Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Yoruba Kingdom, in Modern America!?!
The first African in America to become initiated to the traditional rights of the yoruba people of SW Nigeria. On this clip Oba Oseijeman first king of Oyotunji African village addresses a mix crowed of young and old about purpose of having ones culture.
THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN INDIA
Parts 9 - 11 (with the slideshow pictures)
Head of a Black man from Mohenjo-Daro
PART 1
AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
One of the foremost tasks for contemporary African centered scholars is to provide an historical overview of the global African community. This is a critical task that must be completed in its entirety. This includes the history, culture and present condition of African people both at home and abroad. We are already aware, it should be pointed out, based on recent scientific studies of DNA, that modern humanity originated in Africa, that African people are the world's aboriginal people and that all modern humans can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to Africa. If not for the primordial migrations of early African people, humanity would have remained physically Africoid, and the rest of the world outside of the African continent absent of human life. This is our starting point.
Since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however, there is abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the case in India.
The questions we pose here are simply these: Who are the African people of India? What is their significance in the annals of history? Precisely what have they done and what are they doing now? These are extremely serious questions that warrant serious and fundamental answers. This series of articles, "The African Presence in India: An Historical Overview," is designed to provide some of those answers.
Africoid figurine from the Indus Valley
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
PART 2
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY INDIA
Exceptionally valuable writings reflecting close relationships between Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years. In the first century B.C.E., for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that, "From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt, where he was brought up."
Another important writer from antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, who is said to have visited India near the end of the first century C.E., was convinced that "The Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom." The literary work of the early Christian writer Eusebius preserves the tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians."
PART 3
INDIA'S EARLIEST CIVILIZATION
In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River. The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest known Indus Valley cities.
In 1922, about 350 miles northeast of Harappa, another large Indus city, Mohenjo-daro (the Mound of the Dead) was identified. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were apparently the chief administrative centers of the Indus Valley complex, and since their identification, several additional cities, including Chanhu-daro, Kalibangan, Quetta and Lothal have been excavated.
The Indus cities possessed multiple level houses enhanced by sophisticated wells, drainage systems and bathrooms with flushing toilets. A recognized scholar on the Indus Valley civilization, Dr. Walter Fairservis, states that the "Harappans cultivated cotton and perhaps rice, domesticated the chicken and may have invented the game of chess and one of the two great early sources of nonmuscle power: the windmill."
The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan."
PART 4
Durga Temple
DRAVIDIAN KINGDOMS OF SOUTH INDIA
It is safe to say that when we speak of the Dravidians as a people we are speaking of the living descendants of the Harappan people of the ancient Indus Valley who were pushed into South India as the result of the Aryan invasions. This is certainly consistent with Dravidian traditions which recall flourishing cities that were either lost or destroyed in antiquity. The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid physical features. In reference to this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop stated that:
"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."
Dravidian, in addition to its ethnic component, however, is an important family of languages spoken by more than a hundred million people, primarily in South India. These languages include Tamil (the largest element), Kannada, Malayalam (from which the name of the Asian country Malaya is derived), Telegu and Tulu. The term "Dravidian" itself is apparently an Aryan corruption of Tamil.
From at least the third century C.E. three major Dravidian kingdoms existed in South India: the kingdoms of Pandya, Chera and Chola. Pandya was the southernmost Dravidian kingdom. The major city of Pandya was Madurai, the location of the famous chapel of the Tamil Sangam (Academy). The Sangam, of which there were three, was initiated by a body of forty-eight exceptionally learned scholars who established standards over all literary productions. The Pandyan rulers received these intellectuals with lavish honors.
It is also important to note that in the kingdom of the Pandyas women seem to have enjoyed a high status. This is the exact opposite of the regions of India where the Whites ruled. In these lands of Aryan domination it is said that a woman was never independent. "When she is a child she belongs to her father. As an adult when she marries she belongs to her husband. If she outlives her husband she belongs to her sons." An early queen of the Pandyas, on the other hand, for example, is credited with controlling an army of 500 elephants, 4,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry.
In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:
"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described."
To the northwest of Pandya was the kingdom of Chera (present-day Kerala). Northwest of Pandya lay the kingdom of Chola, said to be the place where Saint Thomas the Apostle was buried. The same Marco Polo who visited Pandya referred to Chola as "the best province and the most refined in all India."
The Dravidians were an unusually advanced seafaring people, with the Cholas, in particular, distinguishing themselves amongst the dominant maritime powers of their era. Through its ports, the great kings of Chola traded with Ethiopia and Somalia, Iran and Arabia, Combodia and China, Sumatra and Sri Lanka, exporting spices and camphor, ebony and ivory, quality textiles and precious jewels.
It seems readily apparent that the Dravidian kingdoms and the Dravidian people were quite well known internationally. When Augustus became head of the Roman world, for example, the Dravidian kingdoms sent him a congratulatory embassy. Dravidian poets describe Roman ships, which carried bodyguards of archers to ward off pirates, while the Dravidian kings themselves employed bodyguards of Roman soldiers. In respect to the ancient East, at least one author has identified a Dravidian presence in the Philippines, noting that: "From India came civilized Indians, the Dravidians from whom the savage Aryans learned. They began at least 500 BC and soon controlled the coast."
PART 5
Panya Woman in South India
APARTHEID IN INDIA
The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race."
Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:
"A Sudra [Black] who intentionally reviles twice-born men [Whites] by criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all his property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall be executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a traditional Hindu religious text], his tongue shall be cut out. If he commits them to memory his body shall be split in half."
Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.
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PART 6
THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA: THE WORLD'S MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE
The greatest victims of Hinduism have been the Untouchables. Indeed, probably the most substantial percentage of all the Black people of Asia can be identified among India's 160 million Untouchables. These people are the long-suffering descendants of Aryan-Sudra unions and native Black populations who retreated into the hinterlands of India in their efforts to escape the advancing Aryan sphere of influence to which they ultimately succumbed. India's Untouchables number more than the combined populations of England, France, Belgium and Spain.
The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.
Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken dishes. Their clothing was taking from corpses. They were forbidden to learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to public wells. They could not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter Hindu temples. The primary work of Untouchables included scavenging and street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals, the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean-up of cremation grounds. The daily life of the Untouchable was filled with degradation, deprivation and humiliation.
The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed little since ancient times, and it has recently been observed that "Caste Hindus do not allow Untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or hold their heads up while walking in the street." Untouchables in urban India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India, where the vast majority of Untouchables live, they are exploited as landless agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. As evidence of this, several cases from 1991 can be cited: On June 23, 1991 fourteen Untouchables were slaughtered in the eastern state of Bihar. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra Pradesh. On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone. However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.
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PART 7
DALIT: THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA
Possibly the most substantial percentage of Asia's Blacks can be identified among India's 160 million "Untouchables" or "Dalits." Frequently they are called "Outcastes." Indian nationalist leader and devout Hindu Mohandas K. Gandhi called them "Harijans," meaning "children of god." The official name given them in India's constitution (1951) is "Scheduled Castes." "Dalit," meaning "crushed and broken," is a name that has come into prominence only within the last four decades. "Dalit" reflects a radically different response to oppression.
The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States. This is a highly important development due to the fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning. In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:
"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago.
African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself."
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PART 8
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM IN INDIA
Buddhism appeared in India during the sixth century B.C.E. and came in the form of a protest against Hinduism. Buddhism opposed the arrogance of caste, and preached tolerance. It should not be surprising, then, that it developed a large and rapid following in the regions of India where the Blacks had survived in substantial numbers. On the emergence of Buddhism in India, Diop has suggested that:
"It would seem that Buddha was an Egyptian priest, chased from Memphis by the persecution of Cambyses. This tradition would justify the portrayal of Buddha with woolly hair. Historical documents do not invalidate this tradition...There is general agreement today on placing in the sixth century not only Buddha but the whole religious and philosophical movement in Asia with Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Iran. This would confirm the hypothesis of a dispersion of Egyptian priests at that time spreading their doctrine in Asia."
Dr. Vulindlela Wobogo, another African-centric scholar, has observed that:
"Manifestations of the Buddha in Asia are Black with woolly hair. They all appear to be Egypto-Nubian priests who fled Egypt...The priests carried their spiritual knowledge but lost much of the scientific knowledge for obvious reasons. The well-known aspects of Buddhism and its companion, yoga, are all simply Egypto-Nubian priesthood practices, meditation, and...the belief that one could attain a god-like state if the soul was liberated from the body through knowledge and denial."
In a monumental two volume work entitled A Book of the Beginnings, originally published in 1881, Gerald Massey recorded that:
"It is not necessary to show that the first colonisers of India were Black, but it is certain that the Black Buddha of India was imaged in the Africoid type. In the Black [African] god, whether called Buddha or Sut-Nahsi, we have a datum. they carry in their color the proof of their origin. The people who first fashioned and worshipped the divine image in the Africoid mold of humanity must, according to all knowledge of human nature, have been Africans themselves. For the Blackness is not merely mystical, the features and the hair of Buddha belong to the Black race."
