iaaas socialscience grade6 q4lesson

SOCIAL SCIENCE6th Grade Interdisciplinary African and African American Studies Quarter 4 Launch Lesson

THEME: Culture, Dignity, and Identity

CONCEPT: Africa, US, and the WorldCONTENT TOPIC: Africa’s history as a world economic power is seldom presented at the middle or high school level. This simulation helps students discard the notion that African people were primitive and isolated from the outside world by showing how kingdoms and city-states in Eastern and Central Africa were involved in the vast and profitable Indian Ocean trade network.UNIT TITLE: African Global Interactions with Asia

Sample Student Outcome Statements*

Students will be able to --- with African and African American Studies

Connections

Students will be able to --- from Social Science Planning Guides

Argue and/or explain … o The merits of Medieval African

Kingdoms with respect to their influence on the culture, politics and socioeconomic aspects of the world of the Indian Ocean

o The East African Diaspora throughout Asia

Research, analyze to write … o An informative essay making an

argument supporting or refuting a stance within a relevant issue

Make connections and understand … o Both the relationship and

relevance between the Medieval kingdoms with respect to their influence on the culture, politics and socioeconomic aspects of the world of the Indian Ocean and African American identity today

Investigate and Research …

o How African trade led to the development of the world of the Indian Ocean

o How Internal and external forces shape identity

o How the greatness of a culture can be measured in various ways

Social Studies Literacy Reading Skills …o Legends, Biographies, Maps and

other primary and secondary sources

o Document Based Analysis

CCSS Literacy Writing Skills … o Explanatory essay, focusing on

Argument CCSS Speaking and Listening Skills …

o Focusing on presentation and/or debates utilizing speaking skills and technology to support an argument or explanation based on information gathered through inquiry

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o How Africa had an immense impact on the world’s many cultures both directly and indirectly

Launch Lesson: Defining Power [economic]

Time Frame: One or two 45-minute periods, depending on whether or not the class needs time before the simulation to work on the How to Make a Profit sheet.Lesson Description: The Indian Ocean Trade: A Classroom Simulation

Enduring Understandings

History. Knowledge of the past helps us understand the world and make better decisions about the future.Geography: Climate and natural resources affect the way people live and work. Identity: Culture is a way of life of a group of people who share similar beliefs, values, and customs.

Essential Questions

Guiding Essential Questions: I) How do culture and identity influence who we are? II) How do time, culture and history influence works of arts and/or the

advancement of science and technology? III) What can I do to positively impact my community?

Common Core StandardsPrimary Reading

RH 6-8.3 Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.

RH 6-8.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social studies.

WritingWHST 6-8.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Speaking and ListeningSL.6-8.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.

Cognitive Skills Thinking skills Reasoning about concrete items versus abstract ideas Analyzing/evaluating arguments

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Developing a logical argument Inductive reasoning: using specific examples/observations and forming a more

general principal Deductive reasoning: use stated general premise to reason about specific

examples Appreciation: recognition of the value of something

AssessmentsFormative Students will share out their findings both verbally and in a quick write exit slip at the

end of class.

Text/Resources

Materials:

one Instructions/Price List sheet per group

(optional) one How to Make a Profit sheet for each student

one Balance Sheet for each student

an overhead projector and overhead projection pens

(optional) “props”—sample items from Africa and Asia: cotton, silk, porcelain dishes, ivory, bars of iron—some of these are expensive, so you may need to employ the principle of “creative substitution”

Texts

Clark, Leon. Through African Eyes: Cultures in Change. Volume III: The African Past and the Coming of the European. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1970. Pages 62–67.

Davidson, Basil. The Growth of African Civilization: East and Central Africa to the Late Nineteenth Century. Longman Publishing Company. Pages 95–119.

Davidson, Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Little, Brown and Company. Pages 171– 212.

Sibanda, M., Moyana, H., and Gumbo, S.D. The African Heritage: History for Junior Secondary Schools. Book 1. Harare, Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe Educational Books (PVT) LTD, (no date). Pages 97–106.

