Africa under new lights
Basil Davidson
Introduction to the Arabic translation of the book carried out into Arabic by Mr. Jamal Muhammad Ahmed
Published by the House of Culture in Beirut 1961
Black Africa. The entire discussion here and in the book revolves around sub-Saharan Africa, as they used to express it, to distinguish it from Arab Africa in the north.
If this book had no good other than highlighting the role of the Arabs in discovering Africa and its life, it would have deserved the attention of the Arab reader, and would have been worth the trouble of Arabizing it, because we know only a little of this bright, bright side of the vitality of the Arabs in their flourishing eras. They have a history in Africa that extends back to the beginning of time. The Greek traveler, author of the book “Sea Searchlights,” referred to it in the first century AD, when he wrote that he admired the large number of Arab ships on the eastern coast of the continent, and praised the ability of the Arabs to live beautifully with their people even in that distant time. They intermarry, and the lineages become mixed, and there is no way to dispute between them and the people. They know their languages, and these people aspire to learn about their language, which opened up horizons for them in trade and culture. They practice tribal customs that they do not mind. Their ships come from the Arabian Peninsula and from every direction in the Indian Ocean with daggers, spears, and glass, and take off from them carrying ivory, rhinoceros horns, tortoise skins, and hookah oil. The Greek traveler in the first century AD saw a comfortable and secure life for each other. The leaders in the African region did not find it difficult to show solidarity with every king ruling the Arabian Peninsula, and they did not feel in this unequal solidarity a dependency they hated or a feeling of contempt. Merchants from the south of the island therefore knew the coast of the continent and a good part of its interior since there was trade and commerce in the two regions, just as medieval travelers knew parts of West and Central Africa with a knowledge that today is the starting point in the history of the continent during the era of the Middle Ages. Davidson addressed this aspect in a way that deserves Arab readers to consider it, and to follow up on what the author did not find space for in his chapters.
All of Arab history is silent, not only Arab history, after the journey of the owner of the “Sea Searchlight” and life for Arabs and Africans passes on from the eyes of observers, and the model of trade and life in it does not change anything, until Arab immigrants flock to the coast after the death of the Messenger, when the situation among them becomes turbulent in their country, and only those who fight for something dear and close to their souls can handle it. These seekers of safety, security, and prosperity come, and they find for their commercial and cultural talents a field that has created an impact not only on the coast, but on life in the Arab countries: for example, their markets in the eighth century abound with iron products from Zimbabwe in the depths of the African continent, which are returned to animals across that wilderness in modern Rhodesia, to be carried by Arab boats to every place in their distant lands. This new activity between the continent and the island is evidenced by the abundance of Negroes in the lands of Arabism: it was “not lost.” They were absent” in the wars during the days of their revolt against their detainees in the Euphrates of Basra. “Whenever one of them is killed, someone else blocks his block, so no trace of his loss appears,” as Ibn Abi Al-Hadid says, in his talk about the Negro revolution. The Arabs multiplied on the coast, and in the tenth century their authority extended from the Horn of Africa off the south of the island to Asvala near Waq al-Waq, which is famous for its legends. This is not surprising, as the stories of One Thousand and One Nights were gathering during that era, and some of them were undoubtedly inspired by the bold journeys of the Arabs in this region, and the people lead you to this day to a rock in Malindi that they believe is the Rock of Sinbad. In the tenth century, which we are talking about, Ali bin Al-Hussein arrived on the island of Kilwa, near modern Dar es Salaam, and his successors remained on its throne until the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese defeated them.
