By
Sampson I.M Onwuka
The Syria-Byzantine-Greek is one of
the languages that gave birth to what is in fact possible in many parts of the
world. Even in modern times, it was always Syria and the Red sea that Govern as
much as Arab legendary history and in very modern times. It is only in the
course of time, did a separation exist between Asia and the Americans. In the
time of Christopher Columbus, we met his view of the whole of his discovery of
a place that is now called America, and the story as it goes suggest that the
Columbus was in that part of the world as some point after the 1492. We have
not noted what took Columbus to that part of world in the very first place. We
have not also asked why all of a sudden these people from different parts of
Europe descended into Africa, into deeper parts of Europe, to India, and to
other parts of the America.
The story is told in such a way that we come out
believing at times that in Christopher Columbus coming to America, he was sent
by the Spanish Royalty of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492, to discover the new
lands of America. If that is considered true by any stretch, we may lean
towards asking the question whether or not Christopher Columbus made it to
America on first visit. For if we have enough information to indicate that
Christopher Columbus landed in America in the first visit or consequent visit
before the official adventure in order of Isabella, we may say that Christopher
Columbus never made it to America on a discovery level, that the place that he
arrived at was none other than the Caribbean, where perhaps he learns of the
lands faraway, the so called ‘otro modus’, the other world, a noted world
nonetheless. In his letter to Isabella and Ferdinand, he cited that he has
discovered a New Land, more than anything Spain has seen for such a long time.
And it is through this accord that we find a connecting thread between Spanish
travelers a decade later and the first missions to the place we regard as
Domingo.
The story is told many times, the story is part of the same thing, and
the story is quite What we now presume is that this land called America was
accidentally discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 or sometime later. In
essence, Christopher Columbus appeared in that part of the world only by
accident and only in the same year where a major part of world history took
place. This history is nothing we have never seen or heard, but here we are
tempted to explore the broad stroke of history from the standpoint of Muslim
and Jewish expulsion from Spain. The ships of Columbus has been described by
many as a Viking Ship, a fact that we may yet explore, yet still, we can say
that Columbus ships carried people no longer at ease in Spain to a new land
that was not America, it was in all respect, the Caribbean.
There is no doubt
that Columbus arrived in the Caribbean first and fore mostly, and it was in the
Caribbean that he met or at least sojourned all of the other adventurers from
Spain, including the likes of Guzman Domingos and Prester John as we have noted
early. What is however missing from this point is what these groups of people were
doing in that part of the world, and when they reached there. We have to look
very closely at the role of Columbus, who was master of 15 ships, where the
flag ship as they called, Santa Maria, was captained by a certain Pietro. This
history is not new but we may not square that with the incident regarding the
people contained or crammed in the 15 ships, most of whom were mainly Muslims
and Jews, at least they were not part of the Christian society as the Edith of
1492 of Alhambra suggest. In essence, Columbus carried certain people with
them, and these people as we have noted were not The point of history is too
clear that those who arrived at the New World were not carrying European Whites
at all, or some sprinkling of them, that they were not Christians is beyond
dispute.
For the practical demarcation between the Catholic Church and those
who were not Christians at all existed in Spain, for the war against the
Muslims including none Christians for practical religious reasons of enhanced
possibility of success, not unlike the Crusades. So who were they and where did
they come from? They were none other than Jews and Muslims, Muslims especially
who has ruled Europe for such a long time. What we notice in the time past and
what we know today is that Muslims were in many parts of Europe even before the
advent of Erik the Red, especially the European Islands which was conquered by
Vikings, within the same century. It seems rather a co-incidence that Muslims
and Jews, departing parts of Europe, could only find solace in no other part of
the World but in a place where the Vikings one sailed and explored. The
Norsemen are nothing Muslim by history, which is only true in so far as current
history also deny that Muslims of Africa were always and entirely Arabs, and
every Arab essentially a Muslim.
This is not the case. Most Arabs after the 9th
century appearance of the Ishmaelite in Egypt, came from Syria, at a time when
Syria was still very much part of Africa. In many sense therefore, we may say
eagerly that Syria was very instrumental in the formation of the ‘Twelfers’ of
the twelve tribes of the Ishmael, who determined the fate of Islam, the very
head of it all, but deep down are others, the Persians and the Africans of say
Fezzan, and these two were neither Arabs or particular Whites. European Muslims
and their role of exploration is therefore dimly lit, in so far as we can say
that they make our world is littered with unrealized explicating of actual
history of the world. We know that the nothing could have better persuaded the
Christian coalition in Spain to fight against the world of Muslims, did they
not see what was in store for them. The catastrophe of the decision has never
departed Spain, who perhaps needed to be free from others.
The disaster of 1492
Spain in nothing else than the religious expurgation, where the departing group
were scattered through the World, especially Africa, and the New World –
assuming it was New at all. The role of Persia in spreading Islam is not also
documented and who and what the Khazars (Khazaria) were, and their role in
widening the Arabic society is not that documented, we may also say that there
is nothing to compel anyone to believe or doubt about the so called group of
people, for if we hope educate the minds of the society of how deep the spread
of Islam is, we may say.... But it is difficult to prove that point, largely
because a place called America was supposed to have gotten its name from a
certain Vespucci. The claim is that the name supposedly came down to the
current generation through a certain man by America Vespucci. It has been
argued by a host of people that such is not the case that Vespucci may have
claimed to have discovered the Quattro Pas, the Fourth part of the Atlas, sometime
before Columbus. Too much have happened regarding the efficacy of the argument
that seeks to largely oppose Vespucci’s claims.
Yet alternative theories on the
discovery of America so to speak, relate the history concerning the people and
culture as we noted in the time past. In the context of the writing concerning
the claims, it does appear that all explicating was resolved in the favor of
Columbus, such that the likes of Sebastian Cabot and other post 1450 century
navigators indicated that the story about Vespucci was essentially redoubtable.
It is not impossible to claim that the story about Vespucci was only
progressively popular, and for one thing, the popularity of the man as the name
for the fourth part of the Atlas was never certain until the founding of the
United States of America. It does not mean that the name America has not been
in use, but the name was general to a point such that the area we call America
is based on old maps included a portion of the initial 13 colonies.
Samuel
Eliot Morrison is a respected Historian of early history and the discovery of
America. In his book the ‘European Discovery of America’, he raised the
ultimate question about the travels supposedly made by Vespucci and the
incident leading to some of the conclusions on the subject which his letter
suggests. There is a reason why is has to be the Viking who re-discovered
America, for it seems that we forget so easily, that the presence of other
factors concerning the conquest of the people and in the land.
The incident of
the people that follow their path and between these people and the rest of Asia
are a long chain of the Islands which were conquered by these Vikings in
familiar light of Muslims and Islam. We have stated before that these lands
supposedly conquered by Vikings or at least visited by Vikings and Saracens
were so names after Alla, and that the name alla, is also part of the same
rubric ala in many languages including the African Igbo, which is land in
English, which appear in all the statements and saying in the forms of the
lands of God, and in the instance, England, taken and captured by Vikings and
then Normans, Ireland, captured by Vikings, so also is Scotland.
But there are
other lands such as Sheltland, Faroe land, Iceland, Greenland, and Baffin land,
are what Elliot Samuelson once described as “series of island stepping-stones
from Europe to America, parallel to those East Asia to Alaska”. It is therefore
not enough to exist to see how and why these lands where simultaneously
conquered by the Vikings and the so called Norsemen.
There is nothing to
pretend about the possibility of their landing in that part of the world, but
if we look into the facts surrounding the founding of these places which
surrounds America, then there is so much to doubt about the discovery of even
Caribbean in the name of Spain The issue is not the name that became the
Americans or the conception of the name, rather the issue is the map, the old
map that contains much of the name and information about America, is published
from ages past and the map contains evidence of permanence of paper and
reference which enabled a rebirth of the name over the years.
Whether the
people who translated part of the letter from Wardseemuller, a cosmography and
publisher, badly translated or not, we may seem to indicate that both the error
and the misinterpretation of the error, would have handed is perhaps
responsible for the enduring power of the name America.
The error was probable
not Vespucci’s, or even Wardseemuller’s, the error may have occurred from the
zeal of latter day scholars who may read their own meaning into the discoveries
and travels of Vespucci, which included a date that suggest that he was the
first to reach America. It cannot be taken for granted that the printing of the
Cosmographies annual edition may have made the case that compelling for a
populist crowd, or can it be taken for granted that Vespucci is Amerigos last
name not the first, for all these may combine to even perpetuate a greater
error that either Vespucci or Columbus discovered America in the decade of
1490-1500, AD.
We shall begin by looking in the sample of the letter Vespucci
where allusions of discoveries were supposedly to have been made and avoided to
Vespucci. It is claimed that Vespucci made the statement that “These regions we
may rightly call Mundus Novus, a New World, because our ancestors had no
knowledge of them….I have found a continent more densely peopled and abounding
in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa.” This statement is from a man who
is believed to have travelled to several parts of the world before making it to
the Americans. And the statement indicate the man was as much aware of the
seize of the crowd of human beings in America, for it seems that Amerigos
Vespucci, was relaying an incident that was either exaggerated or was based on
stories which were popular in his time.
Yet we can see the writing from the
point of view of a world that was gradually evolving for the New Europeans, for
it seems that the inability of Europeans to investigate some of the claims made
by these 15 century explorers substantiated their basic assumptions. What we
may also note is the very attempt to woe the Majesty whose only investigation,
can proclaim that a certain people or place has been discovered for the
interest of the general public, hence the history which is likely to follow the
view. In order to win the approval of their Majesties and the people who make
the discoveries possible, we may likely seek other examples of the room and
need for publicity which are the Press.