Trade in the Indian Ocean http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/trade-in-the-indian-ocean/

Learning Activities

Learning activity 1:

The Simulation

Differentiated Strategies for Varied Learning Profiles

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http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/trade-in-the-indian-ocean/

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/trade-in-the-indian-ocean/


Day One: Description: This is a simulation of the trade that took place between Africa and Asia between approximately 1000 and 1500 on the Indian Ocean. It demonstrates that Africa played a crucial role in the world economy long before contact with European nations. It allows students to use basic principles of economics as they conduct “trade” between the two continents.

Rationale:Africa’s history as a world economic power is seldom presented at the middle school level. This simulation helps students discard the notion that African people were primitive and isolated from the outside world by showing how kingdoms and city-states in Eastern and Central Africa were involved in the vast and profitable Indian Ocean trade network.

For students whom you feel may need some extra guidance before being thrown into the actual simulation (which is quite fast-paced).

DAY ONE may be skipped if you are working with an honors or higher-level class.1. Put students into small groups of no more than

four. Assign each group the name of an East African city-state (examples: Malindi, Mombasa, Kilwa, Sofala, Zanzibar).

2. Give each group an Instructions/Price List sheet.3. Give each student a How to Make a Profit sheet.4. Explain the simulation by going over

the Instructions/Price List with the class. Inform the class that the simulation will take place tomorrow, and that today’s work will be preparation for it.

5. Explain that for any company to survive, it has to be able to make a profit. Similarly, to complete the simulation successfully, each group has to know ahead of time how to make profits. Explain why an item is more expensive in one place than it is in another (the Law of Supply and Demand).

6. Go over the instructions on How to Make a

(Example)

Informational texts will be available in a variety of formats including audio, visual and tactilely.

Tasks will have components that allow for students to use visual, oral and tactile as well as kinesthetic skills to express knowledge gained.

Students will be able to take ownership of tasks through the use of “Choice Boards” and “Learning Centers

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Profit with the class. You may wish to do the first example with the class to demonstrate.

7. Encourage students to work as a group as they complete the worksheet.

8. After everyone is done, call on individual students to explain how they would make a profit on a given item. This enables you to be sure everyone understands how they can make a profit through the import-export business.

9. Collect the Instructions/Price Lists so they can be re-used tomorrow. You may also wish to collect the How to Make a Profit worksheets to check them and then give them back tomorrow to be used as a reference.

Day Two 1. Put students into small groups of no more than four. Assign each group the name of an East African city-state (examples: Malindi, Mombasa, Kilwa, Sofala, Zanzibar). (Students who went through the above procedure for DAY ONE should remain in the same groups.) You may wish to assign roles such as Timekeeper, Task Master, Spokesperson, etc. within each group. Seat one group in the middle section, and other groups on the sides (see seating chart).

2. Give each group an Instructions/Price List sheet.3. Give each student a Balance Sheet.4. Explain the simulation and then go over

the Instructions/Price List with the class.5. Explain how to use the Balance Sheet.6. Give students approximately 10–15 minutes to

work in their groups to plan the items and amounts they will import and export in order to make a profit. Each student should record this information on his/her Balance Sheet.NOTE: You can make this a game: the group that makes the most profit wins.

7. Once time is up, don’t allow anyone to change their Balance Sheets.

8. Have the Spokesperson for the group seated in the middle explains how they conducted their trade.

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Write the information on an overhead Balance Sheet.

9. Have the groups rotate their seating arrangement and repeat #8.

10. Repeat #9 until all groups have reported to the class.

11. A winning team can be declared at this point. Wrap-up with a brief discussion.

12.NOTE: Some students may be surprised to learn that the iron bars are the most profitable item. Most people think that the porcelain dishes are the most profitable because you can sell them for the highest price. This is a good opportunity to discuss profit as a function of volume and percentages.

For instance, selling a set of dishes earns a gain of 70 gold coins (buy for 30 and sell for 100), but only a 230% profit. Selling an iron bar earns a gain of only 9 gold coins (buy for 1 and sell for 10), but it earns a whopping 900% profit. Therefore, selling 30 gold coins worth of iron bars is far more profitable (earning a gain of 270 coins) than selling 30 gold coins worth (1 set) of porcelain (earning only 70 coins).