Here the continent enters history again after the writing of “The Marine Searchlight” by Al-Idrisi in the sixteenth century. This distinguished geographer drew the first map of Africa known to merchants and kings on the European continent. They did not see Ptolemy in the third century, and this was more accurate and comprehensive, reinforced by writings about gold and iron mining in Svala near Waq al-Waq, and in the cities of the interior. It was not difficult for Al-Idrisi to collect the facts he collected that sparked the imagination of his readers. The entire coast at that time was houses inhabited by Arabs, such as the Gedi, which became famous at the end of the century in which Al-Idrisi was writing. There was not a point left on the coast that did not belong to the Arabs, when a wave of their immigrants came in the thirteenth century, and the Mongols invaded Dar Al-Islam up to the Euphrates. These people joined their families on the beach and came with a flow of new blood, the effects of which appeared in their flourishing buildings and hypocritical markets, which Ibn Battuta described when he came to the region in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. It was a stubborn vitality that the attacks of the Portuguese in 1498 were unable to shake. They went on to repel the attacks of the invaders with one hand and build with the other, as you can see today from their remnants in Khalifa and Kulwa. They remained in this state until the year 1521, when reconstruction became impossible, and Portugal's hand was strengthened and theirs weakened, and it would not have been weakened had they not been superior in weapons, and the matter was disputed between the Arab leaders.
The Portuguese ships dropped their anchors on the coast on April 7, 1498, and they received every help and friendliness from the Arabs and their native allies until the invaders realized that they wanted to attack their trade. The friendliness turned into armed hostility after twenty years of deceptive living, and the Portuguese gained control of the coast for two hundred years. Its bounties and the bounties of the interior went to them, even if the Arabs did not relent to their defeat. The Omanis sought from time to time to recover what was theirs, and they once succeeded in besieging the huge Mombasa Castle, which occupies the heart of the city to this day. Thirty-three months passed in this situation between the years 1696 and 1698, and had it not been for their disagreement, they would have regained their land. They did not have patience until the middle of the eighteenth century when they were able, with a determined attack, to expel the Portuguese from the coast, although they were not able to mend their rift until fifty years after this date. Those aspiring to authority and leadership increased after the enemy had departed, and their small wars increased until Sayyed Said came to Oman in the year 1804, and eliminated the preachers and aspirants with the strength of his ruthlessness and the help of his allies from the British. In the year 1832, he transferred his throne to Zanzibar, where his sons rule today under the ally who ruled the whole matter from afar. With Sayyid Said, a new era in the discovery of the continent begins, as after him it became easier for Europeans to travel to the interior. They are guarded by his security forces, which he deployed in the region from his nearby island.
This is the story of one of the most wonderful pages in all of African history or Arab history in Africa, and it is not far-fetched that students of this or that young Arab will devote themselves to it one day, mastering the effects of this African Andalusia before the sands of time sweep away from it or these numerous books, memoirs, and letters written by European travelers, missionaries, and consuls enter the conscience of the entire world, as if they alone are the record of events there, and they are - inevitably - not. She wrote it all with their eyes, and it was difficult for her to see goodness in the Arabs, as they met there at a time when each side openly showed hostility to its brother, after the bickering and deception between them had failed to maintain peace. We do not know which side these young people will turn to in order to write this history through the eyes of the Arabs as well. African Andalusia - as we know now - was illiterate and could not write. There lived men who exposed themselves to dangers, whose images appear in the writings of Europeans, bright and full of colors, tempting you to search; Individuals of people stormed these deserts “from Uganda in the north to Nyasa in the south” and spread terror “from Nyasa in the south to Suakin in the north.” They were not supported by a government nor supported by a group: Saeed bin Jumaa, Salem Mahmoud bin Khamis bin Bahloul and dozens of other people of commerce and politics in the modern Uganda region, Maht bin Khalfan, Bwana Omar, Sharif Majid and dozens of other people of skill and money in Nyasa. Modern and Tanganyika, and Suleiman bin Al-Zubair, the messenger of Sultan Bargash in Zanzibar, who used to cross the continent from east to west, sometimes for trade and for influence at other times. And the master of them all, the one who made Leopold, King of the Belgians, taste the bitter torment, the blessed one, as the Frankish sources call him, the shrewd man who sees every inch of the mountains, the forest, and the lakes. A strange, exciting image appears to you as if it were the creation of an artist. You would like to touch it with your hand to know, but it oscillates from a distance like a mirage and is missed by the senses. A shadow from the shadows through the books. He knew his talents and realized, while in his absence, those sources of power, from which sources of power they were, and which path they were taking. The gaps befell him in the last days of his days in the Upper Congo, and he was dismayed by the nervousness that existed between him and the Arab merchants there. He feared that Leopold would inflame this dispute, so he went out to Zanzibar - where his family and money were. He was met on the road at Lake Tanganyika in the year 1890 by the envoy of one of the missionary groups, and we only think that he He noticed gloating in his eyes. He said while interviewing him: “The white man is more powerful and more equipped than me. He will swallow everything I acquired, just as I swallowed what the Magi owned in the region. I see dark clouds in the air, and thunder is approaching. I am leaving.” Two years after this, war raged between the Arabs and the Europeans in the Congo, and their situation there ended. A beautiful man. I wish someone could collect his bones, blood, and soul, then to collect the history of a region, in the life of a man.
