In the following article historian Omar H. Ali explores a lesser-known aspect of the global African Diaspora, the spread of African peoples and their cultures throughout the Indian Ocean basin. Africans had become a visible part of the Indian Ocean world long before the advent … Read MoreIslam and the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World
Writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia on November 13, 1969. Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a prominent Somali intellectual and revolutionary leader. As a child, Ali had to move with her family to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, due … Read MoreAyaan Hirsi Ali (1969- )
Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr., journalist, was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia. His father was a businessman and his mother a housewife. After Bradley’s parents divorced, he spent summers with his father in Detroit. He attended primary and secondary school in Philadelphia. In 1960 he … Read MoreEd Bradley, Jr. (1941-2006)
The Mouride Sufi Brotherhood is a sect of Islam that boasts over four million followers today, mostly concentrated in Senegal and Gambia. The Mouride Sufi Order was founded by Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba in 1883 in the Senegambia region of West Africa. At this period there … Read MoreMouride Sufi Brotherhood
The Black Jews of Harlem are a minority ethnic group in New York who first appeared in the early 1900s. By 1930 there were at least four groups of Black Jews in Harlem. The most important of these groups was The Commandment Keepers Holy Church … Read MoreBlack Jews of Harlem
Idi Amin was the Ugandan military dictator and President from 1971 to 1979. During his reign Amin’s military forces are estimated to have killed 500,000 people and exiled roughly 70,000 non-Ugandan nationals (mostly Indians) from Uganda. Idi Amin Dada was born in 1925 in the … Read MoreIdi Amin (1925-2003)
In the following article Professor Emeritus Jere L. Bacharach, a specialist in Medieval Middle Eastern history, describes the little known saga of one of the largest groups of persons of African descent in the region, military slaves. These enslaved men, utilized for centuries in the … Read MoreAfrican Military Slaves in the Muslim Middle East
The Mali Empire was the second of three West African empires to emerge in the vast savanna grasslands located between the Sahara Desert to the north and the coastal rain forest in the south. Beginning as a series of small successor trading states, Ancient Ghana, … Read MoreMali Empire (ca. 1200-1545 )
Located in the northeast region of contemporary Ethiopia, the city of Axum sits on a high plateau next to the Red Sea. With the city’s ascendance centuries before the birth of Christ and its position next to the Red Sea, Axum became a major center … Read MoreAxum (ca. 100 B.C.E.-ca. 650 A.D.)
Mansa Musa, fourteenth century emperor of the Mali Empire, is the medieval African ruler most known to the world outside Africa. His elaborate pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca in 1324 introduced him to rulers in the Middle East and in Europe. His … Read MoreMansa Musa (1280-1337)