Examples of ResourcesTeacher Background Information on the Indian Ocean TradeThe Indian Ocean Trade began with small trading settlements around 800 A.D., and ended in the 1500s when Portugal invaded and tried to run the trade for its own profit.

As trade intensified between Africa and Asia, powerful city-states flourished along the eastern coast of Africa. These included Kilwa, Sofala, Mombasa, Malindi, and others. The city-states traded with inland kingdoms like Great Zimbabwe to obtain gold, ivory, and iron. These materials were then sold to places like India, Southeast Asia, and China. These were Africa’s exports in the Indian Ocean Trade. These items could be sold at a profit because they were scarce in Asian countries.

At the same time, the East African city-states were buying items from Asia. Many residents of the city-states were willing to pay high prices for cotton, silk, and porcelain objects. These items were expensive because they were not available in Africa at the time. These were Africa’s imports in the Indian Ocean Trade.

The city-states along the eastern coast of Africa made ideal centers of trade. An important attraction

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was the gold obtained from inland kingdoms. The gold was needed mainly for coins, although it was also used for works of art, ornamentation on buildings, and jewelry. And, the city-states were easy to reach from Asia by ship because of the favorable wind and ocean currents. Ships had no trouble docking at the excellent ports and harbors located on the coasts of the city-states, making it easy to unload and load cargo. Merchants, tired after their long overseas journey, enjoyed the fine restaurants, lodging, and entertainment offered by the port cities. Finally, East Africa was a peaceful region, and the few conflicts that did occur were small and brief. All of these factors created an ideal setting for import-export companies to conduct business.

Many of the merchants from the Arabian peninsula, India, and Southeast Asia stayed in the city-states of East Africa. Interracial marriages were not uncommon, and gradually over the centuries, a new and distinct ethnic group developed, known as the Swahili. Today millions of Swahili people live in the nations of East Africa, where the Swahili language is widely spoken. (You can take Swahili courses at many colleges here in the U.S.) The Swahili language is a mixture of the Arabic, Hindi, and Bantu languages.

The Swahili city-states steadily grew and prospered, and were a major world economic power by the 1400s. Although the city-states were famous throughout Africa and Asia, no European countries knew of them. You can imagine the surprise, then, of Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama when, in 1498, he came upon the bustling port cities of Sofala, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi as he sailed up the eastern coast of Africa. He and his crew were welcomed by each of the cities he visited, although neither his ships nor the European items they attempted to trade were of much interest to the Swahili governments.

Da Gama’s mission was to find a route to Asia by sailing from Portugal, around Africa, then on to India. European countries had been buying Asian goods for years through other, more difficult routes. But now the countries of Europe had begun looking for faster, cheaper routes to Asia. Vasco da Gama did eventually reach India with the help of a navigator from Malindi named Majid. In 1499, da Gama returned to Portugal and told the king and queen, who had sponsored his voyage, everything that he’d seen, including the shiploads of gold, ivory, porcelain, silk, and cotton being bought and sold in the port cities along the eastern coast of Africa.

The Portuguese government took immediate interest in the Swahili city-states. They sent more ships to the eastern coast of Africa with three goals: to take anything of value they could find, to force the kings of the city to pay taxes to Portuguese tax collectors, and to gain control over the entire Indian Ocean trade. The city-states had never needed forts or huge armies, and they were unprepared for the Portuguese attacks. One-by-one, the Portuguese captured the port cities, then wrecked, looted, and burned them to the ground. The residents of the cities who were unable to escape were killed. Shiploads of priceless goods were sent back to Portugal. However, the Portuguese attempt to take over and run the Indian Ocean trade was a failure.

