host: from the tenth to the 15th century,
north and west africa underwent a dramatic transformation.
celebrated cities arose, including timbuktu...
marrakesh... and ile ife.
great scholars wrote books that filled libraries.
wealth from trans-saharan trade
grew on a spectacular scale...
drawing attention from afar
to the wonders of the african continent.
this is the incredible story
of how farmers, traders, and nomads
from the barren fringes of the sahara desert
would build some of the most
advanced civilizations in history.
by 1000 a.d.,
islam, a religion born on the arabian peninsula,
had become established along the whole north african coast
and deep into the iberian peninsula.
the western extremity of islamic civilization,
what's called the maghreb,
meaning land of the setting sun.
this is where our story begins,
in the city of marrakesh.
when it was founded in the year 1070,
marrakesh was a center of politics and law.
but it soon began to attract merchants and craftsmen
from the surrounding regions.
for centuries since,
luxury goods have been traded here.
spices, gold, and textiles.
in just 50 years, marrakesh had been transformed
from a collection of mud-brick huts
to a sophisticated metropolis.
the ancient walled city, the medina,
is a maze of narrow laneways.
it's easy to get lost.
seemingly around every corner,
one encounters a fine palace, a great mosque,
or a lush garden.
the origins of much of this splendor
can be traced to the influence
of one charismatic islamic theologian--
abdallah ibn yasin.
woman: ibn yasin actually originated from
what's now southern morocco.
he was obviously someone who was interested in religious learning
because he made the very difficult journey north
across the high atlas mountains into spain
to study in cordoba.
he seems to have had aspirations
to religiously lead a group of tribes,
but then lead them on to greater things
in a political sense as well.
host: ibn yasin was a berber.
his tribe, the judala,
was part of the sanhaja,
a group living in the sahara desert.
in 1046, ibn yasin was invited to give the sanhaja
instruction in the true principles of islam.
when they rebelled against this harsh interpretation of the law,
he withdrew and founded a movement to convert them.
in 1055, he launched a campaign
to spread his reformist ideas
among the urban centers of morocco and ghana.
bennison: at that point, the tribes of the sahara were
fairly superficially islamized,
so, they were muslim,
but they didn't have a deep knowledge
of the rites and rituals that came with being muslim...
nor were they very familiar with islamic law.
host: ibn yasin's solution
was to go back to basics
and promote a literal and puritanical
form of islam.
he wanted to bring worshippers back in line
with what he believed was the true islamic faith.
man: ibn yasin talked about people converting,
but what he actually meant was changing the way
they'd been practicing islam to the way
he thought it should be practiced.
and he decided that they were effectively deep sinners,
and so, they should give up 1/3
of all their goods to him.
and he was really fond of flogging people.
people left out a word while they were praying,
they got some lashes for that.
if they didn't stand in the right position,
they got lashes for that.
those joining the movement would be
whipped and scourged for the prayers
they hadn't performed in their past life.
they were in a sense literally being whipped into a frenzy,
and the zeal for the movement was being inculcated in them
through this very intense phase of initiation.
host: deep in the desert,
among the sanhaja berbers,
his revolutionary message
attracted a fervent following.
his followers were called the almoravids,
which can be interpreted as
"people of the frontier fortress."
man: this is one of many movements where
people come along and say, you know, "you're doing it wrong,
and i know the way to do it right."
bennison: and it's at that point in the 1050s
that the almoravids begin to coalesce
as a significant army, as a significant military force,
and began to emerge from their desert territories,
moving northwards, first of all
towards the great caravan city of sijilmasa.
[men shouting indistinctly]
host: sijilmasa was an important trading center
on the edge of the sahara.
ibn yasin demanded that sijilmasa submit
because of its sins.
when it refused, he attacked.
at the caravan city of sijilmasa,
the almoravid army smashed musical instruments
and shut down the wine shops.
everywhere they conquered,
the almoravids imposed a fundamentalist regime.
those who failed to comply risked execution.
bennison: ibn yasin was motivated
by a number of different factors.
there was obviously the religious factor,
but at the same time, there were commercial and political motives
underpinning his actions.
when they were successful, they believed that meant
that they were religiously right in their approach.
they saw victory as a mark of god's favor.
host: taking sijilmasa brought ibn yasin and his army
one step closer to a major goal--
control of the trans-saharan caravan trade,
especially the trade in gold.
to complete that mission, ibn yasin set off
on the arduous, thousand-mile journey
across one of the largest deserts on the planet--
the sahara.
the great expanse of the sahara desert
was an ocean to cross.
it was a barrier that divided africa
from north to south,
and attempts to navigate it were treacherous.
long journeys from one oasis to the next oasis
could be quite dangerous, even life-threatening.
the sahara covers 3 1/2 million formidable square miles.
the sanhaja lived across the whole of the sahara,
from ghana and takrur on one side
to sijilmasa on the other.
so, berbers like them had been
criss-crossing the desert to trade
for more than 1,000 years.
around the second century,
they adopted a new mode of transportation
which made crossing easier-- the camel.
as trans-saharan trade routes opened up,
demand for west african gold increased dramatically.
the domestication of the camel
would allow traders to conquer the unforgiving heat
and vast distances through seas of sand
with far greater efficiency than ever before.
on the southern end of the trans-saharan caravan route
was a resource-rich land called the sahel,
meaning "shore."
it contained merchant cities that were gateways
to the principal source of gold
for medieval europe.
one of the largest of these cities
was in modern-day mauritania-- awdaghust.
seize it, and the almoravids
could control the gold trade.
that meant confronting a large sub-saharan state--
the empire of ghana.
man: ghana emerges as a kind of middleman state
that is going to tap into west africa mercantile activity
and especially going to control the gold trade
across the desert from sub-saharan africa.
host: ghana's roots date back
to the very first civilizations
in sub-saharan west africa.
around 1500 b.c., a rich culture arose
in the region of dhar tichitt,
in today's mauritania.
eventually, this civilization spread south
and founded new settlements along the niger river,
where it grew into a powerful empire.
ghana is located right in the middle
between the senegal river system
and the niger river system,
and it's in a position strategically
where it can control access to both of those,
at least potentially it can.
control of the gold trade
generated enormous wealth,
wealth that built empires.
and the kingdom of ghana was poised to exploit
its perfect location.
ghana's legendary wealth and strength
would lead the gold coast colony in 1957
to adopt "ghana" as the name
of its modern-day nation.
ware: there's an 11th-century source that says
the ruler of the empire of ghana
can put 200,000 soldiers in the field,
40,000 of them archers.
he's the biggest, baddest guy on the block
and you're not messing with him. [laughs]
thornton: ghana had a very strong
equestrian tradition and cavalry
that would have allowed it to dominate
other regions around it.
host: in the tenth century, ghana's army
had captured awdaghust from the sanhaja.
so, in 1055, ibn yasin arrived
to seize it back in a brutal takeover.
writing in 1068 a.d., the andalusian muslim
geographer and historian al-bakri
had this to say.
man as al-bakri: they violated the women
and declared everything they found there
to be the property of the muslim community.
host: following the loss of awdaghust,
ghana began to decline,
ultimately falling in 1076.
its traditional religions first coexisted with,
but then eventually gave way to,
the force of islam.
thornton: the almoravids may very well have
converted ghana by conquest
or it may have been a voluntary conquest
or an alliance or some other kind of thing.
we know that by 1100, that region had been
converted to islam.
