African Empires

What do we know about life in the great African medieval kingdoms?

How do we know this?
What happened to these civilisations? Why did they fall?




VIDEO
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage
Great Zimbabwe - Lost Kingdom of Africa
West African Kingdoms
The lost library of Timbuktu



Mansa Musa, the gold of Mali and Britain's wealth




The Kingdom of Ghana - from a website created by Ghanaians keen to preserve their history.

West Africa before the Europeans - created by the National Archive, the British government's centre where historical records are kept.
West African Empires - from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Timbuktu - from the Muslim Heritage website set up by the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation.
African timelines - on a website set up by a College in the USA.
Great Zimbabwe - from the BBC.
Songhay - from the BBC.
Ancient Ghana - from the BBC.
Mali - from the BBC.
Benin - from the BBC.
Kilwa - from the BBC

For advice, ideas and help from a fellow Year 8 student click here.

For information about the trade in enslaved Africans go here or here or here

For links on the abolition of the slave trade click here.

Where would we be without Islamic history?

The Great Mosque at Cordoba
An Islamic map of the world

In the Middle Ages between the 8th and 15th centuries Islamic lands spread right into Western and Eastern Europe.

Muslim societies were rich in science, technology, art, poetry, architecture and medicine.

Today the West seems to have the most advanced technology.

However, we learned much of our mathematics, medicine and architecture from the Arab Muslims.

They passed on and developed what they learnt from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

Do we have the Arab Muslims to thank for our number systems, for the beauty of churches and cathedrals, for fine arts?

What were the great cities like Cordoba in the west (modern Spain) and Baghdad in the east (modern Iraq) really like?

If you could travel back in time to medieval Cordoba and Baghdad what would you find? Would you see great advanced civilisations and how much do we now owe to them?

The textbooks Islamic Empires (pages 14-29) and SHP History Year 7 (pages 160-165) are excellent starting points. Then follow these links:

Medieval Islam
BBC: What the Islamic World did for us.

1001 inventions exhibition
1001 inventions film

Here are links to videos on Islamic inventions. They are all YouTube sites and will lead you to others:


the elephant clock
optics
medicine
home comforts
The Library of Secrets
list of inventions

The Middle Passage

The transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans affected millions of people.
The link below takes you to 4 stories.


Liverpool International Slavery Museum.


B. How did the trade in enslaved people affect the Caribbean, Africa and Britain?

The links below take you to 3 pages from the National Archive website. Each page has links to original documents from the time. From each page choose one document that you feel best shows the effect of the slave trade and explain why you chose it.

Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Britain and the trade.

The Caribbean and the trade.

VIDEOS

Development of the transatlantic slave trade.

Olaudah Equiano's story.

Plantation life.

Slave religion, beliefs and traditions.

Revolution in Haiti

Runaways and Maroons

The abolitionist movement

Mary Prince and Sam Sharpe

A slave trader speaks

Mary Prince

Equiano speaking

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More links.

Fjolla's blog for Year 8 students.