If the Swahili city-states were destroyed by the Portuguese invaders, then how can we know so much about the Indian Ocean trade? One way is through archaeological evidence. For instance, pieces of Chinese porcelain vases and dishes can still be found along east African beaches. Another source of knowledge is the many documents written by people living at the time. For instance, Ibn Battuta, an African scholar, traveled to Kilwa in 1331 and wrote of its immense buildings and its countless other splendors. Vasco da Gama, and other Europeans who visited the Swahili city-states, also kept logbooks

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detailing both the wonders of the port cities—and, later, their violent destruction at the hands of the Portuguese invaders. And of course there are the records kept by African and Asian companies and governments of purchases and sales made via the Indian Ocean trade network. Archaeologists and historians are still working to piece together this great chapter in African history.

SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY: the History of India: European Domination http://india_resource.tripod.com/Europetrade.html

Attach all resources that will be used

Indian Ocean Trade Map

Source: Information History of Africa by Kevin Shellington http://www.palgrave.com/history/shillington/resources/maps/Map9.3.jpg

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http://www.palgrave.com/history/shillington/resources/maps/Map9.3.jpg

http://india_resource.tripod.com/Europetrade.html


Seating Chart

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Reporting Group

Optional Sample

Items Table


The Indian Ocean TradeInstructions:

Your group is a trading company in the year 1324. The merchants working for the company are from East Africa and Asia.

The object of the simulation is to make as much profit as you can by traveling back and forth across the Indian Ocean and conducting trade between Asian and African kingdoms. Use the Price List below as a guide.

Rules:

1. You may begin in either Asia or Africa.

2. Each group starts out with 5 gold coins.

3. Each group has a total of TWO ROUND TRIPS—that’s four one-way trips across the Indian Ocean.

4. Each member of the group should keep track of the company’s profits and losses step by step. Use the Balance Sheet to do this.

5. If your group goes into debt, the company is out of business and your turn is over.

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Price ListBuyer’s Guide Seller’s Guide

In Asia, you can buy:

10 yards of cotton for 1 gold coin

1 yard of silk for 1 gold coin

1 set of porcelain dishes for 30 gold coins

you can sell:

1 ivory tusk for 20 gold coins

1 bar of Iron for 10 gold coins

In Africa, you can buy:

1 ivory tusk for 10 gold coins

1 bar of iron for 1 gold coin

you can sell:

10 yards of cotton for 5 gold coins

1 yard of silk for 5 gold coins

1 set of porcelain dishes for 100 gold coins

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Name: Date:

How to Make a Profit

Directions: Use your group’s Price List to determine the answers to the following questions. Use the units listed on the Price List.

Where would you buy it?

How much would you pay?

Where would you sell it?

At what price would you sell the cotton?

How much did you make in profit?

1. To make a profit on COTTON,

A B C D

[subtract (B) from (D), that's (D)-

(B)=?]

2. To make a profit on SILK,

A B C D


(B)=?]

3. To make a profit on PORCELAIN

A B C D


(B)=?]

4. To make a profit on IRON,

A B C D[subtract (B) from

(D), that's (D)-(B)=?]

5. To make a profit on IVORY,

(A)_____________ (B)_____________ (C)_____________ (D)____________[subtract (B) from

(D), that's (D)-(B)=?]

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Name: Date:

Balance Sheet: The Indian Ocean Trade

Where To? What will you Buy or Sell? Money Spent or

Earned

Money Left

START IN: Buy:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

______________

______________

______________

1. GO TO: Sell:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

Buy:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

2. GO TO: Sell:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

Buy:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

3. GO TO: Sell:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

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Buy:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

______________

4. GO TO: Sell:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

____________________________________

_

Buy:_________________________________

____________________________________

_

______________

______________

______________

______________

______________

Subtract the 5 gold coins you

started with from the

amount of money you had

left after your fourth trip.