[horse whinnies]
host: by the late 1050s,
the almoravid army,
initially comprised mostly of north african
sanhaja berbers,
now included vast ranks of sub-saharan africans.
senegalese, you know, soldiers, not slaves,
free senegalese soldiers that participated,
at least 4,000 of them.
so, then it's not surprising that instead
of an adversarial relationship,
the saharan and sub-saharan, you know, populations
were working in, you know, in concert.
host: in 1059, while the almoravids
were campaigning in the desert,
ibn yasin was killed in battle.
but his movement continued to grow.
one of its new leaders was a general--
yusuf ibn tashfin.
ibn tashfin marched the almoravid army
across the high atlas mountains
and seized control of the north african coast.
in the year 1070, ibn tashfin founded a new city
to be his almoravid capital.
it was called marrakesh.
bennison: they settled on a territory which is
described as being very arid, very barren,
quite desert-like.
not an area that one might think of
as immediately being the place to found a city,
but nonetheless an environment which was quite akin
to the environment which they had come from.
bloom: what the almoravids did was replace
the old town of sijilmasa,
which was on the other side of the high atlas mountains,
with their new center, their new city, marrakesh,
which became much greater than sijilmasa
ever had been before.
host: marrakesh became
such a rich commercial city
for one reason--its location.
it was the terminus of one of the great
commercial trade routes on the african continent.
situated halfway between
the sahara and the mediterranean,
marrakesh was a junction
for goods moving across africa
into europe and asia.
textiles... leatherwork...
and, above all, gold.
bloom: you know, war is wonderful.
i mean, i guess, theoretically, if you--
but it doesn't-- it doesn't provide
the steady means of-- of support,
and so, building a city, a trading city
is a much better way.
host: as the city grew in wealth and reputation,
marrakesh became a showcase
for the ingenuity and artistry
of architects and artisans.
[hammering]
bloom: i think that the almoravids had bad press.
probably the people who wrote about them
had suffered under their rule,
and so, they didn't have anything good to say to them.
one of the things that's great about art and culture,
i mean, is it's sort of silent testimony
to what happens during a period.
host: in 1947, archaeologists uncovered
something here that shed new light
on its almoravid period.
this tower--the koubba.
bennison: one of the most notable features of the koubba
is the contrast between the exterior,
which is quite plain and simple,
and what you see when you go inside.
it's a real revelation.
compared to the austerity of the exterior,
once you get inside and you look upward,
you see this fantastic, deeply carved, plaster dome
which has vegetal designs,
conch shell, which in some ways
reminds you of the interior
of the domes in the great mosque of cordoba.
so, in the day, it would probably have been
even more of a surprise, because the plasterwork
would probably have been painted.
host: one theory holds that the koubba
was an ablutions pavilion
for a great almoravid mosque,
which no longer exists.
another is that it was a monument
in a public park.
bennison: we can't really say exactly what
the koubba was designed for originally,
but it is part of the monumental infrastructure
of early marrakesh, and it was certainly designed
to be a project which the public would see
and which they would identify with the almoravids
and which would celebrate the almoravid empire
in its wider sense.
bloom: the architecture of the koubba
is a product of the interaction between
andalusian builders and techniques
and north african patrons.
the almoravids have this reputation
of not being attuned to aesthetic things.
clearly were interested, because
they must have brought very talented artisans
to build these structures from spain to morocco,
and of course, the artisans were happy to come,
because this is where the money was.
host: by the end of the 11th century,
marrakesh had become a place of affluence,
wealth, and luxury,
a far cry from the berbers' nomadic existence
in the remote atlas mountains.
the berbers had gone from being mercenaries for hire
to empire builders.
in 1085, war broke out in al andalus,
the patchwork of muslim-ruled kingdoms
in the iberian peninsula.
a christian king, alfonso vi of leon,
seized the central spanish city of toledo from the muslims.
across the straits of gibraltar in north africa,
yusuf ibn tashfin was now the supreme almoravid leader.
bennison: the muslim rulers of the peninsula
desperately needed military assistance,
and they began to send messages
down to yusuf ibn tashfin in north africa, saying,
you know, you're an important muslim ruler.
you have a good army. we need military support.
host: with ibn tashfin's help,
the andalusian army
halted alfonso's advance
at the bloody battle of zallaqa.
then, ibn tashfin decided to seize
the andalusian territories for himself.
bennison: the only way to hold the peninsula
was to actually conquer it and bring it into his empire.
he felt that the kings of al andalus were too weak,
too likely to pay tribute
and join with christians in alliances
to hold the territory.
host: by the time of his death in 1106,
ibn tashfin's empire stretched from central spain
to southern mauritania,
and from lisbon to algiers.
[sheep baa-ing]
a flourishing world of art, science,
commerce, and religion.
bennison: the iberian peninsula and north africa
were seen as the two shores
of a single political entity,
the almoravid empire, and there was
enormous movement backwards and forwards
across the straits of gibraltar,
which are very much a bridge
rather than a barrier at this time.
host: the almoravid empire had rapidly expanded,
but it would prove to be short-lived.
in the 1120s, a new berber religious movement arose
in remote valleys of the atlas mountains.
they were known as the almohads,
a term derived from the arabic word
for the monotheists.
in 1147, they overthrew the almoravids
and founded their own empire.
the almohads used literacy as a vital tool
to spread the word of islam.
in the city of fez, northeast of marrakesh,
islamic scholarship would reach new heights.
fez has been a center of learning
since it was founded in the year 789 a.d.
but under almohad rule, in the 12th century,
it became a truly global hub for knowledge.
woman: fez is just a remarkable city
and such an important center.
it was always the intellectual capital in a certain sense.
the scholars' capital within morocco.
fez stood among the greatest centers of education,
not only on the african continent
but throughout the medieval world.
home to astonishing breakthroughs in science,
mathematics, and astronomy.
fez, during europe's middle ages,
was a city of more than 200,000 people
crammed into a maze of more than 9,000 twisting streets.
today, the fez el bali walled medina
is the largest urban pedestrian precinct in the world.
bloom: you go inside these great gateways
and suddenly, there are no more cars.
there are no more wheeled vehicles
except for, like, little trolleys or hand carts
to move things.
it's all beasts of burden-- donkeys--
or humans of burden, porters carrying it,
and everyone's screaming at you,
"belak, belak," "watch out, watch out, watch out,"
and they're coming up behind you.
and it's, like, total chaos.
host: in the middle of this bustling city
sits a mosque begun in the year 859 a.d.--
the kairaouine.
it's arguably the world's oldest institution of higher learning.
two centuries before european universities
like oxford and bologna even existed,
the kairaouine was issuing medical degrees.
bloom: the kairaouine was founded in the ninth century,
supposedly by one of two sisters
who came from kairouan, which was
the capital of tunisia.
and so, it was called the kairaouine,
meaning "the mosque for the people of kairouan."
this was the most important mosque in the city,
and the reason was because it was the center
of muslim scholarship, muslim learning
for the whole region.
host: in 1349, the kairaouine was endowed with a library,
home to more than 5,600 priceless arabic manuscripts.
professor said ennahid is an expert on its history.
said, what are some of the great
literary treasures held in this library?
one good example is volume 5
of ibn khaldun's book.
ibn khaldun was a very famous scholar.
we think of him as the father of--
of--of sociology.
and he wrote this masterpiece,
universal history, in late 14th century,
and we have this volume number 5
with his signature on it saying that
this copy should stay here at--at the library.
he was a student here.
he had this strong connection with fez.
maybe as a student but maybe also
as a--as a teacher, or at least
as someone who had connections with
the elite of fez.
we know that he was here,
maybe in this very spot.
wow. amazing.
some of the most important intellectuals of the middle ages
did their finest work here in fez,
and in the almohad empire more generally.
bloom: these are cultural figures who flourished
and they became, in effect, the gateway for
the transfer of classical knowledge to the west.
host: one especially brilliant scholar was ibn rushd,
also known by his latinized name--averroes.
averroes was considered the greatest interpreter
of aristotle.
so, when europeans started
wanting to study aristotle,
they turned to the arabic writings,
which they then translated into latin.
host: another noted scholar at the kairaouine
was hasan wazzan,
also known as leo africanus.
thornton: leo africanus was a north african legal scholar
who was actually captured by christian pirates
and became a slave of the pope for a while.
while he was a slave of the pope, he wrote
a description of basically all of north and west africa.
host: beyond the walls of fez's kairaouine,
instruction took place in a network of residential schools
called madrassas.
the madrassas, or islamic schools,
were structured like the medieval colleges
of oxford and cambridge.
students could deepen their understanding of the koran
and study the most important developments
in the sciences and humanities.
by the 14th century, 7 great madrassas
thrived in fez,
the most famous of which
was the bou inania,
founded in the year 1350.