In the first volume of his massive text Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins wrote that:
"The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered through Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips and curly hair of the African."
African Merchant
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
HABSHIS AND SIDDIS: AFRICAN DYNASTIES IN INDIA
India also received its share of African bondsmen, of whom the most famous was the celebrated Malik Ambar (1550-1626). Ambar, like a number of Africans in medieval India, elevated himself to a position of great authority. Malik Ambar, whose original name was Shambu, was born around 1550 in Harar, Ethiopia. After his arrival in India Ambar was able to raise a formidable army and achieve great power in the west Indian realm of Ahmadnagar. Ambar was a brilliant diplomat and administrator. He encouraged manufactures and built canals and mosques. He gave pensions to poets and scholars, established a postal service, and ultimately became one of the most famous men in India.
In a collective form, however, and in respect to long term influence, the African sailors known as Siddis stand out. Certainly, Siddi kingdoms were established in western India in Janjira and Jaffrabad as early as 1100 AD. After their conversion to Islam, the African freedmen of India, originally called Habshi from the Arabic, called themselves Sayyad (descendants of Muhammad) and were consequently called Siddis. Indeed, the island Janjira was formerly called Habshan, meaning Habshan's or African's land. Siddi signifies lord or prince. It is further said that Siddi is an expression of respectful address commonly used in North Africa, like Sahib in India. Specifically, it is said to be an honorific title given to the descendants of African natives in the west of India, some of whom were distinguished military officers and administrators of the Muslim princes of the Deccan.
In the second decade of the sixteenth century a European traveler named Armando Cortesao noted that:
"The people who govern the kingdom [Bengal] are Abyssinians [Ethiopians]. These men are looked upon as knights; they are greatly esteemed; they wait on the kings in their apartments. The chief among them are eunuchs and these come to be kings and great lords in the kingdom. Those who are not eunuchs are the fighting men. After the king, it is to this people that the kingdom is obedient from fear."
The Siddis were a tightly knit group, highly aggressive, and even ferocious in battle. They were employed largely as security forces for Muslim fleets in the Indian Ocean, a position they maintained for centuries. The Siddi commanders were titled Admirals of the Mughal Empire, and received an annual salary of 300,000 rupees. According to Ibn Battuta (1304-1377), the noted Muslim writer who journeyed through both Africa and Asia, the Siddis "are the guarantors of safety on the Indian Ocean; let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by the Indian pirates and idolaters."
A Smiling Siddi Girl
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
Also see following:
HISTORY NOTES: CASTE AND RACE IN INDIA
HISTORY NOTES: THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN INDIAN ANTIQUITY
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: HISTORY AND HERITAGE
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: THE BIGOTRY OF HINDUS WITH REGARD TO SKIN COLOUR
HISTORY NOTES: DR. CHEIKH ANTA DIOP AND THE CULTURAL ROOTS OF THE DALITS: INDIA'S BLACK UNTOUCHABLES
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: BIGOTRY OF HINDUS WITH REGARD TO SKIN COLOUR & HISTORY AND HERITAGE
HISTORY NOTES: A PLEA FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AT THE WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM
TRAVEL NOTES: LOOKING AT INDIA THROUGH AFRICAN EYES
HISTORY NOTES: PAN-AFRICANISM IN SOUTH ASIA
HISTORY NOTES: THE BLACKS OF THE EAST BENGAL: A NATIVE'S PERSPECTIVE
Head of a Black man from Mohenjo-Daro PART 1
AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
One of the foremost tasks for contemporary African centered scholars is to provide an historical overview of the global African community. This is a critical task that must be completed in its entirety. This includes the history, culture and present condition of African people both at home and abroad. We are already aware, it should be pointed out, based on recent scientific studies of DNA, that modern humanity originated in Africa, that African people are the world's aboriginal people and that all modern humans can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to Africa. If not for the primordial migrations of early African people, humanity would have remained physically Africoid, and the rest of the world outside of the African continent absent of human life. This is our starting point.
Since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however, there is abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the case in India.
The questions we pose here are simply these: Who are the African people of India? What is their significance in the annals of history? Precisely what have they done and what are they doing now? These are extremely serious questions that warrant serious and fundamental answers. This series of articles, "The African Presence in India: An Historical Overview," is designed to provide some of those answers.
Africoid figurine from the Indus Valley
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
PART 2
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY INDIA
Exceptionally valuable writings reflecting close relationships between Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years. In the first century B.C.E., for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that, "From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt, where he was brought up."
Another important writer from antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, who is said to have visited India near the end of the first century C.E., was convinced that "The Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom." The literary work of the early Christian writer Eusebius preserves the tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians."
PART 3
INDIA'S EARLIEST CIVILIZATION
In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River. The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest known Indus Valley cities.
In 1922, about 350 miles northeast of Harappa, another large Indus city, Mohenjo-daro (the Mound of the Dead) was identified. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were apparently the chief administrative centers of the Indus Valley complex, and since their identification, several additional cities, including Chanhu-daro, Kalibangan, Quetta and Lothal have been excavated.
The Indus cities possessed multiple level houses enhanced by sophisticated wells, drainage systems and bathrooms with flushing toilets. A recognized scholar on the Indus Valley civilization, Dr. Walter Fairservis, states that the "Harappans cultivated cotton and perhaps rice, domesticated the chicken and may have invented the game of chess and one of the two great early sources of nonmuscle power: the windmill."
The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan."
PART 4
Durga Temple
DRAVIDIAN KINGDOMS OF SOUTH INDIA
It is safe to say that when we speak of the Dravidians as a people we are speaking of the living descendants of the Harappan people of the ancient Indus Valley who were pushed into South India as the result of the Aryan invasions. This is certainly consistent with Dravidian traditions which recall flourishing cities that were either lost or destroyed in antiquity. The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid physical features. In reference to this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop stated that:
"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."
Dravidian, in addition to its ethnic component, however, is an important family of languages spoken by more than a hundred million people, primarily in South India. These languages include Tamil (the largest element), Kannada, Malayalam (from which the name of the Asian country Malaya is derived), Telegu and Tulu. The term "Dravidian" itself is apparently an Aryan corruption of Tamil.
From at least the third century C.E. three major Dravidian kingdoms existed in South India: the kingdoms of Pandya, Chera and Chola. Pandya was the southernmost Dravidian kingdom. The major city of Pandya was Madurai, the location of the famous chapel of the Tamil Sangam (Academy). The Sangam, of which there were three, was initiated by a body of forty-eight exceptionally learned scholars who established standards over all literary productions. The Pandyan rulers received these intellectuals with lavish honors.
It is also important to note that in the kingdom of the Pandyas women seem to have enjoyed a high status. This is the exact opposite of the regions of India where the Whites ruled. In these lands of Aryan domination it is said that a woman was never independent. "When she is a child she belongs to her father. As an adult when she marries she belongs to her husband. If she outlives her husband she belongs to her sons." An early queen of the Pandyas, on the other hand, for example, is credited with controlling an army of 500 elephants, 4,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry.
In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:
"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described."
To the northwest of Pandya was the kingdom of Chera (present-day Kerala). Northwest of Pandya lay the kingdom of Chola, said to be the place where Saint Thomas the Apostle was buried. The same Marco Polo who visited Pandya referred to Chola as "the best province and the most refined in all India."
The Dravidians were an unusually advanced seafaring people, with the Cholas, in particular, distinguishing themselves amongst the dominant maritime powers of their era. Through its ports, the great kings of Chola traded with Ethiopia and Somalia, Iran and Arabia, Combodia and China, Sumatra and Sri Lanka, exporting spices and camphor, ebony and ivory, quality textiles and precious jewels.
It seems readily apparent that the Dravidian kingdoms and the Dravidian people were quite well known internationally. When Augustus became head of the Roman world, for example, the Dravidian kingdoms sent him a congratulatory embassy. Dravidian poets describe Roman ships, which carried bodyguards of archers to ward off pirates, while the Dravidian kings themselves employed bodyguards of Roman soldiers. In respect to the ancient East, at least one author has identified a Dravidian presence in the Philippines, noting that: "From India came civilized Indians, the Dravidians from whom the savage Aryans learned. They began at least 500 BC and soon controlled the coast."
PART 5
Panya Woman in South India
APARTHEID IN INDIA
The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race."
Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:
"A Sudra [Black] who intentionally reviles twice-born men [Whites] by criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all his property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall be executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a traditional Hindu religious text], his tongue shall be cut out. If he commits them to memory his body shall be split in half."
Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.
