History of North Africa
The history of North Africa encompasses the development of the North Africa region from prehistory to the present. Northern or Saharan Africa, which is geographically defined as the area between the 19th and 38th degrees of latitude and the 13th degree west and 25th degree east longitude (according to Encyclopedia Britannica ), differs fundamentally from southern or sub-Saharan in its historical processes Africa . The reason is not least the different climatic development of the two continent parts, of which the northern one was subject to constant fluctuations due to the ice ages in the northern latitudes, which caused its ecosystem to oscillate back and forth between tree savannah and the highly arid desert (see Pluvial ). During the Roman era and Islamic expansion, fertile areas were turned into deserts and vice versa.
Especially during the still ongoing desert phase, contacts between North and Sub-Saharan Africa were limited almost exclusively to trade along the east and west coasts of the continent and to certain routes on which it was due to the difficulties in crossing the world's largest sandy desert there were sufficient water points. This also meant an ethnic separation, and although the North African culture has both African and Middle Eastern, with the Berbers possibly even European roots, most North Africans today are either Arabic or Berber- speaking Muslims with lighter skin color. On the southern edge of the Sahara and the Sahel there are dark-skinned ethnic groups, formed their own medieval kingdom, the focus outlined trading empires were and caravan routes to the north in a narrow economic, cultural and later religious exchanges were ( Islamization ), therefore cultural sociology also to extended area of North Africa can be expected. The term Maghreb occasionally causes difficulties . A distinction is made between a small Maghreb with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and a large Maghreb , which includes Libya in the east and Mauritania in the west. Egypt, however, was never part of the Maghreb and the southern states of Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali (and sometimes Mauritania) are classically to Sudan zone expected.
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Prehistory and early history
Paleolithic
The phases of the old and middle Paleolithic (better known as Lower and Middle Palaeolithic according to international custom , since the African and European or Asian phases do not coincide in time) are very similar in Europe, Asia and Africa with their Acheuléen tool complexes (before all hand axes , which can also be found everywhere in North Africa, especially in the Sahara). In East and South Africa they had developed from the early rubble tools of Olduwan and were then carried by their carriers, the developed forms of Homo erectus , later Homo sapiens , to Europe and Asia, then much later to Australia (approx. 38,000 BC). BC, the age of the first human finds) and was finally brought to America in its already Upper Paleolithic form (time and route highly controversial, probably around 13,000 BC at the earliest). The Middle Paleolithic Levallois teeing technique of the Moustérien only differs from the European one in local forms and techno complexes .
Upper Paleolithic (Upper and Late Palaeolithic) : This parallelism of the development, however slowly changed from the last third of the middle Palaeolithic, because v from 108,000. A cold, dry phase began in Europe , the Würm glacial period , which, after initially several warmer and more humid intermediate phases, from 66,000 B.P. basically to 11,500 BC. B.C. intensified, but with two wetter and warmer interruptions between 45,000 and 35,000 B.C. And 26,000 to 21,000 BC Between 21,000 and 11,500 BC. BC in turn were replaced by two extreme cooling periods interrupted by a short, warmer interstadial . As a result, the environmental life opportunities on both continents diverged more and more from each other, one of which was temporarily covered with an ice sheet almost up to the Alps, while North Africa went through a longer period of aridization.
The blade cutting technique is characteristic of these Upper Paleolithic phases, which , in addition to knife blades, produced numerous new, smaller and more effective tools such as burins , prongs , drills, needles , points, etc. Of particular interest in North Africa is Atérien , which is technologically far superior to other regions , whose distribution stretched from Libya in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west, south to the then much larger Lake Chad, and sporadically also in Egypt and in Sudan west of the Nile occurs, and for which hand tools are typical. The Atérien is also considered to be the first specifically North African form of culture, which cannot be found anywhere else, and which now replaces the European division into the Middle and Upper Paleolithic with a specifically African phase, especially since the Atérien in the Lake Chad region lasted well into the Neolithic. The carriers were probably Cro-Magnon people or possibly even Neanderthals . These are probably the first, culturally uniform traces that humans have left in the Sahara, and only there.
The two successor cultures that already transitioned into the Epipalaeolithic - the one from Asia Minor, from 17,000 to 8,000 BC. The Ibéromaurusia and the Capsia that replaced it (9000 - approx. 3000 BC), which lasted mainly in the north-western Sahara , are then also typically North African. Their inventories are mainly characterized by small devices (so-called microliths , especially for combination devices such as harpoons and saws ) and are often still found today on old, dried-up lakes (so-called mudpans with their typical dry mud cones). The rock painting period of the Sahara also falls during the Capsien period .
Epipalaeolitic sites in situ are rare in North Africa, however, many were probably flooded by the sea level rising by more than 100 m in the Holocene, as corresponding finds on the coast of southern France ( Cosquer Grotto ) show. In the cave of Haua Fteah (Libya, Cyrenaica ), one of the most important prehistoric sites in North Africa, the remains of wild sheep, aurochs and gazelles were found in the strata of this time. Sheep bones also come from the Hagfet ed-Dabba cave. Litter finds, however, are also quite common from this epoch, even in the middle of the desert, and serve as evidence of a significantly different climatic situation in North Africa than it was in the first half of the Holocene, i.e. a more humid and humane climate. Such finds can be found across the breadth of the Sahara; Millstones and blades with a so-called sickle shine come from sites in the Maghreb , which are created by cutting plants on the cutting edge of flint blades and serve as evidence of use.
- Paleoanthropology
In North Africa, the following fossils were found mainly in the coastal area and in the vicinity of the Nile valley and the oases:
- Early apes : Fayoum Oasis: Aegyptopithecus and Propliopithecus (primate fossils from the Oligocene , about 30 to 35 million years old). This is the only site in all of Africa for this period.
- Sahelanthropus tchadensis from the site TM 266 in northern Chad (7–6 million years old);
- Australopithecus bahrelghazali from the site KT 12 in northern Chad (3.5-3.0 million years old);
- classic African Homo erectus (initially named "Tchadanthropus uxoris"): Yayo (Chad) (800,000 to 700,000 years old), Ternifine (Tighenif) near Muaskar , Algeria (700,000 years old), Sidi Abderrahman, Rabat. The find from Ternifine was initially named Atlanthropus mauritanicus .
- Transitional forms or mosaics of Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens : Jebel Irhoud and Rabat (He / aHs, 250,000 and approx. 75,000 years old); Thomas Quarries, Salé (400,000 years old). All NW Africa. Sudan: Singa (70,000 / 90,000 years old).
- Earlier or anatomically modern Homo sapiens : Témara, Taforalt, Mugharet el Alija, Dar-es-Soltane, all around 40,000 BC Chr. (NW Africa); Haua Fteah (Libya), Nazlet Khater, Jebel Sababa, Wadi Halfa (Egypt): all around 30,000 BC BC or younger, sometimes even to Iberomaurus (17,000–8,000 BC).
Neolithic
Up to the end of the Ice Age, there were several ever shorter advances of cold and warm air up to the extreme, from 10,900–9,500 BC. The Younger Dryas lasted in the 4th century BC , and all of these had an impact on the climate and humidity of the Sahara. Decisive for the settlement of North Africa were the Holocene climatic phases as well as the climatic periods directly before, which with their strong aridization had initially led to the fact that people withdrew to more humid areas, i.e. the coasts, the oases and the Nile valley. When the sea then rose again after the end of this drought during the now onset of the Holocene heat interval, a food crisis occurred among the hunter-gatherer populations, which in Europe is briefly summarized with the term Mesolithic and which is combined with regional overhunting especially in the Middle East and in eastern North Africa finally forced a change in diet, which then ushered in the Neolithic Age. It is significant that outside of Europe there was a Mesolithic (called the Epipalaeolithic in North Africa and Western Asia ) with its typical large clam clusters as a sign of malnutrition only in North Africa, and especially in the eastern part, but not in the other parts of the continent . And only here a Neolithic developed.
The Neolithic way of life is attested not only by the rock art, but also by numerous types of tools that can be found to this day. The mortars and stones are particularly impressive. But sickles, arrow shaft straighteners , occasional even elaborately manufactured tools with stone grinding and bores, pottery shards, etc. are abundant and show that today's desert area once offered a thoroughly liveable environment, which in some cases was stable for thousands of years, but undoubtedly also created crisis situations during its change which drove both the development of Neolithic techniques and the emergence of the Nile state of Egypt from the organizationally and economically (e.g. regulation of irrigation), but also from a defense-technical point of view, the amalgamation of several smaller regional cultural complexes and finally Upper and Lower Egypt. The rock art is a reflection of this development. The climatic phases of the end of the Pleistocene and the Holocene were decisive for this (for details on the course of these phases, see Libyan Desert ).
Mesolithic sites with bone harpoons, microliths and millstones date from the time of the climatic optimum in the early Holocene . Fish, mussels and snails, crocodiles, freshwater turtles and hippos were used for food, and the bones of antelopes and wild cattle show that hunting was also done in the savannah. In the Sahara wild grasses such as millet were collected, in North Africa also fruits and tubers. Ceramics appear here very early and is not tied to a fully Neolithic economy.
Find spots in eastern Hoggar in Libya show that the hunt was primarily on wild sheep. Structures such as pens and wind screens have been documented from the 7th millennium , for example from the cave of Uan Afuda. Ceramic decorated with wavy lines was also found here. Sheep coproliths with crushed seeds are evidence of deliberate feeding and therefore probably also of keeping morphologically wild sheep in a stable. Wild millet ( Panicum and Setaria ) has also been detected. Clear evidence of domesticated cattle is known from the 5th millennium (Ti-n-Torha, Uan Muhuggiag , Aures, Amekni and Meniet in Algeria, Adrar Bous and Arlit in Niger), as well as hunting and collecting grasses and tubers. Rock paintings also depict such domesticated animals. They come mainly from the middle Holocene, when cattle breeding became increasingly important. Rock paintings in the Sahara may also show people of the "negroid" type (so-called round heads). It is unclear whether this is the "indigenous population" of the Sahara.
The great archaeologist and paleoanthropologist John Desmond Clark (1962, 1964) brought about the beginning of agriculture in North Africa with relatively few people immigrating from the Middle East via the Nile Valley around 4000 BC. In connection with the bones of animals domesticated in the Near East for the first time in the local cultures of the delta such as B. the Merimde culture can be proven (for details see Domestication in North Africa ). The spread into the Sahel , triggered by the increasing desiccation of the Sahara, he continued around 2000 BC. Chr. However, there was already an independent Sudan Neolithic long before this point in time, and numerous archaeological finds that indicate a parallel development of the Neolithic in the Sahara-Sudan area were not known at that time.
Finds of the Neolithic Cardial culture are known from Morocco , which was also proven on the coasts of Italy, France and Spain. Intensive agriculture with irrigation has only been known outside the Nile Valley since the first millennium BC, when the oases of southwestern Libya were more densely populated and agriculture was practiced with underground irrigation channels ( Foggara ) .
Whether there is a connection here with the intrusion of the Garamanten (they are said to have been blond) and if so, which one, must remain open, including where they came from, especially since their existence, apart from some current excavations around their old main town Garama in southern Libya, is largely evident the works of Strabon and Herodotus has been handed down. It is sometimes suggested that they may have been Old Berbers. We also know that they were arable farmers and cattle breeders, knew their way around artificial irrigation, maintained intensive trade relations with Nubia, settled mainly in Fezzan and 19th BC. After several skirmishes were defeated by the Romans, who annexed their area and named it Phazania, which was again conquered by the Arabs in 666 and integrated into their Islamic empire, whereby they used their Christian faith, which had been adopted a few centuries earlier, for more practical reasons ( see below) . Whether the Tuareg are their descendants is an unresolved issue. Her track has been lost ever since.
- See also: Capsien , Atérien , Ibéromaurusien , Libyan desert , domestication in North Africa , Punic rock tombs in North Africa , Bazina , megalithic systems of Makthar
First advanced civilizations, antiquity and late antiquity
Overview
This first historical section of the history of North Africa in antiquity spanned a good three and a half thousand years and is therefore by far the longest. Several phases can be distinguished. They begin with the history of Ancient Egypt , in Sudan with the Nubian Empire of Kush and Meroe , whereby Egypt in particular hardly orientated itself to the west except to ward off nomadic invasions, but almost only to the east, occasionally south, especially when it came to the local treasures such as gold, ivory, incense, precious stones, precious woods and slaves in the legendary land of Punt went.
In the first third of the last millennium BC Carthage (founded by Phoenicians in 814 BC ) temporarily assumed a leading role in power politics in North Africa. The Phoenicians soon dominated trade in the Mediterranean and established trading establishments everywhere between Spain and Palestine, without, apart from city-states, actually creating a land-based state. Even Carthage can only be viewed as a territorial state to a limited extent, as it had large spheres of influence and was the center of the Phoenician trading cities for a long time, but only developed a few of the organizational structures necessary for a territorial state, very similar to the situation of the Polis city-states in Greece. This had the advantage that the Phoenicians did not get in the way of the established powers and could even make themselves useful to them as a pure trade organization, since they always endeavored to adapt their trading cities to the power-political realities of the local environment.