We may yet state that the above
statement is not that far from Columbus’s statement about the blessing that is
entirely America, abounding in wealth which only time proved him right. In the
words of Columbus before his passing, mentioned that “By the Divine Will I have
placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen an Other World, whereby
Spain, which was reckoned poor, is to become the richest of all countries.” Why
there is something to note about these two statements and how they evolved over
the centuries, we cannot pretend that enough does not exist to prove the
statement from Columbus false to a point, amended through the years, as has become
the tradition of some Spanish authors regarding their 15c.
For one thing, Spain
at the time of Columbus was the greatest country on earth, there was no country
that attempted to rival Spain in the 15c, as such the 18th and 19th century
view of Spain as a poor country in Europe is not the same as Spain at the
height of its power in the 15c and 16th century, besides the Moors who were
themselves masters of Europe, or at least one of the masters of Europe, ruled
from Granada Spain. Granada had one of the best Architectural Buildings of
Europe in the 15c, and it is said that Alhambra was the Crown Jewel of Granada,
built from Red Earth.
As such the supposed statement by Columbus couldn’t have
been true, for it seems that the America of the 15c was reduced to a small
state in Africa. But this is not the motivation of this article, this article
explores some of the claims in the early years of the works and workers
concerned, for if we look at the claim about the dense population of the
America as also noted in the statement of Vespucci and compare them to the
statement in the light of claims of slavery, we may begin to see some of the
assumption in even Vespucci’s comments. How anyone will acquire slaves from the
Indians and at the same time replace them with slaves from Africa is ridiculous
to the point of densely ‘populated people’.
The central fix in this man’s
argument may not dwell on this issue clearly enough, unless we make some review
about the forces that determined the evolution of the story or stories
concerning the people concerned. But the presence and role of Wardseemuller may
go the distance to make the point quite clear. First we need to repeat the story
for the general good of the reporting and so on, that one, Wardseemuller was at
time of the incident an ‘instructor’ at a College of St. Die in Eastern France,
and he was involved in the process of publishing the new edition of Ptolemy
Atlas, titled ‘Cosmographie Introduction’ (1507) “…et quarta orbis pars (quam
quia Americus inveunit (sic) Amerigen /quasi Americi terram / sive Americam
nuncupure licet) (…and the fourth part of the Globe, which, since Americus
discovered it, may be called Amerige or Land of Americus, or America…).
And
according to many sources, the same publisher by name Wardseemuller supposedly
repeats the statement in time to make the room other forms of discusses on the
Wardseemuller is believed to have also placed the name AMERICA at the fore
front of the book covering the South and North of what is now the continent of
America. Several arguments have been made about the name and how it stuck over
the years in terms of the America. Some refer to the naturalness of the name in
respect to other places of the world, others may refer it to something else,
but somehow everyone believes that the name stuck for a combination of other
factors which we are likely to examine.
Beginning with the literary
interpretation of the statements, we are seriously concerned with what we can
make out the statement in direct connection likely to look at the statements
closely and draw significant from a literary perspective, and that involves
looking at the relationship between the lines in the first quotes of Vespucci
as Wardseemuller represented it, and the second statement as it is believed to
be a repeat of Wardseemuller. We are likely to form the opinion about the
Wardseemuller and Vespucci on the context of the first statement, since the
first statement need no second guessing and such the second version cannot
apply as the real statement.
Even we push the argument that the first torched
the second, we are likely to do so on the presumption that Wardseemuller and
Vespucci did not corporate with each, and no point exists to cast aspersions on
the deduction that is likely the case and may likely take place before these
people. As such we left we the statement that one, “…et quarta orbis pars (quam
quia Americus inveunit (sic) Amerigen /quasi Americi terram / sive Americam
nuncupure licet) (…and the fourth part of the Globe, which, since Americus
discovered it, may be called Amerige or Land of Americus, or America…)And this
theme allows you to view the disappearing quotations from the earliest evidence
of the printing that one, Wardseemuller’s statement was badly mutilated to the
degree that we cannot for one make out what he is saying in full. In a sense,
those who began this propaganda for Vespucci, adapted their position to
Wardseemuller in such a way that the reader in many other circles of the world,
would see the whole interpretation for themselves, such that we are likely to
view the statement from the point of reduction with little or no relationship
to the actual statement by Wardseemuller.
The statement is not true and worthy
of great scholastic since it is riddled in ellipsis and in complete sentences,
and secondly the quotation “…et quarta orbis pars (…and the Fourth part of the
Globe...)” may suffer from bad translation, for the disappearing statement in
the way we now observe them, may be reduced to other translations for instance,
(…to the Fourth part of the Orbit), which instantly changes the statement, to
mean that a ‘Fourth Part of the Globe’ was already known, and was perhaps
navigated from time to time, and from all indication, it will seem to unlikely
to appear that a second or other parts of the ‘quarta orbis pars’ was
discovered, or that explorers at the time of the publication of a ‘cosmography’
edition submitted an addition to the ‘Fourth part of the Globe’ which became by
the edition, a Vespucci contribution, by title America.
The remaining part of
the first quotation from Wardseemuller, suggested the following that one
“…(quam quia Americus inveunit (sic) Amerigen /quasi Americi terram / sive
Americam nuncupure licet) (…and the fourth part of the Globe, which, since
Americus discovered it, may be called Amerige or Land of Americus, or
America…)” “…quarta pars per Americum Vesputium (ut in sequentibus audietur)
inventa est / quam non video cur quis iure vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis
ingenii viro Amerigen quasi Americi terram / sive Americam dicendam; Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint nomina. (…Since another fourth part
(of the world) has been discovered by Americus Vesputius (as will be seen in
what follows), I do not see why anyone should object to its being called after
Americus the discoverer, a man of natural wisdom, Land of Americus or America,
since both Europe and Asia have derived their names from women.) It is too obvious
that in the statement as well, that there is nothing to hide about the words in
bracket, which is naturally in conflict with the first line of the statement,
suggesting at least on the minimum that a later redactor inserted the claim for
Vespucci.
It is not wrong to claim that the words in the form that they
essentially appear, made it possible for people to dwell on this fact very
closely, for it seems that the earliest extant material on the Vespucci’s saga,
made it impossible to dwell on this facts very clearly, where alterations in
the form of commentaries became perpetuated as the story and as the fact. We
are likely to dwell on the changes that the enduring lines, et al, “Land of
Americus, or America…”, once we note that the copyist carefully manipulated
these lines to suit his or her argument about the founding of a land, we can
see why it endured, since it seems necessary that the words above suggest
entitlement to Vespucci.
How the first name of a man by name Albert Vespucci,
was also tried and embroidered into the frontal piece as Amerigo from Albert,
from which America resulted, may be a lengthy discourse, but in more ordinary
levels, there is a greater look at the name Amerigo, which hardly appear in
many parts of ancient Latin, which became the central puzzle on a land far
away. If a place is to be called after a man, they naturally follow the path of
the last name or the surname, and at no point does it seem that the surname
Vespucci appear anywhere else, saving for the coordinates, which is based on
existing names and family. In reality as we shall also discuss, the word
America, simply refers to a Land of a certain people, and the construct of the
name/s may widen the mind construction of the later day cryptic who created the
error, for while the name Ameri (Am Eri) is not new, and literarily refers to
‘domain of Eri’ or ‘place of Eri’ and very evident in the name Emeri, part of
syllable Rudrik, Erik, Henrik, Henri, it is the later incident of the name
Ama-eri-ka, that seem to invoke the great difficulty with the final chip in the
puzzle about the incidents of 15c.
Yet the solution with the discovery of
America is the name, which somehow manages to spoil the highly choreographed
falsifications of Columbus and Vespucci, and survives the years of misleading
stories about the role of Ferdinand and Isabella is directing Columbus to move
South, as if Columbus who was later jailed and chained by Isabella, who in life
identified himself as Moro (Moor), was working on a master plan from Spain
towards the discovery of America. What we may say that enough exists from the
statement from the purported statement of Wardseemuller - whose name suggest
Norman and Moorish origin – originally from Germany, that the incidents of
Vespucci is probably not true, furthermore, the claim of discovery America by
Columbus is also not true. It may seem that these two sea captains were aware
of the effects of publishing on the general crowd, a process which Gutenberg
perfected but did not originate.
This process of publishing perpetuated the
error in the 18th century, and not before. It will also seem that Vespucci who
accompanied Hojeda (Ojeda), one of Columbus’s Travel Guide, may have also
hinted Vespucci on a secret, which gave Vespucci the impudence to encourage any
misunderstanding with the printing, as if to also claim a ‘claim’ for himself
as Columbus may have also done. We are looking at the possibility of two claims
from two people who have little and no reason to doubt each other’s mental
pre-occupation, for it seems that there all people who ruled in the domain of
Eri were in serious decline, and the bunch of them were mainly interested in
rediscovery of the old navigation route, used maps already enhanced and
perfected by a disappearing group.