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PART 6
THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA: THE WORLD'S MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE
The greatest victims of Hinduism have been the Untouchables. Indeed, probably the most substantial percentage of all the Black people of Asia can be identified among India's 160 million Untouchables. These people are the long-suffering descendants of Aryan-Sudra unions and native Black populations who retreated into the hinterlands of India in their efforts to escape the advancing Aryan sphere of influence to which they ultimately succumbed. India's Untouchables number more than the combined populations of England, France, Belgium and Spain.
The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.
Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken dishes. Their clothing was taking from corpses. They were forbidden to learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to public wells. They could not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter Hindu temples. The primary work of Untouchables included scavenging and street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals, the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean-up of cremation grounds. The daily life of the Untouchable was filled with degradation, deprivation and humiliation.
The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed little since ancient times, and it has recently been observed that "Caste Hindus do not allow Untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or hold their heads up while walking in the street." Untouchables in urban India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India, where the vast majority of Untouchables live, they are exploited as landless agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. As evidence of this, several cases from 1991 can be cited: On June 23, 1991 fourteen Untouchables were slaughtered in the eastern state of Bihar. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra Pradesh. On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone. However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.
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PART 7
DALIT: THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA
Possibly the most substantial percentage of Asia's Blacks can be identified among India's 160 million "Untouchables" or "Dalits." Frequently they are called "Outcastes." Indian nationalist leader and devout Hindu Mohandas K. Gandhi called them "Harijans," meaning "children of god." The official name given them in India's constitution (1951) is "Scheduled Castes." "Dalit," meaning "crushed and broken," is a name that has come into prominence only within the last four decades. "Dalit" reflects a radically different response to oppression.
The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States. This is a highly important development due to the fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning. In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:
"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago.
African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself."
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PART 8
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM IN INDIA
Buddhism appeared in India during the sixth century B.C.E. and came in the form of a protest against Hinduism. Buddhism opposed the arrogance of caste, and preached tolerance. It should not be surprising, then, that it developed a large and rapid following in the regions of India where the Blacks had survived in substantial numbers. On the emergence of Buddhism in India, Diop has suggested that:
"It would seem that Buddha was an Egyptian priest, chased from Memphis by the persecution of Cambyses. This tradition would justify the portrayal of Buddha with woolly hair. Historical documents do not invalidate this tradition...There is general agreement today on placing in the sixth century not only Buddha but the whole religious and philosophical movement in Asia with Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Iran. This would confirm the hypothesis of a dispersion of Egyptian priests at that time spreading their doctrine in Asia."
Dr. Vulindlela Wobogo, another African-centric scholar, has observed that:
"Manifestations of the Buddha in Asia are Black with woolly hair. They all appear to be Egypto-Nubian priests who fled Egypt...The priests carried their spiritual knowledge but lost much of the scientific knowledge for obvious reasons. The well-known aspects of Buddhism and its companion, yoga, are all simply Egypto-Nubian priesthood practices, meditation, and...the belief that one could attain a god-like state if the soul was liberated from the body through knowledge and denial."
In a monumental two volume work entitled A Book of the Beginnings, originally published in 1881, Gerald Massey recorded that:
"It is not necessary to show that the first colonisers of India were Black, but it is certain that the Black Buddha of India was imaged in the Africoid type. In the Black [African] god, whether called Buddha or Sut-Nahsi, we have a datum. they carry in their color the proof of their origin. The people who first fashioned and worshipped the divine image in the Africoid mold of humanity must, according to all knowledge of human nature, have been Africans themselves. For the Blackness is not merely mystical, the features and the hair of Buddha belong to the Black race."
In the first volume of his massive text Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins wrote that:
"The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered through Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips and curly hair of the African."
African Merchant
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
HABSHIS AND SIDDIS: AFRICAN DYNASTIES IN INDIA
India also received its share of African bondsmen, of whom the most famous was the celebrated Malik Ambar (1550-1626). Ambar, like a number of Africans in medieval India, elevated himself to a position of great authority. Malik Ambar, whose original name was Shambu, was born around 1550 in Harar, Ethiopia. After his arrival in India Ambar was able to raise a formidable army and achieve great power in the west Indian realm of Ahmadnagar. Ambar was a brilliant diplomat and administrator. He encouraged manufactures and built canals and mosques. He gave pensions to poets and scholars, established a postal service, and ultimately became one of the most famous men in India.
In a collective form, however, and in respect to long term influence, the African sailors known as Siddis stand out. Certainly, Siddi kingdoms were established in western India in Janjira and Jaffrabad as early as 1100 AD. After their conversion to Islam, the African freedmen of India, originally called Habshi from the Arabic, called themselves Sayyad (descendants of Muhammad) and were consequently called Siddis. Indeed, the island Janjira was formerly called Habshan, meaning Habshan's or African's land. Siddi signifies lord or prince. It is further said that Siddi is an expression of respectful address commonly used in North Africa, like Sahib in India. Specifically, it is said to be an honorific title given to the descendants of African natives in the west of India, some of whom were distinguished military officers and administrators of the Muslim princes of the Deccan.
In the second decade of the sixteenth century a European traveler named Armando Cortesao noted that:
"The people who govern the kingdom [Bengal] are Abyssinians [Ethiopians]. These men are looked upon as knights; they are greatly esteemed; they wait on the kings in their apartments. The chief among them are eunuchs and these come to be kings and great lords in the kingdom. Those who are not eunuchs are the fighting men. After the king, it is to this people that the kingdom is obedient from fear."
The Siddis were a tightly knit group, highly aggressive, and even ferocious in battle. They were employed largely as security forces for Muslim fleets in the Indian Ocean, a position they maintained for centuries. The Siddi commanders were titled Admirals of the Mughal Empire, and received an annual salary of 300,000 rupees. According to Ibn Battuta (1304-1377), the noted Muslim writer who journeyed through both Africa and Asia, the Siddis "are the guarantors of safety on the Indian Ocean; let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by the Indian pirates and idolaters."
A Smiling Siddi Girl
photo credit: K.L.Kamat
Copyright © 1996-2002, Kamat's Potpourri.
All Rights Reserved
Also see following:
HISTORY NOTES: CASTE AND RACE IN INDIA
HISTORY NOTES: THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN INDIAN ANTIQUITY
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: HISTORY AND HERITAGE
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: THE BIGOTRY OF HINDUS WITH REGARD TO SKIN COLOUR
HISTORY NOTES: DR. CHEIKH ANTA DIOP AND THE CULTURAL ROOTS OF THE DALITS: INDIA'S BLACK UNTOUCHABLES
NOTES FROM A BROTHER IN INDIA: BIGOTRY OF HINDUS WITH REGARD TO SKIN COLOUR & HISTORY AND HERITAGE
HISTORY NOTES: A PLEA FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AT THE WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM
TRAVEL NOTES: LOOKING AT INDIA THROUGH AFRICAN EYES
HISTORY NOTES: PAN-AFRICANISM IN SOUTH ASIA
HISTORY NOTES: THE BLACKS OF THE EAST BENGAL: A NATIVE'S PERSPECTIVE
YOSEF A.A. BEN-JOCHANNAN
Like it is Special. Dick Nobel hosts three Africans that have made tremendous contributions to liberating the minds of Africans. Dr. Ben, Ivan Van Sertima, and Dr. Clark are intellectual giants in the black liberation movement. Video from the early 1980s.
There are many parts to this video, which you can obtain on Youtube:
IN EGYPT WITH YOSEF A.A. BEN-JOCHANNAN
ICON OF AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
By RUNOKO RASHIDI
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"This is but a mere feeble effort in saying: Without you, African/Black mother, there would have been no us--African/Black fathers, sons and daughters. Do we need to say any more African/Black mothers, our own true goddesses! Let us praise you to the highest, telling the world about your righteousness. Let us tell the entire universe about your sacredness African/Black woman.
--Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan
Every African should try to visit Egypt at least once during their lifetime. It is a pilgrimage to our sacred motherland--the cradle of civilization--and one is never the same afterwards. Although there are now numerous study tours to Egypt, undoubtedly the most celebrated are those of Dr. Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan. Dr. Ben's tours include the massive rock-hewn temples of King Ramses II and Queen Nefertari at Abu Simbel, the temple of goddess Isis at Philae Island, the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the west bank mortuary temples of Makare Hatshepsut, Ramses II and Ramses III at Luxor, the east bank worship temples of Luxor and Karnak, the temple of goddess Hathor at Dendera, the Sphinx and the massive pyramids on the Giza Plateau, the Step pyramid designed by the multi-genius Imhotep at Sakkara, and the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.