However, when Palestine fell to the New Babylonian Empire , Carthage rose from 586 BC. BC finally became a hegemonic power in the western Mediterranean , but soon and almost automatically came into conflict with another power that began to develop in the center of the Mediterranean: Rome as the center of an increasingly expanding Roman Empire , which Carthage finally also became defeated the Punic Wars and in 146 BC Chr. So destroyed that to this day hardly any archaeological traces of the former great power can be found. After a short interim epoch in which local principalities determined the political scene in North Africa, Rome ruled the Mediterranean and thus also North Africa, that is, its Mediterranean coast and of course Egypt, where the Romans finally replaced the Ptolemies and the Caesars also functioned as pharaohs, a trick, which Alexander the Great had used several centuries earlier (and almost perished when he and his troop 331 took only half as much water with him on the way to Siwa as was necessary as the army of Cambyses II almost two hundred years earlier then disappeared without a trace in the desert).
The decline of Rome in late antiquity towards the end of the third century AD is associated with two developments that also had a massive impact on North Africa: the rise of Christianity in terms of power politics and the division of the empire into an eastern and western Rome, with it the rise of the Byzantine Empire , which now also gained an increasingly strong religious supremacy, while Rome gradually withdrew from North Africa, so that other powers, such as the vandals invading there, could establish their own small empires at short notice. There were also similar developments to a local principality on Cyrenaica . A completely new situation in terms of power politics then arose with the emergence and Arab-driven expansion of Islam . In the face of Islam versus Byzantium, Byzantium was ultimately defeated.
The first high cultures
Egypt
The power-political interests of ancient Egypt were almost always directed towards the east until its decline at the time of Hellenism , where there were always competitors or even invaders with the Assyrians , Babylonians , Persians , the Hyksos and Hittites , and with Palestine an important transit country for trade routes of all kinds, and an area from which important, perhaps decisive impulses had emanated since the Neolithic and which was worth occupying. The west, however, North Africa, was after the climatic changes since 2800 BC. Apart from a narrow coastal strip and a few, often difficult to reach oases, inaccessible desert. It was the land that Egyptian mythology saw as the realm of death. Only the south, where the often rebellious people of the Nubians lived, was of a certain interest, which ultimately extended to the borders of northern Ethiopia, whereby the Egyptians liked to lump the Nubians in a pot with the Ethiopians and referred to them as such, a geographical imprecision which shows how little was known about the southern areas, except that the gold land of Punt was somewhere there.
In connection with the history of Ancient Egypt, not only the southern, relatively well-populated regions of Kush, Meroe and Ethiopia, but also the area west of Egypt, about which there are few reports, are of particular historical interest. What we do know is that Libyans and Egyptians have been hostile to each other throughout history (they continue to do so today). The main reason for the hostility was probably the fact that the Libyans, as nomads, have always invaded Egypt over the desert borders, especially into its western oases and the delta. The pharaohs, especially Ramses II , who is shown on a stele over fallen Libyans, and Ramses III. and Merenptah , at the time of which the tribe of Libu (unvocalized: Lbw), from whose name “Libyer” is derived, around 1220 BC. First mentioned in BC, wars were even waged against them. These Libu were probably only one tribe among several. Sir Alan Gardiner points out in his history of ancient Egypt because even suggest that there was in the early Egyptian history and prehistory at least two from the West coming tribes that Tjehnyu (unvocalized: Thnw), and occurring since the 6th dynasty Tjemhu (Tmhw), of whom the former were possibly identical in race and culture to the early Egyptians of the western delta, the people of the Naqada II culture , or at least related to them, although at all times they were regarded as foreigners . Only the Tjemhu are considered to be actually ethnic Libyans. Above all, this close relationship probably affected the Egyptians of the ruling class, who had subjugated the local peasant population.
Towards the end of the 18th dynasty, another Libyan tribe appeared, the Meschwesch (Mšwš), who were apparently at first quite peacefully valued as competent cattle breeders, but later rose up against the Egyptians as the so-called Lbw, by Ramses III. were subjected and then initially worked as mercenaries for the Egyptians, were settled there in the 20th Dynasty , as was the Egyptian custom with subjugated or captured peoples. Finally, after a “march through the institutions”, the Libyan meshes even gained power as priests and high officials, because from 945 BC onwards. With Scheschonq I. the first Libyan sat on the throne of the pharaohs in Bubastis , and a total of 9 Libyan pharaohs as well as the 22nd dynasty called Bubastids ruled until 712 BC. All of Egypt. To what extent all of this is related to the Garamanten is unclear, but there are now some archaeologically secured further findings about them.
The Eastern Sudanese empires of Kush and Meroe, the Ethiopian Aksum
Nubia was ruled by Egypt for a long time, but became independent in the 21st Dynasty . The events are unclear, possibly the kings were Libyans. The capital was with Napata , and the Nubians ruled as pharaohs in the 25th Dynasty even all of Egypt until 656 BC. After that they remained limited to Nubia and abandoned the Egyptian culture more and more. The capital was moved to Meroe . The realm of the same name was created, which is seen as the late phase of the Empire of Kush, but its expansion, especially to the south and west, is unclear and its end sinks into the darkness of history. All we know is that it was around 25 BC. Was conquered by the Romans and is still documented during the Byzantine period. Here and in Ethiopia, from which it seems to have been conquered in the meantime, Christianity also gained a foothold in eastern Africa, namely in the area of the north-east Ethiopian empire Aksum , which existed since the third century BC and through King Ezana in the fourth century AD was Christianized. Today's Ethiopian Church goes back to these origins.
Antiquity
With antiquity in the narrower sense, the power politics of the Mediterranean peoples, which had hitherto been focused on Egypt and the Middle East , gradually changed. As is so often the case in history, it was trade that paved new paths; and the first people to devote themselves completely to Mediterranean trade, even neglecting their own state structures, were the Phoenicians , the place in North Africa where, at least in part, state structures were formed, was Carthage .
Phoenicians and Carthage
The Phoenicians were not looking for land to settle in, they were looking for bays in which their ships could anchor and where they could therefore set up inexpensive trading posts. Moreover, due to their relatively small number, they would not have been able to found proper colonies like the Greeks in southern Italy, Sicily or Asia Minor . The oldest such post was probably Gades, today's Cádiz , which was founded around 1110 BC. Was founded. Numerous other such branches followed, including Carthage in 814 BC. Gradually, the Phoenician trade network in the Mediterranean was tied closer and closer, and North Africa, that is, its coast here, was connected to the other cultural areas of the area. Unlike the Greek colonies , however , the Phoenician trading posts remained dependent on the hometowns of their founders, mostly Tire , Sidon and Byblos .
The emergence of Carthage as an independent power on the North African coast was based less on the weakening of the Phoenician capital Tire and more on the competitive pressure that the Greek colony began to exert, especially on Sicily in the western Mediterranean. In an alliance with the Etruscans , Carthage finally succeeded in pushing back this Greek influence, which was aimed primarily at the silver mines of Spain, and thwarted the attempts of the Greeks to take all of Sicily. With this success, however, Carthage was from 540 BC. Established both as a military and political power not only in North Africa, but also in the western Mediterranean, especially when Tire finally came under Persian rule in the second half of the sixth century , so that Carthage took on the role of the Phoenician lead city, and they themselves cities began to establish and gradually expanded their domain to include what is now Tunisia, particularly the fertile areas. At the same time, the city, ruled by a king and an aristocratic class, tightened its grip on practically the entire coast from the Gulf of Sidra to the Atlantic. His army, however, consisted for the most part of Libyan, Iberian, Numidian, Celtic and even Greek mercenaries. In his novel Salambo, which was researched according to the reports of Polybius , Flaubert describes the situation after the First Punic War, when Carthage was faced with an uprising by his mercenary army.
Conflict with Rome: It was practically inevitable that Carthage, the great power of the African coast and the western Mediterranean, would at some point collide with Rome, the new Italian great power. In the three Punic Wars (the Romans called the Carthaginians poeni, i.e. Punians ) of the 3rd and 2nd centuries, Carthage was finally subject to the new power, despite the treaties it had repeatedly concluded with Rome (508, 348 and 279), was finally erased by her, because the military and geographical requirements of a centrally controlled military state with an absolute will to power on the one hand - the famous ceterum censeo of old Cato is symptomatic - and a rather loosely constituted city union on the other hand were ultimately too unevenly distributed. In his Somnium Scipionis (Scipio's Dream) , Cicero processed the destruction of Carthage in a congenial philosophical and political way .
Overview:
- 1. Punic War : Between 264 and 241 BC Mainly with naval forces and in Sicily.
- 2nd Punic War : Between 218 and 201 BC Chr. Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. Severe Roman defeat in the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC Chr.
- 3. Punic War : Between 149 and 146 BC Complete destruction of Carthage.
Local kingdoms: Numidia and Mauritania
In the period between the destruction of Carthage and Rome taking control of the Maghreb, local kingdoms flourished briefly. Two largely sedentary ethnic groups are of particular importance:
- the Moors (from Latin Mauri, German Mohren) called Arab-Berber mixed population between the Atlantic coast and roughly the Moulouya River, after which the country was called Mauritania ,
- the Numidians, after whom Numidia was named. In terms of power politics, they played the most important role, especially since they occupied the hinterland of Carthage.
- the third group, of little importance here, were the nomadic Gaetuls .
These groups began to appear from the late third century BC, when contact with the Carthaginian culture led to social upheaval among them. The best known figure in this context is the Numidian general Masinissa and King Jugurtha , both of whom play a central role in Sallust's philosophical-historical description De bello Iugurthino ( The War of Iugurtha ). Both kingdoms initially used the situation for a kind of rocking policy between the two powers, but eventually took the side of Rome and ultimately found themselves again as provinces of the Roman Empire due to internal disputes and political misjudgments - Numidia had supported Pompey against Caesar . The old Numidian kingdom was called from 46 BC. Chr. Africa Nova , and later Africa proconsularis , from the former Mauritanian Kingdom, the provinces were n. Chr from 40. Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitania (capital Tingis, now Tangier ).
Greeks and Hellenism in North Africa
Overall, the Greek influence on ancient North Africa was rather small, if one compares it with the Phoenician-Carthaginian and Roman, because the Greeks oriented themselves in the east to Asia Minor and the Black Sea, in the west to Italy and Sicily, far less to the south, where powerful competitors sat with Egypt and the Carthaginians. The map of the Greek colonies clearly shows this distribution. There are two exceptions to this: the Cyrenaica peninsula with Cyrene and Ptolemaic Egypt .
The Cyrenaica
Favored by the neighborhood with Crete and the Aegean Sea came as early as the 12th century BC. BC Greek settlers from Mycenae to the Cyrenaica peninsula, allied with the Libyans there and attempted an attack on Egypt, albeit in vain. Cretan fishermen came here again and again in the following centuries. The Greeks finally noticed in the 7th century that the peninsula was the only place in North Africa that could still be colonized, and around 630 BC. They finally founded Cyrene . However, the growing wealth of the place soon led to tensions with the hitherto peaceful indigenous population, but also with Egypt, which dates back to 570 BC. BC tried in vain to conquer Cyrene, but then in 525 BC. BC temporarily came under Persian rule. Meanwhile, Cyrene had founded further daughter colonies in the region, including Euhesperides (later Berenike , now Benghazi ). Around 440 the previous monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a democratic polis constitution. In the later fourth century, Cyrene submitted to Alexander the Great (who never got there). After his death, the area came under the rule of the Ptolemies, who, however, gave the city and the other Greek towns of Cyreanica great freedom. Around 96 BC The Ptolemies left the Cyrenaica Rome, which after tensions in 74 BC. BC made the province of the same name, which was added to Crete seven years later. Marc Anton temporarily left the province to his daughter Cleopatra Selene, but Augustus restored the original status as Senate Province .
The Ptolemies in Egypt
From 332–30 BC Ptolemaic Egypt, which lasted in BC, is considered to be the final phase of Ancient Egypt, although it was no longer Egyptians, but the Hellenic Ptolemies, who ruled the country from the new capital Alexandria and who attached great importance to their non-Egyptian, i.e. Macedonian-Greek origin. Ptolemy I was one of the diadochi who ruled the empire of Alexander after his death in 323 BC. When satrapies divided among themselves. Although he formally continued the Egyptian tradition in the title “Pharaoh”, his rule is considered to be the end of the actual Egyptian era and the beginning of the Macedonian era. Outside of Egypt and Cyrenaica, however, the Ptolemies had little influence on the history of North Africa, and their foreign policy interests were mainly eastward. The last Ptolemaic ruler was Cleopatra VII , best known for her power-politics staged love affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Anton as well as for the Shakespeare drama Antonius and Cleopatra .