[man calling in arabic]
preston blier: the repetition of design, on the one hand,
there is a sort of mathematical quality in it,
of multiples of geometries, of that play of forms,
but there's also something that takes on
an element of meditation
as you begin to explore a form
and it merges into another form
and it separates from one into another.
you can't really go away from these
without just being in awe of
the incredible artisans and architects
who created them.
host: when fez was reaching its peak,
a new center of scholarship emerged
1,200 miles away,
on the southern shore of the sahara desert.
it became a kind of sister city to fez,
and no less legendary--
the fabled city of timbuktu.
since the 14th century,
timbuktu has been a place of mystery
in the imagination of the west,
a metaphor for the remotest place on earth.
but timbuktu was to become one of the great
cities of the medieval world,
an unparalleled center of scholarship,
learning, and trade.
timbuktu had its own counterpart to fez's kairaouine--
the sankore mosque.
thornton: timbuktu really attracted
a lot of very learned scholars,
and the sankore mosque in particular became,
really, the university of west africa for muslims.
so, if you were an islamic scholar
and you were living in a village in the gambia, let's say,
one of your aspirations would be
if you--if you really studied hard and you did well,
you might go up to timbuktu, and that was like the ph.d.
host: the heart of timbuktu's intellectual life
was its libraries.
between the 14th and the 17th centuries,
they acquired hundreds of thousands of books,
mostly written by african authors
working in the city.
the first time i visited timbuktu
and saw those astonishing libraries
with their wealth of scholarly text,
i wanted to cry.
i grew up being told that africans never wrote books,
yet here was this astonishing treasure trove
of extraordinary, hand-written manuscripts.
many of them were religious,
but there were also books about math, astronomy, philosophy.
i felt incredible pride and vindication.
books produced in timbuktu
became valuable objects in themselves,
prized all over africa and beyond.
thornton: leo africanus, he talks about timbuktu
and he mentions how it's such an important center
for the book trade, and how books are sold
and sold for very high prices and--and so on.
ware: there's a manual that has everything that
a learned scholar in the bend of the niger river
in the 1400s needs to know--
how to keep your wife happy,
how to get in and out of a canoe,
how to help a woman who isn't producing enough milk
to nurse her--her child.
it's a window onto
all of the concerns and preoccupations of
an african muslim society in the 1400s.
host: timbuktu became one of the principal cities
of a rising new power in west africa--
the empire of mali.
mali was founded around the year 1240
by a legendary warrior king called sundiata
who grew his small provincial kingdom
into the largest state that has ever existed in west africa.
when king sundiata assembled his army,
he ordered his local chiefs to surrender their titles.
such was the reverence accorded to the king
that his subjects were said to approach him on their knees.
mali would become a great empire,
with political, military, and religious power
concentrated in the figure of the emperor.
ware: the empire of mali takes the mantle
from the empire of ghana,
insofar as it comes to control
the gold trade from west africa,
but it doesn't just take over, it expands.
so, this is the time when the gold trade
really reaches its height, and when the kind of
wealth and opulence of the west african imperial states
are--are greatest.
host: through its control of the gold trade,
mali became the superpower of the medieval world.
but gold was just one of its products,
exchanged through a complex commercial network
that transversed the desert.
thornton: even though the sahara desert looks empty,
it's actually--they have got trading communities
located within the desert, and there are stages of trade
that go back and forth.
when we talk about the trans-saharan trade,
it gives the sense or the impression that
goods were transiting through the sahara
to get to markets to the north.
but the sense in which the sahara
was a world in its own,
and a very integrated world.
host: one of the most valuable items of the trade
originated within the desert itself--salt.
salt is the refrigeration of the ancient world, right?
so that you can't, you know, have meat or fish
or any kind of, you know, protein products
last more than a couple of days
unless you salt them and smoke them.
salt is almost impossible to find
in sub-saharan west africa,
except when people are making sea salt.
akyeampong: in the sahara, salt was mined,
and mined in forms that were like slabs.
it could be carried for hundreds of miles
on the back of camels.
[camel grunts]
host: another commonly-traded commodity
made salt mining even more profitable--slaves.
slaves were captured as a result of military action,
such as war or sometimes raids,
then sold to berber traders.
ware: there were some slaves that were incorporated
in the trans-saharan trade in the early period.
there's actually not just an export of trade--
of slaves from sub-saharan africa in small numbers,
but there's also an import of slaves
into sub-saharan africa from north africa and europe,
also in small numbers.
akyeampong: they would settle the slaves around oases
to grow cereals and other crops.
slaves also worked in gold mines.
much of the surplus that went into long-distance trade
was actually production based on slavery.
host: it wasn't only commodities like gold, salt, or slaves
that moved across the desert.
traders also carried with them treasured personal possessions.
the british library in london holds one such object--
a saddlebag koran.
gus, what's a saddlebag koran?
a saddlebag koran is, it's loose-leafed koran
that would fit into a bag
so that it could be-- it could be
carried with you wherever you went.
who would've produced this,
created this beautiful edition of the koran?
well, this is by one hand.
these are breaks to particular bits in the koran,
and so, they have illustrations in them, so,
it's someone who understood that this
had to be not just accurate
but also incredibly beautiful,
because it's about uplifting people,
not just through words but also aesthetically.
so, this was for families,
for people who would travel abroad, um,
and they wanted to have a koran,
but they also wanted something where
they could take leaves out,
they could refer to it, they could look at it.
and share them. and share them. exactly.
this would be something that
through its accumulated use
could become more important.
so, like the gates family bible,
which was started by my great-grandmother.
exactly.
host: merchants could afford such luxury objects
in part because of the ever-increasing global demand
for mali's gold.
[camel grunts]
probably something like 3/4 of the gold
that's going into north african and european markets
in the medieval period is coming out
of the empire of mali.
throughout most of the middle ages,
europe was on the gold standard,
and without african gold, the whole currency of europe
basically would fall.
they were already melting down
roman coins in this period
to try to make up in part for this lack.
host: mali's role in global commerce brought it
recognition, respect, and envy from afar.
this is the catalan atlas,
a map dating from 1375,
probably owned by king charles v of france.
on its southern edge is mali,
personified by its greatest ruler,
the legendary emperor mansa musa.
gus, it's such a surprise to see
a black man on a map from the 14th century.
how did mansa musa get on this atlas?
this was a known figure in europe.
this was someone who had influence,
not just within africa but beyond.
and he was interested himself in seeing
beyond his own kingdom.
and he's represented with his--
the gold orb, gold crown, gold scepter.
yes. yes. and it's a fantastically
wealthy kingdom.
it has some of the biggest gold mines
in the region.
it also has copper. it also has salt.
if you look at this map,
it gives a sense of how
it's right at the center
of a nexus of trade routes
that link it right across the continent.
it's not just the cont-- it's beyond.
host: mali's control of a large share
of the world's gold supply, especially europe's,
gave mansa musa wealth beyond compare.
it's often claimed that mansa musa
is the richest man who has ever lived.
ware: newspapers constructing top 10 lists
of the wealthiest people of all time,
they almost always put mansa musa first,
and some of them, you know, will--will say that
his net worth adjusted for inflation
is something like $400 billion in today's money.
host: in 1324, mansa musa's notoriety
grew exponentially,
thanks to reports of his largesse and generosity
during his hajj, the pilgrimage
to the muslim holy city of mecca.
ware: his pilgrimage that he makes in 1324, 1325,
you know, there are different accounts, but the usual account
is something like 300 camels laden with gold
in addition to all the people that are traveling with him.
host: ibn khaldun, the great author
working at fez's kairaouine library,
wrote an account of a person
in mansa musa's entourage.
man as ibn khaldun: "we used to keep the sultan company
"during his progress
"and converse to his enjoyment.
"at each halt, he would regale us
"with rare foods and confectionery.
