History of Africa - Desert Empires

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening teachers and my readers.  Today, I am continuing to watch thru the History of Africa Series with Zeinab Badawi.  This series continues to fuel my curiosity and now I wonder if I should do a blog wish list topic.  One of my wish list items would be a documentary co-hosted by Gus and Zeinab.  If those two got together and narrated a documentary it would be dynamite!  Anyway, today Zeinab is off to explore the desert and learn about the Empires that rose from the sand in Desert Empires and the run time for this episode is 45:11.

Zeinab Badawi visits historic and magnificent ruins in Mali and Mauritania, sites that are rarely seen.  She learns about the trans-Saharan trade that helped make these empires rich.  The trade-in gold gave rise to three great empires on the African continent, the Ghana Empire, The Mali Empire, and Songhay Empire.  Then under protection, Zeinab visits Timbuktu which was overrun by extremists in 2012.  Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali was considered to be the wealthiest individual to have ever lived.

The first stop on this trip is Mauritania.  This country is linked to the three empires that were based in and around the Sahara Desert.  Zeinab takes in the desert and talks about how harsh the environment was and how it would have impacted the people who trekked across the desert.  Despite the harsh climate, the empires that called the desert home grew wealthy.

The first empire is Ghana, which did not include the country of Ghana.  Zeinab goes into the desert and goes to Koumbi Saleh, the ancient capital of the Ghana Empire.  The people who presently live in this old capital are proud of their heritage and have formed the Soninke Association to keep their history alive.  The king who ruled Ghana allowed the chiefs to keep control, although the King kept the chief’s sons hostages and they had to pay tribute.  The Soninke people were farmers, craftsmen, and fishermen.  Zeinab tours a museum to learn more about the craftsmen of the Ghana Empire.  Ghana Empire was between the ocean and the desert which gave the rulers an advantage in the Sub-Saharan trade.

Zeinab tours Ouadane, a trading post of the Ghana Empire, and talks about how the camel had an impact on Sub-Saharan trade.  The site was an important camel caravan oasis and would have prospered during the gold trade.  The buildings are in ruins now, but even what remains is a spectacular site.  The Ghana Empire grew rich off of gold and salt and prospered and like other empires, its golden days would not last.

Then Zeinab talks about the Mali empire and visits Timbuktu.  It was established in 1235 and was a massive empire.  The empire was established by Sundiata Keita.  He would tax all goods going through his territory.  Timbuktu was established as a place for scholars and was the center of Africa’s greatest empires.  At the time of the filming, there were extremists that were active so she had to go to the city under armed guard.  It is here that she meets up with a local historian and learns more about the history of the city.  She learns about Mansa Musa, one of the richest men in the world, or was he?  The last empire that Zeinab will explore is the Songhay Empire and to learn more about that empire, you will have to tune into the rest of his episode to find out.

It would have been helpful to have this episode divided into chapters and each chapter handling a different empire.  This would make things easier to break out sections for lectures.  I will time-stamp them here.  I know this is a series featuring a basic background of Africa, but this episode should have been longer or divided into different episodes.  I felt like three episodes would have given better coverage to each empire because then the viewer would not feel like they are missing out on learning about each empire.  This series continues to be fascinating and does a good job of providing the highlights of the history of Africa.  Even though it was short, I would recommend showing this episode to a history classroom.