The Roman Empire in North Africa
After the victory over Carthage, the originally small Roman province in North Africa, roughly equivalent to the territory of Tunisia, was administered from Utica by a rather subordinate official. However, Emperor Augustus quickly recognized the potential there and subordinated the province, now called Africa Proconsularis, to a proconsul . So the Roman culture, but above all the Roman administration, spread relatively quickly from east to west along the mountain ranges of the Atlas over the new areas in North Africa. There was a real urbanization. Numerous ruined cities such as Leptis Magna , Sabratha , Thugga , Cuicul (today Djemila ), Thamugadi (today Timgad ), Cyrene , Thapsus , Hadrumetum , Capsa (today Gafsa ), Caesarea or Tingis (today Tangier ) still bear witness to this today. Many of these cities had tens of thousands of inhabitants, the largest of them being Carthage ( Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago ), newly founded by Augustus as a Roman colony, 250,000, Leptis Magna 80,000, Hippo Regius and Cirta around 30,000. There was a reason for this, because the North African provinces had quickly become economically central to the Roman Empire, and between the 1st and 4th centuries AD the survival of Rome actually depended on the grain and olive deliveries from there, because the climate at that time was North Africa more humid than today and created the basis on the local alluvial alluvial soils for long-term use of the agricultural land, the “granary” of the Roman Empire with flourishing settlements in areas that are now desert again. In Egypt of that time, for example, as we know from Ptolemy , it rained every month except August and, unlike today, there was no night frost. At the same time, the Romans avoided turning the local population against them and left them with their identity, so that there were few skirmishes and the military presence could be kept low. Accordingly, the Roman provinces of Africa soon emerged culturally, producing many senators, knights, important lawyers and literary figures. Early Christianity soon found a basis there too, and decisive Christian developments emanated from Africa. Accordingly, the Roman road system in North Africa was the best developed in the entire Roman Empire. In view of the difficulties of overland transport through the mountains inland, however, the ports, which were once founded by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, remained central transport hubs.
In the two Mauritanian provinces , however, the development was not so smooth. This was mainly due to the country's greater impassability, but also to the more rebelliousness of its mostly nomadic residents. This was especially true of the tribes in the Rif Mountains , with whom there were several wars up to the 3rd century. Nevertheless, the defense of the North African provinces was far less problematic for the Romans than that in the north of the empire, where three legions were needed for the much smaller Britain alone . For Numidia, southern Tunisia and Libya, however, troops plus auxiliary troops to the extent of 13,000 men were sufficient. Only 15,000 auxiliary troops were stationed in Mauritania, most of which were also recruited locally.
With the takeover of power in the Mediterranean by the Romans, a development came to an end, in the course of which North Africa in particular finally became part of the Mediterranean world. The Egyptians had always been rather indifferent to the western areas, even scary, and had not aroused any particular thirst for conquest or rule in them. Rather, they localized their realm of the dead there and kept having trouble with the Libyan nomads. Also, apart from coastal shipping, seafaring was never their forte, so that the sea peoples in the 14th century BC. It was not difficult to get Egypt into trouble. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, on the other hand, initially opened up North Africa for trade primarily from the sea, the Greeks, with the exception of Cyrene, were not even interested in it - even Alexander the Great only got as far as the Siwa oasis . It was not until the Romans established nationwide state structures there, also covered with streets and cities in the country, and "civilized" them and finally even endowed them with a certain self-confidence.
Late Antiquity: Late Rome, Christianization and Byzantium
With Diocletian the transition into late antiquity took place in 284, during which three developments will be of importance:
- the disintegration of the empire into a western and an eastern part,
- the collapse of central power and the penetration of foreign peoples,
- the appearance of Christianity.
Late Rome
After a few revolts by local tribes, especially in Mauritania, which had hardly affected the cities but damaged the economy, the African provinces stabilized again. Under Diocletian and Constantine I , the African provinces were also redistributed into Tripolitania for western Libya, Byzacena for southern Tunisia and Africa for northern Tunisia. Mauretania Caesariensis became a separate province, the area west of it, the former Mauretania Tingitana, was largely abandoned. Otherwise North Africa suffered from the same economic and social problems as the whole empire in this later phase, problems that manifested themselves above all in the increasing power of the oligarchical landowners and increasing pressure from the state administrations. Nevertheless, North Africa remained relatively stable compared to the other parts of the Roman Empire.
Christianization
Christianity flourished much better and faster in North Africa than in other parts of the empire. In the 3rd century it was already firmly established in Carthage and other cities in the Tunisian area and had even produced its own martyrs here , as well as important church teachers such as Cyprianus and Tertullian . The reason for the extremely rapid expansion of Christianity in the Maghreb is seen in the similar socio-economic conditions as they had already prevailed in Anatolia and Syria during the first wave of expansion. Furthermore, African Christianity always seems to have contained fanatical and violent elements that promoted its expansion, although there seems to have been little missionary effort. But at this time the beginning of the schism , which started here in Donatism and which resulted in repressive measures on the part of the Roman state, triggered considerable unrest in the African provinces, especially since the Donatists were hostile to the existing social order and downright assumed nationalistic characteristics. In Egypt and Syria there were also other religious movements in parallel, particularly through Monophysitism . Even Augustine , and he, like other church fathers a North Africans, sat down as bishop by 400 with Donatism apart, whose uncompromising rigor he condemned, which, however, there appears to have been typical of the specific variant African Christianity.
The effect of Donatism with its public hostility on North African society cannot be precisely estimated, but it was certainly profound, even if it disappeared without a trace over time. However, the question of how deep the Romanization of the Maghreb went back then, whether it was just a surface phenomenon or goes deeper, cannot be conclusively answered to this day.
The complex ecclesiastical and theological processes and debates (e.g. Arianism , Monophysitism , Nestorianism ) that took place in the development of Christianity in Egypt , especially in Alexandria and, among other things, the emergence and expansion of both the Coptic Church and monasticism and the monasteries led, are here, although partially discussed later political significance, unspecified. They are presented in detail under the keywords given, but show emphatically how great not only the political but also the spiritual importance of North Africa has been for the entire Old World .
The realm of the vandals
The invasion of North Africa by the Vandals was not least a result of the decline, above all, of Western Roman power and its control in the provinces. In 406 they crossed the Rhine together with other Germanic tribes and overran most of Gaul and Spain, where they partly established kingdoms like the Goths , partly moved on and only (but this is highly controversial) left their mark on Andalusia . The wealth of the North African provinces, however, had an attractive effect, and the local military commander of the Comes Africae Bonifatius may have invited them, who hoped that it would benefit them. So 80,000 of them crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 429 under their king Geiseric and settled with Hippo Regius (Augustine died during the siege of the city). The imperial forces offered little resistance, and it was initially agreed that Numidia and Mauritania should be left to the Vandals, who soon occupied the rest of the province of Africa. In 442 a treaty sealed the vandal rule in Africa, which now extended to a large area between Mauritania and Numidia.
The rule of the Vandals, who, in contrast to the peoples they now ruled, were also like the other Germanic peoples apart from the Franks, were Arians , but soon had negative economic and social consequences. The violence with which they exercised their rule seems to have been based not least on these religious differences. Geiserich also didn't think much of contracts, from 455 he plundered Rome with his large merchant fleet - the term vandalism , which was only derived from it in the 18th century, is factually incorrect, because the looting was comparatively civilized -, occupied the Balearic Islands , Corsica and parts of Sicily , pillaged the coast of Dalmatia and Greece. All of this resulted in the Mediterranean trade being severely affected. Geiserich's successor Hunerich (477–484) even began persecuting non-Aryan Christians. It was only under Thrasamund (496-523) that the Vandals began to adopt Roman culture without, however, giving up their tribal identity. However, in modern historical research, the role of the vandals is viewed in a more differentiated and controversial manner.
As a result of this suppressive system of rule, however, independent, apparently Libyan rulers gradually emerged in more remote desert areas and mountain regions, first in Mauritania, and this process finally heralded the end of vandal rule, because such independent nomad tribes now caused ever greater damage up to the border of Cyrenaica and became a general threat, so that it was not difficult for the Byzantine general Belisarius in 533, on the orders of Emperor Justinian I , who also saw it as a model for the elimination of other Germanic rule and the unification of the empire, with a relatively small force to end vandalism.
Byzantium and North Africa
Like the influence of the Vandals, the influence of the Byzantine Empire in and on North Africa was also relatively brief and only lasted about 100 years until the Arabs conquered Egypt in 642. Initially, however, the Byzantines succeeded within 12 years in pacifying North Africa to some extent, despite the resistance of local tribes, especially in Mauritania, also by creating a network of forts in the country and fortifications around the cities, despite the predatory advances from the Libyan desert could not stop completely. At the same time, however, a new persecution of the Donatists, who had already been greatly weakened under the vandals, began. Religious and quite violent resistance of the Western-oriented religious communities against the state church of Constantinople remained a constant feature of this troubled region until the conquest by the Arabs.
Little is known about what happened in the region after Justinian's death in 565, because it seems to have moved a bit out of sight of the court in Constantinople , which now increasingly turned its attention to the threats from the east. The military factor remained decisive, however, while the economic situation worsened, while corruption and usury prevailed in the administration , but probably no more than in other parts of the empire. In any case, the population in the cities fell sharply. Occasionally, there appears to have been local uprisings. Nevertheless, North Africa was also useful in terms of foreign policy when it was able to provide sufficient funds in 619 after the conquest of the East, including Egypt, by the Persian Emperor Heraclius , who temporarily even toyed with the idea of moving his capital from Constantinople to Carthage as a result repel the threat.
However, because of the poor sources, it is difficult to adequately assess the period between 649 and the final Arab conquest in 698 in North Africa in the Maghreb. But it seems to have been a very troubled time with uprisings and nomadic incursions, which now got parts of the country permanently in hand, whereby the traditional Roman culture, even Latin, disappeared more and more, although some of these tribes were Christians. At the same time, the country's economy suffered greater and greater damage, and a regular life in the cities or even just agricultural production were ultimately less and less possible, especially since the humid and fertile climate of the Roman era around 250–500 had given way to a much drier, more desert-like place an arid high point between 300 and 400. The military presence of the Byzantines also decreased continuously, so that the strongest resistance against the invading Arabs even came from the Libyan tribes. However, some Christian customs seem to have lasted into the 11th century, but the rapid Islamization of the Maghreb eventually led to Arabization. The decisive break between the ancient and medieval world seems, if one follows the theories of the historian Henri Pirenne , not to be based on the Germanic invasion of North Africa, but on the Arab one. Seen in this way, the history of the Maghreb is a central element, because in it one sees the complete replacement of a centuries-old political, social, religious and cultural system by another within a relatively short period of time.
middle Ages
Overview
The Middle Ages , in order to use this term, which in itself is determined by Europe, in the absence of a better than pure time frame, is historically shaped by two phenomena in North Africa:
- of Islamization. Finally, at the time of its greatest expansion, Islamic rule extended from the Pyrenees to Senegal , from the Atlantic to Iran
- the emergence of new states on the southern border of the Sahara in the so-called Sudan Zone , which are particularly impressive as trading empires, but which are no longer fully part of North Africa, especially with regard to the empires in the Niger-Benue basin and in the Senegal river , but consistently culturally and economically refer to the Islamic north and not to the more southern cultural zones of black Africa with their mostly still underdeveloped populations, mostly resting on a simple agrarian subsistence basis , where there are now also empires like those of Zimbabwe or Benin , or that of the Yoruba and Ashanti as well as various forest kingdoms began to develop. However, the height of this development was in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Islamization, although it was never homogeneous and often torn by internal disputes due to its enormous extent, has been the primary factor, especially in North Africa, because it gradually spread to the more southern areas. At the same time, the caravan trade and the trans-Saharan trade in general , which thanks to the introduction of the camel in the second half of the last millennium BC could now be carried out much more effectively and, above all, on a wider area, took off and gradually led to the previously effectively sealed off by the Sahara South for cultural assimilation. Caravan routes and trade bases now also became important factors in terms of power politics. The connecting elements of the Islamic area, which is now expanding more and more to the south, were religion and the Arabic language (in which the Koran is only valid to this day) as well as the associated script. The modern spread of Arabic in Africa is a result of this development.
North Africa under Muslim rule
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The most important dynasties (the respective power center is indicated as the rulership area) Caliphate of Damascus and Baghdad Egypt and Libya (Cyrenaica and Tripolitania)
Libya
Little Maghreb
Algeria:
Morocco:
Maghreb and Spain:
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The unbelievable speed of the Arab-Islamic expansion raises questions to this day, because Egypt was conquered in only 3 years, and by 642 Syria, Iran, almost the entire Byzantine and Sassanid empires . As early as 656 the Islamic troops were in the west in Cyrenaica, in the north in the Caucasus , in the east on the Oxus and Hindu Kush . Science currently has several answers ready.
- The weakness of the opponents Byzantium and Persia (empire of the Sassanids) was the result of decades of revenge struggle that had destabilized both empires domestically. This factor, which has long been regarded as a decisive factor in historical research, was evidently not decisive.
- An essential factor, however, was that behind this expansion there was a targeted policy of conquest and settlement by the ruling Islamic elites in Mecca and Medina , above all to keep the Bedouin tribes under control, some of which threatened to abandon his teachings after the death of Muhammad and had to be kept happy with the prospect of battle and plentiful booty. However, this intention was not enough for success.