"his equipment and furnishings
"were carried by 12,000 private slave women
wearing gowns of brocade and yemeni silk."
host: mansa musa and his retinue
stopped at every town between mali and mecca.
it was said that mansa musa's largesse knew no bounds.
as he made his way to mecca,
he handed out extravagant amounts of gold,
to high-ranking officials and working people alike.
and according to legend, his generosity
inadvertently destabilized the economy of cairo.
he distributed so much gold that its market value collapsed
and took years to recover.
as he traveled, he purchased camel-loads of books
and recruited respected scholars
to bring back home.
ware: when he comes back is when
he begins to invest, especially in
the construction of mosques and schools
in the town of timbuktu.
mansa musa, he's trying to invest
in learning and schooling and knowledge
in order to diversify the economic and social basis
for what he was trying to do in the empire of mali.
host: 1,000 miles along the niger river
in modern-day nigeria,
another great civilization
traded with the empire of mali.
it was called ife, and it was the site
of a remarkable explosion of creativity
at about the same time as mali's rise.
the national museum of nigeria in lagos
houses an extensive collection of ife art.
this astonishing sculpture
is the mask of the ooni--
obalufon the second,
monarch of one of the most important kingdoms
in all of west africa in the middle ages--
the kingdom of ife.
this is one of 40 or so brass and copper sculptures,
executed with dazzling naturalism
under the king's patronage.
preston blier: they are technically among the most
truly remarkable works of art
created any place in the world.
these are striking heads that are quite naturalistic,
but they're also this idealized naturalism,
so that none of the warts and wrinkles of the face are shown.
if you look at them, there's almost this
serenity and calmness in them,
and give a sense of-- of timelessness,
which are really, really beautiful.
while european artists were still
grappling with perspective,
and often struggling with the human form,
these african artists were making magnificent,
life-like sculptures.
it's not just the technical achievement
of these sculptures that's so impressive.
it's also their sheer artistry,
their capacity to capture the human spirit.
these classic masterworks of world art
date from the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
the artists that produced them
lived in a powerful and handsome city-state.
preston blier: it just must have been an amazingly thrilling
city to live in,
a city of great hierarchy.
the king and others in the court
being very distinguished by the kinds of
attire that they would wear, crowns of glass beads
and--and other things that--that
would have made it a really remarkable place.
host: ife, or ile ife as it's properly known,
had paved courtyards
and a flourishing trade in high-value manufactured goods,
like textiles and glass beads,
which were a symbol of authority
throughout the world at that time.
preston blier: i would say if there's one place in the world
that i would love to be able to visit,
circa 1300, it would be ife.
host: ife's role is so important in west african history
that today, the yoruba,
a 40-million-strong ethnic group in the region,
regard ife as their spiritual capital.
the nobel laureate for literature, wole soyinka,
is an expert on yoruba culture and art.
what is the role of ile ife historically
for the yoruba people?
ife is acknowledged universally as
the origin of the black peoples.
mm-mm. the white people,
the yellow peoples, they can decide which is their own origin.
we have decided that ile ife
is where we all came from.
that's our spiritual home.
it's--it's where-- those who believe in reincarnation,
or revitalization,
they believe that they will come back to ife.
[chuckles] and that's enough for us.
host: this origin myth lies at the heart of yoruba culture.
after death, the oonis were worshipped as gods,
and the artworks that we call ife heads
were probably used as icons of power.
ife sculptures are so naturalistic,
so...humanlike.
and those who encounter
it for the first time,
you know, it's mind-blowing
that--with that kind of complexity
in the use of the material, which is--
and yet, what comes out is so,
um, it's just so beautiful,
just so beautiful.
host: ife's greatest ooni was obalufon the second,
who came to power following a brutal civil war.
he rebuilt the city and sponsored the renaissance
that produced the ife heads
within a single generation.
obalufon the second is one of those
remarkable figures in world history
who came into power under really quite
unfortunate circumstances.
his father had died in--in a civil war
that had hit the city,
but obalufon seemed to have had
the support of the population
to come back onto the throne to really create a center
that--that would stand on its own
as a remarkable place for centuries to come.
host: until the 20th century,
most of the world had little idea
that the ife heads even existed.
several were found accidentally in 1938
by builders remodeling a house,
but the first european to unearth these heads
was a german ethnographer called leo frobenius.
in fact, he took these photographs.
preston blier: when leo frobenius
fell upon these works,
not only was he stunned by them
but he tried to reference them
with his--his own sense of the history of the world.
at that point, they had assumed that africa,
really, there was no complexity, no wealth.
this was the high era of the introduction of colonialism.
host: incredibly, frobenius found it easier to believe
that they came from the lost city of atlantis
than that black people could have created them.
preston blier: he wanted to make himself famous
and claimed he'd found the lost atlantis
and telegraphed this off to the "new york times."
the only thing that he could think about
was that they must have been made
by some kind of lost colony of greeks
who somehow had made their way here.
host: frobenius' theory of atlantis
was quickly challenged by other scholars,
who understood that the ife heads
could only have been made by africans.
the rediscovery of the ife heads in the 20th century
changed how many people throughout the world
regarded both african art
and the african people themselves.
preston blier: you really can't know african history
unless you look closely at the art,
because they complicate, enrich, and--and inform in new ways
so much of what we know about the past.
host: the national museum of nigeria's
collection of ife art gives us some insight
into obalufon the second's royal court.
woman: normally, you do not see the face of an ooni,
and they use beads, stringed beads
to cover the mouth as well as
part of the face.
so, that's why you have the holes all there.
this is a mask that can be worn,
and it has a slit.
when it was brought out of ife,
we had gold dusting by the eyes
and red pigments all over it.
this one is that of the king.
you see the crown, the beaded crown on the head.
host: one of the most difficult crafts
that ife artisans mastered
was metalwork.
was there a class of artists
working for the king who made these pieces?
well, if you look at this time,
it's like they are from a common artist.
who the artist was, how they were grouped,
we do not know.
the conception of africans that, um,
we are not that intelligent.
it shows the ingenuity of the africans.
it shows genius.
genius.
host: from ile ife to timbuktu to marrakesh,
this was an extraordinarily rich period
when merchants and rulers
and artisans and scholars thrived.
and knowledge of their riches and cultural treasures
spread across the world.
the great sahara desert was, for millennia,
a vast ocean, a seemingly impassable barrier,
but really, for those who mastered it,
it was a conduit between lands to its south
and lands to its north.
on the shores of this desert,
great cities arose to prominence,
driven by trade, religious devotion,
and a love of learning.
kingdoms were linked for centuries to each other
by trading networks across vast regions of africa,
reminding us that this continent
has always been dynamic, interconnected,
and an integral part of world history.
as europe's middle ages progress,
key regions in africa enter a golden age.
in the east, the swahili coast will blossom
as a new cosmopolitan center of islamic culture.
in the west, the kingdom of benin
will take art and royal authority
to ever-greater heights.
and in the south, great zimbabwe
will grow fabulously wealthy through trade.
while these key african civilizations
would experience unprecedented growth and prosperity,
they would also encounter new conflict--
with each other and, increasingly,
with the outside world.
announcer: on "africa's great civilizations"...
dr. henry louis gates, jr.: the wheel is about to turn
once more for africa.
civilizations throughout the african continent
experience something of a golden age
during europe's middle ages.
sublime artistry, astute political maneuvering,
and daring commercial endeavors
redefine not only how the world sees africa,
but how africa sees itself.
announcer: "africa's great civilizations,
coming up next, only on pbs.
host: between the 11th and the 17th centuries,
civilizations throughout the african continent
experienced something of a golden age.
africa, during europe's middle ages,
was dotted with powerful cities
built on the trade of the riches
of the continent's natural resources
with the outside world.
goods and ideas flowed in and out of africa
along its trade routes,
resulting in sophisticated societies
that were truly cosmopolitan.
with expansion and wealth came tensions
that, inevitably, would lead to conflict.
this period remains defined by sublime artistry,
astute political maneuvering,
and daring commercial endeavors,
which taken together would redefine
not only how the world saw africa
but also how africa would see itself.
[thunder]
our story begins on the shores of east africa,
on the swahili coast, once known as azania.
for over 1,000 years, african merchants
have gathered on this coast to exchange their wares
with other merchants from europe, from persia,
arabia, even as far east as china...
creating a cosmopolitan society
as well-connected as any
in late medieval europe.
the island of zanzibar sits 45 miles
off present-day tanzania in the indian ocean.
here in the darajani market,
in the capital, stone town,
the legacy of commerce that helped make
the swahili coast so prosperous endures.