Regarding these sites, the reader should know that Usemare Ramses II (popularly known as "Ramses the Great") ruled Egypt more than six decades and emerged as one of history's most colossal builders. Nefertari, his chief queen, helped Ramses govern and was revered throughout ancient Egypt. Isis was one of Egypt's greatest deities, and along with her husband Osiris and son Horus, formed one of antiquities' great triads. The Valley of the Kings entombed the bodies of some of pharaonic Egypt's most significant rulers. Makare Hatshepsut was a great female monarch who governed effectively for twenty years. Ramses III fought off two foreign invasions of Egypt and sat on the throne for thirty-one years. Karnak temple is the world's largest religious sanctuary. Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of love, beauty and sensuality. The enormous pyramids on the Giza plateau have been called "miracles in stone," while the Step Pyramid at Sakkara has the distinction of being the world's first large stone monument. The Cairo Museum is crammed full of the representations, physical remains, personal possessions and writings of the pharaohs, queens, officials and ordinary people the ancient Nile Valley.
Dr. Ben's tours, like the man himself, stand out quite singularly. Born December 31, 1918 in Gondar, Ethiopia, Dr. Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Jochannan ("Dr. Ben," as he is affectionately known) has devoted the better part of his life to the illumination of the indigenous origins of African civilizations. By profession, he is a trained lawyer, engineer, historian and Egyptologist. Ben-Jochannan went to Egypt for the first time in 1939, and moved to Harlem, New York in 1945. Dr. Ben knew Malcolm X personally, and was a student and colleague of George G.M. James. He was exceptionally close to the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke. Since 1957, he has coordinated regular study tours and pilgrimages to the Nile Valley, directly exposing thousands of African people to the still visible splendors of ancient Egypt. Formerly adjunct professor at Cornell University's Africana Studies Department, Dr. ben-Jochannan has also been a professor-at-large at Al Azar University in Cairo.
While now advanced in years, Dr. Ben continues to wield tremendous influence on African studies. He is indeed one of the most unrelenting twentieth century advocates of the African origins of Nile Valley civilizations and the African origins of Western religions. By his own account, he has prepared seventy-five manuscripts for publication, and was working on another during his 1997 tour. He is the author of more than twenty books, including African Origins of the Major Western Religions in 1970, Africa: Mother of Western Civilization in 1971, Black Man of the Nile and His Family in 1972, A Chronology of the Bible: A Challenge to the Standard Version in 1973, The African Called Rameses ("The Great") II, and the African Origin of Western Civilization in 1990. Several of his works have gone through a number of reprints and different editions, and although controversial, all of them are well-documented. As pointed out by Dr. Leonard Jeffries:
"Ben-Jochannan's extensive publications contain voluminous reference materials and sources to stimulate students and scholars to pursue more systematic and scientific research. He also includes very revealing photos, illustrations and charts that help the ordinary layman grasp the significance of the work."
Dr. ben-Jochannan remains uncompromising in his views, a lively public speaker and a prolific writer, and has probably done more to popularize African history than any living scholar. Dr. Ben has brought history to life for the masses of African people. This is perhaps his greatest legacy and gift.
There are many parts to this video, which you can obtain on Youtube:
IN EGYPT WITH YOSEF A.A. BEN-JOCHANNAN
ICON OF AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
By RUNOKO RASHIDI
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"This is but a mere feeble effort in saying: Without you, African/Black mother, there would have been no us--African/Black fathers, sons and daughters. Do we need to say any more African/Black mothers, our own true goddesses! Let us praise you to the highest, telling the world about your righteousness. Let us tell the entire universe about your sacredness African/Black woman.
--Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan
Every African should try to visit Egypt at least once during their lifetime. It is a pilgrimage to our sacred motherland--the cradle of civilization--and one is never the same afterwards. Although there are now numerous study tours to Egypt, undoubtedly the most celebrated are those of Dr. Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan. Dr. Ben's tours include the massive rock-hewn temples of King Ramses II and Queen Nefertari at Abu Simbel, the temple of goddess Isis at Philae Island, the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the west bank mortuary temples of Makare Hatshepsut, Ramses II and Ramses III at Luxor, the east bank worship temples of Luxor and Karnak, the temple of goddess Hathor at Dendera, the Sphinx and the massive pyramids on the Giza Plateau, the Step pyramid designed by the multi-genius Imhotep at Sakkara, and the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.
Regarding these sites, the reader should know that Usemare Ramses II (popularly known as "Ramses the Great") ruled Egypt more than six decades and emerged as one of history's most colossal builders. Nefertari, his chief queen, helped Ramses govern and was revered throughout ancient Egypt. Isis was one of Egypt's greatest deities, and along with her husband Osiris and son Horus, formed one of antiquities' great triads. The Valley of the Kings entombed the bodies of some of pharaonic Egypt's most significant rulers. Makare Hatshepsut was a great female monarch who governed effectively for twenty years. Ramses III fought off two foreign invasions of Egypt and sat on the throne for thirty-one years. Karnak temple is the world's largest religious sanctuary. Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of love, beauty and sensuality. The enormous pyramids on the Giza plateau have been called "miracles in stone," while the Step Pyramid at Sakkara has the distinction of being the world's first large stone monument. The Cairo Museum is crammed full of the representations, physical remains, personal possessions and writings of the pharaohs, queens, officials and ordinary people the ancient Nile Valley.
Dr. Ben's tours, like the man himself, stand out quite singularly. Born December 31, 1918 in Gondar, Ethiopia, Dr. Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Jochannan ("Dr. Ben," as he is affectionately known) has devoted the better part of his life to the illumination of the indigenous origins of African civilizations. By profession, he is a trained lawyer, engineer, historian and Egyptologist. Ben-Jochannan went to Egypt for the first time in 1939, and moved to Harlem, New York in 1945. Dr. Ben knew Malcolm X personally, and was a student and colleague of George G.M. James. He was exceptionally close to the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke. Since 1957, he has coordinated regular study tours and pilgrimages to the Nile Valley, directly exposing thousands of African people to the still visible splendors of ancient Egypt. Formerly adjunct professor at Cornell University's Africana Studies Department, Dr. ben-Jochannan has also been a professor-at-large at Al Azar University in Cairo.
While now advanced in years, Dr. Ben continues to wield tremendous influence on African studies. He is indeed one of the most unrelenting twentieth century advocates of the African origins of Nile Valley civilizations and the African origins of Western religions. By his own account, he has prepared seventy-five manuscripts for publication, and was working on another during his 1997 tour. He is the author of more than twenty books, including African Origins of the Major Western Religions in 1970, Africa: Mother of Western Civilization in 1971, Black Man of the Nile and His Family in 1972, A Chronology of the Bible: A Challenge to the Standard Version in 1973, The African Called Rameses ("The Great") II, and the African Origin of Western Civilization in 1990. Several of his works have gone through a number of reprints and different editions, and although controversial, all of them are well-documented. As pointed out by Dr. Leonard Jeffries:
"Ben-Jochannan's extensive publications contain voluminous reference materials and sources to stimulate students and scholars to pursue more systematic and scientific research. He also includes very revealing photos, illustrations and charts that help the ordinary layman grasp the significance of the work."
Dr. ben-Jochannan remains uncompromising in his views, a lively public speaker and a prolific writer, and has probably done more to popularize African history than any living scholar. Dr. Ben has brought history to life for the masses of African people. This is perhaps his greatest legacy and gift.
LIVES AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF GREAT AFRICAN HISTORIANS
RACE MEN AND RACE WOMEN
LIVES AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF GREAT AFRICAN HISTORIANS:
ABSTRACT OF A SLIDE-PRESENTATION LECTURE
By RUNOKO RASHIDI
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"Let me forever be discarded by the Black race, and let me be condemned by the White, if I strive not with all my powers, if I put not forth all my energies to bring respect and dignity to the African race."
--Edward Wilmot Blyden
Race Men and Race Women: Lives and Contributions of Great African Historians is a slide-presentation overview detailing and summarizing the times and contributions of many of the most significant chroniclers of the African past and the global community of African people. These were the sisters and brothers who in difficult conditions managed to keep alive the tradition of what has been been called "that other African." This is not the African typically portrayed in the media and educational institutions of the western world. Rather, "that other African" refers to the African people who gave birth to and nurtured humanity and produced and refined civilization itself. The presentation is magnificently brought to life through the use of rare and brilliant photographs.