The Arabs had the right to import and issue matters in the interior far from the coast when the groups of missionaries came, the leaders of European influence, carrying the flags of governments and companies, but they did not give them anything at first. The slave and ivory trade was in their hands, and no one involved them in it, and these people were friendly to them, as they were human beings with generosity and a disposition to live for everyone, which the original people were not accustomed to at that time, but the friendship did not last long between the two parties, and these people cried out to their people beyond the seas, and the conflict raged at times with weapons and at times with cunning, and the record of events left by the Europeans themselves made it clear that the victory in the beginning was for the Arabs. The battle was a battle of cleverness, knowledge, and charm. These rulers of the country, the alliances of chiefs and tribes, know how to spread their influence over the enemy, so that he becomes distressed and angry when his affairs are spoiled and the hand of the Arabs rises. The British consul in Uganda on the eve of the Arab coup in October 1888 in the king’s court, and he thought he was his ally against the Arabs, asked: “These are reprehensible incidents. We must stop at them and ask ourselves which law will prevail in Central Africa: the European or the Arab?” She was angry beyond what we know. The Arabs were punished severely, but their master in London surrendered himself to unsightly wrath: The missionary associations, both Catholic and Protestant, were waging a stubborn war with the Arabs - which was later called the “Arab War” in Niassa. Their supporters were insisting on the government in place at that time in London to reinforce them with weapons and men, and it was not in a position to respond to the opposition. The bitterness of the dispute over saving Gordon in The hose is stuck to every tongue. Salsbury said, making excuses not to do so: “We will do no good to those great efforts to evangelize and civilize this country if we take them as a cause of war with the filth of humanity that is spreading in that long, broad region that is basically ruled by Arabs, examples of whom we have treated in Sudan, who combine for merciless cruelty an blind religious fanaticism. It is a terrible army of malice that will only be destroyed by the spread of Christianity and the gradual spread of civilization among them” [July 6]. 1888].
He was unfair in what he said, because the Arabs, although history had the right to stigmatize their slave trade with the ugliest stigma, left where they settled dead markets, established methods of trade, a nucleus for administration and governance, and ways of planting and harvesting, upon which the Europeans built when they took over the matter later. He was not fair when he called them “the filth of humanity.” Modern research has proven that “the Arabs left a real impact on the face of that land: they cleared acres of jungle and planted various crops on top of it.” To the end of what Father Salmans says in his book about “The Arab Question and the Congo” when he talks about the economic effects left by the Arabs in the region and the impact of the “Arab element” in dividing the continent between the European powers. It is worse than the Europeans' trade in it, as our book, which is in your hands, shows us in numbers. Perhaps one of the praises of the Arabs in this regard is that the relations between them and their slaves were largely humane. Dewart Barbosa wrote in 1815, and the slave trade was no other trade at that time: “The condition of the slaves in Mombasa indicates the humanity of their Arab masters there. One is sometimes unable to distinguish them from their masters, as these people allow them to imitate them in dress and in other matters of living.” You can compare this with any page you want from the pages of Joseph Conrad’s story “Heart of Darkness” to see the relationships between the risk-takers from Europe and their workers from Africans, not four hundred years ago, but at the beginning of this century, and the religious fanaticism that Salsbury spoke about in his angry and angry speech undoubtedly played a role, but if you read the record with a single eye, you saw that it was Europe that was throwing religion in the field, not the Arabs: Karl Peter and his companions, pioneers of German colonialism in Tanganyika in 1885, wanted evangelism to be “an important tool of armed European-colonialism,” as Ronald Oliver, the author of “The missionary element in East Africa” and they were urging their governments to “mix the missionary movement with the expansionist movement in Germany” - things that historians are certain played a role in the Arabs turning away from cooperation with the Europeans. They did not mind doing business with them at first, buying their weapons and selling them ivory, and it was not possible after that for cooperation between the two groups. “Every missionary station is an article in colonialism,” and colonialism is one of the meanings of monopoly, as the messenger of the British government in New Zealand wrote in the year 1890. You will not find anything of this use of religion in the Arab record in Central Africa, and perhaps they are too incapable of organizing a missionary movement like the one the Europeans organized.