It is not easily to illustrate the
insignificance of Vespucci and Columbus, and we can only hope to make amend on
the claims on the context of the statement and history regarding the
exploration of the 15c, where it all seems that all hell broke loose for the
European explorers and the English, when in no small measure we notice the
arrival of these people to a land far away. Or was it? The familiar statements
of the American Philosopher by name Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his sloppy and
overly done ‘English Traits’ mentioned that “Strange that…broad America must
wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at Seville, who
went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda (Ojeda), and whose highest naval
rank was boatswain’s mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this
lying world to suppress Columbus and baptize half the world with his own
dishonest name”
That statement also appeared in the Morison’s book, but in such
a way as to suggest that the man was attacking Vespucci. Such commentary is not
without the impact of the civil society for nothing in the context of American
society may mean that US would have been called Columbus or Christopher
Columbus as the case with Amerigos. What we can also miss from this point is
that Amerigos in the context of the discussions, evolve through the picture
carefully, and the fact that the ‘Land of Americus’ has nothing to do with
Amerigos, can only be explained by the acceptance since it was not the land of
Amerigos. We must also note that nothing in the history of America in the last
100 years or thereabout remotely mentions the faults with the claims, that
neither Spain or England, were maritime champions in the 15c, that in fact the
name Armada, which sounds (at least to me as Am-edda) refers to a group of
explorers, older than the foundation of Royal Spain in 1494, on whose shoes the
Spanish house of Aragon and Castile essentially carried on...
There is also the
word ‘marine’ which now refers to life inside the water, a name that is evident
in Spanish history, a name that is only African through and through, for this
Marine, refers an Old Empire on the Red Sea, on what in Ancient and Modern
times, is Africa, Egypt to be sure. Merimde, Merida, Meriden, are terms that
are African through and through, terms that are associated with navigation on
the continent of Africa, terms that are reserved for explorers, who became much
more portent with the rise of Islam and the collapse of Persia into the hands
of Arabs. It is not small statement to say that no useful part of the open Sea
Navigation belongs to Europe before 1415, and no small part of their
interference with masters of navigations, the Africans, the Persians, the
Arabs, especially the Africans, seem evident after 800 AD.
We shall delve into
this discussion from the point of view of a man who wrote in the time past by
name Henry Pirene, especially his book ‘Mohammed and Charlemagne’, and shall
discuss in full some of the writings of a certain man by Thompson on his
‘Social and Economic History of the Middle ages’. Before we continue, we may
look at the second statement, “…quarta pars per Americum Vesputium (ut in
sequentibus audietur) inventa est / quam non video cur quis iure vetet ab
Americo inventore sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen quasi Americi terram / sive
Americam dicendam ; cum &Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint nomina.
(…Since another fourth part (of the world) has been discovered by Americus
Vesputius (as will be seen in what follows), I do not see why anyone should
object to its being called after Americus the discoverer, a man of natural
wisdom, Land of Americus or America, since both Europe and Asia have derived
their names from women.)
This second statement which is believed to have come
by of way of Wardseemuller, may be the reason behind the difficulty in settling
the issue, for it seems at least to the best of us, that the reiteration of
Wardseemuller’s words in one of his publications, whose original is no longer
extant, may indicate that the connection of the word to the saying ‘Land of
Americus, since both Europe and Asia have derived their names from women’ may
have done more in perpetuating the name and in giving some credibility to the
statement. If the original copy from where the statements from which the
account where were copied does not exist anywhere by stretch of history, there
is nothing to come to grasp with the statement that Vespucci who was called a
man of “natural wisdom”, regarded as the “discoverer” of America had anything
to do with Wardseemuller.
The statement was probable inserted by someone else,
and that is where the confusion begins and ends, for here there is no where we
can verify the sources and the accounts about the Atlas, nor see the entire
pages since the document was ascertained more than once to be longer be extant.
Whether we lift the name Albert Vespucci to the sailor to replace Amerigos
Vespucci as a derivative, and from there to become Americus Vespucci, to
Americus, is entirely up to the reader who has to understand what essentially
is going on over years. We are only left with one option and one option only,
to look at the evidence of remaining papers and make all the amends in terms of
business and business community.
Here only first class scholars can interpret
the whole incident very clearly, that as much as Europe was named after a Iopa,
a supposed daughter of a Pharaoh, captured by an Ensi (a Chief) which is a
general term as the name Zeus, and taken to an island far away, we can remain
attentive to choreography of words which indicate that the names of other
continents as woman’s name may indirectly but inaccurately survived the much of
everyone’s else. Iopa’s brother, Kadmos, was said to sail out to look for Iopa,
but was never successful. And as the story goes, Iopa was taken to the West
which is what we now call Netherlands, and what is now Europe. Asia on the
other hand and as a story is difficult to square in the context of being a
woman’s name, for no such history or indication is actually available.
The
origin of the name seems difficult to demonstrate saving for more realized view
that Asia existed at some point or another as a name of a people, perhaps as a
name that was not that whole, perhaps a name that changed from ancient form to
its modern corruption. In terms of America, we cannot exactly indicate that the
name is exactly and completely what it is, for even we say that the name of the
man was Amerigo, we can still indicate that the Amerigo is looked upon as a
Latin female version of America. The inference from the Amerigo as a name makes
it very clear that the name in of itself could not have been appropriate in
terms of the provisions of the insertion, by necessity the female name in
context of Amerigo which the poor redactor inserted, defeats the purpose of the
claim, since America as a name could not have survived as a male version of
Amerigo when the name Amerigo, is supposedly the female genitive of America.
Unless we insert that Amerigo Vespucci is a woman, whom the author and later
redactors attempted to appropriate as the soul of the New Continent from a male
bias, then surely the statement is not from the Publisher, Wardseemuller. We
may further indicate that the lines also suggest the redactor’s
pre-occupations, for it seems clear that him or her that inserted the
description, cannot be that opposite and complete at the same time, for we know
too well that praising a man or woman before completely verifying the facts
tells us too much about the other and about the publication. If we pretend that
Wardseemuller inserted the statement, then we can say that the man was leading
a campaign for the bearer of the name, Vespucci.
It may seem to also say that
the praises on the name is all of sudden a matter of necessity where the name
is lousily incorporated into the main, irrespective of Vespucci as the main name,
for sure, the publishers may have been motivated by other names which was well
received, a name that was perhaps existing at some point, a name that must have
been forgotten but now fleshed in the names of Amerigo and Vespucci. In some
sense, the name Vespucci is as sound as Amerigo, may even on its own even
strike a match in public ear as the name Americus, yet the name America was
affixed to the paper, suggesting a quality that was not ordinary at the time of
its publication, or a name insubordinate to public view. That inability to
outlast the public image indicates very clearly that the public did not care
about Vespucci, since the original publications probably did not quote Vespucci
as the discovery of the land of the Americans.
In very vivid sense, Vespucci
may have been celebrated as a local hero who added to the world a new land, and
the new land was celebrated in a popular magazine or publication thereof, such
that the publication became popular in terms of America which to many small
people was a new land, which became confused with the name Amerigo, the star of
the new edition of Cosmography, in essence there were subsequent editions, and
others much later, yet one involves a man that will be popular in later years.
His popular was not so much the publication as it was destined to become the
place, the continent. In essence, we attach Vespucci to the name America, when
in reality Albert is the first name of Vespucci and not really Amerigo, let
alone America.
A name that probably had nothing to do Albert Vespucci, ab
initio, became popular because of the publication, ipso facto. We may presume
that some form of transfer of the name from public ‘imagination’ and the
‘reality’ of a place, to the very reality of the source of the popularity, no
more a hero than he was a local champion who may or may not discovered a place
in the fourth part of the compass. We may buy this view on one condition that
America is a place in the Atlas that covered the Fourth Part of the Compass or
the Atlas, the Northern part of the Atlas to be precise, that the place must
have been known and traveled to and well navigated to complete the fourth part
of the Compass. The Compass was perfected in the 13th century, and it has been
in use for some time, and in respect to Vespucci and Columbus, their landing in
America, assuming we accept their view, would have taken place in the 15th
century, almost two centuries from the perfection of the Compass and the Atlas.
In any given sense, we may presume that the Fourth part of the Compass was not
a new discovery and cannot account for one. We can always compare that other
publications may or may have the same name and title as the one for America, is
one that is recent and not as old as Columbus and his voyages. We can also spy
a possibility that Spanish historians and others from Europe kept the name
alive as a form of reminding them that Europe discovered America. It is too
early to indicate that such outcome may yet prove that no alternate sources
exist to correct the impressions, for it seems (at to me) that Columbus was not
as popular as he became in Spain in the course of time, that the incidents of
Mexico, made more magic the outcome of the incident.
Therefore we claim that it
is only a recent addition to the name, as such historians out of purpose or out
of error gave Vespucci the name of a place that he neither claimed to have
discovered or discovered in its entirety. Vespucci may have discovered a land
within the Americas, but by facts, it was not the Fourth part of the compass, a
theme within a theme which self-defeats. For how could one discover a place
called place where he stood to discover the place, for if there was no Fourth
part of the world or globe already known, the need will not exist to
demonstrate that a Fourth Part of the world has been found.
The Quartro Pars
was a puzzle only because the solutions were already, the ‘otro mundus’ was a
Noun form from a verb because there was a place noted as the Outer World. The
New World was to suffer the same fate, from verb to Noun because there was a
different world at the time of the people and their culture. Vespucci is that
of the bearer who got the anointing for the continent. Second of all, there are
names of this Amerigo which is better fitting, for instance his surname which
is Vespucci, by far a more commanding male name and more fitting into the
gender repressed names. The New World and Quatra Pars, Terra Incognita, which
makes for more difficult comprehension and the rest of the whole issue, In
another way, there was no discoveries made about the Fourth part of the World,
there were perhaps new lands which never existed before, which were included in
an Atlas that was published from to time.