- Decisive for the impact, however, was the integration of the new Islamic state and the spiritual power of the new religion, which provided the ideological support for an efficient policy of conquest in the sense of a divine mandate with the idea that it was an absolute religious duty contained in the Koran To spread religion not only spiritually, but also spatially in terms of power politics. There were three specific reasons why this expansion was dangerous for the opponents:
- The religious motivation for war. It is about fighting against unbelievers and for the cause of God. It therefore attracted not only earthly wages (booty, power), but also heavenly ones (paradise).
- The troops consisted of often death-defying volunteers who were motivated not by pay, but by ideals. These often small troops were highly mobile and were always reliably supplied from their homeland for the same reasons.
- The tactics were superior, based on fast camels, on which the troops, who were consistently battle-tested, acted flexibly, so that they could hardly be defeated by the often massive but immobile opposing troops made up of mercenaries and those who were pressed for military service.
- What role climatic factors played, especially the fact that there was a new dry period in North Africa between 650 and 850 as between 300 and 400, is an open question. In Arabia, for example, around 600 areas have already been given up that could no longer even be made usable by artificial irrigation, and the rapid spread of Islam apparently took place at a time when a food crisis caused by drought prevailed in the Islamized areas and this were already weakened by it. The fragmentation of the now established North African Islamic empire also begins around the middle of the 8th century, which was, however, promoted primarily by internal Islamic disputes of theological, political and ethnic nature (Arabs against Berbers, invasion of nomads).
In detail, the processes of Islamic expansion in North Africa are as follows:
After 632, the death of Muhammad , North Africa very quickly came under Islamic influence. As early as 640, the Muslims under the leadership of Amr ibn al-As defeated a Byzantine army in the decisive battle of Heliopolis . The Shia, with the emergence of the Shiite denomination in 660 after the assassination of the 4th Caliph ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib 660, initially had no impact on North Africa. In 670 the Muslim armies of the Umayyads began to conquer what is now Tunisia, at that time the most economically and culturally important part of North Africa alongside Egypt. Here the city of Kairouan was founded, the first Arab city there. From Kairouan, the further conquest of the Arabs called Ifrīqiya North Africa (more precisely: Tunisia, East Algeria and Tripolitania) began. While in Egypt the Christian communities, especially the Copts , survived under Muslim rule, those in western North Africa, which had produced personalities of great ecclesiastical and philosophical significance like Augustine , disappeared relatively quickly. The reason is probably to be found in the fact that the predominantly Berber population did not want to continue to submit to foreign suzerainty. As Muslims they were considered to have equal rights with the conquerors, as Christians they were, like the Jews, respected as the religion of the book , but with lesser rights and were often subject to a poll tax. Isolated Christian communities stayed in remote oases until the 18th century. Judaism was widespread well into the 20th century and only gradually disappeared after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, mostly due to political and economic pressure.
In 756 the Arab-Muslim empire broke up into an eastern and a western part. In 761–800, western North Africa (Maghreb) (in Arabic Maghreb = west, namely seen from Arabia) fell away from the caliphate and broke up into individual empires that formed the nucleus for the modern states of Morocco , Algeria and Tunisia . In Algeria a theocracy was formed among the Rustamids . Morocco came under the rule of the Idrisids , who soon became extinct, which made the country a bone of contention between the emirate of Cordoba and the other North African states. The Aghlabids , who ruled Tunisia, expanded to Sicily from 827 , which they conquered from the Byzantines in protracted wars . In doing so, they controlled a strategically important position between the western and eastern Mediterranean. In 1250 the Mamelukes came to power in Egypt and 10 years later they subjugated the entire Levant .
After changing dynasties such as the Moorish-Berber, extremely Orthodox-fundamentalist Almoravids , more stable rulership structures established themselves in the Maghreb in 1269 after the overthrow of the likewise religiously rigid but Mahdist -oriented Almohad empire. From this point on, the Hafsids ruled in Tunisia, the Abdalwadids in Algeria and the Marinids in Morocco. Algeria remained more of a rural-agrarian structure, Morocco tended to be isolated and inaccessible. In the 14th century, the Hafsids began state-organized piracy . In 1270 the 7th crusade took place , influenced by Karl von Anjou under Ludwig the Elder. Saints against Tunis, which was under siege. In 1415 the Portuguese conquered Ceuta and intervened in internal Muslim disputes when they conquered Tangers in 1471.
Although in North Africa massive power-political splinters and controversies again and again became apparent in North Africa, the basis always remained that of the Muslim-Arabic culture and language, which is relatively uniform to this day and at that time was far superior to the Christian one. The dynasties listed in the adjacent table often ruled side by side and in disarray, sometimes only locally; Temporal gaps can be explained by the respective foreign rule of other Muslim dynasties. After the end of the Middle Ages (around 1450 according to modern conventions) they were largely absorbed by the Ottoman Empire (1516–1918), the remaining mass of which then became modern Turkey and some European dominated Middle Eastern and Arab kingdoms after the First World War (cf.Lawrence von Arabia and Sykes-Picot Agreement ).
Since the Umayyads, various dynasties ruled Spain , which was soon independent of Baghdad, with the centers in Andalusia ( Córdoba , Granada , Seville , Toledo ) which was first an emirate and later an independent caliphate (Umayyads, Almoravids, Almohads, Nasrids ).
The early empires in the south (overview)
Towards the end of the first Christian millennium, in the transition to Sub-Saharan Africa, political formations emerged that can be described as empires, albeit with considerable restrictions, and that almost always have their origins in the fact that trans-Saharan caravan routes ended here, crossed or crossed the areas passed and were dependent on the services of large caravanserais before or after the desert passage . (It is no coincidence that the kingdoms of Kush, Meroe and Aksum, which emerged further south from Egypt along the Nile, came into being much earlier, because here there were natural connecting routes with the Nile and the coast of the Red Sea, which enabled contacts and thus a cultural exchange .) These empires are, however, only to a limited extent to be included in North Africa, especially since in the west they were partly in the Niger-Benue basin or on Senegal or reached into it, in the east in the area of Lake Chad, i.e. basically originated there, where today the Sahel runs roughly and merges into the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa. The basis for the power and spatial structure of these empires is the priority of owning people over property (cf. North Africa ). Its history also extends far beyond the Middle Ages, in some cases into the 19th century. Moreover, sooner or later they were all Islamized.
Only the most important empires in terms of size, importance and duration are listed below. Smaller "empires" such as Sosso ( ethnic groups expelled from Ghana by the Almoravids ), Tekruri (in Senegal), Mossi (upper reaches of the Volta) or Bambara (in Niger), which were relatively often locally formed as satellites of the great empires, joined whose downfall occasionally did amicable or at some point even perished are not taken into account here, especially since they seldom left archaeologically usable traces, sometimes like the Wolof did not develop any historically halfway comprehensible realms and can only be interpreted as ethnic groups. They are also at least partially or, like the Kingdom of Benin or the distribution area of the enigmatic Nok culture, even completely south of the Sahel zone and are therefore no longer part of North Africa in the broadest sense. The successor state of Meroe, one of three, the Kushitic-Christian kingdom of Dongola , which was destroyed by the Muslims in 1317 after 800 years of existence, is not taken into account here, nor is the Christian empire located there in Darfur between 900 and 1200 Empires from which various smaller sultanates emerged after Islamization .
Terminological note: Please note that the terms used in the following (central or western) "Sudanese" do not refer to the state of Sudan, but as an old term to the Sudan zone (Arab. Bilad es-Sudan = land of blacks), an approximately 900 km wide and 5500 km long west-east across Africa between desert and rainforest, which roughly coincides with the Sahel zone , but also includes the tree savannas south of it and extends through the states of Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Chad and the Republic of Sudan, whose name was derived from this, as there is otherwise no common criterion for the different ethnic groups living there with their many languages (over 100, of which 20 with over 100,000 speakers, see list of Languages in Sudan , and Religions ) existed. The name, apparently created by Arab travelers in the Middle Ages, is an additional indication that the Sudan Zone was considered part of the North African area from an early age, although dark-skinned people lived there. Without this geographical reference, the name would be nonsense, since Sub-Saharan Africa was almost completely inhabited by this human phenotype at that time (possible exceptions: San , Ethiopians ).
Central Sudanese States
Along with Mali and Songhai, which had very similar political constitutions, Kanem-Bornu was one of the vast empires of the Middle Ages in the southern peripheral zone, the forerunner of which is known as the Saokultur . His influence extended to Tripolitania and Egypt, to Cameroon and from Niger to the Nile. The state around Lake Chad arose in the middle of the 9th century as a result of the caravan trade at the southern end of the "Route of 40 Days" (Darb el Arbein). It was ruled by the Sayf dynasty until the 19th century in a kind of decentralized feudal monarchy with an almost god-like sultan at the head. At different times it also included areas in southern Chad, northern Cameroon, northeast and southern Nigeria and southern Libya. Towards the end of the 11th century, King Umme adopted Islam, and from then on the state was Islamic. Its main function was to facilitate trade contacts between North Africa, the Nile Valley and sub-Saharan Africa. In the 14th century, the Bulala people split off for two centuries and moved their own capital to Bornu, west of Lake Chad. This second capital remained a residence even after reunification, so that the rulers alternately ruled in one and the other. The empire remained stable and economically successful until the 19th century despite the constant attacks by the Berbers , Tuareg and Tubu . After the ruling dynasty died out, however, it fell apart, not least under the pressure of the Haussa states and due to the interruption of the slave trade by the European colonial states, among which it was later divided.
These are several city-states between Niger and Chad, which, however, never came to an agreement in the course of their history. These city-states were founded in the 12th century around the caravan routes that connected Tripolitania and Egypt to the south in the east, and Niger in the west via Darfur to the upper Nile valley. The name Hausa is linguistic, not ethnic, and Hausa is spoken by several peoples, so that an agreement was therefore unlikely. Little is known about the individual states, some of whose origins are legendary. There were a total of seven of these Hausa city-states: Daura, Kano, Biram, Katsena, Gobir, Rano and Zaria, plus seven satellites: Zamfara, Kebbi, Yuri, Gwari, Nuoe, Djukun / Kororofa, Yoruba. Originally ruled by magical priests and queens, they adopted Islam from missionaries from Mali in the 14th century, but mixed it heavily with elements of traditional religion , and some came temporarily under the rule of Bornu and Songhai. The "main commodities" were, among other things, the slaves, much sought after by the Arabs because of their strength and intelligence, some of whom were sold as far as Constantinople and often held high positions there. The constant civil wars between the individual house states prevented them from playing a dominant political role, and they were mainly agriculturally oriented. At the beginning of the 19th century the house states came under the rule of the Fulani and became emirates , which in turn fell under British rule together with Bornu at the beginning of the 20th century, which they added to their protectorate Nigeria.
West Sudanese States
The empire of Mali was arguably the largest of the Sahel empires. It extended over the territory of the southern Mande peoples, the Malinke , and existed from the 13th to the 16th centuries. Its origins seem to be in the 11th century, when the small local prince of Kangaba turned to the Almoravids for help because of a famine and converted to Islam in gratitude for their help. From these small beginnings a mighty empire emerged in the course of the 13th century, which stretched from the Sahara in the north to the tropical jungle in the south and from the Atlantic to the eastern Niger arc connected western and eastern Trans-Saharan trade with the waterways of the Niger, with trade in gold playing a central role. However, this importance and the resulting wealth also made it vulnerable to internal changes of power and external thirst for conquest. In 1325 Mali even subjugated Songhai for a short time, occupying Gao and Timbuktu . Egyptian scholars now came to Mali, there were political connections to Morocco and Egypt. But the decline of the empire began as early as 1360 with a number of weak rulers. From the north the Tuareg advanced to Timbuktu, to the south Mossi . The people of Takrur and Wolof rebelled. Mali finally made contact with the Portuguese without this having prevented their decline, because at the same time another empire had risen: Songhai. From 1550, Mali is then meaningless.
This trading state in western Africa was located on central Niger, but possibly extended to the Atlantic coast, in the east to Niger and Nigeria. But it only existed independently for a good two hundred years. Its rise coincides with the fall of the Mali Empire. Its origins are also hidden in legends. Berbers or Arabs are said to have been at its beginning, its rise was initially slow and unspectacular. Gao only became the capital and seat of their kings, called Dia , at the beginning of the 11th century . At this time, the Dia Kossoi converted to Islam. Gao became so rich over the next several years that the kings of Mali incorporated it into their empire from 1325 to 1375. A troubled century followed. An attack on Timbuktu, the second most important city occupied by the Tuareg, and the subjugation of the Fulani and Dogon in 1468 removed the imminent threat to the empire, which had now become small but prosperous center of the gold trade from Ghana, and it moved now also many Arab scholars who settled in Timbuktu, Gao and Djenne . In the east, Songhai now extended into the area of the Hausa states, in the north deep into the desert, where at times even the salt mines of southern Morocco were controlled. However, the country did not come to rest at first because of disputes over the succession to the throne, but then stabilized and prospered in the Sahara trade, the undisturbed settlement of which it secured with its troops. In 1591, however, it was finally subject to Moroccan troops, who had been sent by their sultan Mulai Achmed al Mansur, who was demanding for gold, and whose firearms the Songhai had nothing to counter, so that the former empire was now dissolved in the Sultanate of Morocco.