[speaking native language]
spices, still, but once also ivory and gold.
between 800 and 1600 a.d.,
east africa exported an estimated
500 tons of gold, at a value today
of $25 billion.
woman: swahili culture was basically a result of
deep african traditions that are soaked in the indian ocean
with surrounding cultures and give birth
to this extraordinary and fairly distinct culture.
host: this fertile strip of east african coast
extends 1,800 miles from modern-day somalia
down to mozambique.
the majority of its inhabitants
engaged in fishing and farming.
one metropolis, rhapta, traded with merchants from arabia.
and by the end of the first millennium,
a series of other coastal cities had emerged.
woman: the height of the swahili age,
1000 to 1500, is where you get
the physical coast looking the way we think of it.
the merchant elite had a level of wealth
that is probably new at that time.
host: a fascinating natural phenomenon
that sailors along the coast had been using for centuries
fueled the growth of these cities.
in the first century b.c., a greek navigator named hippalus
noticed that between the months of november and march,
the monsoon winds blow from india towards africa.
that is southwest.
then in april, miraculously,
the winds would reverse,
so, between the months of april and october,
the winds blow from the swahili coast
back northeast towards india.
working with the monsoon wind shifts
dramatically reduced the time it took
to cross the indian ocean...
connecting the east coast of africa since ancient times
with civilizations on the arabian gulf,
in india, and even far-away china.
and using this principle,
merchants have since the time of christ
been coming to the swahili coast
to exchange goods, ideas, and yes, even genes.
by harnessing these winds,
traders could make the 3,000-mile journey
from india to east africa
in as little as 25 days
in wooden boats known as dhows.
classic dhows are still built by hand
at the nungwi boat yard
on the northern tip of zanzibar.
man: there are two types of construction style.
there's dhow, with big stomach, that can carry
lot of things inside,
can float in very shallow water,
but not very good for long way journey.
so, other type of dhow is narrow at the end.
they call them taper-style dhow.
this can cut the movement of the waves
and make easy to cross from the deep sea or rough sea.
host: dhows carry far more than just traded goods
back and forth across the ocean.
prosperity bred competition between cultures and religions.
[speaking native language]
through this long history of trade and intermarriage,
a cross-pollination of cultures and beliefs took place,
and in fact, the most enduring contribution
that the arab immigrants and traders made
was their religion--islam.
as early as the ninth century a.d.,
arabian traders brought islam
to the people of the swahili coast.
woman: it's not that they become arabs
but that they are swahili people
who are practitioners of the islamic faith.
the swahili did adopt islam and they africanize it,
they swahili-ize it.
[indistinct chatter]
man: we do know that the islam that emerges on the coast
is a very distinctive type of islam.
so, the way that they treat the dead,
the way they mark burials, the way they construct ancestors.
the actual physical space of the mosque
and the things that they put in the mosque,
those are all very locally fashioned.
host: islam gave the swahili elite
added entry to the vast common market
of the indian ocean.
fourshey: the swahili did see islam
in terms of its religious value
but they also saw that it helped to improve
the terms of trade, and that
being part of this islamic brotherhood
allowed them access to certain networks.
[horn honking]
host: alongside this growth in trade,
the people along the coast developed their own language,
called kiswahili,
an african language with loan words from arabic,
a lingua franca that unified the cultures
along the coast still further.
[man speaking native language]
host: islam also brought literacy in arabic.
man: because of the necessity to read the koran,
you begin to have koran classes where the alphabet was taught,
and the swahili used that alphabet to write poetry,
to write history of their own towns,
and this contributed to the advancement of the culture.
what we call swahili culture
is a peak of tradition
rather than something new just mushrooming.
traditions which will still be practiced today,
which are actually, um,
originally from a different religion, but
in the indigenous tradition have been absorbed.
[children speaking native language]
host: civilization thrived along the swahili coast,
exemplified by the legendary city-state of kilwa,
located 200 miles south of zanzibar.
its authority at its height
stretched the entire length of the swahili coast.
in the year 1331, ibn battuta,
the muslim world's great explorer and chronicler,
wrote that kilwa was one of the most beautiful
and well-constructed towns in the whole world,
and these ruins testify to its past splendor.
kilwa's fame was legendary and far-reaching.
in 1667, the english poet john milton
referred to kilwa as one of the world's great kingdoms
in his epic poem "paradise lost."
its remarkable rise stemmed from its ideal location.
man: kilwa happens to be the edge where
the monsoon winds that were bringing
the vessels from india, arabia,
this is about the furthest south
that they could directly come.
but if you lived further south of kilwa, you were toast.
exactly. so, kilwa ha ha!
played the middle, and as you know,
in commerce, the middleman
is the one who reaps the profit. yeah.
say, man, you know how long it took
to get this gold here?
you got to pay.
huh? yes, exactly.
and--and these guys would come here
and say, no, no, you can't even get yourselves there.
get south of kilwa, you are going to die.
[laughs] so, all those guys would come here
and stop and wait for, uh--
wait for the wind to change.
yes, exactly.
host: constructed in the 10th century
and subsequently rebuilt,
kilwa's great mosque would become
one of the largest of its kind
in the whole of sub-saharan africa.
this is stunning.
stunningly beautiful.
it is. it is.
how long did it take to build? do we know?
in some sources it shows, like, 10 years to finish.
this part where we are now
was built in the 14th century.
this was just at the time when kilwa
was at its apex of commercial strength.
and i just marvel at the domes, as you see.
yeah. extraordinary.
it's amazingly beautiful.
this is what they call the friday mosque,
which tends to be bigger, where
all people would come here.
it's like sunday church. exactly.
and it symbolizes the glory that was kilwa.
exactly. exactly.
host: kilwa's most ambitious ruler
greatly extended the mosque
in the 14th century
along with a spectacular palace.
so, bertram, who lived in
this modest, little cottage by the sea? [laughs]
this was the place where
the great sultan
al-hasan ibn sulaiman lived.
this was his personal house.
this is where his close family would be, but
it is also a place built in such a way
that he would receive all those
important people,
because he would receive them here.
host: sultan sulaiman was one of a long line of sultans
who embellished kilwa with magnificent buildings.
his palace, known as husuni kubwa,
was built between 1315 and 1330.
it was exquisite, covering 5 acres
and containing 70 rooms.
fleisher: husuni kubwa is an incredible piece of architecture.
it was probably gleaming white,
and as you pulled into the harbor,
you would see this phenomenal palace.
and if you wanted to approach it,
you'd walk up sort of winding your way
up into this massive formal audience court.
there was a sense that the sultan was building into the structure
a sense of drama, a sense of greatness
that had never been done before in east africa.
so, this was the public face of the palace
where affairs of state and general hospitality
would both be...
yeah. sultan sulaiman
is said to be the father of gifts.
what's that mean?
we are told that everyone who would come
and be received here would not leave without
a tiny, little something to tell the story.
a little gold nugget? [laughter]
of course.
a small, little leopard skin?
yes, exactly.
host: the medieval moroccan scholar and traveler ibn battuta
tells us that sultan sulaiman
was renowned as a pious and humble man,
known to share his food with beggars
and even give them his clothes.
but the sultan was not above earthly pleasures.
amidst the ruins of husuni kubwa
rests one of the palace's most luxurious features--
a hexagonal swimming pool.
so, like a jacuzzi.
exactly. with these steps
on which you could sit. yes.
how much water would it hold?
something like 80 cubic meters of water.
a lot of water. yes.
you can imagine how many people
filling one bucket after another until
you fill this pool.
host: it's a lot of buckets. mapunda: exactly.
and this was a place of recreation.
yes.
host: the sultan's court hosted a regular traffic of traders
from across the indian ocean,
and on the city streets,
a cosmopolitan mix of people
reflected both its modernity
and its commercial significance.
fleisher: if you're walking down the street at a place like kilwa,
you would see traders that had come from the interior
meeting people with scarification, with piercings.
you'd see religious teachers from across the indian ocean.
you would see craftspeople working.
people with different amounts of wealth.
some with the ability to build an earthen house,
some with the ability to build a stone house,
some with the ability to build a stone palace.
what unites all of them is
a sort of sense of urban dwelling.
host: sultan sulaiman's prosperity,
and that of kilwa, was built
on a monopoly on the trade in gold and ivory
from the african interior.
and those very precious resources
originated 400 miles inland to the south,
on the zimbabwe plateau.