As we shall see, the Ptolemy Atlas
goes to the 2nd century before Christ, launched as a appendage to sea
Navigation and exploration, which was the pre-occupation of a certain people
called the Merinde, who wrote in runes, who used Red Sea as platform to reach
parts of the world including places that was easily noted. There may probable
be a place was not discovered, and that land was not America, rather a New
World, that may or may not be Mexico, but a new land by claim. The error may
have started something later, The extra-ordinary quality of the name Americus;
America, must be something divine, something so powerful that only the earning
years can the respect and make it possible to have survived the centuries.
It
may also indicate that the nature of instinct is such that one may reach a
certain threshold on the context of a subject that has occupied his or her
mind. We can also indicate that there is no need to state clearly, whether the
name should be that important, for sure, we know that if go through the title
of the name Amerigos, and how it even appears on the man’s name, we may suggest
that the man’s popularity was not in Spain or Portugal, that enough name/s
exist for the name in the context of perception and not reality. We may go the
greater detail in changing the name to meet the fact that America is supposed
to be a Spanish Version of the Latin name Amerigo, or is the other way round,
for if we note the example very clearly, the female nature of the name has
nothing to do with the subject in the context of how it descends into America
as the cognomen for other names in the story.
There are other more revealing
factors in the whole discourses and from the available facts of the given story
we may recapture part of the synapses from the era of the story which may
directly explain a whole lot, which we may find adequate or inadequate in the
course of the discovery of American story. The evidence of these names includes
the Atlas, by name Ptolemy Atlas, and the name America, which as we have
mentioned is not an uncommon place in the years past, featured prominently in
the Introduction or part of the Introduction, as if the edition was about
America and nothing more.
The publisher himself Wardseemuller, as I have
mentioned earlier, has a name that can be attributed to be Moorish in origin,
which I have also mentioned is not far from Normans as will be the case for
French, though he is supposed to be German in Origin. It is only in the context
of the understanding that ‘Cosmographie’ was not experiencing a first hand of
trial and execution, that Cosmographie was a theme that was quite old, much
older than 15c and Amerigo and Columbus, can we see the point much clearly that
the edition was a form not a first and continues later.
In terms of what lies
between the word ‘Cosmographie’ and the culture, we may only see it as a case
that is not that different from new editions of world Atlas, for instance new
edition of British Encyclopedia, with near dispatches from new scientist and
new introduction to new discoveries or even commentary upon the old, may need
the publisher’s introduction to the particular subject. In essence, Preludes in
a book edition are mere symbolic process of introduction, whose central theme
may be the title of the book, and whose idea is still very young. There is a
whole lot to offer the tinkering group and culture involved in book making if
look at it very seriously, for it seems, that if we collect the evidence about
lands far away, about commentary on old Maps which Vespucci and Columbus had a
great Library, especially Columbus, we are likely to see this group as apprentice
coming into their own when the masters have already left.
We must also add that
Columbus identified himself as a Moro or a Moor, ‘son of enlightenment’ as they
describe them nowadays, as opposed to ‘sons of light’ or ‘sons of God’ as they
appear in early times. We must also indicate that he was following a religious
prophecy so to speak about the end of the reign of the ‘great ones’ in Spain,
and a star was to come full light in the year 1492 or sometime thereabout which
was to lead to the banishment of these sons of light into some unknown land of
promise. These were only stories, or claims which people made at some point and
another, for as much as we know, there is not enough about that stories that
appear in regular history of American, and by the turn of the last century, all
the story connected to the Americas and Amerigos has been reduced a form of
opposition against the already entrenched view, which made the whole argument
and refutation seem a case for Columbus.
But someone is not always his best
defense. We may however indicate that the Columbus is not the man who reached
or discovered America first, that America does not need to be discovered in
particular sense of history. It is not just the case however we look at it. We
may see the point from a point of the numbers facts about European history
after 15 century, but enhanced Navy power of Spain and Europe was not born overnight,
it has a staying power that goes in time.
In addition to the fact that Columbus
identified with the Moro, and that he descended in many ways than one from a
place that is now Morocco, means that he is in fact an African without doubt,
his 15 ship, was made in the form of stripped Viking’s Ship, the popular Dragon
Ship. If we give in to the fact that Columbus was a ‘vikein’ an ‘explorer’,
that he is a Moro, that he is African in guise of a Ship lord after a certain
man of Genoa, whereas his father, Demico, a certain Lankra man, was from
Córdoba, then we are looking at the fallacy of the claims about the man and his
voyage and the bad interpretation given to the heroes of the age of European
Discovery or Re-discovery. Columbus was another fact is that Vespucci was from
the same place as Columbus, and since his name is not exactly Latin or Spanish,
there is a great deal about Amerigo as a name that would placate the country.
It is said that Vespucci was from Genoa and same with Columbus, need exists for
that to be false too, because Columbus is from North Africa, on the side of the
continent that is 30 miles away from Europe. It is quite possible that Vespucci
is also from Cordoba, and possible from North Africa and perhaps in between
Africa and Italy.
This also applies to Alfonso Ojeda, one of Columbus’s Travel
Guide, who also came from North Africa. The man who was the Captain of the
flagship of Columbus’s 15 Ship called Santa Maria, was also a Moor, by name
Pietro. It all makes sense, that these people who lead the Ship to the so
called New World, were no easy fellows, there is a possibility that they were
aware of the line that thread between Spain and America, or between Europe and
America. Or even between the Red Sea, parts of North Africa, Indus Valley,
Arabian Peninsula, Petra and Arabian Desert, Syria, to Asia Minor, to Mainland
China and India which came increasingly under threat from Turkey in the 14th
century, to Islands of Europe and the ‘outer’ world, which reduced or
re-translated from Columbus’s ‘otro mundo’ ‘other world’ to the language of
‘mundus novus’ ‘new world’ which is purported to have come from Vespucci’s 1502
letter from Lisbon.
Yet we know what these things will exactly mean, for it
seems that Columbus’ language was one of re-discovery based on the childhood
fancy and not necessarily one of pure and previously unknown places. One can
also understand that these so called explorers of the 15c came to the scene
‘already made’, they were coming up with something new, and they know, they
were claiming to have discovered a New World altogether and Spain, Portugal,
the World in the time knew it that very much. Perhaps the essence of Posterity
is that ‘one’ has to take a stage in the unfolding of the events beyond the
world in a given era or time. In essence, historians forced Columbus and
Vespucci to be the ‘discoverers’ of a world that they could not have claimed to
have discovered.
It is my view that these discoveries as we reduced them were
so authenticity of their discoveries was in many ways a form of re-discovery,
part based on reality, part on synthesis form Nautical and they were happy to
get the credit for it since the abandoned Quatra pars was for a time the Domain
of Eri, which illiterate Spanish and Portuguese of 14 and 15 century Spanish
could not attempt. The reader must under that Spanish Christian population was
10-20 percent literacy, 80 -90 percent illiteracy. Before 14c and 15C, there
was virtually no record of sea travels. As such our world is saturated with
inadequacy of history, which were enhanced through and through by redactors,
which is only from 15C, as if Europe, when in reality it has always been, only
that a certain Christian coalition and Conversos in Spain and Portugal, were
now new masters of their world and it was only a question of time that they
began to dare sea Navigation which was for many years, essentially the preserve
of the Moors, the Arabs, and Jewish others.
Part II,... a response to professor
Harris .... Joseph E. Harris, with his Ph.D in ‘Africans and Their History’,
may be part of the same interpretation of Africa. His work is very monumental
to the point that only little can done be added in terms of its content to
expedite on African synthetic history. Yet his work is not deep enough and
general graft misleads the untrained historian. There is so much that we find
to be generally missing in his book, beginning for instance with the new
discoveries in archeology and what the stones tell us about Africa. His major
contribution however is on what the African languages tell us about the past of
the continent, a point he only briefly torched on and did not expand.
Harris
emphasized the history of Egypt from ancient times to perhaps the time of the
last dynastic, with special emphasis on the 12th, yet much of the history of
Egypt so to speak was severely limited to Africa and to the documentary
retention of Egyptian history, as if nothing exist for the contention. We learn
about the psychological influences of the thinkers of history, much about the
view of blacks as wanting in just about anything we know about the continent.
For instance, Professor Harris reminded the reader of the story concerning a
certain John C. Calhoun, on his challenge to the world that if he could find a
‘black man’ able to read the ‘Greek syntax’, he will then consider ‘the black
race human’. Ali Mazrui was supposed to have responded to have cited Kwame
Nkrumah’s reaction to Calhoun, saying “what might have been the sensation
kindled by the Greek syntax in the mind of the famous Southerner, I have so far
been unable to discover, but…I could show him among black men of pure African
blood those who could repeat the Koran from memory, skilled in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic”.
What was the point of raising this in African
history? It was perhaps to disabuse the mind of the readers and the listening
crowd, perhaps to encourage and lead them into a certain direction for instance
- , history of Africa is one that we are yet to understand, perhaps it was to
expedite on the obstacles to African history and knowledge, which he may or may
not be suggesting is intricately bound with the Black race. There is no denying
that Professor Harris was making a case for Africa since he highlighted the
influences guiding world historians and the perception if not pre-occupation of
such history. Assuming that is not the case, we may look at other instances where
other reflections on African history essentially appeared in part of his book.