It was an unequal struggle in any case. Europe, with the Industrial Revolution firmly established itself, was confident of itself and an aggressor. The majority of the people in it believed in the message of their happy continent, and most of the people in it believed in searching for markets for their goods and the raw materials they wanted across the seas by any means. They wanted to compensate Africa for America, which had left the British domain in the year 1783. The Industrial Revolution, with its success, changed everything in the lives of the Europeans, both material and psychological, and suggested to them that it The best people, the most worthy of leadership, and the most deserving of what the ancient land produces, and it was not a mere coincidence that the African Society was formed in Britain only five years after this date, and it is the society that worked to discover the African continent at home more than any other society or individual did, and the influx of consuls to Zanzibar, and the paths were connected and the roads were secure - as we said - during the reign of its Muscatian Sultan, Mr. Said, they came: the United States in 1837, and Britain In the year 1841, and France in the year 1944 - they were breathing in the news and looking inward, wanting their power to extend and possess the continent’s conscience on the one hand and its wealth on the other. The Arabs had preceded them in these two things, as Livingstone told them in his letters: He found their traces wherever he went. According to himself, he walked a path no one had walked before him when he crossed the continent from Bechuanaland through the Kalahari Desert and around Lake Ngami and over the Zambezi River, then Angola, and crossed the continent again to two provinces on the coast of Mozambique, after seven years of travel, ending in the year 1856. Then he learned that an Arab named Saeed bin Habib bin Salim Al-Lafifi had set off a few months before him, without a newspaper or a group supporting him and no state concerned with his matter, as was the case with Livingstone and other bold souls who unmasked the continent to the new, industrialized aggressor Europe. This was similar to the situation of the Arabs in their struggle to survive in the end. News comes to them of the Khedive armies on their way to the middle of the continent towards Uganda. They are eager and listen, hoping that they will find an ally to help. News of the successful conquests of Imam al-Mahdi comes to them, so they listen again, perhaps some of the notable Arabs will come to their rescue. They are scattered individuals who are not restricted by a system or led by a leader. They hear of the intentions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and they hope that help will come from him, as he is their master in name, and nothing will happen. This; On the contrary, young, capable and organized Europe is advancing and dividing the entire region bits and pieces between them. Sultan Said in Zanzibar in 1895, as he saw the rings around him being completed day after day and his subjects bringing news of defeats from within, could not help but say, regretting himself and his family, “I am nothing but a bird in the claws of a hawk.”