After an initial discussion of such writers as Imhotep, Manetho, Al-Jahiz, Ahmed Baba, Mahmud Kati, Abderrahman es-Sadi, Leo Africanus, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin and Alexander Dumas brother Runoko allows us to sojourn with some of the great contributors of the nineteenth century beginning with Henry Highland Garnet, who demanded that our "motto be resistance." The overview is continued with the dynamic Martin Robison Delany, who told us "Africa for the Africans" and the great Edward Wilmot Blyden. Added to the list are Rev. Rufus Lewis Perry, George Washington Williams (who did research in Belgian king Leopold's Congo) and Bishop Henry McNeil Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century we are joined by such pioneers as Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Rev. James Marmaduke Boddy (the first African to write a comprehensive article on the African presence in the ancient Far East), Charles C. Seifert, William Henry Ferris, Alphonso Orenzo Stafford, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg and the great George Wells Parker. While in the decade of the1920s we are introduced to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, master historian Drusilla Dunjee Houston, the brilliant Joel Augustus Rogers and the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
In the 1930's we are connected with Dr. Willis Nathaniel Huggins, Professor William Leo Hansberry, Nnamdi Azikiwe and in the 1940s we visit with Sterling Means and W.E.B. DuBois, There is no let up. In the 1950s we encounter George G.M. James, the author of Stolen Legacy, and J.C. DeGraft-Johnson, who gave us African Glory. In the 1960s we hear from Malcolm X and by the early 1970s we are prominently introduced to our beloved John Henrik Clarke, John G. Jackson, Dr. Charles B. Copher, Cheikh Anta Diop, Yosef ben-Jochannan, Chancellor Williams, Edward Scobie and Jan Carew. In the late 1970s and 1980s we walk with Ivan Van Sertima and examine the impact of Dr. Theophile Obenga. More recently we note the the contributions of Queen Mother Kefa Nepthys, Jacob Carruthers, Anderson Thompson, Charsee McIntyre, Leonard Jeffries and Asa Grant Hilliard III.
Of course, the presentation is not all about historians and scholars and we look proudly at the lives and contributions of such giants as Mary Ellen Pleasant, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, Nanny Helen Burroughs, Anna Julia Cooper, Hubert Henry Harrison, Duse Mohammad Ali, Ida B. Wells, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Richard B. Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Clark, Kwame Ture and a whole calvacade of mighty and distinguished soldiers in the army of African victory. Many of them are well known. Others hover in obscurity. All of them deserve recognition. So travel with us through time and space with brother Runoko Rashidi as we sojourn and pay tribute to this grand genealogy of African giants.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
"Revolutionary Intercommunalism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination"
Some remember Huey Newton as a noble folk hero and some as a gangster and thug. But who recollects the co-founder of the Black Panther Party as a political philosopher prophet of the postmodern world? Newton and his partner Bobby Seale became dramatically famous in the mid-1960's in Oakland, California for following policemen around and monitoring their racist behavior. What made it really interesting was that Newton, Seale and their associates were armed to the teeth. They were taking advantage of California's then very permissive wild west gun laws. A giant personality poster of Newton seated in a wicker toting both spear and shotgun was only mildly successful as a fashionable decoration among Berkeley's white revolutionaries.
In 1967, the inevitable happened. Huey Newton was in a shoot out with two Oakland policemen. One was dead, one was wounded. Newton, healing from a bullet wound was facing murder-one charges and California's gas chamber. The Newton family hired a white old-left San Francisco attorney and the Free Huey movement was launched. Newton became a movement icon and his poster now was a best seller. Three trials took place. In the first, Huey was convicted of manslaughter. The verdict was reversed on appeal, and the next two trials resulted in hung juries. Finally, the prosecution just gave up. Newton was free on bail after his original conviction was reversed.
It was the early 70's and the Black Panther Party had grown into a national organization with chapters in most major cities and many small ones. Newton believed the party needed its own guiding philosophy. Up to then, it had been mostly reactive: "oppose police brutality"; "defend the constitutional rights of Black people"; and during the trial "Free Huey or the sky's the limit." As the party grew, so did the expectations of its supporters. They were no longer just the leaders of ghetto Blacks. Now the Panthers were the vanguard of the revolution -- role models for the whole kit n' caboodle rebellion of alienated young America. And they didn't have a philosophy. They had demands without a vision. When Huey was behind bars, and mostly concerned with getting out, Marxists of various stripes and traditions attempted to influence and seduce the organization. They succeeded, to a degree. But old-fashioned Marxism wouldn't do for the newly free Huey.
The New Left generation felt it needed to reinvent itself and the world, and Newton was no exception. He developed a set of ideas and imperatives that were indeed unique. In fact, they were so unusual that some of the furthest-out rebels had a mountain of trouble just figuring out "what the man was saying." Newton's laws lived in three concepts. Intercommunalism, Survival Programs and Revolutionary Suicide. They embraced an entire social and inner spiritual universe and they aimed at providing revolutionaries with a guide for prospering in a political universe that was expanding and collapsing at the same time. Intercommunalism: The centerpiece of Huey's philosophy was the demise of nations as significant economic and political forces. Huey saw that the world had become completely interpenetrated through technology, media and commerce, and that those emerging links were the new basis for power and domination. Huey Newton even refused to use that great old revolutionary slogan, internationalism.
"The nation is dead, so how could you have an internation?" The Panther leader preferred to talk of intercommunalism because all that remained of effective and humane social life in the brave new world were communities -- from small ones like neighborhoods -- to former nations or portions of nations. Newton insisted that no political program could function independently of an all-embracing intercommunity He asserted that Panthers must condition their actions and goals by this new and ineluctable phenomena. Truth to tell, a lot of radicals thought Newton was nuts. "What do you mean the nation no longer exists?" "Doesn't he see the difference between Korea and Coney Island? Ah, but this was still awhile before the World Wide Web and global corporate capitalism.
Survival Programs: Survival programs were the way to organize and revolutionize in this new world of communities. With antiquated national wealth and power on a one-way ticket to Palookaville, how could revolutionaries rely on government programs or try to fight for them? The governments were collapsing and revolutionaries had to create direct social programs that would replace the failing and cynical efforts of the doomed nation state.
The Panther's sponsored a variety of "Survival Programs Pending Revolution." They included "Free Breakfasts for Children," and programs involving free schools, free chickens, free shoes and much more.
The Panthers built widespread grass roots support with these activities.
A vision arose that saw within these programs, and their culture and style, the potential for taking hegemony over the ruling greed culture of exploitation. But how were the finances raised? There were straight forward contributions, but when governments raise money it's called taxation, when ghetto-based revolutionaries try to get money out of the more successful members of their community, it will inevitably be described by the police and politicians as a "protection racket."
And again, these were the days when corporate social liberalism was still riding high and many scorned Newton's turn away from the state. "He's letting the government off the hook and replacing concessions from government won in great struggle with hand outs and charity." These days, after Reaganomics and Bush the First's "thousand points of light," the death of social liberalism is acknowledged by liberals on the path towards embracing laissez-faire19th century economics and the war of all against all.
Revolutionary Suicide: Finally, there was the ominous sounding "Revolutionary Suicide." Huey was observing the narcissistic consumerism that dominated American culture, and all the deadly escapes that ghetto life offered to the alienated and agonized. All around him, people died young or lived on to devote their lives to acquiring objects instead of authentic human experience. Life was getting suicidal, no less for a revolutionary than for a dope, or shopping mall, junkie. In a changing world of rising new exploitative power, the elites would be getting much less tolerant of its rebels and troublemakers.
And so the choice was coming down to reactionary vs. revolutionary suicide. And which side were you on? At that time, Huey was studying Zen and Samurai traditions and trying to experience liberation as non-attachment - a non-attachment to fear and the shiny trinkets of multitudinous new addictions. He urged the Panthers to live pure lives dedicated to revolutionary action, without fear of the quite possibly deadly outcome. He was sure that all the alternatives being offered on the block were much worse. Many denounced "revolutionary suicide" as morbid posturing. But as we look back over the decades of social break down, crack and television, RICO laws, and a vastly enlarged prison population, who will deny that spiritual suicide has become as American as apple pie, or claim that the more heroic course of action advocated by Newton was without its charms?
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/War-Against-Panthers-Newton1jun80.htm
WAR AGAINST THE PANTHERS:
A STUDY OF REPRESSION IN AMERICA
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of:
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
by
Huey P. Newton
June 1980
Monday, February 2, 2009
History AND Culture
Not just historical facts, but a deep cultural meaning and understanding, that guides the actions of one towards and within Community.
This is part one of many parts, which can be found on Youtube.
PEACE, to the great scholar Asa Hilliard, who returned to the essence while doing what he loved, which was teaching and traveling in Egypt.
This is part one of many parts, which can be found on Youtube.
PEACE, to the great scholar Asa Hilliard, who returned to the essence while doing what he loved, which was teaching and traveling in Egypt.
"Way out in Timbuktu"
I'm sure many of us have heard someone use this expression.
Timbuktu, which included Djenne and Sankore; these are all names that our children should know.
Perhaps, when the HipHop artist Nasir Jones said, "History don't acknowledge us; we were scholars, long before colleges," he was doing more than simply making a nice-sounding rhyme.
According to the Guiness book of World Records, the oldest Degree-Granting University, in the Modern sense of the term, was founded in Fez, Morocco.
The woman who founded it was Fatima al-Fahiri, this sister was born in Tunisia, Africa in an unknown year, but in 859, she founded the oldest academic degree-granting university existing today, the University of Qarawiyyin, with money inherited from her father, a wealthy businessman. She is said to have fasted during the building of the university.
Then, we have what is often mistakenly called the oldest Modern university and that is El Azhar University, built during the Fatimid Dynasty of Egypt, in 975 AD, and of course Timbuktu is dated to the 1000's.
