Medieval Africa: Did you mean...?

Did you know that the Ghana king would automatically keep any gold nugget extracted that weighed between 25 grams and half a kilo? This video is all about the lucrative gold trade of ancient and medieval...

The Mali Empire (1240-1645) of West Africa was founded by Sundiata Keita (r. 1230-1255) following his victory over the kingdom of Sosso (c. 1180-1235). Sundiata's centralised government, diplomacy and well-trained army permitted a...

In medieval society a knight enjoyed a position of high status and often wealth, they were feared on the battlefield and known for their chivalry off it, but it took a long time and a lot of training to get there...

Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi al-Granati, 1485-1554) was a diplomat, merchant traveller and scholar who famously voyaged from Timbuktu to the Niger River and wrote 'The Description of Africa' (La...

Abbeys were a striking feature of medieval urban and rural landscapes. Their layout and architecture reflected their purpose as cut-off monastic retreats which, conversely, also served and inspired their local communities...

Matabeleland (1838-1897), also known as the Ndebele Empire or Mthwakazi by the Ndebele themselves, was an African state covering what is today part of southern Zimbabwe and northern South Africa...

Trade and commerce in the medieval world developed to such an extent that even relatively small communities had access to weekly markets and, perhaps a day's travel away, larger but less frequent fairs, where the full range...

The Swahili Coast on the shores of East Africa was a region where Africans and Arabs mixed to create a unique identity from the 8th century called Swahili Culture. Swahili is the name of their language and means 'people of the coast.'...

From 1940 to 1943, the desert of North Africa became an important theatre of the Second World War (1939-45) since it was the only place the British Empire, standing alone, could directly fight on land the Axis powers of Germany...

Mauretania was an ancient kingdom in northwest Africa, encompassing regions of modern-day Morocco and Algeria. Although it shares a name with the modern country of Mauritania, they do not overlap. Ancient Mauretania was named after...