one african kingdom dominated
the flow of gold from the west,
and the rulers on the swahili coast
became its international brokers.
this extraordinary african kingdom
was extremely well placed
to profit from the great resources it controlled.
that way, to the west, people mined the gold.
and that way, to the northeast, people bought the gold.
and sandwiched in between sat great zimbabwe.
location, location, location.
great zimbabwe lies close
to the most extensive gold workings
in the ancient world.
at its peak, as much as a ton of gold a year
was extracted from this region.
incredibly, half the gold coins in medieval europe
were struck from african gold.
but it wasn't just gold that made
the rulers of great zimbabwe wealthy.
you didn't have to mine the gold
to become wealthy.
trade could be a gold mine, too.
great zimbabwe was known far and wide
as africa's el dorado,
a place shrouded in mystery
and wrapped in tales laden with gold.
the original site, which became the king's palace,
began on the rocky precipice around 1200 a.d.
from here, his kingdom unfolded before him,
as far as the eye could see.
over the following century,
the city spread
into the valley below.
the city of great zimbabwe filled this entire valley.
thousands of adobe buildings,
clustered around larger stone enclosures,
housed more than 15,000 people.
who were the people who created this great civilization
that prospered and flourished here
for more than 200 years?
its builders almost certainly were shona speakers,
ancestors of many of today's zimbabweans,
and heirs to an older civilization
that stretched back to 900 a.d.
man: coming into the city from the countryside,
we first go through areas of fields.
women would be the farmers doing most of the farming.
and then as you come into the city,
you'd be walking in among hundreds and hundreds of houses,
and as you wend your way past all these houses,
you might eventually see the great buildings themselves,
and the most notable is the great enclosure.
host: the great enclosure sat at the heart of a city
that covered nearly 1,800 acres.
its ruler controlled a kingdom
that spanned much of present-day zimbabwe
and surrounding countries.
this is the largest pre-colonial structure
in the whole of sub-saharan africa.
it was a statement of majesty and power,
wealth but also architectural genius.
few people know this site
as well as its former director--
dr. edward matenga.
my god, this is astonishingly beautiful, is it not?
absolutely. and it's the pride of all africans.
the king and his family, would they have lived here, or
what would've happened here on a day-to-day basis?
ordinarily, the king would have lived
on top of the hill, on the summit.
the king's great wife lived in this enclosure.
number-one wife. yes. mm-hmm.
so, the queen had her palace
and the king had his.
absolutely.
why did they need the wall, do you think?
prestige.
the person who is living in this enclosure
is very important.
so, a wall is the signature of power,
of authority, of dignity.
yes.
host: the great enclosure is comprised of
over one million stone blocks,
but absolutely nothing binds these walls together.
mire: those high walls are connected together
without any mortar.
it showed an indigenous, distinct architectural development
in southern africa.
host: the massive outer wall
is over 800 feet long...
rising in places to the height
of a 4-story building.
and ingeniously, it combines with an inner wall
to form an intimidating passageway.
i love these curved walls.
the theory is that
because of social stratification,
these passages would force people
to move in single file.
uh-huh.
to protect the people who live here.
oh, yeah. absolutely.
host: the combined effect of this monumental architecture
remains a marvel to behold,
one of the world's great wonders.
ehret: the kings have the wealth
to hire skilled masons,
and we can see as the years go on at great zimbabwe,
the masons get more and more skilled.
the latest buildings are the most magnificent,
the most wonderfully put together.
and the living areas of the royal family
would've mostly have been more within those particular areas.
they wouldn't have been right out
with the hoi polloi of the society.
this would've been a place of
having to get access
to be able to even to go in there.
host: life in the stone enclosures
was a world apart from the everyday reality
of those living in the crowded streets beyond.
this valley would've been bustling
with the king's enterprising subjects
and filled with the smog
from thousands of cooking fires.
herds of livestock grazed in the valley.
archaeologists have discovered
so many bones of cattle in this valley
that it could be nicknamed the valley of the dry bones.
and that shouldn't surprise us, really, because
cattle sustained this society.
[cow moos]
surprisingly, however, archaeological finds
suggest that only the ruling elite
ate the beef from the cattle.
livestock served as a sign of status.
ehret: these institutions were organized around
ownership of great herds of cattle,
and the chiefs who grew into pedi kings
were people who controlled enormous herds of cattle.
they could lend these cattle out,
and so, they built up a system of subordinate chiefs
within small kingdoms.
host: cattle became the banking system
for the wealth accrued from brokering the trade in gold
with the merchants on the swahili coast.
in addition to gold, the zimbabwe plateau
was also rich in another natural commodity
coveted by those traders from the coast.
there's one very important product
along the limpopo river.
it was a great area of elephant herds.
and swahili merchants coming south
discovered that they could get ivory there.
host: as late as the 16th century,
about 40 tons of ivory were being exported every year
from the swahili coast.
similar amounts were exported
during the heyday of great zimbabwe,
and on every load transported across the kingdom,
great zimbabwe's rulers took a 50% cut.
ehret: the hunters went out to do the killing of the elephant.
one tusk had to go to the chief or the king.
they kept the other tusk.
and then it starts happening with the gold.
so, with half of the gold profits
and half of the ivory profits going to the king,
that gives the king all kinds of power.
now it becomes a tool of state-building.
host: great zimbabwe's enormous significance
can be gleaned not just from the goods it exported
but from those it imported into africa as well.
shards of ming dynasty porcelain
from far-away china have been discovered here,
suggesting that great zimbabweans
liked to dine in style.
matenga: during the ming dynasty, they were getting
blue and white porcelain.
really? yeah. which was used for making plates.
if you had said this when i was growing up,
no one would have believed it.
the myth of africa was that
all these africans are running around,
not being very bright, waiting for some
european to discover them. ha ha ha!
but you're saying that's total rubbish.
the so-called myth of a dark continent
does not hold water.
if you look at 1,000 years of exchange
between this part of the continent
with the indian ocean, across,
and then, of course, beyond to the middle east,
india and china. in other words,
the world was multicultural
over 1,000 years ago.
absolutely. absolutely.
host: by the 1420s, great zimbabwe was in decline.
a new trade route allowed swahili merchants
to circumvent the old routes,
diverting gold before it ever reached great zimbabwe,
leading to its decline and kilwa's as well.
but these towering ruins bear witness
to the civilization that dwelled here so regally
for centuries.
man: it tells us that africans were building cities
in the 13th century and 14th century and 15th century,
contrary to this notion that africa is,
to some people, it's a place where
there are animals and you have a couple of villages.
but it shows that there was substantial
technological and architectural development and that
all these exploits were the work of africans.
matenga: there has been debate about
what is a civilization.
civilization has been rather sort of wrongly defined as
the ability to write, leave text.
i believe in its own way,
this place is a text.
it is a text. it is a text because
a text is about communicating messages.
mm-hmm. so, this is a medium through which
you can communicate messages.
this is a sublime manifestation
of the human spirit.
absolutely.
host: at the same time that great zimbabwe
and the swahili coast
were flourishing in east africa,
civilizations in west africa
were igniting an artistic revolution.
today, benin city is part of nigeria,
completely rebuilt after it was burned and looted
by britain's invading army in 1897.
but at its peak, it was at the center of a kingdom
that controlled over 20,000 square miles.
and at its heart sat the royal palace of the oba, the king.
the sublime art that benin's artists created
reveals an urban society that was both
complex and sophisticated.
these treasures of classic world art
are known today as the benin bronzes.
when i look at that, i see
a brother with dreadlocks wearing a turtleneck.
ha ha! what do you see, art historian?
that's a great commentary on it.
it's an idealized portrait of
one of the kings of benin,
and the dreadlocks, as you are calling them,
are actually strings of coral.
what was the function of the head of the oba?
well, these were placed on a royal altar
in the middle of the palace.
each king, once he died,
had an altar made for him.
they would've been made by a patron
who would've been a later king
honoring his predecessor.
mm.
the man chiefly responsible
for initiating this artistic tradition
was a 15th-century oba
known as ewuare the great.
according to oral tradition,
ewuare seized power from his brother
after years of civil war.
woman: ewuare the great is one of these
remarkable figures in human history
who is seen to have done a lot for the kingdom.