TOTAL PROFIT:

Teacher Background Information

The African Diaspora in the Indian OceanFrom the NY Public Library1

Beginning in at least the seventh century, the inhabitants of the East African coast (Bantu- and Cushitic-speaking groups) created a cosmopolitan culture along the Swahili coast that was deeply involved in trade with the Indian Ocean world, and particularly the Persian Gulf. The name Swahili, from the Arabic word sahil meaning shore, was later applied to the nearly forty trading towns, mostly concentrated in Tanzania and Kenya, that developed along this coast. Persian, Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants made their way to towns on Zanzibar and Pemba islands, to Shanga, Manda, Pate and Malindi (Kenya), Mogadishu (Somalia) and to Kilwa (Tanzania), using the force of the monsoon in their search for profits. The seasonal trade winds enabled them to carry goods from East Africa to South Asia—and points in between—from April to September and then return between November and February. The ships' captains and crews found a ready home in the cosmopolitan, Islamic, world of the East African coast, and were hosted by the maritime communities in the ports that dotted the coastlines of the Indian Ocean.

These seafaring and trading networks helped create and disseminate new languages, ideas, syncretic religious practices, technologies, people and goods carried from the Swahili Coast to southern Arabia, southern Iran and Pakistan, and western India. Africans—as sailors, merchants and captives—became

1 Used by permission for noncommercial use

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part of each of these coastlines, developing communities of their own. Language became a powerful indicator of the extent to which peoples were intermingled not only on the coasts but also deep into the interior. By the 19th century, Swahili had become the lingua franca as far inland as the Central African Lake District and parts of eastern Congo.

East Africans who arrived in the Indian subcontinent aboard the ubiquitous dhows almost always stopped in Yemen before continuing on to South Asia, where they disembarked at the western Indian ports of Kutch, Surat and, later, Bombay. Others carried on to Madras on the eastern side of India, Colombo and Galle in Sri Lanka—from where other ships transported them to the Far East.

The demand for slave labor at times drew fierce competition between Arabs and East Indians. Such rivalry accelerated with the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean region in the late 15th century and led to increased kidnappings of Africans from the interior of the continent (extending west of Lake Tanganyika), with ever-greater numbers of men, women and children being dispersed across the Indian Ocean world.

EthiopiaThe presence of Ethiopians, or Abyssinians, across the Indian Ocean world appears early in the archival and archeological record. The anonymous first-century Greek author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea notes commercial contact between East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Trade, however, was often mixed with imperial expansion. During the fourth century armies from Ethiopia invaded the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula and occupied Yemen from 335 to 370.The Persian and Byzantine historians Muhammed ibn Jariri al-Tabari and Procopius of Caesarea indicate that between 532 and 535 the Ethiopian general Abraha al-Ashram, a Christian, seized the throne of the Himyarite kingdom and ruled as the king of Saba for some 35 years. His sons by a Yemeni woman ensured that an African presence in Arabia remained following his death in 570.

The archeological record verifies that commercial contacts between Ethiopia and South Asia had been well established in the ancient world. Indian figurines were imported into Ethiopia as early as the third century BCE; and during the first century CE the Roman observer Pliny the Elder described Barygasa (Baruch) in Gujarat, on the western coast of India, as an Ethiopian town. More than 100 gold coins dating to approximately 230 found in Dabra Damo, northern Ethiopia, have been identified as Kushana (from the Kush region between Pakistan and Afghanistan).

Many of the captives in Ethiopia were Oromo, who filled the markets at Gondar and Gallabar in the northwest. Oromo chiefs often acted as dealers, supplying Christian Oromo to Muslim markets. During the 16th century, a Dutch traveler noted that enslaved Christian Ethiopians could be recognized by the cross-shaped marks on their faces—burns made upon baptism to forever mark their religious identity, if not faith. Up to 500 Oromo were reportedly sold in a single day at Gallabar alone.

Another observer, the Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema—the first non-Muslim European to enter Mecca—noted at the turn of the 16th century how Ethiopian soldiers were taken by the "Moors" (i.e., Muslims) to Zeila on the Gulf of Aden and from there "carried into Persia, Arabia Felix [southern Arabia] and to Mecca, Cairo and into India." Some of these Ethiopians were paid mercenaries, but most were slave-soldiers being transported as a military force by Arabs to various parts of the Indian Ocean.

