Africa

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Spread of Christianity

By ad 100 Alexandria had become the most important intellectual center of the early Christian Church. From Egypt, monastic Christianity spread south to Nubia and Ethiopia, and west to Berber North Africa. In the latter region, the Berbers adapted the new religion to fit in with indigenous beliefs. Subjugated by the Roman Empire by 200, Berber Christians maintained a strong tradition of religious independence from Rome, even after the empire had adopted Christianity as the official Roman religion in the 320s.

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Trans-Saharan Trade

The Romans introduced the camel to North Africa in about 200, and in doing so unwittingly revolutionized trans-Saharan trade. North African Berbers and other residents of the central Sahara quickly adopted the use of camels, both as a source of food and as a means of transport. Where trade across the desert had formerly been sporadic, moving haltingly from oasis to oasis, it was now possible to take a camel caravan on a two-month journey directly across the Sahara. Trade and contact between the Mediterranean world and sub-Saharan West Africa flourished. Major traded commodities included horses, weapons, and textiles from the Mediterranean; gold, slaves, and animal products from West Africa; and salt mined from dried-up prehistoric lakes in the central Sahara.

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Islam and the Arab Conquest of North Africa

The religion of Islam, founded in Arabia in the early 7th century, quickly united Arabs and inspired the expansion of a great Islamic empire across the Middle East and North Africa. By 641 Muslims had conquered Egypt, where they established a new ruling class of administrators and merchants. Over the ensuing centuries, and following further Arab immigration, most of the Egyptian population converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language, leaving the Egyptian Coptic Church as a small Christian sect. In Nubia, the Christian kingdom of Makuria managed to maintain its independence, establishing important trade connections with its newly Islamic northern neighbors. Arab penetration south and conversion of Christian Nubia to Islam did not occur until the early 14th century.

The Arabs referred to North Africa west of Egypt as al-Maghreb (“the West” in Arabic). Muslims conquered Byzantine Carthage in about 700, and by 711 they overcame Berber resistance, extended their empire to Morocco, and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to southern Spain. In the Maghreb, the Arabs were initially confined to coastal regions. Here, captured Berbers were conscripted into the Arab army and converted to Islam.

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Inland, among the Berbers of the mountains and desert, conversion proceeded at a slower pace. In addition, many Berber groups asserted their independence from the caliphs (the rulers of the Islamic empire) soon after being converted. Over the ensuing centuries, a number of independent Islamic Berber states rose and fell, until, in the 10th century, the Fatimid dynasty united the central Maghreb. In 969 the Fatimids conquered Egypt and declared their independence from the caliphate.

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Egypt Under the Fatimids, Mamluks, and Ottomans

The Fatimids established a new Berber aristocracy in Egypt. The main wealth of the country, as always, was derived from peasant agriculture. Fatimid rulers granted Berber aristocrats huge land estates from which they were to collect taxes from the peasants. A portion of this tax was paid to the state and the rest retained by the Berber landholder. As the Berbers settled into the role of landed elite, their former ranks in the Fatimid army were filled by legions of Turk and Mongol slave soldiers known as Mamluks.

In 1171 a Kurdish military officer named Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, also known as Saladin, seized the Egyptian throne and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. His action was prompted by the threat to Egypt posed by Christian Crusaders from Western Europe who had seized control of much of Palestine (see Crusades). Saladin reformed the army, imported more Mamluks, and placed the land estates and the collection of taxes in the hands of successful Mamluk officers. These Mamluks became the new Egyptian aristocracy and in 1250 they seized the throne from the Ayyubids. The Mamluk dynasty ruled Egypt for the next 250 years. The Mamluk period was a time of great religious and cultural revival in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. However, in the countryside—where the vast majority of Egyptians lived—the estate holders abused their tax-collecting powers and exploited the peasantry.

In 1517 the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt and made it an Ottoman province. The Ottoman sultan appointed the pasha, or governor, of Egypt, but otherwise Ottoman Egypt was largely able to act autonomously. Under the Ottomans, Egypt’s boundaries were extended south as far as the third cataract of the Nile and down the Red Sea coast as far as Eritrea. South of Egypt, a dynasty of black Muslims known as the Funj established a sultanate over the Sudanese Nile centered at Sannār (Sennar) and extending as far south as the highlands of Ethiopia.

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Almoravids and Almohads of Northwest Africa

Across the Sahara, Islam provided the traders and herders of the remote desert oases with a common sense of brotherhood. Trans-Saharan trade expanded in response to the Islamic world’s demand for West African gold for its trading currencies. Muslim Berbers making their pilgrimages to Mecca—a duty of Muslims—were exposed to the vast differences between life in the remotest Saharan oases and the realities of the wider Muslim world. Scandalized by the wealth and luxuries of urban North Africa, a small group of Sanhaja Berbers in what is now Mauritania initiated an Islamic reform movement in the mid-11th century. Known as the Almoravids, they provided the desert peoples with a new sense of unity and reformist zeal. The Almoravids built up a mass army that swept north through the western desert and conquered Morocco.

After the deaths of early Almoravid leaders in the late 1050s, the southern desert regions broke away. In the 1140s another reformist movement, known as the Almohads, overthrew the Almoravids and established the Almohad empire over much of the Maghreb. In subsequent centuries the Almohad empire broke apart into three Islamic states, roughly corresponding to the modern nations of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.