Summary of Howard W. French's Born in Blackness

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 The city of Djenné, Mali, was the oldest known urban civilization in Africa outside of Egypt. It was also the most recently discovered example of a major ancient urban civilization.

#2 The city of Djenné in Mali was one of the first to trade with the outside world, hundreds of years before Arabs arrived in North Africa. It thrived by trading fish, grains, and copper and other metals with places hundreds of miles away.

#3 The Ghana Empire was ruled by a Muslim elite, but the capital city was located six miles away from another capital city that was still honoring older, ancestral religions. This allowed the empire to benefit from both lucrative trade and peaceful relations with the Berbers.

#4 The gold that flowed out of the Sudan played a crucial role in the Arab golden age, a period of explosive growth and political expansion that began around 750 CE and extended until the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669384106

IRB Media

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Insights on Howard W. French's Born in Blackness

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The city of Djenné, Mali, was the oldest known urban civilization in Africa outside of Egypt. It was also the most recently discovered example of a major ancient urban civilization.

#2

The city of Djenné in Mali was one of the first to trade with the outside world, hundreds of years before Arabs arrived in North Africa. It thrived by trading fish, grains, and copper and other metals with places hundreds of miles away.

#3

The Ghana Empire was ruled by a Muslim elite, but the capital city was located six miles away from another capital city that was still honoring older, ancestral religions. This allowed the empire to benefit from both lucrative trade and peaceful relations with the Berbers.

#4

The gold that flowed out of the Sudan played a crucial role in the Arab golden age, a period of explosive growth and political expansion that began around 750 CE and extended until the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century.

#5

The story of Abu Bakr II and the ocean voyage he supposedly took is hard to believe, but it contains logical elements that argue for taking it seriously. The first is that by spending time in the Canary Islands, off West Africa, we know that Columbus discovered the existence of powerful winds and ocean currents that circulate in a counterclockwise fashion and swiftly carry ships off to the west.

#6

The idea of a voyage of ocean discovery for Africans, or at least the harboring of such an ambition, does not seem as farfetched as it might seem. Mali had been sending embassies to Cairo and other cities in the Arab world since the mid-thirteenth century, and had converted to Islam in the second generation of its existence.

#7

The rise of Mali was helped by the fact that its leaders were aware that adherence to Islam by itself was not a sufficient guarantee of their security. They knew that they would have to join the network of trade and learning that was developing in the region.

#8

The Mali Empire was already aware that on the far shores of the Mediterranean lay another landmass, which was Europe. They were looking for new territories to trade and diversify their relations with.

#9

The legend of Abu Bakr II, which claims that the Mali Empire was about to launch a voyage of ocean discovery, was just a cover story for an abrupt shift in the line of Malian imperial succession.

#10

The entrance of Mūsā into Cairo in 1324 was filled with drama. He was accompanied by a sixty-thousand-person delegation, including twelve thousand slaves, each of whom carried a four-pound fan of gold.

#11

Mūsā’s audience with al-Malik al-Nāsir, the Mamluk ruler, was the most lavish gift he gave in Egypt. The account of Mūsā’s visit to al-Nāsir varies in some of the finer details, but in all of them, Mūsā comes across as both prideful and shrewd.

#12

The visit by the Sudanese king Mūsā to Egypt was a major disappointment for him. The many acts of profligacy by the visiting king and his vast retinue actually undermined Mali’s image.

#13

The trip also reinforced the reputation of sub-Saharan Africa as an inexhaustible source of Black bondsmen and women. And this legacy would come to haunt the region for the next five and a half centuries.

#14

The history of Mali was short, but it was the first African