there are many traditions that are credited back to his reign.
i think one of the most important is that
he rebuilds the city and a palace in it.
host: from the year 900, the edo people
had begun to carve a home
out of the west african rainforest.
the people remained within small village chiefdoms,
but over time, a centralized city-state emerged
that by the 15th century was about to undergo
a remarkable transformation.
when ewuare became oba in 1440,
he ordered an extraordinary engineering project--
to rebuild the city as a stronghold
from which he could expand his kingdom.
man: benin had a very elaborate system of earthworks
that went not just around the city itself,
as you might expect, but all throughout the countryside, too.
i think it's the longest earthworks system
in the entire world.
host: estimated to be longer than the great wall of china,
the walls encompassed over 500 surrounding villages
and have been called the world's largest ancient monument.
their purpose was not only to keep out enemies
but to keep out the forest as well.
boundaries are very important
in many indigenous west african societies.
in benin, there's a sense in which
the space of human settlement
was maintained through constant work
to keep the forest at bay.
host: but for ewuare the great,
the city's walls served still another purpose.
thornton: what's interesting about all of those
earthworks around benin
is that their purpose is to keep
people from moving anywhere except through designated areas.
you couldn't go anywhere in benin
without passing through a gate,
and there would be a guard there
and he would inquire about your business
and so on, so, everything was channeled through
this very elaborate bureaucracy.
host: benin city became a military fortress.
residents unhappy with ewuare's restructuring of benin society
were prevented from fleeing.
obedience and control, ewuare believed,
encouraged stability and strength.
but he also knew other ways
to inspire his subjects' loyalty.
akyeampong: one of the things that is notably significant
was that within the palace
he builds quarters for craftsmen,
and that is also connected
to his patronage of the arts
and the flourish of the arts.
host: those craftsmen were known
as servants of the oba.
in return for his patronage and protection,
they produced elaborately detailed
metal plaques that decorated the interior
of the oba's palace.
akyeampong: from that period, we see
militarism become important
and the annexation of territory,
and these then are reflected
in the plaques that are made.
preston blier: they're incredibly detailed
in terms of the portrayal of various figures
in rich kinds of regalia,
engaged in various activities.
you can see the oba or king. in a number of them,
you see various of his ministers and servants and priests.
there are a number of portrayals of
situations of war where they're going to war
or coming back after a military victory.
host: ewuare, the first of 5 great warrior kings,
could mobilize 20,000 soldiers
in a single day.
during the 15th and 16th centuries,
ewuare and his successors
waged a series of wars against neighboring states
and they commemorated their victories
in a most unusual fashion.
suzanne, who is this gentleman?
one of the theories about this work
is it represents not an individual from benin
but rather a defeated enemy of some sort.
i think one of the striking things
in many african art contexts
is there's often as much emphasis given
to honoring somebody of importance
whom one defeated
as there is in portraying
important individuals in one's own society.
so, if you show your enemy as brave
and strong and regal,
and you defeated him,
then you are brave and strong and regal.
exactly, and that's in part the point.
you're saying, "who's the man? me, because i defeated him."
exactly. would he have been beheaded?
most likely. that was one of
the main means of execution, so,
that idea of an honorific portrait head
and a trophy head, they sometimes merge.
but does it look like the defeated king?
no. the idea of an exact representation
is something that for the most part
was not done in africa.
there's much greater sense on timelessness
and monumentality,
which comes when one is creating
an idealized portrait.
host: although they're called bronzes,
these heads are in fact cast from brass.
the intricate skill involved in memorializing their kings,
and their conquered opponents,
speaks to a society that was both
sublimely self-confident and extremely proud.
where does this piece stand
in the canon of late 15th-century art
throughout the world?
this is an extraordinary work,
both in the effect of its presence
and its technology.
and at this time, the casting is
really just very, very thin and very precise.
as a work of art, it really stands
right up there among
the real canon of art history.
host: remarkably, these bronzes
capture a moment that would alter the course
of african history--
the arrival of the portuguese.
to the people of benin, the portuguese
initially represented a new market,
just another group with which to trade.
what's coming from europe?
by this time, the metal is coming from europe
and there is an exchange of individuals,
ideas, and materials.
so, was it a relationship of equality?
each was offering different elements
to the relationship.
for the portuguese, this was
a center for exchange.
for the edo of benin city,
they used the portuguese as soldiers,
and so, in a certain sense,
it was an equal exchange.
so, the king was hiring
portuguese soldiers as mercenaries.
yes. they were hired as mercenaries.
it helped them to expand the domain
of the empire of benin.
host: the portuguese, however,
had expansionist ambitions of their own.
back on the east coast of africa,
by the end of the 15th century,
the swahili stone cities were still thriving.
kilwa, now home to as many as 12,000 inhabitants,
had long minted its own gold coins.
little did they realize that their dominance
was about to be fatally challenged
by portuguese fortune hunters.
topan: the portuguese came with an agenda of their own
and they were very much there to take and to subdue.
laviolette: the portuguese were essentially pirates in many ways.
i mean, they are-- they were a pirate culture
into a very thriving, existing system.
they wanted to co-opt existing trade routes
and make them their own.
they wanted to seize ports.
they wanted to tax ports.
they disrupted a world in which they had no part.
they inserted themselves in that.
they were looking for economic toeholds in different places
and to disrupt and to exploit.
host: the portuguese believed that kilwa
was the key to the gold trade
and eagerly desired to conquer the city
to control that lucrative trade.
bold in ambition, ruthless in method,
the portuguese thought it would be easy to defeat the sultan
and then take control of this sophisticated
market economy.
in 1505, a fleet of 11 heavily-armed portuguese ships
carrying 500 men docked at kilwa.
their captain was francisco almeida,
a proud and experienced man,
recently appointed the portuguese viceroy of india.
when the sultan refused to surrender,
almeida's response was swift.
almeida and his men resorted to force.
they bombarded the city with cannon.
the coral buildings were no match
for all that portuguese firepower.
weakened by infighting and local rivalries,
kilwa was hard pressed to defend itself.
the portuguese attack delivered the final blow
to this once-great city.
as a consequence, almeida and his men
secured a vital strategic stronghold
on the swahili coast.
but they made a fundamental mistake.
arrogantly, they interfered
with a trading economy
that had evolved over centuries.
mapunda: from that moment, east africa
is falling in the hands of the europeans.
mm-hmm. their interest
is not to actually promote trade.
had they been smart, actually, what they would have done,
just to take control politically,
and then let the business go on.
and take their cut.
[laughs] exactly.
but they didn't want to do it.
leave the political parts, they were not interested,
but just the commerce.
now, they did not know that this commerce
has been there going on for a long time
and it was a system.
host: following the sacking of kilwa,
the portuguese continue to upset trade on the swahili coast
in their aggressive pursuit of profits.
laviolette: the effect of the portuguese
on the indian ocean trading system is undeniable.
they came in to disrupt and to exploit,
and it's the whole indian ocean system
that they ended up disrupting.
so, it's the beginning of the decline of a system.
host: but it was more than gold and the spice trade
that the portuguese had been seeking.
their navigators carried a letter
written by the king of portugal himself,
addressed to an individual
who had fascinated europeans for centuries.
their search would lead them
to the ancient christian kingdom of ethiopia.
ethiopia was replete with biblical myth--
a line of kings descended from solomon and the queen of sheba.
the home, legendarily, of the ark of the covenant itself.
but what the portuguese were seeking
was a superhero, a wealthy african king
whose supernatural powers would turn out to be a fantasy
of the european imagination.
a legendary ethiopian king
became a powerful symbol
of the glories of africa.
the embodiment of the riches, romance, and mystery
that europe imagined the continent to hold.
his name was prester john.
the legend of prester john
arose during the crusades of the 12th century.
the idea of a mighty christian ally located in the east
captured christendom's fancy.
he was, it was said, rich and powerful,
descended from one of the 3 magi
and immortal.
the fountain of youth was located in his kingdom,
which explained why he was still around
all these centuries later.
this greatest of kings, prester john,
had thus far eluded his european pursuers.
european monarchs believed that
if they could locate this great king
and forge military alliances with him,
they might be able to reverse the progress
of the muslim forces that had conquered the holy land.
europe's quest for prester john
had a certain appeal for the ethiopians.
woman: the location of prester john kept on moving.
was he in asia? was he--who knew where he was?
and the ethiopians came to europe
and when they heard this myth, they said, "yeah, that's us.
we are those people. our king is the prester john."
so, they corralled this european myth
for their own uses, as it were.
host: the ethiopians had their own reasons
for claiming prester john as their own.
in 1306, ethiopia dispatched an embassy to the king of spain,
requesting aid against their muslim neighbors.