This is about East Africa and its distant center, but the Arab bond with its west in ancient times is no less strong than this, some of which we saw in the East and the Middle. This and that have been connected to the south of the Arabian Peninsula since history opened its eyes to see, and the West has been connected to North Africa and its north-east since ancient times. The desert was like the sea here, with cities like ports scattered on its edges in the north and south. Caravans departed from Fez, Marrakesh, Constantinople and Kairouan, carrying salt, which was a dear commodity in the south. And the West, to Ghana, Mali, Jinn, Java, Timbuktu and Kano, and their caravans returned carrying gold and slaves. The two sides of the desert knew three routes for caravans, the first of which was western, departing from Marrakesh, heading to the northern bend of the Niger, and to the vast region west of it towards the ocean, and the second was a central route starting in Tunisia and heading to the large region located between Lake Chad and the Niger River, and a third route from the east, to Tripoli and Egypt, going to the region located around the entire Chad. All of these routes point to the close ancient connections between North Africa and the broad region that was known from afar. In Sudan, when the Arab travelers came to it, and this book of ours that is in your hands tells you many of their boasts on these rugged paths. This relationship remained purely commercial until the beginning of the Christian era, when political fluctuations in the north pushed several peoples and different tribes to migrate across the deserts to the south, escaping wars. These groups continued until the thirteenth century, and houses of Arab immigrants and converted Berbers arose with them, living safely in the middle of the Zanj land. They had compassion, shared their lives, and exchanged their cultures, just as the people of the southern Arabian Peninsula did in East Africa. The Zanj Sea swallowed up these arriving drops, so there was no longer anything distinguishing a coming from a resident, and their lives remained thus safe and untroubled by anything, until Europe found its way to them, trading in slaves, at first and taking over its affairs little by little since The fifteenth century, paving the way for its eventual colonization.
The Arabs have a central role in this story. After Islam, they rushed to North Africa, as the Arab reader knows, and before that they were groups that had no danger or any risk. The road was opened for them as a paved plain after the conquest of Egypt (639-642), so they took control of the north after well-known successful invasions. Historians estimate that a quarter of a million Arabs subsequently settled in the region and mixed with its Berber people, so they adopted the new religion as a creed, and the dominant language as their tongue. Their authority grew and extended between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at the hands of the Banu Hilal, the Banu Hassan, and other Arab tribes, and these are the centuries that witnessed the beginnings of the Islamic empires that this book talks about in an uneventful summary. Migrations from North Africa and the North-East in ancient Sudan, which extends between the Nile and Niger, were intermittent before the Arabs settled in the north, but they were widely connected after this era. The scope of trade, migration, and settlement expanded, as the influence of the Arabs on the life of the Zanj became more profound. They did not come to raid, as the Berbers did before them, nor to reside to escape persecution, as the Jews and converted Berbers did, when it was difficult for them to live with the Romans. The Arab merchants and immigrants were carrying a message and speaking a prestigious language, and after that they were looking for a broader field of living and trade, and their traces took on this strong characteristic that remains to this day in the faces of many, the religion of the majority, and the language of the minority. The mixture that formed in the region of Berbers and Zanj submitted to the young Arab sultan, so they dominated trade, culture, and governance, with no one sharing it with them, and the effects of this are seen in the physical composition of the peoples who live in the northwest, south of the deserts. The predominant blood in the north of Senegal and Niger is the mixed blood of Negroes, Berbers and Arabs, and the predominant religion is Islam, and the Arabic language is not Arabic in the majority. Then the Negro blood predominates in the south of these two rivers, even if you see to this day the trace left by the trade, religion and customs of the immigrants, despite the centuries that have now passed since that connection.
This is about the Arab reader in general and the book. As for the Sudanese reader in particular, I will not spend a long time with him tempting him, because ancient Sudan here in “Africa Under New Lights” is a hero of the story of African civilization, with clear features and characteristics. This book is a must-have for the Sudanese reader who has not specialized in the ancient history of his country and wants to learn about its major landmarks. The chapter that Davidson wrote here is the best summary written in any language so far about the history of Meroe that is known to this day. Most of it, as you will see in the book, is still hidden in the unseen conscience. There is no doubt that it indicated the responsibility of Sudan first and the world second in working to discover what remains of the remains buried in the desert of Meroe. It is ancient, not only because it is a piece of Sudanese history, but because it is the starting point in the history of the continent, and each of us hopes that his opinions in this way will reach the people of money, who are keen on African history, which is a part of the history of the wide world, obscured by centuries under the soil. Meroe was the link between Black Africa, the Mediterranean civilization, and ancient Egypt. She carried what the two regions accomplished towards the west towards the Atlantic Ocean, and towards the east towards the Indian Ocean, and the author left nothing left for the non-specialist reader to say.
Creations of Jamal Mohamed Ahmed
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