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Over the course of many centuries Ethiopians would appear repeatedly in the historical record. Some were quite notable: in the seventh century, Bilal ibn Rabah, the son of an enslaved Abyssinian woman and Islam's first muezzin (the person who calls Muslims to prayer); in the 14th century, Bava Gor, a merchant in the agate trade and a highly venerated Sufi pir (Muslim spiritual master); and in the early 17th century, Malik Ambar, a Muslim general in India's Deccan, under whose command were nearly 8,000 soldiers, including several thousand fellow Habshi. In 1530, during the Portuguese occupation, Sayf al-Mulk Miftah, the governor of Daman on the coast of Ahmednagar in western India, was described as an Ethiopian who commanded a force of 4,000 Habshi soldiers. In addition to serving in military roles, Ethiopians continued to trade directly with outlying ports in the Indian Ocean. In the 16th century, the Portuguese traveler Tomé Pires noted that Ethiopian merchants were trading as far away as Malacca in Malaysia.

Ethiopians were also part of crews that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean. Some navigated between Hormuz in southern Iran and Goa and Bengal in India, while others sailed to Malaysia, and a few went to China and Japan with the Portuguese. Along the western coast of India, Ethiopians built a chain of fortifications, controlling sea access from Daman, in the north, down to the island of Janjira, south of Bombay. There, beginning in the early 17th century, Habshi sailors turned rulers established a royal lineage that reigned for nearly 300 years.

ZanzibarSustained commercial contact between Muslim Arabs and Persians down to Tanzania and the island of Zanzibar began in the 10th century (although there is evidence of long distance trade at Unguja Ukuu, a site on the southern tip of the island, from at least the 6th century). With greater commercial contact came religious conversion to Islam. As elsewhere in East Africa, Muslim conversion among Africans grew first along the trade routes, followed by urban centers, and only much later in the countryside. Merchants and later sultans and lower-level sheiks along the East African coast were instrumental in spreading Islam through their financial support for the construction of mosques and Muslim scholarship. They lent their support both for the prestige increasingly associated with patronizing Islamic religious institutions and scholarship and to deepen commercial contacts with Muslims in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. In exchange for imports such as cotton cloth from India, cowry shells from the Maldives, and Chinese porcelain, East Africans exported gold, ivory, coconut oil, mangrove poles (for construction), and enslaved men, women and children.

For centuries slave trading thrived along the East African coast. However, during the 19th century Zanzibar became the principal port along the coast for the mass distribution of captive Africans from the interior. Most came from the area of Lake Nyasa (today Lake Malawi). Arab and Swahili traders descended into this region, traveling down the Shire River, kidnapping or purchasing men, women and children who had been captured through war and raiding. People from dozens of ethnicities were then brought to Zanzibar, Kilwa and Pemba where they awaited transport.

Precise numbers are not known, but there are some indications. For instance, in 1830, the sultan of Zanzibar claimed dues on approximately 37,000 enslaved men, women and children. As late as 1859 approximately 20,000 people were being funneled through the island. They were then shipped to the island of Socotra and to Aden in Yemen before being taken to ports across the Arabian Sea, landing in Sindh (Pakistan) and Gujarat (India). Thousands of Indian merchants and their kin eventually settled in

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East Africa, some becoming large slaveholders. Following a tradition of enslavement among Hindus going back 4,000 years, Bania Indians (Hindus of the largely merchant caste) and Gujarati traders in Zanzibar reportedly owned some 6,000 Africans.

CairoCairo was a major crossroad for Muslim West Africans on their way to Mecca to perform the hajj (pilgrimage). Perhaps the most famous pilgrim was the 14th-century emperor of Mali, Mansa Musa. In 1324, with an entourage said to be of 60,000 people—including 20,000 enslaved subjects—dozens of camels laden with gold dust, drums beating, and in full regalia, the emperor journeyed to Arabia, passing through Egypt. According to chroniclers, while in Cairo, Mansa Musa infused so much gold into the local economy through his purchases and gift-giving that the price of gold was devalued in the city for years thereafter. On his way back from the hajj, the emperor brought back some of the leading artists, scholars and architects of the Muslim world. Mansa Musa's journey made a lasting impression; more than 50 years later, in their Atlas Catalán, two Mallorcan Sephardic Jews, Abraham Cresques and his son Jehuda, vividly depicted the West African emperor seated on a throne with a gold orb in one hand and a staff in the other.