West African Sahel and Niger Basin
African geographers described the first black African state that is better known as early as the 9th century. It lay in the north of the two diverging arches of Senegal and Niger. Ghana was also a trading state with the main export products gold, copper, ivory and slaves from the more southern rainforest areas and savannahs, which were traded across the deserts to the north. It was also a center of the salt trade; the salt mines of Taudeni, for example, were exploited by slaves. Horses were mainly used for slave hunting. The state, however, was not run tightly and was not durable enough, so that the term empire does not actually fit here. There are quite precise descriptions of trading cities such as Tegdaoust or the presumed capital Kumbi Saleh in southern Mauritania from Arab authors . The rulers (tunka) themselves were not so much kings as commercial middlemen who got rich by controlling the markets, not by acting - that was the business of the desert nomads - or producing. Ghana soon acquired the reputation of a black Eldorado . Its rulers, who, like the merchants at that time, had often converted after contact with Islam, surrounded themselves with luxury goods and were in this respect comparable to the European rulers of that era. In the 9th to 11th centuries Ghana reached its greatest extent and the pinnacle of wealth and power, which was also secured by a large standing army, which was essential for monitoring the caravan routes. In the north, however, it had the same problems as the other empires later, because there were constant disputes with the nomadic peoples, especially the Berbers, over the profitable control of the caravan routes. In the 11th century there were riots connected with the Islamization by the fanatical Almoravids , who penetrated far south with their holy wars and gradually Islamized the last area of ethnic religions that still was Ghana sought. The resulting uncertainty of the caravan routes including the refugee flows, which had additionally been triggered by a further desiccation of the Sahel between 900 and 1000, soon brought Ghana into great difficulties and finally reduced it to insignificance, especially since the caravans are now making their way to Gao, Timbuktu and Jenne searched. Eventually, after 1235, Ghana was absorbed by the Mali Empire.
Modern times
Overview
The modern age as a historical epoch in North Africa looks very different in terms of both content and structure than the comparable European historical epoch. While its beginning there is characterized by the Renaissance , the discovery of America , the printing press , the Reformation and the philosophical currents accompanying them such as humanism and derives its decisive impulses from them, later with empiricism , rationalism and the Age of Enlightenment as well as the French, industrial and Russian revolutions shows important turning points and impulses, which also gave the modern natural sciences the decisive boost, can be found in North Africa, but also in the other parts of the Islamic world nothing of the kind. On the other hand, the following features are striking:
- The cultural solidification of Islam and the state structures that support it, through to the disintegration of the late Ottoman Empire. Effectively, the Islamic countries in modern times have not produced a single significant philosophical or scientific theory or invention. There is nothing there that can be compared with the theories of Copernicus, Galilei, Newton and Kepler, Leibniz, Darwin, Freud and Jung, Einstein, Planck, Marx and the economists, or with the development of modern chemistry, biology and medicine. Steam engine, asepsis, artificial fertilizer, cars, electricity, aircraft, nuclear power, transistors, microchips, computers, space travel, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, etc. were (and are) not invented or discovered in the Islamic world. Even fundamentalism is a Christian invention of North America, and the weapons of the terrorists or the Taliban are exclusively inventions and products of the West.
- The defenselessness, yes, the disinterest with which the European dynamic of conquest and colonization was confronted, sometimes submitting to it as the example of Egypt and the Suez Canal, but also of Morocco, for example, shows when the threatening gestures of the American gunboats off the coast showed.
- Finally, in view of the former cultural superiority in the Middle Ages, today the astonishingly sorry gaze of the Islamic countries, which is often paired with a fateful backwardness and which, according to Enzensberger, is one of the main driving forces of the "radical losers" from which the suicide bombers are recruited.
- Numerous authors have pointed out that this attitude at the same time justifiably also provokes aggression in view of the enormous disadvantage it has created not only for the Islamic world, but also for the Third World as a whole, most recently, despite all criticism of some of his arguments, the former Swiss National Council and special rapporteur of the United Nations Jean Ziegler .
The Ottomans
The Ottoman Empire was the most important and longest-lived of all three empires that arose in the central Islamic countries in the 16th and 17th centuries (the other two were the Mughals in India and the Safavids in Iran). At the height of their power, the Ottomans ruled (after their founder Uthman , hence in the English-speaking area Ottoman Empire), an originally insignificant Turkic people from the circle of the so-called Rum Seljuks ( Rum zu Rome ), who had founded a smaller state in Anatolia. an area similar in size to that of the Byzantine Empire during its greatest expansion and which included the Balkans, Asia Minor, Greece and large parts of North Africa. In fact, the Ottoman sultans saw themselves as successors to the Byzantine emperors, just as they saw themselves as successors to Rome, although they only ruled over the eastern part of the former Roman Empire, whose western part had long since perished in the Germanic storms towards the end of the fifth century , so that Rome and its inhabitants only served the Pope as a now insignificant residence the size of a medium-sized, even small town, while political power had long sat in Ravenna . The charisma of this great empire was enormous, its desire for expansion and its urge to rule were no less, and the Ottomans even threatened Vienna twice. Its center in Constantinople was the Sublime Porte , its most important and most powerful ruler was not called Suleiman the Magnificent for nothing (he largely gave the old city of Jerusalem its current shape).
The power of the Ottomans rested on two pillars:
- an effective administration based on the so-called military patronage system with the Sultan as the absolute ruler. The small group of the ruling military was strictly superior to the mass of the rest of the population, who earned the wealth for their livelihood, and even this class had only the status of slaves in relation to the sultan.
- and a huge military machine, which historians see as one of the reasons for the subsequent decline, mainly because it was closely linked to the administrative structure and geared towards constant expansion.
After the first conquest of Mameluke Egypt by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, North Africa soon came under Ottoman influence. Turkish pashas were installed in the provinces of Tripolitania, Tunis and Algeria . Morocco, on the other hand, never came under Turkish-Ottoman suzerainty, but began an expansive policy towards the south, in the Niger area . In the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, however, the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultans over the Maghreb became more and more nominal, not surprising, because for centuries the sultans had delegated their authority on the so-called Barbarian Coast to the governors of Tripolitania, Tunisia and Algeria, whereby these Paschas , Beys and Deys controlled little more than a narrow strip of coast. The Qaramanli family, originally Greek, established itself in the province of Tripolitania at the beginning of the 18th century , and exercised state authority there more or less sovereignly . The Husainids , who ruled Tunisia from 1705, were also originally of Greek origin. In Algeria, the last Ottoman governor was deposed by the “pirate parliament” and an electoral monarchy was established, which in 1711 officially left the Ottoman Empire. Due to the increased naval presence of European powers, the North African states, which the Europeans called " barbaric states ", were forced to gradually give up piracy. Morocco sought contact with the French court during the 18th century. It was hoped that European experts would modernize the state and the army. In 1774 Morocco released all Christian slaves . Whether Mozart's opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and Lessing's “Nathan the Wise”, both of which were written shortly thereafter and show generous Muslim rulers at the center of the action, were influenced by this is an open question.
- See also: American Tripolitan War and Second Barbarian War
European expansion in colonialism
Overview and important dates
Historic benchmarks of European colonialism in Africa 1800–1918
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- Overview
In the early modern period, most of North Africa, with the exception of Morocco and the interior of the Sahara, came under the loose control of the Ottoman Empire . However, the European powers also showed interest in Africa relatively early on and maintained trading bases on the coasts. However, when the Ottoman Empire became weaker and weaker, while the modern European states became stronger against the background of industrialization ( Industrial Revolution ), its African domains gradually became in the 19th and 20th centuries France , Belgium , Great Britain , Spain , Portugal , Occupied Germany and Italy . Very few areas such as Ethiopia , Liberia and Nyassaland were not affected. Parts of Ethiopia and Somalia came under Italian rule for a short time in the 20th century during the fascist epoch of Mussolini's Italy, who wanted to restore the old Roman Empire. The main motives of the colonization were primarily of an economic nature, the rule over the raw material sources (gold, spices, exotic products) and trade routes above all, the opening up of newer sales markets, in addition, initially against the background of a Christian racist image of man, also slaves , especially for the supply of the American southern states with manpower. Until 1880, only relatively few areas in Africa were dominated directly by Europe. Then, however, it only took three decades until Africa was completely conquered and divided, and in 1913 of the 40 political regions there were 36 under European rule. The colonial powers drew a veritable trail of blood over North Africa, especially France. The main motive for the almost explosive spread of colonialism was not least the increasing, increasingly nationalist colored competition between European countries, which repeatedly gave rise to direct confrontations in Africa and ultimately led to the outbreak of the First World War. The then Chancellor Bismarck was therefore skeptical about the acquisition of colonies, as he expected only minor economic advantages in connection with colonial acquisition , but considerable political disruption.
Individual countries: Maghreb, Egypt, Sudan
- Algeria
The beginning of the direct European establishment in North Africa can be set to the year 1830. The so-called " Bacri-Busnach Affair ", in the course of which the French charge d'affaires had allegedly been beaten at the Dey of Algiers, gave Charles X the pretext to occupy Algiers . Whether the reason was above all to achieve better trading conditions for France and to what extent he thereby wanted to divert attention from domestic political difficulties - an effective tool in politics in general - is debatable. For a long time, however, this step was very unpopular in France. The French were initially limited to the coastal places. In the interior of Algeria, Abd el-Kader declared himself independent as an emir. It was not until 1840 that King Louis Philippe set out to completely conquer the country. The colonization of Algeria by French settlers was by no means planned from the start, and the first "colons" until 1871 came mostly as exiles from the respective French regimes. After 1871, however, many French moved from Alsace, which was forcibly ceded to the German Empire in 1871, to Algeria. Another wave of immigration to Algeria and the Maghreb in general took place in the 1880s when a phylloxera invasion ruined large parts of French, but also Italian and Spanish wine production. Napoleon III envisaged a Franco-Algerian personal union. However, this vision was not put into practice, instead, in 1848 Algeria with its departments of Algiers, Constantine and Oran was declared part of the French metropolitan area. In the 1860s, all the inhabitants of Algeria were given French citizenship , and the tribal units and clan -based social structures of the tribes have been abolished. From now on, Muslims should live under modern European law of the civil code and renounce their centuries-old traditions. This measure was connected with a broad wave of expropriations. Promptly, a nationwide uprising broke out in Algeria in 1871, which was put down by the French Foreign Legion . In addition, as was later the case in all the other French colonies, the discriminatory Code de l'indigénat was introduced in 1881 , which placed the local population under “special jurisdiction” so that they lived in a permanent state of emergency. The code was valid until 1946, but was not overridden for Algerians until 1962 with the end of the Algerian War.
The uprising of 1871 was the last major uprising of the Algerian population until 1954. Many uprooted Algerians then left the rural areas, where the most fertile soils now belonged to the French landowners, and migrated to the cities, where they made their way as day laborers and dock workers and with them formed a proletariat at the time. See also pied noir .
- Egypt and Tunisia
Both countries came under European control during the 1880s. Egypt , which had been ruled virtually independently from the Ottoman Empire since the beginning of the 19th century under Muhammad Ali and his successor, has been increasingly confronted with financial straits since the Suez Canal was built and was shaken by internal unrest. In response to the Urabi movement , Great Britain occupied Egypt in 1882 to restore "security and order". After the spheres of influence of the powers in south-eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin were defined at the Berlin Congress in 1878,
Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881.
- Sudan
In the early 19th century, the Khedives , the Ottoman viceroys of Egypt, began to conquer Sudan . In 1820 today's capital Khartoum was founded by them as a military camp. In 1821 the Sultanate of Sannar was conquered by Turkish-Egyptian troops. After the convulsions of the Mahdi uprising in 1898/99 with the final suppression of the Mahdists by Horatio Herbert Kitchener as well as after conflicts with France (Faschoda crisis, Omdurman), Sudan finally came under British rule and became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium with Egypt merged.
- Morocco
Morocco came under increasing pressure from France, Great Britain and Spain in the course of the 19th century. Support for the Algerian insurgents against the French and a war with Spain in 1860 brought the country to the brink of economic ruin. Eventually the country was forced to mortgage its customs revenue. At the beginning of the 20th century, Morocco became the object of quarrels between Germany and France, which, however, only extended its independence by a few years. In 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Tangier to confirm the German claim to have a say in North Africa. Germany was only able to postpone French power growth in Morocco for a few years. In 1911, France occupied Fez despite German threats and declared Morocco a protectorate in 1912, with Spain being awarded the Rif .
- Libya (Tripolitania)
Tripolitania , later Libya (the name Libya for the entire present-day territory comes from the Italians), like all other states in North Africa, came into conflict with European states and the USA because of state-sanctioned piracy. In 1830 Tripolitania finally banned piracy, which led to a war within the ruling Qaramanli family , in which the Ottoman Empire intervened. The province, the only one that ever returned to the Ottoman Empire, could not be “pacified” until 1858. In the interior of the country, the Senussi brotherhood developed , which resisted European influence. 1911–1912 Italy occupied the country and met only slight Ottoman resistance, but in the following years all the more violent local resistance.
