African History

African History

The Empire of Songhai

In the wake of Ghana and Mali, Songhai empire emerged Sonrai or east of the Niger bend. The form sonrai Gao, a Muslim state whose power is at once religious, commercial and military. The empire ruled by two powerful dynasties: the Sunni and Askia.

The state founded in Songhai Koukia the seventh century, due to interbreeding between Sonrhais effected, and Berbers led by chiefel-Za Ayamen, who fled before the Arab invasion. This interbreeding between Berbers and give Sonrhais Dynasty Dia.

Initially small kingdom in the Niger River in the seventh century, to be vassal empires of Ghana and Mali, it becomes worse, during the fifteenth century. The Songhai Empire extended over much the Niger, the Mali and parts of Nigeria today.

Around 1010, the kings of Koukia settled in Gao and converted to Islam. The nearby city of Timbuktu became the gathering point for caravans and center of the trans-Saharan trade, making it not only the economic capital of the empire but also the paramount religious and academic center. This mysterious city honored so many monuments in mud (mixture of mud and straw), such as mosques Djingareyber, Sidi Yaya and Sankore. The French Rene Caillie to discover much later.

Around the year 1300, the Songhai came under the control of the Mali Empire. But it regained its independence during the reign of Sunni Ali Ber. If the dynasty, (in 1464 - in 1492) that fights the Fulani and Tuareg, as well as Muslim scholars of the holy city of Timbuktu. Sonni Ali is trying to preserve African culture of his kingdom.

The successor of Sunni Ali, Mohammed Sarakolle Toure (1493 - 1528), Soninke Tekrour native, takes the opposite of his political ends to Islamize the kingdom with extreme brutality reports the traveler Leo Africanus. He founded the Muslim dynasty of Askia in which the Songhai Empire reached its height largely Islamized.

Songhai collapsed in 1591 following the invasion of the armies of Moroccan Sultan Ahmed al-Mansur Saadi under the command of Djouder at the battle of Tondibi. The Empire broke into a dozen principalities.Haile Selaissie

Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen, Ethiopia, July 23 of 1892 - August 27 of 1975) was the last emperor of Ethiopia. Ascended the throne in 1931, establishing an absolutist regime, which would delay the Italian invasion in 1936, to retake power in 1952 and completed in 1974 with the socialist revolution that overthrew him.

The Rastafari movement believes in Selassie as a messiah Black, Christ came in his role as King. This movement spread mainly in Jamaica since the thirties and then the world since the seventies, mainly due to the success of Jamaican Bob Marley, a Rastafarian singer.

In 1935, the Italian armies of Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. In June this year the emperor gave a famous speech to the League of Nations making a call to international morality and the principles of collective security. In 1936, he retired from his country by the conflict caused by the invasion of Italy, and settled in England, in the city of Bath. With support from the United Kingdom managed to regain his throne in 1941, during World War ...