa was home to multiple complex societies which flourished in a region at the crossroads of many cultures linking North-East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.Scattered between the modern countries of Eritrea and Ethiopia are the ...
Books and articles on the medieval city of Zeila
A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea by Samantha Kelly First Footsteps in East Africa: Or, An Explanation of HararBy Sir Richard Francis Burton with an introduction by Henry W. NevinsonSun, Sand and SomalsBy Henry A. RayneA Traveller in Thirteenth-century Arabia: Ibn Al-Mujāwir's Tārīkh Al-mustabṣirby ...
An East African traveler's description of 19th century Germany.
"I wandered around the city and saw women in it catching men and I thought: this city is the city of madmen, this is the end of the world, this is where you have come to get lost, Amur."Africans had been exploring and traveling across the old world as envoys, merchants, and pilgrims since antiquity, but it wasn...
Books and Articles on the history of Mombasa
The Way the World Is: Cultural Processes and Social Relations Among the Mombasa Swahiliby Marc J. SwartzFort Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa, 1593-1729by Charles Ralph Boxer, Carlos de AzevedoThree Swahili Women. Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya.Edited by Sarah Mirza and Margaret StrobelThe Mijikenda and Mombasa ...
On Africans exploring Africa:
A sneak peek into the AfricanHistoryExtra Patreon account, please subscribe to access all my posts.
Dynamics of gold trade and consumption in South-East Africa and the Swahili coast, and the historical links between Great zimbabwe, Sofala and Kilwa ca. 950 to 1820.
The Swahili coast of East Africa was one of the world's leading exporters of gold since the middle ages, with about as much gold passing through the port town of Sofala every year in the 15th century as was owned by Mansa Musa --the wealthiest person in history.The coastal town of Sofala, which was referred to as &...
Books and Articles on the history of the stone ruins of South Africa
The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africaby Lynn MeskellMapungubwe and the Origins of the Zimbabwe Culture by Thomas N. HuffmanMapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The Origin and Spread of social complexity in Southern Africa by Thomas N. HuffmanShell disc beads and the development of class‑based society at the K2‑Map...
The Kimpasi religious society of Kongo: traditional beliefs in west-central Africa from the 17th to 20th century.
The kingdom of Kongo, as it appears in 16th century accounts, was, along with Ethiopia, one of only two Christian states in Africa after the fall of medieval Nubia. However, Kongo's global recognition as Christian kingdom by the papacy in Rome and by the kings of Iberia, may obscure the continued presence of 't...
Books and Articles on the history of Iron technology in Africa
Metals in Past Societies: A Global Perspective on Indigenous African MetallurgyBy Shadreck ChirikureMetals in Mandara Mountains Society and Cultureedited by Nicholas DavidA Comparison of Early and Later Iron Age Societies in the Bassar Region of TogoPhilip de BarrosThe Origins of African Metallurgies by A.F.C. HollBook...
The stone ruins of Cameroon and the 16th century kingdom of Mandara
Written in 1576, the chronicles of the kingdom of Bornu contain a curious account of an expedition conducted by King Idrīs Alooma beyond the southern banks of Lake Chad against a king of Wandara who had sought refuge in the mountain fortresses of northern Cameroon.Beginning in 2002, archeologists started excavating a ...
Books and Articles on the Kong empire
Rural and Urban Islam in West Africaby Nehemia Levtzion, Humphrey J. FisherLes états de Kong (Côte d'Ivoire)By Louis Tauxier, Edmond BernusLa ville de Bobo-Dioulasso au Burkina Fasoby Katja Werthmann, Mamadou Lamine SanogoKong et sa région by Edmond BernusIslam on both Sides: Religion and Locality in Western ...
