APWH CH 9 - Africa and the Spread of Islam

Stateless societies

societies of varying sizes organized through kinship and lacking the concentration of power found in centralized states.

Maghrib

Arabic term for northwestern Africa.

Almohadis

a later puritanical Islamic reform movement among the Berbers of northwest Africa; also built an empire reaching from the African savanna into Spain.

Juula

Malinke merchants who traded throughout the Mali Empire and west Africa.

Sundiata

created a unified state that became the Mali empire; died in 1260.

Ibn Batuta

Arab traveler throughout the Muslim world.

Timbuktu

Niger River port city of Mali; had a famous Muslim university.

Songhay

successor state to Mali; dominated middle reaches of the Niger valley; capital at Gao.

Hausa

peoples of northern Nigeria, formed states following the demise of Songhay Empire that combined Muslim and pagan traditions.

Muhammad the Great

extended the boundaries of Songhay in the mid-16th century.

Sharia

Islamic law, defined among other things the patrilineal nature of Islamic inheritance.

Zenj

Arabic term for the east African coast.

Benin

powerful city-state (in present-day Nigeria) that came into contact with the Portuguese in 1485 but remained relatively free of European influence; important commercial and political entity until the 19th century.

Kongo

large agricultural state on the lower Congo River; capital at Mbanza Congo.

Great Zimbabwe

with massive stone buildings and walls, incorporates the greatest early buildings in sub-Saharan Africa.