100 years later, a group of ethiopian monks
constituted an official delegation to the papacy.
belcher: we often think of europeans discovering africa,
but of course, in this case,
the ethiopians were discovering europe.
the ethiopians went to europe
in order to make religious connections,
but of course, the political was very much a part of it as well
because ethiopia was surrounded by islam,
and they were anxious to protect themselves.
host: ethiopia had lived in a state of uneasy tension
with its islamic neighbors for centuries.
but in the first half of the 14th century,
christian ethiopia became aggressively expansionist,
seizing the land of neighboring muslim sultanates.
but then those neighbors fought back.
man: by the end of the 14th century,
a strong islamic state emerged
in the eastern highlands of ethiopia.
that was the sultanate of adal.
mm-hmm. so, the sultanate of adal
and the christian kingdom
were in continuous conflict.
the main reason was control of the trade route
that goes to southwestern parts of ethiopia.
it's all about the money.
yeah.
so, the islamic monarchy is expanding.
expanding. at the beginning of the 16th century.
yeah.
host: it seemed that ethiopians had found
the christian ally they'd been looking for.
the king sent letters to portugal
and he was expecting...
reinforcements. yeah, the portuguese
came to assist the christian king,
but by the time that the portuguese came,
he was already dead and he was succeeded by
his son gelawdewos,
and then in that same year,
the portuguese arrived at the...
at massawa.
host: the commander of the portuguese musketeers
was christopher da gama.
he joined forces with the ethiopians
under their leader gelawdewos.
in the year 1543, the ethiopians,
assisted by portuguese reinforcements,
inflicted a sharp defeat on the attacking army
from the sultanate of adal.
they had managed to save the christian kingdom.
[people singing in native language]
host: but this new alliance with the portuguese
would have profound and devastating consequences for ethiopia.
at its root lay a fundamental misunderstanding.
woman: gelawdewos believed that he was receiving
military aid out of christian friendship.
on the other side, in portugal,
they believed the military assistance
was given in exchange for a vow of obedience to the pope.
so, something very, very important
had been lost in translation there.
[people chanting in native language]
host: with the portuguese mercenaries
came a different kind of army-- the jesuits.
they were roman catholics in search of converts.
windmuller-luna: the ethiopian orthodox christian church
is one of the oldest christian churches in the world,
and the catholics admired that,
but they also believed that it was full of errors
and that it had become heretical.
belcher: they sent these priests to ethiopia
in order to convert them, and this is
one of the more bizarre of all historical moments
when christians go to convert christians to christianity.
host: by 1606, ethiopia had a new emperor--susenyos.
seeking to counter the power of the ethiopian orthodox church,
susenyos developed an interest in catholicism.
what happened is that there was a jesuit
who loved ethiopia.
he said to the emperor, look, the church is wonderful.
christianity is wonderful.
you really don't have to change anything.
this is really about politics.
if you say that you are, you know,
agreeing to be a part of the pope's kingdom,
that just helps us all to fight islam.
host: susenyos converted.
determined to gain total control of his kingdom,
he outlawed the ethiopian orthodox church,
which was supported by powerful and rival nobles.
the people of ethiopia didn't take kindly
to the outlawing of their faith,
a faith, after all, that they had practiced
for over 1,000 years.
ordinary people, the nobility,
the clergy of the ethiopian orthodox church
all refused to convert to roman catholicism.
and what followed was a catastrophe for ethiopia.
in the wake of susenyos' conversion,
ethiopia plunged into a civil war
that lasted 5 years.
in the fighting between the forces of susenyos
and those who resisted conversion,
the death toll was enormous.
on the last day of fighting alone,
8,000 people were killed.
by 1632, susenyos was a broken man.
he had little choice but to abdicate
in favor of his son fasilides.
windmuller-luna: fasilides was adamantly pro-orthodox,
and the very first thing he did was to turn the kingdom's faith
back into ethiopian orthodox.
the second thing he did was to expel
the jesuits from the court,
and very soon after, he expelled them from the country.
belcher: this failed attempt of the jesuits in ethiopia
turned out to be a great blessing to the ethiopians,
and that's because they had an early experience
of exactly what colonialism would be.
the ethiopians decided that this was not for them
and they were never colonized again.
host: susenyos' ploy, however,
had opened up deep rifts
in ethiopian society.
fasilides faced a huge challenge.
but he was a man who understood the power of symbolism, and so,
he turned to architecture.
he believed that by building a great, new capital city,
he could provide a unifying focal point
for a nation that had spent years
riven by religious division and anarchy.
oral tradition states that a buffalo
led fasilides to a spot north of lake tana,
where a hermit told him he should build a city.
4 years after fasilides ascended the throne,
he commenced work on a permanent stone capital
for his ancient country,
perched high on a volcanic ridge
at gondar.
windmuller-luna: prior to the establishment of gondar,
the capitals of ethiopia were roving.
they moved from place to place seasonally.
but in gondar, you had settlement
at the same place for hundreds of years,
going all the way into the 18th century.
so, given this stability in terms of place,
the empire's power was consolidated.
host: at the heart of the city sat fasilides' castle.
the castle enclosure, known as fasil ghebbi,
covered 70,000 square meters
and was surrounded by an imposing wall
more than half a mile long.
its design was a bold statement
of imperial intent.
windmuller-luna: the gondarine style is characterized
by large towers topped by these egg-shaped domes
and grand staircases on the outside.
you also have these sort of crenellations at the top.
gives it a bit of a fortified look.
host: within 20 years, gondar had expanded
to become the largest city in the ethiopian empire.
with a population just over 25,000,
and a remarkable 44 churches,
gondar became a flourishing center for the arts.
windmuller-luna: under the gondarine kings,
there was a cultural explosion.
you had a royal court centered in a city
where there were workshops of painters
as well as monks producing illuminated manuscripts,
and it really allowed art to flourish.
host: coming out of a time of
bitter division within the country,
gondar was fasilides' reassertion
of the supremacy of the emperor,
as well as a vision of optimism and confidence
for the future of the ethiopian empire.
fasilides had redeemed the catastrophic error
of his father's plan.
and even today, his legacy lives on.
fasilides' bath in gondar
is filled with water once a year
for the timkat festival,
when ethiopians gather
to celebrate jesus' baptism.
[all cheering]
belcher: this is what people don't know about africa,
is that there were these amazing cities
that were effervescent.
people were writing, people were creating things,
people were doing innovations in law, in trade,
and gondar was a great example of that.
host: the rise of these sophisticated
and ambitious civilizations
on the swahili coast, in great zimbabwe,
at benin city, and at gondar
was an indication of africa's continuing engagement
with europe, the middle east, and asia,
absorbing foreign influences
and transforming them into something
uniquely african.
this period of ingenuity, creativity,
and daring commercial ambition
would fuel the world's curiosity about africa
for centuries to come.
but the wheel was about to turn once more.
kingdoms in west africa would undergo profound changes
as they were drawn ever more deeply
into the political economies of the atlantic world.
these links would generate great wealth and power
but also disruption, tearing 12 million people
from its shores.
[thunder] while a revolution based on faith
would lay the foundations
of one of the largest
and most culturally vibrant empires
in the history of africa.
announcer: on "africa's great civilizations"...
dr. henry louis gates, jr.: europe's exploration of the americas
ignites a race for riches that turns the world
upside down.
this new world becomes synonymous with trade,
and a crucial component of trade
is the shipping across the atlantic
of 12 1/2 million africans as slaves.
powerful empires rise and fall
during this time of seismic global change.
announcer: "africa's great civilizations,"
coming up next, only on pbs.
africa's great civilizations is available on blu-ray and dvd.
to order visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-play-pbs.
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