Diversity, Unity, and most importantly, Identity (SHORT, chapter 2)
- What is it that makes a "makes a nonsense of pseudo-scientific theories of racial difference"? (Are you familiar with some of the theories?)
- In what ways are African people diverse? (pull from 4 paragraphs that follow the above quoted text)
- The variations are a consequence of what historical processes? (last paragraph p. 28)
- Define "Maghrib." What might being North African mean? (p. 29ff)
- What is meant by "A historian's definition of 'Africa' is necessarily broad and unracialized"?
- With all this diversity, where can we find unity or "interconnectedness"?
- Who wrote the first serious continent-wide history of Africa?
- What is Afrocentrism and what are the book's arguments against it?
- How did Zulu and Yoruba identities develop?
- What are problems with the concept/term "tribe"?
- Who are the Tutsi and Hutu?
- How did the Mukogodo become Maasai?
Christianity & Islam (AFRICANS, chapter 4)
- How did Christianity come to Egypt and how popular was it (% of population)?
- Define "Coptic" (language and religion).
- What is Aksum (or Axum)? Ga'ez?
- Why did Nubian Christianity not last the way Ethiopian Christianity has? (See image below for clue.)
- What helped the Muslims conquer Egypt?
- How may Egyptians were still Christians by the 14th century? Why?
- What role did Berbers play in the spread and practice of Islam (p. 43f) and in trans-Saharan trade (p. 52)?
- Why did trans-Saharan trade grow so fast in the early Islamic period?
- Describe Old Jenne (Jenne-jeno).
- What is the relationship between religion and trade in West and East Africa?
- What "created the basic pattern of the modern northern Sudan"?
- What effects did partial isolation have on Ethiopian religion?
You might want to get started with Sundiata this week!
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