Showing posts with label Medieval Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medieval Africa. Show all posts

Queen Amina of Zazzau: A West African Warrior Queen


Image of Queen Amina of the Zazzau Kingdom of West Africa
Queen Amina (also known as Queen Aminatu), was the elder daughter of Queen Bakwa Turunku, the founder of the Zazzau Kingdom in 1536. Some scholars date Queen Amina's reign to about 1549, as heir apparent after the death of her mother. This medieval African kingdom was located in the region now known as the Kaduna State in the north-central region of Nigeria, capital at the modern city of Zaria. Zaria (aka Birnin Zaria) was named after Queen Amina's younger sister Zariya, and is where the Royal Palace of Zaria resided.


The earliest commentator to mention Queen Amina is Muhammed Bello's history Ifaq al-Maysur, composed around 1836. Queen Amina is also mentioned in the Kano Chronicle, a well-regarded and detailed history of the city of Kano and the surrounding Hausa people. It was composed in the late 19th century and incorporated earlier oral histories before the Fulani jihad of 1804-1810. It included king-lists of the various Hausa kingdoms.

Known as a great military strategist, the cavalry-trained Queen Amina fought many wars that expanded this southern-most Hausa kingdom. According to the Sankore Institute of Islamic - African Studies International, a non-profit, non-political educational institution, reporting on this region of the Hausa:
These seven regions witnessed many unusual and strange events. The first to establish government among them, as it has been claimed, was Amina, the daughter of the Amir of Zakzak. She made military assaults upon these lands until she proclaimed herself over them by force. The lands of Katsina and Kano were forced to hand over levy to her. She also made incursions into the lands of Bauchi until she reached the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west. She died in a place called Attaagar. It was for this reason that the kingdom of Zakzak was the most extensive among the kingdoms of Hausa, since Bauchi included many regions.
Here, it appears that Zakzak is Zazzau, and the reference is to Queen Amina.

Public sculpture of the warrior Queen Amina in Nigeria
Queen Amina is a legend among the Hausa people for her military exploits. She controlled the trade routes in the region, erecting a network of commerce within the great earthen walls that surrounded Hausa cities within her dominion. According to the Kano Chronicle, she conquered as far as Nupe and Kwarafa, ruling for 34 years.

Commemorative stamp of Queen of Amina of Zaria.
By 1805, the region was captured by the Fulani during the Fulani jihad. By 1901, Frederick Lugard led British forces and captured Zaria as a protectorate state. This is the same year that it is reported that Zaria sought British protection against slave raids from the Kontagora region. After a Zaria magaji (representative) murdered the British Captain Moloney in 1902 at Keffi, the British stripped the emirate of most of its vassal states. Since Nigeria's independence from the British in 1960, Zaria is one of its largest traditional emirates.

Photo: Gate to the palace of the emir of Zazzau
Zaria city was originally surrounded by walls built by Queen Amina, but those walls have since been removed. The above shown entrance is to the palace of the Emir of Zazzau. The emir counsels over a region larger than the city of Zaria. Despite the rise of the nation-states in Africa, the emirs exert significant power within the region and represents the continuation of the traditional leadership of the historical kingdom-states.

Photo: community in city of Zaria, representing traditional Hausa architecture in Africa.
Zaria is home to Ahmadu Bello University, the largest university in Nigeria and the second largest university on the African continent. The university is very prominent in the fields of Agriculture, Science, Finance, Medicine and Law.

Africans in Medieval England

 
Images of artistic renderings of African descent knights of medieval Europe
Human skeletal remains were found in a friary in Ipswich, Suffolk, England in the 1990s with recent carbon testing dating the remains to the European medieval period of 1190-1300. Scientific experts have confirmed that it is the oldest fossil record evidence of the African presence in Medieval Europe. The European Medieval Period, also called The Middle Ages, is generally dated by Western historians as running from the 5th-15th centuries.

Map of the Suffolk Region of England

Isotopic forensic testing conducted by experts from the University of Dundee Scotland identified the archaeological remains at Ipswich as a human of African descent, likely from the northern regional area of the African continent, in a country now called Tunisia in the Atlas Mountains region. Body carbon dating was also performed by experts for the History Cold Case program on BBC2, which will release a documentary news feature that includes expert facial reconstruction from the skull remains. The remains were found buried on consecrated religious grounds at a friary in the Suffolk region of the United Kingdom.

Image: The Mosque of Uqba, Tunisia

In ancient times, this region was populated by a people called Phoenicians (/fɨˈnɪʃə/) by English speakers and Canaan (Kana`an) in the Hebrew language. Later European and Arab settlers came into the region, such as the Roman Empire under the Eastern Germanic Tribe called Vandals, and the Ottoman Empire. The Mosque of Uqba, also known as the Great Mosque of Kairouan, was founded in 670 B.C.E. in Tunisia (pictured above). It is known as the oldest mosque in what is called by Arab settlers as the Muslim West.


Photo: original land of people Canaan along the Nile river
before migrating throughout the African continent 

"We don't know much about the migration of ordinary people," said Jim Bolton, a historian at Queen Mary, University of London.  "I believe that this is the first physical evidence of Africans in medieval England." Prior to this discovery, however, the oldest known humans of African descent to live in this region of Europe were identified from the tax records. This was a couple whose lifetime dated approximately 150 years after the African man at Ipswich.

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