But Cairo was also one of the starting points of the dispersion of Africans. The largest city in Africa at the time, its slave markets were among the largest in the continent, surpassing Zanzibar's. For centuries, caravans of several thousand men, women and children from Dar-Fur (Darfur, Sudan) regularly arrived in the city. From there many captives were sent to the Maghreb in the western part of North Africa, across the Mediterranean, and to Ottoman Turkey. Many, however, remained in Egypt, where they served in military capacities.

Sub-Saharan African captives were introduced into Egypt in 870 by the Tulunid ruler Ahmed ibn Tulun, who held upward of 24,000 white and 45,000 black slaves. None of the Africans reached the highest echelons of power, but in the next century a Nubian eunuch, Abu 'l-Misk Kafur, briefly ruled Egypt on behalf of the Ilkshidid dynasty (935-969). The Ilkshidid ruler Muhammed ibn Tughi had bought Kafur and, recognizing his talents and loyalty, gave him increasing and substantial administrative and military authority. Among Kafur's special tasks was serving as tutor to Tughi's two sons. When Tughi died in 946, Kafur became regent to each of the sons. After the death of one son, he assumed the position of de facto ruler but died less than three years later.

The succeeding Fatimid dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 969 to 1171, continued the tradition of drawing on soldiers from sub-Saharan Africa. The Fatimids raised several black battalions. But in 1146 some 500 enslaved Africans mounted on the Arabian horses under their care briefly fled for their freedom. The rebels even set up their own state on the Lower Nile until they were crushed by military force.

Sub-Saharan Africans continued to arrive in Cairo. In the 1570s a Frenchman visiting Egypt found "many thousands" in the slave market; in the 1660s another European eyewitness reported seeing between 800 and 1,000 Africans for sale; and in 1796 a British traveler reported up to 5,000 Africans being transported up from Dar Fur. The slave trade continued until the end of the 19th century.

Madagascar and the MascarenesThe slave trade across the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian subcontinent accelerated from the 18th through the 19th centuries because of a combination of factors: more efficiently organized states

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in East Africa that had an active interest in promoting it; the transportation of people from Mozambique to Brazil by the Portuguese; the establishment by Omani Arabs of plantations at Zanzibar and Pemba; and the introduction of African captives into the island of Madagascar by the French.

People from Madagascar and those sent there from continental Africa were transported to southern Iran during the 19th century. A sizable black population formed at Hormuz, comprising Malagasy and mainland Africans who fused cultures and traditions into a unique culture of their own.

During the second half of the 17th century, European colonial powers established labor-intensive plantations in the Mascarenes, an archipelago to the east of Madagascar. Rival Portuguese, Dutch, British and French colonizers fought for control. Ultimately, the French took hold of the archipelago, including Ile de France (Mauritius)—whose first two successful settlers were maroons who survived the initial Dutch efforts at settlement—Ile Bourbon (Reunion) and Sechelles (the Seychelles). French victory, and the subsequent development of plantation agriculture requiring extensive labor, prompted the introduction of men and women from East Africa (via Kilwa in Tanzania), who were joined by indentured servants from Asia to work on the sugar and coffee plantations that greatly enriched the French and their Indian Ocean trading partners.

As the plantation system grew in the Mascarenes, the character of these islands began to more closely resemble the distant islands of the West Indies than the islands of the Indian Ocean, prompting some scholars to describe them as a "second Caribbean." Today fully one-fifth of all Mauritians (approximately 200,000 out of a total population of 1 million) are estimated to be of African descent.2

2 Used by permission for noncommercial use. New York Public Library website http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/essay-east-africa.php

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http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/essay-east-africa.php

iaaas socialscience grade6 q4lesson

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