He cited the comments about world history concerning a misguiding view of
Babylonian Talmud of the 6th century on the nature of Noah’s course that “it
must Canaan, your first born, whom they enslave…Canaan’s children shall be born
ugly and black…your grand – Children’s hair shall be twisted into kinks…(their
lips) shall swell. Men of his race are called Negroes, their forefather Canaan,
commanded them to love theft and fornication, to be banded together in hatred
of their masters and never to tell the truth”.
Such position is genuinely
laughable. For anyone unaccustomed to Jewish history and tradition, he or she
may just take in the bad jest from these writings. (1) There is no doubt that
some versions of Christian and Jewish history make outrages claims about Canaan
and the sons of Ham, but the story as we note from these lines are seriously
misleading, so misleading that the much later bigoted injection into the lines,
and the gyration of the bad characters of these sons of Ham, may have
altogether reduced itself to blacks and their Africans. Beginning with the word
‘Negro’, we can tell right on that the word is very recent addition to the
text, such that no one in the 6th century through fall of the Moors, perhaps
several centuries or so later, used the word Negro.
The root of the word
‘Negro’ is in all likelihood is a 19th century invention and suggest to a large
extent the age of the altering and insertion into the Talmudic. Such position
goes even to a large extent in demonstrating that something is perhaps wrong
with the overall statement, since the word was perhaps quoted verbatim by
Harris and perhaps by others of latter day histrionic.
(2) Secondly the
statement seems to have descended from the 6th century Babylonian Talmudic. We
are supposed to believe that the presence of the Talmudic makes the case that
the quote is accurate. In many ways than one, we can say, that if tortured
quote is accurate it may or may not be the official position of the school of
Rabbis, that the Talmudic has a history of its own, such that one Rabbi’s
exegesis on a particular topic is more than likely to differ from some others.
In essence, the Talmudic is just a school of pronunciation and commentary, a
school that go back to the fall of Jerusalem and Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. In
that, the school remains part of the Jewish intellectual liturgy but no longer
central to the society from around the time of Zerubabel and the rebuilding of
Jerusalem, at the time when Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return home.
In
essence, we can say that from the time of Nehemiah of the Minor Prophets - who
is more or less Ezra the Priest - to the Second fall of Jerusalem in AD 70,
Babylon as the center of Jewish life was no longer relevant. Even if we say
that the Sadducees who came much later and the Pharisees of the Edom and Hebrew
reconnaissance, Jerusalem was the focal point of Jewish life and commentary and
not Babylon. Altogether we can also say that when we really look at the period
in Babylon, which is the 6th century after Christ, we are talking about a time
of deciding African history where much of the world and its intellectual
activity had been decided by early fathers.
(3) Much of the early fathers themselves
were seriously Africans for instance natives, and most popular of whom was St
Augustine of Hippo. It is no joke that the much of the world had substantial
faith on these people and so on, in fact, Memphis which was far from whoever
ruled Alexandria. St Augustine himself, considered the founding father of
Western Intellectual society lived in these Hamitic places so to speak, and
lived a century earlier than the 6th Babylonian school of Rabbis. And by 6th
century we dare not contemplate anything less than 6th century AD, for mistakes
are little to take place with the very date. The main point and perhaps the
only concern is that Harris himself did not treat the subject very well. For we
still know that even the so called Torah in standard notation began in 2nd
century but reached the adopted form in the 3rd century AD.
(4) By Sixth
Century, much of Jewish society has already been run over, first the
persecution of a Christ-like people – followers of Jesus of Nazareth, second
the conquest of Jerusalem in AD 70 and in 72, where 998 Jews of mostly priestly
descent, committed suicide while protecting the inner Sancta, an action that
further disintegrated the people of Israel. That action was accomplished either
by poison as accomplished by the two remaining women, or by Jews who
eviscerated themselves, yet it was the death of the cream of the society and
vanquishing that brought Titus and the Menorah to Rome Then the persecution
broke in many ways than, and the remnant were dislocated to various parts of
the world.
(5) It was in the context of the breakdown that many of the Jewish
parties, numbering eight at the time of Christ’s death were forced in the
mountains, into the deserts, into parts of Syria, into places that we may now
call Turkey, modern day Turkey covering provinces of Asia, Cappadocia,
Pamphilia, parts of Phrygia, etc. At the time of Christ, there were already
Jews from different parts of the world, but after the great revolt in Syria led
by Bar Choba and after the accounts of I and II Maccabees – written a century
or so from each other, then the Jews really sparse all over the world.
Yet one
area which dominated their world even at time of Nebuchadnezzar was Egypt and
the Aswan - the first Cataract into Africa. Africa dominate everything Jewish from
its earliest years to much later years of Gnostic, in fact then and as much as
now, nothing can be called Jewish that is not entirely African. Too early to
dwell on that statement, especially the fact that they were Jews in many parts
of Southern Arabia, whose culture through years have grudgingly changed in many
ways than one.
(6) That they were Jews through Syrian deserts and mountains,
may have also given some impetus to the evolution of Islam itself. Yet Islam
however wonderful, only managed appears as an institution in Africa. All three
religions copying the Memphite priest, then the position of the Christian in
their early years was fully enhanced by foreign element in the area. What is
happening in this interpretation is that Africa, in terms of the issues
concerning the culture and people of the world, is no strangers at least to
three religions, especially Christianity and Judaism, that even the Muslims has
a lot of bragging about the continent and tell us about the people and about
their cultures so to speak. We need suggest that Eusebius himself pointed to a
few Christians who knew how to speak Hebrew, one whom was a certain Origen.
(7)
The breakdown of these religious groups in terms of their 6th century history
promotes the difficulty in even contemplating the probable official status of
the so called Babylonian Talmud regarding the Negro apostrophe and Hamites
culture. It does not mean that it did not take or was not taken into canvas by
some Rabbi, yet a lettered one, much yet a Rabbi unfamiliar Judaism can reduce
certain teachings to the above lines as exactly stated by Harris. It is
important to note that throughout History such issue regarding Ham has always
entered in the fore of the history of Africa, and even in terms of the very
place we can Afro-Asiatic – both in terms of the people and language – there
has always been the issue of Hamitic stock.
(7b) This stock is supposed to
include everything we know from much of the Bible and its history, on the
greater count that the view much of us have been influence by same process,
bleaches away any form indication and claim very closely, noting that a place
for instance called Canaan is many times larger than anything we know and
associate with Israel. That Israel is itself is situated in that part of the
world we ultimately we refer to Canaan. In that sense therefore, much need to
be said about the place and time of the statement concerning children of Ham,
not that it interferes with any particular version of history as far as Africa
is concerned, but allows to give label to Ham and give Ham a picture which
cannot necessarily fit into a posture by the statement about the Kinky hair
Africans.
It is the stubble lips that is an issue, since many races of the
world so speak has it, it is not the wooly hair, since many races of the world
has it, it is not the dark skin since of the culture in the world boast of
their very dark ones not necessarily from Africa. It is the prevailing
psychology and the time of the psychology that really matters. For one thing,
the prevailing psychology of the 6th century is one last revival of the African
history since the end of 3rd century. In a sense, much of the world in the war
it has survived to us, survive as if the rest of Sub-Sahara had little to offer
the world.
By sixth century, the culture of the North is just a culture of the
so called Asians, it was a culture of Native Africans, many of them very wholly
hair, many of them very dark, many of them very kinky hair. These individuals
as we have noted in time past also did the world all kinds of favor, they were
the spiritual and intellectual center of whatever happened in either the
Christian or the Jewish society. Even in Babylon in the 6th century, Babylon
and Iran was seriously bejeweled by Blacks, so much so, that much of their very
native races in Iran then as well as now, are among the very dark. In a way,
the mixed quality of the Iraq of today and not necessarily Iraq of the 19th
century, results from three possible groups and three possible influences.
Besides
the natives - among who were light skinned, were migrants from deep parts of
Asia – some of whom are light skinned. The case of Darius is not very complete,
he is in fact rumored to wooly haired and smooth skinned. Many Assyrians are
like that, many of the ancient Babylonians were noted with same wooly hair and
otherwise blacks. As the case may be, we can believing against the fact that
rest of these Asian group were so pure in white or strange dark and different
from the Africans, that we find the color that sufficient to create all kinds
of distinction.
(8) These places mentioned, including Babylon where the Jews
rested and was saved, are no strangers to dark skinned people. These people are
rather used to all kinds of people, and in fact down the coast and around
Mesopotamia or through Jordan, Trans-Euphrates were known very well for one the
darkest people known to man. Like we have mentioned, a place such as Jordan,
remained a dark hue till the coming of Turks of different variety. It was not
the Arabs of the 6th and 7th century that created this headache with race, in
fact these invading Turks of the 14 and 15th centuries, did not see themselves
as white Europeans. All thing in many ways than, relegate the color issue to at
17th century and perhaps 18th century.
What the redactors were trying to
accomplish is not clear, but providing explanation to certain things or
providing justification for certain laws is not unlike Judaism of the 18th
century, hence a picture of a certain people believed as philosophers and
writers, Luxurio once called them to be the ‘most beautiful of men’. The time
frame of the learning and the writing can only be due to the incidents of 18th
century, for if we bold enough to take a step back, to the centuries preceding
the slave trade, it is impossible to even contemplate the legacy of such talk.
Why the great professor Harris did not treat issues is not quite certain, but
that leaves us is the influences of the professor in jotting his own synthesis
on the ink.