The Sahel countries: Chad, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Western Sahara
- Chad
In 1900, after severe military conflicts with local forces, France established the military territory of the countries and protectorates of Chad. In 1908, this merged with the colony of Chad in the administrative region of French Equatorial Africa . In 1911 the colony was legally and politically secured against Germany by the Franco-German Morocco-Congo Agreement with the help of cedings of territory ( New Cameroon ). Between the world wars, the colony of Chad received its current borders.
- Mali
In 1883, French colonial troops penetrated deep into the interior of what is now Mali and in 1894 they subjugated Timbuktu. In 1904, France annexed it to the French Sudan colony and subjected it strictly to its own agricultural interests. France installed a civilian governor as early as 1893. The resistance to the occupation did not end until around 1898. Mali was then part of French West Africa until independence .
- Niger
Due to its central desert location, the area of Niger, which is economically not too interesting, was under the influence of neighboring black African states such as the Mali and Songhaire empires, Kanem-Bornu and domestic states. Most recently, a Fulani sheikh declared holy war there against the Hausa in 1804 and established the Sokoto Empire . From 1904 the Niger colony was part of French West Africa.
- Mauritania
Because of its geographical situation as an almost pure desert country without good ports, hardly any European country showed interest in Mauritania until the end of the 19th century . At the turn of the 20th century, the French began subjugating it from the south, as it was primarily of strategic importance as a link between West and North African possessions. In 1904 the area became French territory within the framework of French West Africa (AOF), and in 1920 a French colony.
- Western Sahara
In 1884 the Spaniards established a base on the Rio de Oro peninsula. At the Congo Conference 1884–1885 in Berlin, Spain received the Western Sahara . The resistance against the French and Spanish colonial armies in northwest Africa flared up here too. After decades of resistance by the Sahrawis , the area of Western Sahara was finally occupied by Spanish troops. Since then, uprisings have raged there, first against the Spaniards, then against Morocco, which is also trying to occupy the area. This conflict continues to this day. The Polisario Front of Liberation is the main actor.
Resistance and Decolonization in the 20th Century
Historic benchmarks of decolonization in Africa 1918–1970
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First half of the century: The First and Second World Wars
After the still puzzling entry of the already moribund Ottoman Empire , weakened by internal conflicts and external threats - the Ottoman Sultanate was called the “sick man of Europe” - on the side of the Central Powers in the fall of 1914, Great Britain annexed both Cyprus and Egypt . All of Constantinople's theoretical claims to sovereignty on these territories had thus become irrelevant in purely political terms, and the entire North African Mediterranean coast from the Suez Canal to the Strait of Gibraltar was now under European, especially British and French rule.
The southern zone states of Sudan, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania that were not directly affected by the war remained in their colonial status during the two wars and were only useful as suppliers of raw materials and agricultural products (e.g. cotton from Sudan), so far the unsafe sea routes allowed it. Here and there resistance movements developed, and there were local uprisings, as in Mauritania and Western Sahara , but due to the arbitrariness of their colonial borders and multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, even multi-religious composition, these countries were practically never national units with a national consciousness and thus became after theirs Self-employment both victims of civil wars as in Sudan and / or easy prey of authoritarian regimes with mostly military backgrounds. In 1921, with the proclamation of the Rif republic in northern Morocco under Abd el-Krim , the first armed independence movement took place. This state existed for over five years before it was defeated by French and Spanish troops in 1926. In 1922, Egypt was granted independence from Great Britain.
In the inter- war period, nationalist groups emerged in all the countries of North Africa, especially in Tunisia and Algeria, but their impact was initially greatly hampered by the outbreak of World War II .
Between 1940 and 1943, Tunisia and the former Italian colony Libya in the African campaign to a secondary front of World War II. The French part of North Africa belonged to the Vichy regime , tolerated and controlled by the Nazis , which ruled the non-occupied part of France until 1944 and was led by Marshal Pétain .
The western part of North Africa, in turn, became a deployment area for the Allies, who landed on the Moroccan and Algerian coast in November 1942 ( Operation Torch ).
In 1922, Egypt became a largely independent kingdom under Fuad I and received sovereignty after his death in 1936. Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were the main combat areas of the German and Italian armies under Erwin Rommel and the British under Bernard Montgomery ( El Alamein , Tobruk , Benghazi , Tunis , Biserta ) in World War II . The Germans capitulated in Tunis in May 1943. British troops remained in the country until 1946.
The second half of the century: decolonization
Most of the northern and southern states of North Africa were “granted independence” in the years after the Second World War: 1951 Libya, 1956 Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, 1960 (so-called “African year”) Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, 1962 Algeria.
- The Maghreb and Egypt
The first two decades after the Second World War in North Africa were dominated by the liberation fronts, the decolonization and suppression of European influence and the search for national identities, which was much easier than in the classical states of the Maghreb and in Egypt with their relatively uniform traditions in the ethnically heterogeneous states south of it that emerged as purely colonial regions of power and influence. Nevertheless, or also because of this, this development was sometimes violent.
As early as 1945 there was an uprising movement in Algeria, which was severely crushed by the French military .
Italy renounced its possessions in 1947 in Libya , which became an independent kingdom under Idris I , the religious head of the Senussi order .
In Egypt , General Muhammad Nagib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser carried out a coup against the Egyptian King Faruq in 1951 . Two years later the Republic of Egypt was proclaimed. Nasser, first Minister of the Interior, soon after Nagib's disempowerment himself President, now vehemently advocated pan-Arabism and tried to fight poverty in his country. His endeavors to nationalize the Suez Canal led to the Suez Crisis in 1956 , in the course of which Egypt was attacked by Great Britain, France and Israel and it was only the pressure of American President Dwight D. Eisenhower that led to the cessation of the fighting and withdrawal.
In 1956 Tunisia under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba and Morocco under King Mohammed V gained their national independence. Morocco immediately began making claims on Mauritania and the Western Sahara .
In Algeria , meanwhile, France stubbornly refused to withdraw. It was clear early on that this would lead to armed clashes. For the Algerians, however, the French defeat in Indochina in the spring of 1954 was a key experience, as it showed that France could be defeated by insurgents (the Việt Minh ). In the autumn of the same year the Algerian war broke out, which was waged with extreme severity on both sides. The Front de Liberation Nationale , the Algerian liberation movement, had 30,000 fighters under arms and tried to bring the colonial power to its knees using guerrilla warfare in the country and terrorist attacks in the cities. The French, on the other hand, relied on means of state terrorism such as torture and the disappearance of people in the French doctrine . Military historians therefore speak of one of the first cases of so-called " asymmetrical warfare ". Increasing tensions within France, massive criticism of the type of warfare that did not at all follow the French ideals of human rights, and a great wave of sympathy for the Algerian fighters around the world ultimately led to a turning point. Many of the dead and the massive depreciation of the franc contributed to the fact that public opinion in France changed. Called for help from retirement, Charles de Gaulle finally put an end to the national crisis into which France had now fallen by giving his country a new constitution in 1958, that of the Fifth Republic , and he led in 1962 against the bitter resistance of parts of the French The military who joined forces in Algeria to form the secret terrorist organization OAS , as well as the so-called pied noirs peace talks .
Algeria, however, is still one of the largest unrest areas in the Maghreb, where not only the Tuareg defend themselves against their state-decreed sedentariness and national restrictions on a national territory, but also the Salafi variety of fundamentalist Islam is active and repeatedly attracts attention through kidnappings .
- Sudan and the Sahel countries
The southern zone states of Sudan, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania that were not directly affected by the war had meanwhile remained in their colonial status during the two wars. Here and there resistance movements developed, but due to the arbitrariness of their colonial demarcations and multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, even multi-religious (especially in Sudan and Chad) composition, these countries were practically never national units and thus became victims of civil wars after their independence in Sudan and / or easy prey from authoritarian regimes with mostly military backgrounds. The nomadic way of life of many peoples there, combined with their often warlike mentality, for example among the Tuareg , was a massive obstacle to gaining a national identity. In addition, in the last few decades there have been mainly Islamist fundamentalist movements that declare Islam to be the state religion and the Koran and Sharia to be the basic law.
20th and 21st centuries: At the center of world politics
Historic fixed brands: Pan-Arabism, nationalism, socialism, the Middle East conflict, Islamism and terrorism in North Africa 1970–2010
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The last third of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st can be described in terms of the history of North Africa with the keywords pan-Arabism, nationalism, socialism, Middle East conflict, Islamism and terrorism , which now characterize the entire Arab and Islamic world and historians simultaneously or one after the other as even tempted Samuel P. Huntington to speak of a clash of civilizations . Others, on the other hand, who, like Fukuyama, were talking about the end of history , were soon forced to expressly exclude Islamic societies from this end. As a more recent development in North Africa, the People's Republic of China is increasingly exerting its influence, as it has been in Sudan for some time. Since January 2011, there have been revolutions in various North African countries that led to the overthrow of the regime in Egypt and Tunisia, and in Libya to a civil war against the Gaddafi regime, which, with the help of a flight ban enforced by NATO, also fell in the autumn and was killed .
Pan-Arabism, Nationalism and Socialism
Historically in the first place is pan-Arabism , which, together with the Arab national movement , whose first public manifestation was triggered by the Balfour Declaration in 1918, is still rooted in colonial times. Both movements were accompanied by mostly unsuccessful democratization efforts and demarcations from the old colonial powers, which were seen to be morally, politically and historically delegitimized and whose political systems therefore seemed not worth emulating. Gradually, however, despite numerous organizational superstructures such as the League of Arab States with the Arab summit conferences, the relative unsuccessfulness of pan-Arabism in particular became apparent, which was not least reflected in the failed unification efforts of various Arab countries. The failure had various causes. Above all, however, historical egoisms and, for young nations, after a national liberation perceived as heroic, were by no means unusual nationalistic jealousies, which eventually replaced Islam as a culture of national liberation with an Islamic national policy. In addition, some states began, in some cases parallel to the pan-Arab efforts, with socialist experiments . Meanwhile, soon after 1948, Arab nationalism split into a pan-Arab basic direction that emphasized the unity of the Arab world, and a more regional one, which put national peculiarities first. Nasser's Egypt ( Nasserism ) and Gaddafi's Libya as well as Numeiri's Sudan and Algeria Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediennes are particularly striking examples of this in North Africa (in the Middle East it was the founding of the Baath Party ), with Gaddafi even attempting to join of his Third Universal Theory to design a third path between Western capitalism and Eastern socialism not only theoretically, but also to realize it in practice, a path that, in his opinion, seemed better suited to the needs of his Islamic-Bedouin homeland. In the 1950s, however, such efforts in no way meant a Moscow orientation, as was often assumed in the West at the time.
Another factor of such discrepancies that is rarely mentioned by the Arab-Islamic states not only in North Africa is, of course, the sometimes extreme economic imbalance between these countries. The range extends from an annual gross domestic product per capita of US $ 738 in the case of Niger to 1126 for Mali and 5898 for Egypt to 14,533 for Libya and 39,850 for Kuwait. Then there are the sometimes disastrous consequences of the modern western dumping policy, which also massively affects the agriculture of North Africa, as well as "the current cannibalistic world order of globalized finance capital". Islamic socialism also failed because of the practical implementation and the different framework conditions From 1979 onwards, both Islam and its socialist interpretation were de-ideologized. Black September 1970 is seen as the official end of pan-Arabism, enriched with socialist ideas .
The Union of the Arab Maghreb has existed since 1989 , an amalgamation of the Maghreb states of Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia as well as Mauritania, which had been planned since 1964, but had been postponed again and again due to constant conflicts between these states.
Middle East conflict, Islamism and terrorism
However, shortly after the end of the Second World War, there was a situation in the geostrategic political environment of the Middle East that had a massive influence on all these efforts and tendencies from the very beginning, and which downright militarized and radicalized them: the existence of the State of Israel in Palestine since 1948. This geopolitical situation in the Middle East was in itself an insurmountable affront for the Muslim world, which included the Jewish land all around, especially since this area with only a few million inhabitants (7.5 million today, then in relation to the Arab world) 1948 650,000) not only managed to survive, but also gradually defeated the Arab armies in over half a dozen wars in the course of the Middle East conflict (the last one in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead , is only a short one Time back). The shock of 1967 in particular had a long lasting effect. Since the USA also saw itself as the protective power of Israel, which also became a nuclear power in the 1960s, the general political tendency of the Arab-Islamic states in the socialist, nationalist and anti-Semitic-Islamic direction was not only practical in Palestine as early as the 1950s and 1960s specified, with the Eastern Bloc and especially the Soviet Union as initially preferred partners (and arms suppliers, since the West did not supply any weapons). The importance of the Soviet ally, which initially increased sharply after the Suez Crisis of 1956 and also reached an economic climax in Egypt from 1967 ( Aswan Dam ), declined relatively quickly in view of the economic temptations that the West had to offer In view of the fact that the Soviet Union had not had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1967, as a mediator in contrast to the USA was therefore out of the question, because Nasser's successor Anwar as-Sadat urgently needed this mediator, the USA, in order to achieve a territorial settlement with Israel (Return of the Sinai) to stabilize its position, but also the economic situation of Egypt, and therefore did not even hesitate to expel all 21,000 Soviet experts from the country in 1972. Later Russian wars in Islamic countries Chechnya and Afghanistan had a rather sobering effect, and so did the collapse of the Soviet Union and its ideological model, especially since its atheistic structure was in stark contrast to Islam. (Which, on the other hand, does not prevent the extremely Orthodox Sudan from maintaining close relations, especially with the People's Republic of China.)