Please look up Timbuktu's preservation foundation. They do travelling tours and exhibits, as well as preserving the thousands of documents, which were written on everything from accounting to religion to algebra to poetry of love.
Tuareg and other travelers would entrust this woman with any belongings for which they had no use on their return trip to the north. Thus, when a Tuareg, upon returning to his home, was asked where he had left his belongings, he would answer: "I left them at Tin Buktu", meaning the place where Buktu lived.
The two terms ended up fusing into one word, thus giving the city the name of Tinbuktu which later became Timbuktu.
Timbuktu (Timbuctoo; Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu; French: Tombouctou) is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali.
It was made most prosperous by Mansa Musa, tenth mansa (emperor) of the Mali Empire. It is home to the prestigious Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an intellectual and spiritual capital well into the 15th and 16th centuries.
Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. Timbuktu is assumed to have had one of the first universities in the world. Local scholars and collectors still boast an impressive collection of ancient Greek texts from that era.
By the 14th century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa.
Tales of Timbuktu's fabulous wealth helped prompt European exploration of the west coast of Africa. Among the earliest descriptions of Timbuktu are those of Leo Africanus, Ibn Battuta and Shabeni.
Leo Africanus
Perhaps most famous among the tales written about Timbuktu is that by Leo Africanus. As a captured renegade who later converted to Islam from Christianity, following a trip in 1512, when the Songhai empire was at its height he wrote the following:
The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some whereof weigh 1300 pounds. ... He hath always 3000 horsemen ... (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense.
At the time of Leo Africanus' visit, grass was abundant, providing plentiful milk and butter in the local cuisine, though there were neither gardens nor orchards surrounding the city.
"El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyati was born in the Moorish city of Granada in 1485, but was expelled along with his parents and thousands of other Muslims by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. Settling in Morocco, he studied in Fez, and as a teenager accompanied his uncle on diplomatic missions throughout North Africa and and to the Sub-Saharan kingdom of Ghana. Still a young man, he was captured by Christian pirates and presented as an exceptionally learned slave to the great Renaissance pope, Leo X. Leo freed him, baptised him under the name "Johannis Leo de Medici," and commissioned him to write in Italian the detailed survey of Africa which provided most of what Europeans knew about the continent for the next several centuries. At the time he visited the Ghanaian city of Timbuktu, it was somewhat past its peak, but still a thriving Islamic city famous for its learning. "Timbuktu" was to become a byword in Europe as the most inaccessible of cities, but at the time Leo visited, it was the center of a busy trade in African products and in books. Leo is said to have died in 1554 in Tunis, having reconverted to Islam."
Shabeni was a merchant from Tetuan who was captured and ended up in England where he told his story of how as a child of 14, around 1787, he had gone with his father to Timbuktu. A version of his story is related by James Grey Jackson in his book An Account of Timbuctoo and Hausa, 1820:
"On the east side of the city of Timbuctoo, there is a large forest, in which are a great many elephants. The timber here is very large. The trees on the outside of the forest are remarkable...they are of such a size that the largest cannot be girded by two men. They bear a kind of berry about the size of a walnut, in clusters consisting of from ten to twenty berries. Shabeeny cannot say what is the extent of this forest, but it is very large."
While Islam was practiced in the cities, the local rural majority were non-Muslim traditionalists. Often the leaders were nominal Muslims in the interest of economic advancement while the masses were traditionalists.
Sankore, as it stands now, was built in 1581 AD on a much older site and became the center of the scholarly community in Timbuktu. The "University of Sankore" was a madrassah, very different in organization from the universities of medieval Europe. It was composed of several entirely independent schools or colleges, each run by a single master.
Students associated themselves with a single teacher (the ancient Master-Student system), and courses took place in the open courtyards of mosque complexes or private residences. The primary focus of these schools was the teaching of the Qur'an, although broader instruction in fields such as logic, astronomy, and history also took place.
Scholars wrote their own books as part of a socioeconomic model based on scholarship.
The profit made by buying and selling of books was only second to the gold-salt trade.
Among the most formidable scholars, professors and lecturers was Ahmed Baba – a highly distinguished historian frequently quoted in the Tarikh-al-Sudan and other works.
The most outstanding treasure at Timbuktu are the 100,000 manuscripts kept by the great families from the town.
These manuscripts, some of them dated from pre-Islamic times and 12th century, have been preserved as family secrets in the town and in other villages nearby. The most were written in Arabic or Fulani, by wise men coming from the Mali Empire.
Their contents are didactic, especially in the subjects of astronomy, music, and botany. More recent manuscripts deal with law, sciences and history (with unique records such as the Tarikh al-Fetash by Mahmoud Kati from the 16th century or the Tarikh al-Sudan by Abderrahman al-Sadi on Sudanic history in the 17th century), religion, trading, etc.
The Ahmed Baba Institute (Cedrab), founded in 1970 by the government of Mali, with collaboration of Unesco, holds some of these manuscripts in order to restore and digitize them. More than 18,000 manuscripts have been collected by the Ahmed Baba centre, but there are an estimated 300,000-700,000 manuscripts in the region.
The collection of ancient manuscripts at the University of Sankore and other sites around Timbuktu document the magnificence of the institution, as well as the city itself, while enabling scholars to reconstruct the past in fairly intimate detail.
Dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, these manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans at the time.
In testament to the glory of Timbuktu, for example, a West African Islamic proverb states that "Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom come from Timbuktu."
From 60 to 80 private libraries in the town have been preserving these manuscripts: Mamma Haidara Library; Fondo Kati Library (with approximately 3,000 records from Andalusian origin, the oldest dated from 14th and 15th centuries); Al-Wangari Library; and Mohamed Tahar Library, among them. These libraries are considered part of the "African Ink Road" that stretched from West Africa connecting North Africa and East Africa.
At one time there were 120 libraries with manuscripts in Timbuktu and surrounding areas.
There are more than one million objects preserved in Mali with an additional 20 million in other parts of Africa, the largest concentration of which is in Sokoto, Nigeria, although the full extent of the manuscripts is unknown.
During the colonial era efforts were made to conceal the documents after a number of entire libraries were taken to Paris, London and other parts of Europe.
Some manuscripts were buried underground, while others were hidden in the desert or in caves. Many are still hidden today. The United States Library of Congress microfilmed a sampling of the manuscripts during an exhibition there in June 2003. In February 2006 a joint South African/Malian effort began investigating the Timbuktu manuscripts to assess the level of scientific knowledge in Timbuktu and in the other regions of West Africa.
Timbuktu, which included Djenne and Sankore; these are all names that our children should know.
Perhaps, when the HipHop artist Nasir Jones said, "History don't acknowledge us; we were scholars, long before colleges," he was doing more than simply making a nice-sounding rhyme.
According to the Guiness book of World Records, the oldest Degree-Granting University, in the Modern sense of the term, was founded in Fez, Morocco.
The woman who founded it was Fatima al-Fahiri, this sister was born in Tunisia, Africa in an unknown year, but in 859, she founded the oldest academic degree-granting university existing today, the University of Qarawiyyin, with money inherited from her father, a wealthy businessman. She is said to have fasted during the building of the university.
Then, we have what is often mistakenly called the oldest Modern university and that is El Azhar University, built during the Fatimid Dynasty of Egypt, in 975 AD, and of course Timbuktu is dated to the 1000's.
Please look up Timbuktu's preservation foundation. They do travelling tours and exhibits, as well as preserving the thousands of documents, which were written on everything from accounting to religion to algebra to poetry of love.
Tuareg and other travelers would entrust this woman with any belongings for which they had no use on their return trip to the north. Thus, when a Tuareg, upon returning to his home, was asked where he had left his belongings, he would answer: "I left them at Tin Buktu", meaning the place where Buktu lived.
The two terms ended up fusing into one word, thus giving the city the name of Tinbuktu which later became Timbuktu.
Timbuktu (Timbuctoo; Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu; French: Tombouctou) is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali.
It was made most prosperous by Mansa Musa, tenth mansa (emperor) of the Mali Empire. It is home to the prestigious Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an intellectual and spiritual capital well into the 15th and 16th centuries.
Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. Timbuktu is assumed to have had one of the first universities in the world. Local scholars and collectors still boast an impressive collection of ancient Greek texts from that era.
By the 14th century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa.
Tales of Timbuktu's fabulous wealth helped prompt European exploration of the west coast of Africa. Among the earliest descriptions of Timbuktu are those of Leo Africanus, Ibn Battuta and Shabeni.
Leo Africanus
Perhaps most famous among the tales written about Timbuktu is that by Leo Africanus. As a captured renegade who later converted to Islam from Christianity, following a trip in 1512, when the Songhai empire was at its height he wrote the following:
The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some whereof weigh 1300 pounds. ... He hath always 3000 horsemen ... (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense.