Still at the issue of the 6th century AD, we know also from
Christian history we may indicate that as far Christian history was concerned,
third century Africa was so full of traffic that anyone not used to the Natives
who became it all, was not entirely human. The Jews themselves were not the
main event, they were only part of the so many. It was Christianity that
enabled Jews rise to the prominence, it happened when enough Christian
prejudice against Jews were no longer significant.
For Strabo, the writing much
earlier indicated that a connection between Jews and Egyptians - essentially
Black or the Hamitic stock, citing how they are together inside the area that
is called Palestine, he said “for the most part each region is inhabited by a
mixture of tribes drawn from Egyptian and Arabs and Phoenician, for such are
those who dwelt in Galilee and Jericho and Philadelphia and Samaria, which
Herod Sebaste.
Although they are so mixed, the predominant opinion among the
beliefs concerning the temple at Jerusalem represents the ancestors of those
now called Jews as Egyptians.” And these two if not three have remained very
close, such that in the later part of the 6th century, we begin to notice great
changes in the languages. As in the 6th century, much of the salvation of the
Jews came from Africans themselves, especially the Alexandrians, for when
Byzantine and the Western church got upper hand in the affairs of the world,
they seethes with resentment on the Jews.
(9) In a book written by Henry
Wolfram “Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples’, the author mentioned an
instance of the Berber and the Moors of Africa, that “the eyewitness and
contemporary Procopius, one must realize, wrote in the dialectical tradition of
an ethnography that gained its insights through comparison and contrast. While
Caesar had compared the wild and utterly uncivilized Germans with the far less
barbaric Gaul, Procopius concerned himself with the striking contrast that
existed between the Vandals and Moors. The Berbers – the word means
‘barbarians’ –
….When they prepared for battle, they were careful “to abstain
from all injustices and from all foods tending toward luxury and most of all
from association with women.” (10) We know from Archives of English Historical
review and from LaTourette’s ‘History of Christianity’ that the Aryan Heresy
did not entirely end the separation between one group and another as far as the
church was concerned. There was the rising issue of church property which many
of them had accused the Jews of being the necessary instrument and accessory.
What the church did was to dislocate the Jews from among them, accusing of
profiteering. So well did they that Jews essentially forced into defensive
position, and in places such as Toledo and parts of Spain, the Jews were barred
from any form of lending to Christians and from usury. The Jews were barred
from major public observance and forbidden to ‘celebrate’ or to conduct
official Jewish days, and the edit that proclaimed such outcome was 9th council
of Toledo in 655.
In the 12th council and in 681, Jews were stripped of further
entitlement and in 16th council of Toledo in 693 BC, Jews were forbidden to
meet in any open water prayer or cleansing which was not Christian baptism, and
in 17th council, following issues of property confiscation and riots in major
parts of what was Toledo, Jews were forced to Slavery so to speak. These
episodes were enacted through Europe and throughout the places that Byzantine
willed influence and ruled.
(10) The rest is not a new story to the rest of at
all, largely for the fact that stories are repeated all the time through the
ranks of Christian history and Christian doctrines. The book that perhaps added
a clear and deciding dimension to the actions of the Jews is James Westfall’s
‘Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages’, a book that first introduced
the bibliography on the Archives of the English Historical Review, also treated
part of the Toledo issues but went on to describe the reaction of the Jews,
that they turned to Berbers in Africa and so on, that “in their desperate
plight the Jew connived with the Mohammadized Berber across the straight in
Africa, where Jews enjoyed the protection of Islam.”
It goes without saying
that rest of what happened in Africa and in Spain, has always been a theme of history,
that these same blacks were the saviors of these Jews, and were the bearers of
great cultures and warriors of the world, who defeated Rodrigo and his high
ranking officers, a feat that Arabians could not achieve. If there is only one
explanation to the whole episode is these Berbers and other tribes of the
continent from Germanic tribes and mothers, were perhaps the most powerful
force along the straits and perhaps inside Syria.
Since they were not Muslims
initially means that they were perhaps hired by Musa, perhaps in connived with
the Governor of Morocco, altogether indicating that a conflict between these
Germanic tribes and African counterparts was still evident. Victor of Vita
indicated that it was Vandals and one of the tribes that began the conflict
that these groups of invaders first settled in what was Phoenician off the
coast of Tunis, but then the entered into Africa from Tunis.
If James Westfall,
whose poor knowledge of Ancient Egypt essentially manifested in context of his
book and whose knowledge of evolution of the sea power was seriously lacking
and exposed is his book, sympathized with Jews of being stripped of their
property, and then using lines such ‘conniving’ with Berbers, for people who
were almost reduced to slavery, seem to tell more about the individual than his
sympathy essential suggest.
The author did not indicate that the people in
question called the Berbers, were the masters of the North Africa, that Berbers
have already removed much of Germanic tribes from Phoenician were they
initiated rested to parts of North Africa where they lived, that same people
were in liaison with arriving Seljuks from Turkey, all of whom more less formed
the bulk of the Germanic tribes. The author however mentioned that the arrival
of Muslims in 697 was led Musa, but did not indicate that Musa’s effort did not
pay off until the Berbers and a new brand of leaders, familiar with the sea
coast along the straights of Africa came in.
It was not Musa who led the fight
against Rodrigo and his Germanic group, it was a certain Tarik the Great, or at
least a leader remembered for such incident that completely defeated Rodrigo
and the remnant of the Germanic tribes in 711. The Visigoth’s defeat by Berbers
only ended in 711, they began almost immediately to penetrate and conquer all
of Spain, a case in point that unified successfully all of Spain in wake of
Rodrigo who albeit briefly succeeded in unifying the kingdom of Spain. The
route which some ridiculous history still speak in droves, explicit the depth we
owe the rest of the world and its culture.
And then into South of France, where
they were halted occasional by Damascus Syria which was the seat of Muslims all
of world and which felt threatened by rising group and the force. Musa himself
was caught in between Damascus and his loyalty to the ‘brothers of covenant’ in
Spain under Tarik and Company, but he was removed eventually by Damascus
Caliphate who was concerned about the growing powers of these Africans in
Spain.
(11) The reign of Muslims in the 7th century which is now taken as
solely the work of Arabs, began in earnest in the reign of Abu Bakr (632-634)
where a substantial period of the North East African began to collapse into
Islam. Then the decaying trunk of the Persian Empire, so to speak cracked at
the heels of these Muslims and the Arabs.
Then there was theme of brotherhood
was eventually carried forth by the next chain commanders, Omar (634-644), and
Othman who was elected to represent Abu-Bakr, who also witnessed a large mass
of people from none traditional background of Islam and rising Muslim. The
divided city of Alexander Egypt, separated between many groups of the world
present in Alexandria, and those in deeper parts of the Memphis, all collapsed
in some respect and another to a form of crisis.
We are looking at Africa, of
the 6th century when skin torn, leprous groups of people from several parts of
the world were feasting off the African continent, the people of smooth skin
and lined back who ate drink the wild milk and whose hair ranged from kinky to
jelly dark hair, whose skin and lips were fully rounded and some stubby were
the real Africans, the image of man. It was these remnants of the Natives and
then Ethiopians, who were the envy of the world.
These people and this race of
men and women were noted for master work of art and stone masons and designed
much of the art from that era, designed much of the Grecian Stone Motif. They
were the masters of Maritime, especially the navigation of the Atlantic and the
Red Sea. These were the descendants of the Merinde, the oldest African
Civilization who made it to the fore of the world, and provided the platform
for the like of Ptolemy Philadelphus II, much control over the Naval Sea in the
3rd century before Christ.
(12) Yet the story in that 6th century offered
interesting highlight to the rise of Islam, for when these Merinde group of
Egyptians joined forces, or began to join forces with Islam, they created the
motion for brothers of covenant which many Arabs and some Turkey group speak
well of. Is Amazing how the rest of the story regarding these people are thrown
away as if a small portion of Middle East, populated by the Blacks until lately
was always the crown jewel of world history away from Africa.
Both in ancient
and modern times, it isn’t the case that they were likely the same after many
years - above all slaves from the time of Abraham till the 12th century -
slaves may come from Africa as the issue of war may mean, but in terms of
Biblical documentation, Abraham lived at a time when African history and
greatness was witnessing an end.
For sure, not many people live beyond the
Sahara as the case will determine, even at this time and in parts of Sudan and
beyond, we know through history that these places were belts of Gold which was
literally picked from the ground. Case in point is the incidents of the 13th
and 14th century at the time of Mansa Musa. Above all, South of Egypt was were
the best cattle, herbs, minerals, and so on was, and even if we add the facts
of Upper and Lower Egypt, the reader must remember that Upper Egypt was
essentially the capital of Egypt and much of Libya, and Memphis was the home of
that Capital which was inside Africa.
Lower Egypt which was the beginning of
the pre-monarchic Egypt was closer to Aswan and first Cataract. Slaves may have
occasional roved in and out of the place but these slaves were not the norm,
let alone the indication that African of immortal historical classic were to reduce
to a mere statement by some scrupulous fellows.
(13) Then we speak of the
Architecture of the 6th century and beyond, contrary to what anyone would have
otherwise believe, the styles of Architecture notable in parts of Alexander
Egypt was the outcome of these Africans, from the remnant of the briefly lived
Meiotic, to the rise and decline of King Ezana of Kush who the professor
mentioned in the book, to the time of Azum Empire and Kandac (Candice), a name
that appear in the Christian history as the name of Queens of a Berber tribe,
who according to LaTourette’s ‘History of Christianity’ nearly stopped the
advances of the Arabs in Africa in the desert frontiers. In fact they did as
other sources confirm.
