Azania
Azania is a name for various sub-Saharan African areas. It was first used at the time of the Roman Empire as a name for the coast of East Africa south of Cape Guardafui in Somalia up to present day Tanzania . As such it became part of the country name Tanzania (composed of Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Azania). Today the term is mostly used by black nationalists.
The earliest evidence of the name comes from Pliny the Elder , who in his work Naturalis historia mentions the "Sea of Azan", which began at Adulis . The Periplus Maris Erythraei mentions that Azania, the southernmost trading post, included Rhapta , which was in what is now Tanzania or Kenya . The area corresponded roughly to that of the Arab Zanj . Azania is also mentioned in the writings of Ptolemy and Cosmas Indicopleustes .
Attempts to interpret the name etymologically refer either to Arabic ʿAdscham (stranger, non-Arab) or Zanj (black, slave) or to Greek azainein (dry, scorch, dry), which is an indication of the particular dryness of the country in Somalia can.
Modern term
- Evelyn Waugh used the term Azania for a fictional island off Somalia in his 1932 book Black Mischief .
- In 1958, at the All-African Peoples Conference in Accra , Kwame Nkrumah suggested using Azania as the name for South Africa . Some South African groups adopted this suggestion, according to the Azanian People's Organization . After the end of apartheid in South Africa, a renewed renaming proposal for the country did not find broad support.
- Azania or Asania should be the name of the separate state that Christian and animist rebels wanted to establish in the south of the otherwise predominantly Muslim Sudan, see Civil War in South Sudan
- On April 4, 2011 in Nairobi ( Kenya ) another state in Somalia was proclaimed , which has its territory roughly in Jubaland and bears the name Azania.
Individual evidence
- ^ Fischer Weltalmanach '66, page 376. Frankfurt 1965
- ↑ Lothar Rathmann (Ed.): History of the Arabs , Volume 6, page 160f. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1983
- ↑ Al-Ahram Weekly online Sudan and the hereafter ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Wehel Media Center, 6 April 2011, Somalia Creates new state, Azania, latest of at least 10 new administrations recently added.
- ↑ Jubbalandnews, Dowlada Kenya oo aqoonsatay maamul goboleedka Azania ee shalay lagu dhawaaqay (hoos ka daawo sawirada)
- ↑ Alkisima, J / Country: -M / weynaha D / Goboleedka AZANIA & Wafdi La Socda-Oo Gaaray Tuulada Dhoobleey !!! ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
