The Wizard
05-02-2004, 17:26
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/~kkasongo/africa2.jpg
Source (http://www.kurdistanica.com/english/history/articles-his/his-articles-10.html)
http://www.utalii.com/images/Kilwa_%20Ruins.gifhttp://jatatours.intafrica.com/Kilwa-husuni2.jpg
Palace of Husuni Kubwa (http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Architecture/Kilwa93-010-039.jpg), the largest stone construction in sub-Saharan Africa
Colonies of Kurds, Persians and other Iranic peoples from southern Iran "founded everywhere on the [East African] coast and islands commercial settlements in pre-Islamic times, centuries before Muhammed?" (Richard Reusch, History of East Africa. New York: Ungar, 1961, 33, 49). Because of the dominance of the Barzangi of East Africa, soon it came to be known as Barzangibar ("Barzangi coast" ), eventually shortened to Zangibar (whence Zanzibar). The black slaves they marketed in Asia, were thus known as the zangi/zinji, meaning a native of Zangibar-a name that continues to the present as a pejorative for an African black in the Middle Eastern languages.
In East Africa, many colonial cities were founded in the Zanzibar archipelago and later, on the mainland under the tutelage of the Barzangis. The cities of Zangibar and Manda in the archipelago soon were rivaled and surpassed by cities like Mombasa, Malindi, Brava, Mogadishu, Kisimayu and of course the Barzangi colonial capital of Kilwa Kisiwani south of modern Dar es Salaam. Kilwa became the nucleus of an East African Barzangi empire, better known as "Kilwa Empire," that stretched from the Horn of Africa to Mozambique and included settlements on Madagascar, the Comoros, the Seychelles and the Zanzibar archipelago per se.
An independent Kilwa Empire seems to have come into being when the first Sasanian emperor, Ardasher I, ended in AD 224 the independent rule of the parent Barzangi state in southern Persia. In the reign of Ardasher's successor, Shapor I, Sasanians had annexed the southern shores of the Gulf and Muscat on the Indian Ocean, finishing off any vestige of Barzangi independence on the Asian continent. By the mid-6th century, the Yemen had been wrested by the Sasanians from the Ethiopian Empire, effectively cutting off the Barzangis in East Africa from all their Middle Eastern roots and trade. These steps may have been the impetus for the Kilwa Barzangis to embark on a search for new markets, now that the Sasanians were in firm control of the ports and markets in Persia and Arabia.
The Barzangis thus fanned out east and engaged in commerce with India, the Malay archipelago and south China, leaving behind geographical names telltale of their once dominant position. The name of the Malabar coast of India (Malay+bar, "Malay coast" ) is just a parallel with that of Zangibar/Zanzibar. This process is also at the root of how the sea faring hero Sindbad, gets his Kurdish name, and how the third largest island in the Philippines archipelago is called Palawan/Pahlawan-"hero" in Kurdish, and now also "hero, saint" in all Southeast Asian languages.
The Sasanians took great interest in continuing the Barzangi enterprise in the south seas, for by middle of the 5th century AD, they had gained from the Barzangis the "control of the sea ways in the western half of the Indian Ocean." (Gervase Matthew, "The East African Coast until the Coming of the Portuguese," in Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew, eds., History of East Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963, 99). This added a definite Persian coloring to the earlier Kurdish endeavor in maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. Persian colonies were already flourishing in South China, East Indies and south India-and East Africa by the 7th century.
http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Ibn_Battuta/kilwa.jpg
It is not clear how successful the Sasanians were in continuing the impressive steps of the Barzangis in dominating the maritime trade and the colonies in East Africa, south and southeast Asia and China. The rather scanty numismatic evidence on exhibit at the Beit al-Amani Museum at Zanzibar city includes four Parthian and one Sasanian piece from the mint at Ctesiphon, the latest of which is one of Ardasher I. This can hardly be used to compare Barzangi Kurdish success with that of subsequent Sasanian Persians.
One should recognize that the survival of Zoroastrian fire temples found in many locations in the Kilwa domain is not necessarily a Sasanian vestige. Sasanian sources, including rock inscriptions and textual records tell of the Badhrangi/Barzangi house having served an important Zoroastrian function as custodians of the great temple of the goddess Anahita at Stakhr/Persepolis. It is hard to believe that such a religious function was not transplanted by the Barzangis to their East African domains. These mixed Iranic colonies continued to prosper into the early Islamic era, when under attacks from the aggrieved native population, the imperial capital of Kilwa fell and nearly 2,000 of its inhabitants were eaten in a single week.