At the time of Leo Africanus' visit, grass was abundant, providing plentiful milk and butter in the local cuisine, though there were neither gardens nor orchards surrounding the city.
"El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyati was born in the Moorish city of Granada in 1485, but was expelled along with his parents and thousands of other Muslims by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. Settling in Morocco, he studied in Fez, and as a teenager accompanied his uncle on diplomatic missions throughout North Africa and and to the Sub-Saharan kingdom of Ghana. Still a young man, he was captured by Christian pirates and presented as an exceptionally learned slave to the great Renaissance pope, Leo X. Leo freed him, baptised him under the name "Johannis Leo de Medici," and commissioned him to write in Italian the detailed survey of Africa which provided most of what Europeans knew about the continent for the next several centuries. At the time he visited the Ghanaian city of Timbuktu, it was somewhat past its peak, but still a thriving Islamic city famous for its learning. "Timbuktu" was to become a byword in Europe as the most inaccessible of cities, but at the time Leo visited, it was the center of a busy trade in African products and in books. Leo is said to have died in 1554 in Tunis, having reconverted to Islam."
Shabeni was a merchant from Tetuan who was captured and ended up in England where he told his story of how as a child of 14, around 1787, he had gone with his father to Timbuktu. A version of his story is related by James Grey Jackson in his book An Account of Timbuctoo and Hausa, 1820:
"On the east side of the city of Timbuctoo, there is a large forest, in which are a great many elephants. The timber here is very large. The trees on the outside of the forest are remarkable...they are of such a size that the largest cannot be girded by two men. They bear a kind of berry about the size of a walnut, in clusters consisting of from ten to twenty berries. Shabeeny cannot say what is the extent of this forest, but it is very large."
While Islam was practiced in the cities, the local rural majority were non-Muslim traditionalists. Often the leaders were nominal Muslims in the interest of economic advancement while the masses were traditionalists.
Sankore, as it stands now, was built in 1581 AD on a much older site and became the center of the scholarly community in Timbuktu. The "University of Sankore" was a madrassah, very different in organization from the universities of medieval Europe. It was composed of several entirely independent schools or colleges, each run by a single master.
Students associated themselves with a single teacher (the ancient Master-Student system), and courses took place in the open courtyards of mosque complexes or private residences. The primary focus of these schools was the teaching of the Qur'an, although broader instruction in fields such as logic, astronomy, and history also took place.
Scholars wrote their own books as part of a socioeconomic model based on scholarship.
The profit made by buying and selling of books was only second to the gold-salt trade.
Among the most formidable scholars, professors and lecturers was Ahmed Baba – a highly distinguished historian frequently quoted in the Tarikh-al-Sudan and other works.
The most outstanding treasure at Timbuktu are the 100,000 manuscripts kept by the great families from the town.
These manuscripts, some of them dated from pre-Islamic times and 12th century, have been preserved as family secrets in the town and in other villages nearby. The most were written in Arabic or Fulani, by wise men coming from the Mali Empire.
Their contents are didactic, especially in the subjects of astronomy, music, and botany. More recent manuscripts deal with law, sciences and history (with unique records such as the Tarikh al-Fetash by Mahmoud Kati from the 16th century or the Tarikh al-Sudan by Abderrahman al-Sadi on Sudanic history in the 17th century), religion, trading, etc.
The Ahmed Baba Institute (Cedrab), founded in 1970 by the government of Mali, with collaboration of Unesco, holds some of these manuscripts in order to restore and digitize them. More than 18,000 manuscripts have been collected by the Ahmed Baba centre, but there are an estimated 300,000-700,000 manuscripts in the region.
The collection of ancient manuscripts at the University of Sankore and other sites around Timbuktu document the magnificence of the institution, as well as the city itself, while enabling scholars to reconstruct the past in fairly intimate detail.
Dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, these manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans at the time.
In testament to the glory of Timbuktu, for example, a West African Islamic proverb states that "Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom come from Timbuktu."
From 60 to 80 private libraries in the town have been preserving these manuscripts: Mamma Haidara Library; Fondo Kati Library (with approximately 3,000 records from Andalusian origin, the oldest dated from 14th and 15th centuries); Al-Wangari Library; and Mohamed Tahar Library, among them. These libraries are considered part of the "African Ink Road" that stretched from West Africa connecting North Africa and East Africa.
At one time there were 120 libraries with manuscripts in Timbuktu and surrounding areas.
There are more than one million objects preserved in Mali with an additional 20 million in other parts of Africa, the largest concentration of which is in Sokoto, Nigeria, although the full extent of the manuscripts is unknown.
During the colonial era efforts were made to conceal the documents after a number of entire libraries were taken to Paris, London and other parts of Europe.
Some manuscripts were buried underground, while others were hidden in the desert or in caves. Many are still hidden today. The United States Library of Congress microfilmed a sampling of the manuscripts during an exhibition there in June 2003. In February 2006 a joint South African/Malian effort began investigating the Timbuktu manuscripts to assess the level of scientific knowledge in Timbuktu and in the other regions of West Africa.
The International Black Man
A picture is worth a thousand words, indeed.
Jose Pimienta Bey - The Decline of Moorish Power
These are just parts 5, 6 and 7, you may view the rest on Youtube.
The history of Spanish, Briton (English), and German nobility. Also, some of the beginnings of racism in the Western world, beginning with the Papal decrees and slave trade in the 1300's, the Portuguese slave expeditions in the mid-1400's, continued by Spain's forced conversion or expulsion of Moorish (African), Arab and Sephardic peoples from Spain in 1492 after the fall of Grenada, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the interest of English writers, and the de-nationalization and de-humaminzation of African peoples on South, Central, and North American soil.
Brother Jose is a scholar and a professor, who has done extensive travel and research, in the vein of great scholars such as Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Chancellor Williams, and Ivan Van Sertima; also, Runoko Rashidi. Please look these names up, if you are not familiar with their work, they are all well-researched and present their material in a manner, which stands up to the highest standards of documentation and refinement. They not only document their work with books, b-u-t also display their finds with pictures.
"Look for Me in a Whirlwind"
The visionary Marcus Garvey, whose legacy is not only self-love, but also, the largest Black/African/Asiatic organization in history.
Garvey sparked the father of Malcolm X; he was the forerunner of the solidarity-doctrine of Drew Ali and the MSTA; he laid the blackprint for the do-for-self doctrine of Elijah Muhammad; he wrote the article, which influenced the Rasta movement and so much more. Not only is Garvey relevant to the world, but to Virginia, specifically. There is much research to be done.
Also, let us definitely not forget Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey, who also has a book written of her, I believe it is entitled, "The Veiled Garvey." I bought it as a gift for a sister, after seeing it in the store Positive Vibes on Indian River Rd.
Garvey sparked the father of Malcolm X; he was the forerunner of the solidarity-doctrine of Drew Ali and the MSTA; he laid the blackprint for the do-for-self doctrine of Elijah Muhammad; he wrote the article, which influenced the Rasta movement and so much more. Not only is Garvey relevant to the world, but to Virginia, specifically. There is much research to be done.
Also, let us definitely not forget Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey, who also has a book written of her, I believe it is entitled, "The Veiled Garvey." I bought it as a gift for a sister, after seeing it in the store Positive Vibes on Indian River Rd.
Black 365
It's no just a McDonald's tag-line, it is what was meant to be by the brother Carter G. Woodson himself. This post, my first post, is about the Story of Black History itself and the need to read much more deeply into it.
Imagine my surprise -- as I sit at a recent Conference by the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice -- listening to the global travels of brothers and sisters in the 1920's, trying to garner support for an international (diasporic) Black History movement and the neglected evolution of the ideas of Carter G. Woodson in regards to Black History.
Actually, it confirmed a feeling that I had long held within my heart. Here the sister, a representative of Carter G. Woodson's longstanding organization was explaining to me that following Negro History Week, February was intended to become the Month that would kick-off a year-long celebration of Black History, based upon a theme, which had been assessed and decided upon in January. Imagine that.
For this purpose, he established the organization ASALH, One of the oldest organizations, totally dedicated to the study and teaching of "Black History." ASALH would continue his thrust far beyond his own individual time on this Earth.
"When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the Black experience, but to bring to the public's attention important developments that merit emphasis. For those interested in the study of identity and ideology, an exploration of ASALH's Black History themes is itself instructive. Over the years, the themes reflect changes in how people of African descent in the United States have viewed themselves, the influence of social movements on racial ideologies, and the aspirations of the black community.The changes notwithstanding, the list reveals an overarching continuity in ASALH--our dedication to exploring historical issues of importance to people of African descent and race relations in America." ~ Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University
This year's theme? "2009: The Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas."
That is an interesting theme, which various different sectors of the Black populace would have very different perspectives on -- all relevant. Another historical father, Martin Delaney, had some of the most dynamic writings on this subject. Check him out! He even went so far as to break down Roman law and it's relationship to America's system of civil empowerment. Drew Ali is another oft-overlooked figure in our history, who had very interesting and different views of citizenship.