Seen in this light, it is not surprising that on this unstable basis a terrorist Islamic fundamentalism, not only independent of Western allies, but also directed against them as so-called crusader nations , is not surprising, especially since it rested on a broad mass basis, because the countries were not only North Africa With the exception of the oil states, it was not possible to sufficiently improve the social situation of their constantly increasing populations (increase in Egypt approx. 1 million per year). And many of today's terrorist organizations such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbolla in Lebanon, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) in Algeria or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have started and are practicing as social organizations and / or political parties this function continues to this day. Al-Qaeda , an offspring of extremely orthodox Saudi Wahabism , uses this mass-psychological situation, which is based on a massive inferiority complex, up to and including the suicide bombers used almost exclusively by it .
As far as Arab-Islamic anti-Zionism is concerned, a certain dependence of the distance between individual states from Palestine and the radical nature of their political stance can be observed. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and, despite all Islamic extremism, also Sudan tend to take the events from a distance and dedicate themselves relatively undisturbed to their Muslim or simply military-induced local power interests, are consistently like the other states of North Africa despite everything democratic sprinkles authoritarian led.
There are also essential factors in North Africa that have a decisive influence on the religious reception of anti-Zionism . For example, the fact that not all the states of North Africa are Arab, but, especially in the western and southern areas, are Berber and Moorish with other ethnic minorities, so that Islam remains the only unifying bond (again with the exception of South Sudan, the majority of whose inhabitants are Christian and ethnic religions ), but which is often interpreted and practiced very differently in the different countries, from strictly religious to liberal and sometimes with very different traditions. Especially in the Maghreb states, North African Islam has gone through its own development and has developed special forms and schools of law that orthodox Muslims in the Arab world sometimes view as heretical , for example with regard to the pronounced veneration of saints or sects such as the Ibadis , and there are also massive sociological ones Differences, for example, in the position of women (for example among the Tuareg). In addition, the influence of the culture of the French colonial power on the elites in particular has an impact to this day. (In the states of the Lesser Maghreb, French is still the second, unofficial, national language.) The experience that practically over a thousand years of peaceful contact with native Judaism brought with it, which only gradually and usually became common from around the 1960s, also has an effect was expelled from the respective countries under pressure from outside, and in Egypt the Coptic element is also still strongly represented (5–8 million, between 6 and 10% of the total population). On the other hand, the common struggle against the colonial powers at least temporarily managed to bridge these sometimes very considerable differences and to integrate the development of North African Islam into the general development of political Islam and its goals. In place of this bracket, however, there has long been hostility against Israel and thus often against the West as a whole, as propagated by fundamentalism. But the attitude of the North African states to the Middle East conflict is inconsistent. Even Libya, which rudely expelled its former Italian colonial rulers from the country after the overthrow of King Idris in 1969 (and has excellent relations with Italy today), was not particularly involved in the fight against Israel materially (and not at all personally) and at the instigation of the Almighty revolutionary leader Gaddafi turned primarily to international terrorism and occasionally military conflicts with his neighbors Chad, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Niger. The state terrorist activities , such as the attack on the La Belle discotheque in Berlin in 1986 or the Lockerbie attack in 1988, resulted in a massive political, technological and economic embargo internationally .
Egypt , which also has a longer tradition of Muslim extremists such as the Muslim Brotherhood , al-Jamaʿa al-islamiyya or Al-Jihad (they murdered Sadat),which has since merged into Al-Qaida,along with a number of smaller groups, is also a special case here : On the one hand, it has a border with Israel on the Sinai and was militarily humiliated by the country several times (1956, 1967 and also 1973, when General Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal, occupied the city of Suez and large areas to the west of it and 100 km ahead Cairo stood), on the other hand it is dependent on not worsening its massive internal, above all economic, social and religious problems through military adventures. The example of Nasser, whom only his charisma saved from overthrow when he shamefully lost his wars against Israel (and the Sinai Peninsula on top of that), had a rather deterrent effect here and prompted his successor in the office of Sadat, after the lost Yom Kippur War , which he knew how to convert propagandistically into a political success because of the Israeli near defeat, to seek the above-described compromise with Israel, which his successor Hosni Mubarak still practices today, despite the complications in the Gaza Strip , which ran from Egypt until 1967 was administered and is nowdominatedby Hamas . In fact, in Egypt, as in the other Middle Eastern states, people understood how to exploit the Palestinian refugee problem , whicharoseafter thedefeat of the Arab states called Nakba in 1948, for their own purposes by not accepting the refugees and thus integrating them rather, it was left in their camps for decades so that the problem would keep simmering politically, but without realizing what fundamentalist explosives would accumulate in these places as a result.
Current political situation in North Africa
General developments
It is therefore no wonder that the Maghreb states, which are already struggling with restless Berber tribes and like Morocco, focus their main attention on Western Sahara, or the states on the southern edge of the Sahara, apart from rhetorical efforts and symbolic actions, avoided it too much to get involved in this Middle Eastern situation and would much rather pursue and still pursue their own power interests. This does not only apply to the Maghreb, but also to Sudan, for example, as can currently be observed in Darfur and to the problems raised by the secessionist efforts in the oil-rich South Sudan in Mali, where democratic conditions prevail, but the internal situation as In Chad is barely under control in Niger, which only saw a military coup in 2010, and in Mauritania, where the same thing happened at the end of 2008, the situation is traditionally unstable. But also in counter-terrorism measures in Algeria and Morocco and others, also in view of various kidnappings of tourists for their income from tourism-fearing states in North Africa, including Egypt, are hardly guided by the rather distant fate of the Palestinians.
Overall, there has been an increased divergence of interests in the Islamic-Arab countries of North Africa to this day, especially when they lack the unifying bracket of the struggle against Israel and other, almost always domestic problems are more important, even if efforts are made to admit this standstill overcome. This is especially true when the fear of terrorist attacks in their areas in many Islamic countries, which are not least initiated by Al-Qaida and, for example, have taken the form of a veritable Sunni-Shiite religious war in Iraq , so that the A vision of possibly even pan-Arab Islamic sovereignty and solidarity, be it bombed or not, tends to create resignation. The same applies to the hope for democracy and the hope for an improvement in the economic situation among the population.
Revolutionary upheavals since 2010
Since 2010/2011, relatively unexpectedly and as triggered in Tunisia by a singular tragic case with a social background (a self-immolation), above all socially oriented revolutions have shaken North Africa, which led to civil war-like conditions, and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, where the uprising is central Tahrir Square in Cairo, and Ben Ali in Tunisia (so-called Jasmine Revolution ) have already surrendered their offices. Colonel Gaddafi, on the other hand, was also faced with a popular uprising in Libya, primarily in the east of the country around Benghazi , which was made even more explosive by the intervention of the NATO air forces due to a UN resolution to protect the civilian population and, in the autumn, made the revolutionaries successful Death of the dictator led. As in all other North African states that have been shaken by popular uprisings, the domestic political situation was unstable after its success. Last but not least, the behavior of Muslim movements as well as the ethnic egoism of tribes (for example in Libya) and the attitude of the military or the old elites, together with a lack of democratic structures and experience, are the decisive factors of uncertainty.
However, these revolutions were never primarily triggered by Islamist tendencies, which played no role at all and only assigned a minor role, if at all, to relevant organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or al-Qaida , but rather the dissatisfaction of the population, especially among the educated bourgeois youth, about unemployment, inequality of opportunity (extremely high unemployment) and social distortions as well as the enormous greed of the ruling circles, whereby demographically an additional problem is that the majority of the respective population is still very young, under 30. The revolutions, which have now also spread to the Gulf States (Bahrain), Yemen and Syria outside of North Africa, were promoted, above all, by the Internet and the familiarity of young people with the possibilities of this technology, which enable the insurgents to coordinate quickly and to allow less and less censorship of processes by government agencies.
In the other states of the North African Maghreb, in Morocco and especially in Algeria, there were unrest in 2011 with a very similar socio-political tendency. Similar protests had already taken place in Iran after the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 , during which Internet technologies had been effectively used for the first time to disseminate and document the uprisings. These uprisings flared up again on February 14, 2011. The idea of making widespread use of the Internet in this way, for example with cell phones, seems to have been adopted from there by the Arab-North African region (and later also by China).
- Some of the current political hot spots in North Africa
Refugee camp in Darfur , where Arab Muslims terrorize dark-skinned Muslims in an ethnic conflict. 2009.
Moroccan bomber shot down by the Polisario near Tifarit, Western Sahara , 1990s.
EUFOR mission to secure Chad in 2008/09.
Tuareg rebel from northern Niger , 2008.
Building destroyed by the civil war in Nasir, South Sudan . 2005.
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- ... and some of the key players
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak , who was ousted in 2011, at the opening of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008 in Sharm El Sheikh , Egypt.
The Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi at the 12th summit of the African Union , February 2009 in Addis Ababa. He was overthrown by the population in 2011 with NATO air support.
The President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir during the same conference. On July 12, 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for genocide against al-Bashir.
Polisario leader Mohamed Abdelaziz , President of the Sahara Democratic Arab Republic in 2006.
The President of Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted and fled in 2011 (photo from 2006).
.jpg)
See also
- Domestication in North Africa
- History of africa
- History of the Mediterranean
- Libyan-Arab-African unification projects
- Libyan desert
- Islamism
- terrorism
literature
- Reference works and general presentations
- G. Barraclough (Ed.): Knaurs Historischer Weltatlas. 6th edition Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0529-3 .
- P. Bertaux: Fischer world history. Volume 32: Africa. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1993, ISBN 3-596-60032-4 .
- JD Clark: The spread of food production in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Journal of African History. 3/1962, 211-228.
- JD Clark: The Cambridge History of Africa. 2 vols., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1989. ISBN 0-521-22215-X .
- L. Frobenius: Cultural history of Africa. Prolegomena to a historical theory of shape. Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal / Leo Frobenius Institute Frankfurt 1993. OA 1954, ISBN 3-87294-525-4 .
- K. Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. From the beginning to the present. Nikol Verlag, Hamburg 2007. ISBN 3-937872-62-0 .
- J. Ki-Zerbo: The History of Black Africa. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1991. ISBN 3-596-26417-0 .
- Jocelyn Murray (Ed.): World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Africa. History, art, forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-88472-042-2 .
- A. Sheratt (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology. Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-035-X .
-
The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed., Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 .
- Africa. Volume 13., pp. 37-120.
- Christianity. Volume 16, pp. 251-366.
- Egypt. Volume 18, pp. 91-144.
- Islam. Volume 22, pp. 1-43.
- North Africa. Volume 24, pp. 939-996.
- Prehistory and early history
- JD Clark: The Earlier Stone Age / Lower Palaeolithic in North Africa and the Sahara. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 17-38.
- Angela E. Close: Holocene Occupation of the Eastern Sahara. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 155-184.
- J. Clottes, J. Courtin: Cosquer grotto near Marseille. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7995-9001-3 .
- S. di Lernia, G. Manzi (Ed.): Before food production in North Africa . Forlí 1998.
- R. Feustel: History of the descent of humans. 6th edition Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1990, UTB 1722, ISBN 3-8252-1722-1 .
- F. Geus: The Neolithic in Lower Nubia. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 219-238.
- W. Henke, H. Rothe: Paleoanthropology. Springer, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-540-57455-7 .
- E. Hoffmann: Lexicon of the Stone Age . CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-42125-3 .
- HJ Hugot, M. Bruggmann: Ten thousand years of the Sahara. Report on a Paradise Lost. Cormoran Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7658-0820-2 .
- St. Jones, R. Martin, D. Pilbeam (Eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-46786-1 .
- F. Klees, R. Kuper (Eds.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Contributions to a Symposium Cologne 1990. With contributions by R. Kuper, JD Clark, F. Wendorf u. R. Schild, R. Schild, F. Wendorf u. Angela E. Close, PM Vermeersch, Angela E. Close, Barbara E. Barich, M. Kobusiewics, F. Geus, L. Krzyzaniak. Heinrich Barth Institute, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-927688-06-1 .
- M. Kobusiewicz: Neolithic and Predynastic Development in the Egyptian Nile Valley . In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 210-218.
- L. Krzyzaniak: The Late Prehistory of the Upper (main) Nile. Comments on the Current State of Research. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 239-248.
- M. Raimbault, K. Sanogo: Recherches archéologiques au Mali. Prospections et inventaire, fouilles et études analytiques en Zone lacustre. Editions Karthala et ACCT, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-86537-285-5 .
- K.-H. Striedter: rock art of the Sahara. Prestel, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7913-0634-0 .
- PM Vermeersch: The Upper and Late Palaeolithic of Northern and Eastern Africa. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 99-154.
- R. Vernet: Préhistoire de la Mauretanie. Center Culturel Français de Nouakchott, Sépia 1993, ISBN 2-907888-25-0 .