A new wave of Iranic dominance of East Africa unfolded in the 11th century, and this time it was a joint endeavor by the Persians and Shabankara Kurds of Shiraz region in southern Iran. East African traditions and chronicles, numismatic and architectural evidence, statements of European traveler Joao De Barros, and reports of Muslim travelers and geographers imply that after the Barzangis, another "Shirazi" dynasty moved to East Africa, establishing the Zanj Empire, and ruling there for more than 500 years from 980 to 1513 (Reusch, 91-215; Mathew, 102-106). The founder, Ali ibn Hasan, "ruled over the whole coast from Lamu in the north to Sofala in the south, if not farther." (Reusch, 107). Thus modern elite and many common citizens of the Zanzibar archipelago and those of the "Swahil" (Lindi to Mombasa and Malindi) and "Benadir" (Kisimayu to Mogadishu) coasts of East Africa call themselves "Afro-Shirazi," including the main political party in Zanzibar, the "Afro-Shirazi Party".
The foundation of the modern town of Zanzibar (the stone town center) was laid late in the reign of this Kurdo-Persian "Shirazi" dynasty. Arabs, particularly those from Oman came to dominate East Africa after the fall of this dynasty. The Portuguese, Germans and the British successively ruled and divided the area into various colonial domains beginning with the 17th century. The dominance by Middle Easterners of the area, nevertheless, continued under European colonial regimes, albeit in an ever-shrinking form, until the anti-white revolution of 1964 completely removed the last vestiges of non-native, Iranic-Arabian domination from their first, and ironically last, bastion-Zanzibar. Recent archaeological excavations in the old Kilwa imperial sites such as Unguja Ukuu, Tumbatu, Mtambwe and Mkumbuu are shedding new light on the history of settlement and institution of the Iranic empire of Kilwa, and the interconnection between various far-flung segments of that maritime state with each other and southern Iran.
One can only hypothesize what could have been, if the much more powerful Zelanids had an open ocean lapping on their coast instead of the besieged Black Sea. The great potentials of this Kurdish maritime empire may not have been wasted and the history of the Kurdish people in general might have taken a different, less mountain-oriented turn.
http://shanana.berkeley.edu/spiro_img/94/031/94-031-032.jpg
Shirazi Mosque in Kilwa
An article straight from All Empires (http://www.allempires.com/). Very interesting to learn this endeavour, and the Persian roots of great African empires.
Source (http://www.kurdistanica.com/english/history/articles-his/his-articles-10.html)
http://www.utalii.com/images/Kilwa_%20Ruins.gifhttp://jatatours.intafrica.com/Kilwa-husuni2.jpg
Palace of Husuni Kubwa (http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Architecture/Kilwa93-010-039.jpg), the largest stone construction in sub-Saharan Africa
Colonies of Kurds, Persians and other Iranic peoples from southern Iran "founded everywhere on the [East African] coast and islands commercial settlements in pre-Islamic times, centuries before Muhammed?" (Richard Reusch, History of East Africa. New York: Ungar, 1961, 33, 49). Because of the dominance of the Barzangi of East Africa, soon it came to be known as Barzangibar ("Barzangi coast" ), eventually shortened to Zangibar (whence Zanzibar). The black slaves they marketed in Asia, were thus known as the zangi/zinji, meaning a native of Zangibar-a name that continues to the present as a pejorative for an African black in the Middle Eastern languages.
In East Africa, many colonial cities were founded in the Zanzibar archipelago and later, on the mainland under the tutelage of the Barzangis. The cities of Zangibar and Manda in the archipelago soon were rivaled and surpassed by cities like Mombasa, Malindi, Brava, Mogadishu, Kisimayu and of course the Barzangi colonial capital of Kilwa Kisiwani south of modern Dar es Salaam. Kilwa became the nucleus of an East African Barzangi empire, better known as "Kilwa Empire," that stretched from the Horn of Africa to Mozambique and included settlements on Madagascar, the Comoros, the Seychelles and the Zanzibar archipelago per se.