These Berbers were dislocated from the Ancient Azum and
Meiotic Empires, dislocated in the reign of Emperor Aurelian, ravaged by
sickness and Vandals of the fourth century, and who moved in deeper parts of
the continent with the map of the African deserts in the backs of their notable
soldiers and messengers, an African custom that was eventually copied by the
incoming Arabs with little or no tradition. These people routed Arabs in the
7th century, drove Camels as well Horses – knew that horses were always afraid
of Camels, captured an Arab boy which Candice or Kandac as she was called,
nurtured and who betrayed these Berbers of older African Empires into the Arabs
contingent.
What happened later was that the Arabs managed to isolate the two
groups of soldier class, one group been the Soldiers who attended to the
royalty who came behind the main group who roved securely from one season to
another. By confiscating their Godmother and her retinue, the Berbers late in
6th century were forced to surrender to Arabs on certain condition.
Yet there
other tribes of Africa in the fore mentioned places, and these people were
however challenged for many years by Arabs who were one of the toughest
fighters who made it to the continent. The war between Arabs in Africa and much
of the tribes inside the continent was finally decided in the rise of the
Alhoravids and Almoravids.
The history concerning the book of Jordanes on the
tribes in the straights of Africa, as the leader of their tribes who was almost
always their Queen, to the Obelisk that celebrated the birth of Modern
civilization in Africa, the culture had (14) Coptic buildings of the Christian
church scattered around the North Africa in the 6th century were legendary,
especially the Mosaic and the Murals on their building walls, such that Islam
acquired much of what was left of the Architecture which they celebrated as the
beginning of modern civilization.
In fact, the claim that Byzantine was built
by slave labor is only a 19th century acceptance that Africans built the
palaces and decorated the Mosaic of Byzantine. No major training in
Architecture is necessary in coming to grips with the reasons why the Byzantine
required African experts. This can only be true in the sense of what we know to
be much greater; power of the training Yet the 6th century Africa was noted for
forces from Persia, the Sassanid fighting it out with Byzantine as both groups
sought control over Syria and over much of the Red Sea. The Romans and the
Sassanid wore each other out, but in parts of Ghazzar was the last king of
Jordan before the approaching Khalid Ibn al-Walid, himself an ally of the Arab
but not Arabic, by name Jabla Al Aihan.
The role that he played in helping to
force Syria out of the hands of the Roman is not easily noted and as such we
can say that there is enough to dwell on the open and mildly noted through
course of history, largely because of the great victories of the Khalid yet
builders of the Byzantine, were not that farfetched from Africa and so on. In
that Sixth Century, the most decisive battle over Syria was fought between
Romans and Arabs and between Arabs and the Sassanid, and a unified Arab
hegemony was able to overcome them all, especially in the battle on the
Yarmouk.
The rise of Abu Bakr forced the Arab tribes to disintegrate, because
the man was not directly one of them, yet the decision to re-instate the man
arose from several groups of Arabs at the time of the conflicts. The Arab
coalition forced their way into parts of what is now Syria and made it to shore
of Africa. It was in these places that everything we know concerning Africa in
context of Arabia history began to play. It is worthy of note that everything
we have come to expect from Arabia is not that far from evidence of much
incidents at the time of the issue and so on.
Yet Babylonian still was in the
6th century coming to an end, it was the coming of Moawiya, that the foundation
of Umuyyad dynasty was formalized. The Umuyyad took advantage of the materials
from the Coptic buildings, and it was the Umuyyad mainly derived from the labor
of the Egyptian masons, many of them of seriously African descent and same
insulted blacks, essentially built much of Byzantine into what it was in later
years became the toast of the New World. I shall not refrain from hitting out
that existing commentary on the culture and the people of Syria do not deny the
influence of the Arabia on Byzantine, nor shy from the claim that the control
of the sea and Mesopotamia, was in the hands of the Saracens – themselves a
mixture of Africans and Arabs, not necessarily Arabs – but nonetheless Muslims.
Yet Christians do believe that the open sea was not altogether Islamic, that it
remained Byzantine till quite late, that Byzantine was in control of Syria and
their forth until the beginning of the crusade. Yet this is not true, in terms
of everything that was known to them we can say that not exist to defeat such
claims given the nature of Islam and the force that was taking over the world
in those time. They repeatedly war fights in much of the Asia Minor and
repeated did what was important to them in many ways than one.
In all these
changes and the art forms, one place that eventually demonstrated the
scientific use of light and space, was not Asia or Asia Minor, it was not
Romans per se as the story goes, it was rather the fact that changes in the
world as we understand took over the dynamics and achieves of the history of
the world. Left out the picture was the role of Arabia in conquering much of
Syria, much of Asia Minor which opened the sea to them. These people did not
call themselves Arabic nor did anyone among themselves earn the basic language
that became Arabic.
In the same context, Harris also cited a certain Benjamin
Ben Jonah, a ‘twelve century merchant and traveler from Spain Navarre’, that
“There is a people…who, like animals eat of the herbs that grow on the banks
of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked and have not the
intelligence of ordinary men. They cohabit with their sisters and anyone they
find…These sons of Ham are black slaves.” While this statement is not false,
it is not true either. It is not false to make such claim since that interior
of Africa was full of people who never left their old pyramids, who lived in
the interior and who like the Bantu and their migratory routes, roved around
the continent.
The Bantu migratory routes may have started in Nigeria
Cameroonian boundary, on the claim that nothing in the whole history of the
world and so on, make and break with Now the natural question is what did the
professor had in mind in introducing these things in the context of African
history? He had to demonstrate that the continent and their culture has always
existed in the cultural backwaters of the world, as a people cast in some light
where much of the world saw them from a perspective that came under the
perception of the other, the black.
The issue may be not necessarily dwell on
how and why the professor failed to do what was necessary in correcting the
faulty impressions of the fellow historians who so far demonstrated that it
wasn’t always the case, but how he hinted on the quotation without seeking to
point the significance of such view, and how he left the fault with such claim
furlough and above why such position was never at any time part of the academic
institutions of the world until the 19th century ear mark the professor as
intellect descended from European academic institution.
In essence, the
professor explains his influences and upbringing by making unusual and
unnecessary citation without looking to expose the scam in the sentence and
such things seriously wrong from the very beginning. That the traveler even mentioned
black slaves makes the whole sentence impossible to answer given the 12th
century social conditions of the world. At no time in the history of the last
2000 was the Africans that solid than the 9-12th century.
Professor Harris may
have started off with good details of his writing on Africa and may have
conducted himself with good intentions so to speak, but the professor’s
authorship reflected essential versions of African history which converged in a
story of dark people and slavery, stories that none the less made more harm
than good. There was perhaps tribes of Africa in the deeper swampy regions of
Africa, a fact only mean lot in term of Australia whites with blue eyes, but
live in very bushy areas of the continent.
Look at the statement of this Jewish
traveler and time of his travel? We notice that he is supposed to have come
down from Spain in the 12th century, at a time when the Jews were at all-time
low in social status and when the likes of Abraham Ibn Ezra were lamenting the
plight of Jews under the rule of Islam. Historians of Jewish descent may only
speak of themselves as people of pure race, that their faces may be black as
they say, but their heart was pure. In Yemen at the 12th and 13th century,
these Jews who migrated to parts of Yemen and North Africa lived under the
protection and guide of Muslims, yet they carried away their grid to the
farthest part of the World were general rejection from just about all cultures
of the world has forced them into the shell.
Many of us may have read of
Shakespeare’s ‘sun for spit will not show his face’, a theme in humanity that
runs the line of Romeo and Juliet, but what we soon forget that the origin was
from Abraham Ibn Ezra lamentation of the gross injustices inside Spain, saying
‘sun for spit would not show….’
The story of the Jews in Spain, the story of
this forgotten people in Spain, has not been fully written and when they become
available especially the 12th and 13th centuries, we may see that this theme of
Spanish traveler commenting on Africans is possible but not probable. Judaism
was facing revival in Spain, facing the grasping of time in the context of the
academic show of that era. It was a time when the civil wars between the
Almoravids and Alhoravids were still very significant and was entirely decided
by loyalty to the course of Islam. The Masoretic Text has just been completed
and the civil war between Arabs and Africans in Spain has come to an end.
The
undisputed powers were Muslims, who in reality were the blacks Africans, and
the Khazars themselves of Persia remnant and of Sassanid; literarily meaning
the Sassanid (Saxons), were moving into the farthest part of Russia, and what
remained of these people were littered throughout Europe. We still know for
sure that in the 13th century, everything that existed about Judaism was still
practiced through the help of these Muslims – many of them the Moors.
It will
mean much to the rest of the world if we carefully indicate that the Moors of
Spain as we note them hence, were not that unpopular until the very 18th
century and so on. In many, many, ways than one, the principal architect of the
world order and businesses, were these Moors – who are no different from Maori,
a people scattered all over the world and suffered in the hands of traveling
Spaniards throwing away their unwanted from the world. These people who may or
may not have travelled as far as the Americans as the charts and history of the
9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, and in even 15th century charts of the Ptolemy
Atlas suggested, last of these Atlases in was published in the 15th by Muller,
a name suggesting Moorish origin, with Vespucci as the discoverer of what
showed the fourth part of the world, Quattro pars, and terra incognito,
America.
History of Judaism and Israel! Where do we start and where do we end?