In fact, here are the yearly themes, from 1926 through this past December:
1926 The Negro in History
1927 Negro Accomplishments
1928-*
1929-*
1930-*
1931-*
1932-*
1933-*
1934-*
1935-*
1936-*
1937 American Negro History from the Time of Importation
from Africa up to the Present Day
1938 Special Achievements of the Race: Oratory, Drama,
Music, Painting, Sculpture, Science and Inventions
1939 Special Achievements of the Race: Religion, Education,
Business, Architecture, Engineering, Innovation, and
Pioneering
1940 Negro Labor
1941 The Career of Frederick Douglass
1942 The Negro in Democracy
1943 The Negro in the Modern World
1944 The Negro and the New Order
1945 The Negro and Reconversion
1946-*
1947 Democracy Possible only Through Brotherhood
1948 The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth
1949-*
1950- Outstanding Moments in Negro History
1951 Eminent Negroes in World Affairs
1952 Great Negro Teachers
1953 Negro History and Human Relations
1954 Negro History: A Foundation for Integration
1955 Negro History: A Contribution to America's Intercultural
Life
1956 Negro History in an Era of Changing Human Relations
1957 Negro History
1958-*
1959 Negro History: A Foundation for a Proud America
1960-*
1961- Freedom and Democracy for the Negro after 100 years
(1861-1961)
1962 Negro History and a New Birth of Freedom
1963 Negro History Evaluates Emancipation (1863-1963)
1964 Negro History: A Basis for the New Freedom
1965 Negro History: Freedom's Foundation
1966 Freedom from Racial Myths and Stereotypes Through
Negro History
1967 Negro History in the Home, School, and the Community
1968 Negro History and the Fourteenth Amendment
1969 Creating a New Image of Afro America through History
1970 15th Amendment and Black America in the Century
(1870-1970)
1971 African Civilization and Culture: A Worthy Historical
Background
1972 African Art, Music, Literature: A Valuable Cultural
Experience
1973 Biography Illuminates the Black Experience
1974 Helping America Understand
1975 Fulfilling America's Promise: Black History Month
1976 America for All Americans
1977 Heritage Days: The Black Perspective; the Third Century
1978 Roots, Achievements and Projections
1979 History: Torch for the future
1980 Heritage for America
1981 Black History: Role Model for Youth
1982 Afro American Survival
1983 Afro Americans in the United States
1984 Afro Americans and Education
1985 Afro American Family
1986 Afro American Experience: International Connection
1987 Afro Americans and the Constitution from Colonial
Times to the Present
1988 Constitutional Status of Afro Americans in the 21st
Century
1989 Afro Americans and Religion
1990 Carter G. Woodson
1991 Educating America: Black Universities and Colleges,
Strengths and Crisis
1992 African Roots Experience New Worlds, Pre-Columbus to
Space Exploration
1993 Afro-American Scholars: Leaders, Activists and Writers
1994 Empowering Black Americans
1995 Reflections on 1895: Douglass, Du Bois & Washington
1996 Black Women
1997 African Americans and Civil Rights; a Reprisal
1998 Black Business
1999 The Legacy of African American Leadership for the
Present and the Future
2000 Heritage and Horizons: The African American Legacy
and the Challenges for the 21st Century
2001 Creating and Defining the African American Community:
Family, Church Politics and Culture
2002 The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead?
2003 The Souls of Black Folks: Centennial Reflections
2004 Before Brown, Beyond Boundaries: Commemorating the
50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education
2005 The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005
2006 Celebrating Community: A Tribute to Black Fraternal,
Social, and Civic Institutions
2007 From Slavery to Freedom: Africans in the Americas
2008 Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of
Multiculturalism
Imagine my surprise -- as I sit at a recent Conference by the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice -- listening to the global travels of brothers and sisters in the 1920's, trying to garner support for an international (diasporic) Black History movement and the neglected evolution of the ideas of Carter G. Woodson in regards to Black History.
Actually, it confirmed a feeling that I had long held within my heart. Here the sister, a representative of Carter G. Woodson's longstanding organization was explaining to me that following Negro History Week, February was intended to become the Month that would kick-off a year-long celebration of Black History, based upon a theme, which had been assessed and decided upon in January. Imagine that.
For this purpose, he established the organization ASALH, One of the oldest organizations, totally dedicated to the study and teaching of "Black History." ASALH would continue his thrust far beyond his own individual time on this Earth.
"When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the Black experience, but to bring to the public's attention important developments that merit emphasis. For those interested in the study of identity and ideology, an exploration of ASALH's Black History themes is itself instructive. Over the years, the themes reflect changes in how people of African descent in the United States have viewed themselves, the influence of social movements on racial ideologies, and the aspirations of the black community.The changes notwithstanding, the list reveals an overarching continuity in ASALH--our dedication to exploring historical issues of importance to people of African descent and race relations in America." ~ Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University
This year's theme? "2009: The Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas."
That is an interesting theme, which various different sectors of the Black populace would have very different perspectives on -- all relevant. Another historical father, Martin Delaney, had some of the most dynamic writings on this subject. Check him out! He even went so far as to break down Roman law and it's relationship to America's system of civil empowerment. Drew Ali is another oft-overlooked figure in our history, who had very interesting and different views of citizenship.
In fact, here are the yearly themes, from 1926 through this past December:
1926 The Negro in History
1927 Negro Accomplishments
1928-*
1929-*
1930-*
1931-*
1932-*
1933-*
1934-*
1935-*
1936-*
1937 American Negro History from the Time of Importation
from Africa up to the Present Day
1938 Special Achievements of the Race: Oratory, Drama,
Music, Painting, Sculpture, Science and Inventions
1939 Special Achievements of the Race: Religion, Education,
Business, Architecture, Engineering, Innovation, and
Pioneering
1940 Negro Labor
1941 The Career of Frederick Douglass
1942 The Negro in Democracy
1943 The Negro in the Modern World
1944 The Negro and the New Order
1945 The Negro and Reconversion
1946-*
1947 Democracy Possible only Through Brotherhood
1948 The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth
1949-*
1950- Outstanding Moments in Negro History
1951 Eminent Negroes in World Affairs
1952 Great Negro Teachers
1953 Negro History and Human Relations
1954 Negro History: A Foundation for Integration
1955 Negro History: A Contribution to America's Intercultural
Life
1956 Negro History in an Era of Changing Human Relations
1957 Negro History
1958-*
1959 Negro History: A Foundation for a Proud America
1960-*
1961- Freedom and Democracy for the Negro after 100 years
(1861-1961)
1962 Negro History and a New Birth of Freedom
1963 Negro History Evaluates Emancipation (1863-1963)
1964 Negro History: A Basis for the New Freedom
1965 Negro History: Freedom's Foundation
1966 Freedom from Racial Myths and Stereotypes Through
Negro History
1967 Negro History in the Home, School, and the Community
1968 Negro History and the Fourteenth Amendment
1969 Creating a New Image of Afro America through History
1970 15th Amendment and Black America in the Century
(1870-1970)
1971 African Civilization and Culture: A Worthy Historical
Background
1972 African Art, Music, Literature: A Valuable Cultural
Experience
1973 Biography Illuminates the Black Experience
1974 Helping America Understand
1975 Fulfilling America's Promise: Black History Month
1976 America for All Americans
1977 Heritage Days: The Black Perspective; the Third Century
1978 Roots, Achievements and Projections
1979 History: Torch for the future
1980 Heritage for America
1981 Black History: Role Model for Youth
1982 Afro American Survival
1983 Afro Americans in the United States
1984 Afro Americans and Education
1985 Afro American Family
1986 Afro American Experience: International Connection
1987 Afro Americans and the Constitution from Colonial
Times to the Present
1988 Constitutional Status of Afro Americans in the 21st
Century
1989 Afro Americans and Religion
1990 Carter G. Woodson
1991 Educating America: Black Universities and Colleges,
Strengths and Crisis
1992 African Roots Experience New Worlds, Pre-Columbus to
Space Exploration
1993 Afro-American Scholars: Leaders, Activists and Writers
1994 Empowering Black Americans
1995 Reflections on 1895: Douglass, Du Bois & Washington
1996 Black Women
1997 African Americans and Civil Rights; a Reprisal
1998 Black Business
1999 The Legacy of African American Leadership for the
Present and the Future
2000 Heritage and Horizons: The African American Legacy
and the Challenges for the 21st Century
2001 Creating and Defining the African American Community:
Family, Church Politics and Culture
2002 The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead?
2003 The Souls of Black Folks: Centennial Reflections
2004 Before Brown, Beyond Boundaries: Commemorating the
50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education
2005 The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005
2006 Celebrating Community: A Tribute to Black Fraternal,
Social, and Civic Institutions
2007 From Slavery to Freedom: Africans in the Americas
2008 Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of
Multiculturalism
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