- F. Wendorf, R. Schild: The Middle Palaeolithic of North Africa. A status report. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 39-80.
- Ancient and Middle Ages
- J. Baines, J. Málek: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Egypt. History, art, forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-040-6 .
- JH Breasted: History of Egypt. OA Phaidon Verlag, London 1905. Reprint: Parkland Verlag, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-88059-128-8 .
- T. Cornell, J. Matthews: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Rome. History, art, forms of life. 2nd edition Christian Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-88472-075-9 .
- Sir Alan Gardiner: History of Ancient Egypt. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1994 (based on the 3rd rev. Edition from 1962), ISBN 3-89350-723-X .
- É.-F. Gautier: L'islamisation de l'Afrique du Nord. Les siècles obscurs du Maghreb . Paris 1927.
- J. Haldon: The Byzantine Empire. History and culture of a millennium. Artemis & Winkler and Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-538-07140-3 .
- W. Helck, E. Otto: Small Lexicon of Egyptology. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 .
- G. Herm: The Phoenicians. The purple kingdom of antiquity. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-430-14452-3 .
- P. Levi: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Greece. Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-041-4 .
- Islamic world, Judaism and Christianity
- H. Chadwick, GR Evans (ed.): World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Christianity. History, art, forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88472-143-7 .
- Nicholas de Lange: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Jewish World. Christian Verlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-88472-089-9 .
- A. Th. Khoury, L. Hagemann, P. Heine: Islam-Lexikon. History, ideas, design. 3. Vol. Herder, Freiburg 1991, ISBN 3-451-04036-0 .
- H. Küng: Islam. History, present, future. 2nd edition Piper Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-492-24709-1 .
- F. Robinson: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Islam. History, art, forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-88472-079-1 .
- A. Schimmel: In the name of Allah the All-All-Hearted. The islam. 2nd edition Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-491-69051-X .
- Modern times
- F. Braudel : The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Epoch of Philip II. 3 vols. Frankfurt / Main 1990.
- Muammar Al-Qaddafi: The Green Book . The third universal theory. Verlag S. Bublies, Koblenz 1990, ISBN 3-926584-02-5 .
- Helga Baumgarten : Palestine. Liberation in the state. edition suhrkamp 1616, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1996.
- R. Danzinger: Abd al-Qadis and the Algerians . New York 1977, ISBN 3-518-11616-9 .
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger : The radical loser . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2005, p. 174-183 ( online ).
- S. Faath (Ed.): Democracy and Human Rights in North Africa . Hamburg 1992.
- W. Herzog: The Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-406-33180-7 .
- W. Herzog: Algeria. Between democracy and the state of God. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-35180-8 .
- SP Huntington: Clash of Cultures. The reshaping of world politics in the 21st century. 6th edition Europaverlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-203-78001-1 .
- David Nicolle : The Ottomans. 600 years of the Islamic world empire. tosa Verlag / Ueberreuther, Vienna 2008, ISBN 3-85003-219-1 .
- F. Schreiber, M. Wolffsohn: Middle East. History and structure of the conflict. 4th edition Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1996, ISBN 3-8100-1478-8 .
- R. Schulze: History of the Islamic World in the 20th Century. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38108-1 .
- R. le Tourneau: " Evolution politique de l'Afrique du Nord muselmane 1920–1961 ", Paris 1962.
- L. Valensi: " On the eve of colonialism: North Africa before French Conquest ", London 1977.
- PJ Vatikiotis: The Modern History of Egypt . London 1980.
- J. Ziegler: The hatred of the West. How the poor people defend themselves against the economic world war. Bertelsmann, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-01132-4 .
- Other - climate, geography, ethnology, genetics, linguistics, psychology
- JR Baker: The races of mankind. Features, differences and their relationships to each other. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsges., Herrsching 1989, ISBN 3-88199-648-6 . (OA Oxford Univ. Press 1974)
- H. Baumann (ed.): The peoples of Africa and their traditional cultures. 2nd volume Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 3-515-01974-X and ISBN 3-515-01968-5 .
- L. and F. Cavalli-Sforza: Different and yet the same. A geneticist removes the basis of racism. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-426-26804-3 .
- P. Conzen: Fanaticism. Psychoanalysis of a sinister phenomenon. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-017426-6 .
- M. Dayak: The Tuareg Tragedy. Horlemann Verlag, Bad Honnef 1996, ISBN 3-89502-039-7 .
- W. Gartung: Yallah Tibesti. From Lake Chad to the rock people. Geog Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-07-509400-5 .
- H. Haarmann: History of the Flood. On the trail of early civilizations. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49465-X .
- P. Fuchs: People of the desert. Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1991, ISBN 3-07-509266-5 .
- G. Göttler (Ed.): DuMont Landscape Guide: Die Sahara , 4th edition. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7701-1422-1 .
- B. Heine, Th.C. Schadeberg, E. Wolff (ed.): The languages of Africa. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1981. ISBN 3-87118-433-0 .
- R. Kuper (Ed.): Research on the environmental history of the Eastern Sahara. With contributions by Katharina Neumann, St. Kröpelin, W. Van Neer and H.-P. Uerpmann. Heinrich Barth Institute, Cologne 1989. ISBN 3-927688-02-9 .
- HH Lamb: Climate and Cultural History. The influence of the weather on the course of history. Pp. 125-148. 3. 6. T. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg 1994. ISBN 3-499-55478-X .
- R. Schild, F. Wendorf, Angela E. Close: Northern and Eastern Africa Climate Changes Between 140 and 12 Thousand Years Ago. In: Klees, Kuper (Ed.): New Light on the Northeast African Past. Pp. 81-98.
- M. Schwarzbach: The climate of prehistory. An Introduction to Paleoclimatology. Pp. 222-226, 241-255. Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart 1993 ,. ISBN 3-432-87355-7 .
- G. Schweizer: The Berbers. A people between resignation and adjustment. 2nd edition Verlag das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg 1984, ISBN 3-7023-0123-2 .
- H.-G. Wagner: Settlement Geography - North Africa. Stuttgart 1983, 96 pp. = Afrika-Kartenwerk, supplement N 9, ISBN 3-443-28337-3 , with map 1: 1 million: settlement geography. Stuttgart 1981.
- H.-G. Wagner: Population Geography - North Africa. Stuttgart 1981, 120 pp. = Afrika-Kartenwerk, supplement N 8, ISBN 3-443-28303-9 , with map 1: 1 million: Population geography. Stuttgart 1982.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Baumann: The peoples of Africa. Volume 1, pp. 97-103, but see also Schweizer: Die Berber. P. 28f.
- ↑ Clotte, Courtin: Cosquer Grotto near Marseille. Pp. 7, 33-37, 47.
- ↑ Haua Fteah Cave (PDF; 4 kB)
- ↑ See Breasted: History of Egypt. Pp. 31-33.
- ↑ Uan Afuda Cave (PDF; 137 kB)
- ↑ The terms “negrid” and “negroid” are to be understood here exclusively phenotypically, not as a race (which objectively, that is, biologically and genetically, does not exist in humans anyway, cf. e.g. Cavalli, Sforza: Different and yet equal . Pp. 353-385).
- ↑ See the contributions in Klees, Kuper: New Light on the Northeast African Past. Symposium, Cologne 1990.
- ↑ Baumann: Peoples of Africa. Pp. 98ff, 116.
- ↑ Monod: libyque Desert. Pp. 100-108.
- ↑ Gardiner: History of Ancient Egypt. P. 35.
- ↑ Helck / Otto: Small Lexicon of Egyptology. Pp. 171-173.
- ↑ Jean-Christoph Caron: The Garamanten - The mysterious ruling people of the desert. In: Spiegel Online , 4/2006.
- ↑ Lamb: Climate and Cultural History. P. 175.
- ↑ Andalusia (name): Controversy ( memento of the original from February 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.
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica. Volume 24, pp. 958 / 1a.
- ^ Vandals: Historical Controversy
- ↑ Lamb: Climate and Cultural History. Pp. 178, 185.
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica. Volume 24, p. 950 1b.
- ↑ Murray: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Africa. Pp. 48-55.
- ↑ The terms colonize, colonize and their nouns are used in different meanings: colonize always refers to the modern European operations from the modern era, especially from 18/19. Century, colonization on the processes before, for example with the Greeks of antiquity, in the sense of colonize, to settle . The first term is politically negative, the last neutral. See Brockhaus Encyclopedia. 19th ed., Volume 27: Dictionary.
- ↑ Küng: Islam. Pp. 217-219.
- ↑ See Koran. : Sura 2: 214, 215; 4: 76-79; 8: 39-42; 9: 5, 6, 29 as well as passages in the “Traditions” with sayings of Muhammad such as: “Anyone who dies and has never fought for the religion of Islam ... is like a hypocrite” or “To fight for the path of God or be determined to do so is a divine duty ”and“ One who supports another in the fight for the path of God with weapons is like the fighter himself and has a share in the reward ”.
- ↑ Swiss: The Berbers. Pp. 64-73.
- ↑ Lamb: Climate and Cultural History. P. 185.
- ^ Küng: Islam. Pp. 291-301, 369-376.
- ^ Franz Ansperger: History of Africa. Beck'sche Reihe Wissen, Munich 2004, pp. 33–35.
- ↑ a b Fuchs: People of the desert. Pp. 18-22.
- ↑ Duke: Maghreb. P. 54f.
- ↑ de Lange: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Jewish World. Pp. 218-223.
- ↑ Sherratt et al .: Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology. Pp. 348-354.
- ↑ Baker: The races of mankind. Pp. 162, 198-213, 365.
- ^ Cambridge History of Africa. Volume 2, pp. 675ff.
- ↑ Sherratt et al .: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology. P. 348.
- ↑ Lamb: Climate and Cultural History. P. 178.
- ↑ See Enzensberger: The radical loser. P. 182.
- ^ Enzensberger: The radical loser. P. 174ff.
- ↑ J. Ziegler: The hatred of the west.
- ↑ Nicolle: The Ottomans. P. 6.
- ↑ Robinson: Islam. Pp. 72-75.
- ↑ Robinson: Islam. Pp. 72-80.
- ↑ Ziegler: The hatred of the West. Pp. 45-52.
- ↑ Hew Strachan: The Emperor's War. In: Spiegel special. 1/2004: The original catastrophe of the 20th century. Pp. 12-20. Pp. 26-30. The war of the spirits.
- ↑ Nicolle: The Ottomans. Pp. 154, 168.
- ↑ See also Mano Dayak: The Tuareg tragedy.
- ↑ Kidnappings: Algeria
- ↑ The title was translated into German rather misleadingly as “ clash of cultures ”. What is meant by “clash” is a loud collision, not a smash or even a crash .
- ↑ China and North Africa: Influences ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 88 kB)
- ↑ Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. Pp. 257-264.
- ↑ Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. Pp. 249-256, 265-277.
- ↑ Schulze: History of the Islamic World. Pp. 192-194, 207-211, 261-263.
- ↑ Schulze: History of the Islamic World. Pp. 177-194, 221-223; Schreiber: Middle East. P. 175f.
- ↑ Muammar Al Qaddafi: The Green Book: The Third Universal Theory.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. P. 175f.
- ↑ Ziegler: The hatred of the West. P. 73ff.
- ↑ Ziegler: The hatred of the West. P. 83.
- ↑ Schulze: History of the Islamic World. Pp. 297-300, 305-308.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. P. 222f.
- ↑ Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. Pp. 271-274.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. P. 178.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. Pp. 180-182.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. Pp. 227-229.
- ↑ See Enzensberger
- ^ Conzen: Fanaticism. Pp. 25-87, 237-261.
- ↑ See the theses of Hans Magnus Enzensberger : The radical loser . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2005, p. 174-183 ( online ).
- ↑ Huntington noted three distance groups from the primary conflict in what he called the fault line wars, in which the first group is actually involved in warfare, the second form states that are directly connected to those of the first group, and finally the third group, the So-called tertiary states are even further removed from the fighting, but have cultural ties to those involved. See Huntington: Clash of Cultures. Pp. 444-449.
- ↑ See Schulze: History of the Islamic World in the 20th Century. Pp. 261-269, 272-277.
- ↑ de Lange: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures. Jewish world. Pp. 218-222.
- ↑ Khoury, Hagemann, Heine: Islamlexikon. Pp. 43-45.
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. Pp. 230, 233
- ↑ Schreiber: Middle East. Pp. 152, 158 f.
- ↑ Baumgarten: Palestine. Pp. 108-112.
- ↑ South Sudan: Unrest
- ^ Sudan: The Divided Country . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 2010, p. 102-105 ( online ).
- ↑ Mali: Internal Security.
- ↑ Chad: Homeland Security
- ↑ Niger: Military coup 2010. ( Memento from February 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Mauritania: Military Putsch 2008 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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.
- ^ Algeria: Kidnappings
- ↑ Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. Pp. 274-277.
- ↑ Schulze: History of the Islamic World. Pp. 348-350.
- ^ Duke: Algeria. Pp. 155-175.
- ↑ Duke: The Maghreb. Pp. 122-128, 161-164, 188-202.