Perhaps we can start with time of Adam and Eve, perhaps we can start with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or perhaps we can start with Moses and his wife? May
be not these Africans whose language actual speak to us today. Perhaps, we can
speak of David and Solomon? What we have to ask is why? Why do have to start
with David, perhaps because he sought to seek out a woman of Sheba or Bathsheba
(meaning daughter of Sheba or simply from Sheba) as an object of lust? Perhaps
it was curiosity, yet the woman gave birth to a son, called Solomon who of all
sons in his house, David chose as King over Israel. The same Solomon lavished
on a certain queen Sheba, who may or may not have come from the outskirts of
Ethiopia, but definitely from Sabea or what is known as Sheba.
Sabeans are part
of Africa, they were noted as sea trotters and travelled widely and occasional
settled in Asia. They also settled in the Eastern Desert which is now called
South Arabia, they may have also constituted the interior of the people and
place. Between Africa and much of Asia, these people are not different from
today’s Kenyan and Ethiopians. However we stretch that history of Africa away
from Israel, we only realize that all the while we are talking about Africa,
all the while discussing a religion and a people that couldn’t have made any
sense to the rest of the world besides Africa. ….. We have to put in the extra
effort to show how misleading some of the general conclusions about the above
statements are, since in many ways than one, these statements would show how
Professor Harris was influenced in his synthesis of African history. In that
case, we may see the influences in that statement may have indirectly blinded
the man into seeing much of Africa and the rest of the world in terms of just
about everything.
How Professor Harris managed to pull himself out of the hole
of building African history as an informal defense to the general claim that
African history did not exist, seem to suggest something of the man’s ability
and perhaps his earnest drive in on matters concerning the continent. The
history of Africa is redaction is the story of Africa in terms of how it was
essentially conceived as opposed to the verity of the evidence of such history
through much of African history and beyond.
Professor Harris may have started
his book with these lines about the future of yesteryears and its presentations
in terms of academic life which descended through the last century, but his
leniency and perhaps acceptance of several stances of slavery, makes a hard
case for the man as a intellect immune to the intimidations of African slave
trade, which only lasted a century or less for Europeans, and for Arabs perhaps
a century or less before 1840.
Yielding perhaps to the new and biased sciences
of Darwinian evolution….but there is no doubt that he vied into degree recesses
of the languages. In many than one, his book sponsor a false faith on right
facts, faith that assumes with literati of the age, that the presence or in
some cases absence of Blacks in many parts of words - Iraq and in India were
for several reasons the bi product of slave trade, else he implies, their
presence is inexplicable aside the atrocities of slave era. For that to be
correct, we have to draw aside the flaws in the book, with especially emphasis
on slave trade, not that the subject offends on the linguistics, but the issue
of synthesis and view in very current periods of the world can only be redeemed
through vistas on the older architecture of world history and now of languages.
What many Chinese who discovered heroic figures of blacks in their backyard of
Xi-an province of Tang tombs have said, we can add that these figures show
voluntary settlement, and Harris added also ‘involuntary settlement’, that these
people who Chinese indicate as Nobles, and Harris added as ‘slaves of Chinese
Nobles’, were part of the older history of the world, history go back to the
expansion of Islam and the rise of Vikings. These Vikings (Vikeins) or whatever
names, Sarakins, we also give them, were mainly from the area we refer to the
Red Sea and Mesopotamia, they carried along with trade of different sought,
they were familiar with parts of India, they crossed the “Gates of India”, they
penetrated mainland China, they were disconnected from their immortal home
land.
In Eritrea the languages that we have today are born of the geography and
the people, languages such as the Tigre, Saho, Bilen, Afar, Kunama, Nara, and
Hedareb, are found in various versions throughout Europe and so on. That is to
suggest that the relationship between something of Ethiopia and the much of
ancient Persia may not be that enough in demonstrating that the people in
question have a lot to do with the rest of it all. In terms of a historian
holding indubitable command of his student’s attention, there is no doubt that
Harris meant well in repeating that “papal bulls of Nicholas V (1454) and
Calixtus (1456) had provided the justification for the slave trade by
proclaiming Portugal’s expansion into Africa as a Christian crusade.
The
enslavement of Africans therefore was regarded as advantageous to the
“savages.” Our world collide from the loftily of these lines and sentences,
largely from concern of the bad interpretations of the papal edits of Nicholas
V and Calixtus. For one thing, Africa was never assigned to Portugal until
about 1493 when Sextus 1V awarded West Africa to Portugal following the defeat
of Moors in Spain it was to absolve the conflict raging between Spaniards and
the Portuguese searching out these rich Moors and a certain Prester John.
The
highly disputed 143 leagues of West Africa were an inhabitable riverside choke
ends to begin with, and the Portuguese nearly rejected it initially because it
didn’t offer anything that specific, but also, it was full of these Muslims who
were also Moors. It must also be said that no Spanish royalty existed at any
point in Europe until the 1494 by acts of the same pope Sextus IV, who
organized the Christian coalition that fought the Moors to stand still in 1485.
The Spain went further into areas below the 143 river choke ends and were said
to have gone as far Brazil. From vintage point of many historians and others of
certain likes, this was supposed to be the beginning of the conquest of the
dark continent of Africa.
Why these are mere and serious balderdash, there is
no escape from the imagination that much of world history has been badly
educated in Africa in such a way that to describe as misleading and inaccurate.
Given that the issue of slave trade and conquest of Africa which no longer
appeal to the rest of world, Africans of common descent has often found a way
around the history as if to suffer from the fear that welcomes the acceptance.
But fear is unknown since in the history of Europe, there is nothing to hide
from the greater fact that the injury such interpretation has done to Africans,
and West African especially, will not be measured in very simply words.
For
sure, we have the world telling us stories about slave trade over and through,
and then the teachers seeking to avoid offending their institutions do not care
to bother why we have already accepted that comments made Elizabeth I about the
many ‘Blackmoors’ in England who should be deported to Africa, should only
refer to slaves. Then the likes of Harris carefully hinted that a certain
William Hawkins sailed to Africa in 1530, and then the comment by Elizabeth I
in 1556. Is it really possible that slaves came from England through William
Hawkins or that they were others who followed in his footsteps.
Such reduction
view of Africa has dominated much of what we know of the world, and in terms of
blacks found in Anjou, Lyon, Orleans, Nantes, Paris, and Poitheis, in France,
the general easy conclusion has always been, as Harris concluded, that they
came through slavery. Whether or not Harris is promoting his own view of
History or that he is promoting his view of slave trade is not clear, but
Harris they say is awarded an emeritus in African History, there is so much to
question about the man’s validity as a teacher of African history. Joseph
Harris like many recent historians of Africa, including Basil Davidson, have
always gentrified the fact that Blacks in Spain and Portugal were slaves from
Africa even as late or early as 16c.
As much as the record of the slave trade
between Spain and Portugal is that meager and in some cases does not exist, the
attention about the influence of Spanish in Africa and the presence of Africans
in Spain would always been tainted in slavery. Whatever may be the issue about the
problems in Spain, it reached Africa alright and it reached everything else
than was later known about the languages of the world. Harris in his book even
gentrified the more that these blacks in Barcelona, Cadiz, Seville, and
Valencia worked as concubines and construction guards. And many of them were
slaves.
It is that difficult to even contemplate such irascibility, when
history everywhere in the world indicated that 16c Spain was noted for violence
against non-Catholics, many who were themselves Muslims, some Jews, or those
who were forced to be Christian conversos had to endure the very stripping of
rights inside Spain. Have any Nigerian so to speak taken time to look into the
contents of the Decree of Alhambra in 1492. The Decree was not to be borne by
the defeated royalty of Spain, who left Spain, who are now romanticized as
Arabs so to speak.
We need not spend time explicating the serious and rather
confounding fact that in Spain was born the modern adjective, slavery, a fact
the. Largely on the account Spanish inquisition was not so much a matter of one
religion over the other rather not also means that these Black moors were also
visiting some of these areas in these places as said and so on. There is no
doubt that stories abound about blacks in antiquity visiting many of the places
in Europe, for instance the very celebrated descent of Ethiopian ambassador to
Russia, Alexander Pushkin who composed for the theater ‘Oniegan’, but the story
as we make note of him are now regarded by fact as sons and descendants of
slaves. As we mentioned concerning Harris and his conclusion, there is no to
spare the presence of presence of blacks in Venice, in Italy, in Greece, in
Persian Gulf, in Muslim Gulf around ‘Bandar Abbas’ and ‘Shiraz’ and Arabian
peninsula. He made a significant claim in page 97 that “far too little research
has been published to allow a satisfactory identification of the global scope
of the African Diaspora in Asia. However, Arabs continued to conduct a trade in
Africa across the Sahara desert, the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and Indian
Ocean and took them to Turkey, Arabia, the Persian Gulf region, India, and the
Far East. These enslaved Africans worked in the salt mines, coconut groves, and
date plantations of the Persian Gulf region; as pearl divers in Bahrain; as
palace guards, domestics, farmers, dock workers, craftspeople, etc. in Arabia
and India. They as eunuchs and concubines throughout much of the Muslim world”
The Dutch he said took their African slaves to Indonesia, and the French and
English took many of their African slaves to India and the ‘Mascarene Islands
in the Indian Ocean’. And not the least people who say that Africans were also
noted to her reached parts of what is Malaysia, and parts of Arabia. Historians
of Africa go out of their way to speak of Arabian history of African slave
trade and how slave trade continues across ‘the Sahara desert, the
Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and took them to Turkey,
Arabia, the Persian Gulf region, India, and the Far East’