An independent Kilwa Empire seems to have come into being when the first Sasanian emperor, Ardasher I, ended in AD 224 the independent rule of the parent Barzangi state in southern Persia. In the reign of Ardasher's successor, Shapor I, Sasanians had annexed the southern shores of the Gulf and Muscat on the Indian Ocean, finishing off any vestige of Barzangi independence on the Asian continent. By the mid-6th century, the Yemen had been wrested by the Sasanians from the Ethiopian Empire, effectively cutting off the Barzangis in East Africa from all their Middle Eastern roots and trade. These steps may have been the impetus for the Kilwa Barzangis to embark on a search for new markets, now that the Sasanians were in firm control of the ports and markets in Persia and Arabia.
The Barzangis thus fanned out east and engaged in commerce with India, the Malay archipelago and south China, leaving behind geographical names telltale of their once dominant position. The name of the Malabar coast of India (Malay+bar, "Malay coast" ) is just a parallel with that of Zangibar/Zanzibar. This process is also at the root of how the sea faring hero Sindbad, gets his Kurdish name, and how the third largest island in the Philippines archipelago is called Palawan/Pahlawan-"hero" in Kurdish, and now also "hero, saint" in all Southeast Asian languages.
The Sasanians took great interest in continuing the Barzangi enterprise in the south seas, for by middle of the 5th century AD, they had gained from the Barzangis the "control of the sea ways in the western half of the Indian Ocean." (Gervase Matthew, "The East African Coast until the Coming of the Portuguese," in Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew, eds., History of East Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963, 99). This added a definite Persian coloring to the earlier Kurdish endeavor in maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. Persian colonies were already flourishing in South China, East Indies and south India-and East Africa by the 7th century.
http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Ibn_Battuta/kilwa.jpg
It is not clear how successful the Sasanians were in continuing the impressive steps of the Barzangis in dominating the maritime trade and the colonies in East Africa, south and southeast Asia and China. The rather scanty numismatic evidence on exhibit at the Beit al-Amani Museum at Zanzibar city includes four Parthian and one Sasanian piece from the mint at Ctesiphon, the latest of which is one of Ardasher I. This can hardly be used to compare Barzangi Kurdish success with that of subsequent Sasanian Persians.
One should recognize that the survival of Zoroastrian fire temples found in many locations in the Kilwa domain is not necessarily a Sasanian vestige. Sasanian sources, including rock inscriptions and textual records tell of the Badhrangi/Barzangi house having served an important Zoroastrian function as custodians of the great temple of the goddess Anahita at Stakhr/Persepolis. It is hard to believe that such a religious function was not transplanted by the Barzangis to their East African domains. These mixed Iranic colonies continued to prosper into the early Islamic era, when under attacks from the aggrieved native population, the imperial capital of Kilwa fell and nearly 2,000 of its inhabitants were eaten in a single week.
A new wave of Iranic dominance of East Africa unfolded in the 11th century, and this time it was a joint endeavor by the Persians and Shabankara Kurds of Shiraz region in southern Iran. East African traditions and chronicles, numismatic and architectural evidence, statements of European traveler Joao De Barros, and reports of Muslim travelers and geographers imply that after the Barzangis, another "Shirazi" dynasty moved to East Africa, establishing the Zanj Empire, and ruling there for more than 500 years from 980 to 1513 (Reusch, 91-215; Mathew, 102-106). The founder, Ali ibn Hasan, "ruled over the whole coast from Lamu in the north to Sofala in the south, if not farther." (Reusch, 107). Thus modern elite and many common citizens of the Zanzibar archipelago and those of the "Swahil" (Lindi to Mombasa and Malindi) and "Benadir" (Kisimayu to Mogadishu) coasts of East Africa call themselves "Afro-Shirazi," including the main political party in Zanzibar, the "Afro-Shirazi Party".
The foundation of the modern town of Zanzibar (the stone town center) was laid late in the reign of this Kurdo-Persian "Shirazi" dynasty. Arabs, particularly those from Oman came to dominate East Africa after the fall of this dynasty. The Portuguese, Germans and the British successively ruled and divided the area into various colonial domains beginning with the 17th century. The dominance by Middle Easterners of the area, nevertheless, continued under European colonial regimes, albeit in an ever-shrinking form, until the anti-white revolution of 1964 completely removed the last vestiges of non-native, Iranic-Arabian domination from their first, and ironically last, bastion-Zanzibar. Recent archaeological excavations in the old Kilwa imperial sites such as Unguja Ukuu, Tumbatu, Mtambwe and Mkumbuu are shedding new light on the history of settlement and institution of the Iranic empire of Kilwa, and the interconnection between various far-flung segments of that maritime state with each other and southern Iran.
One can only hypothesize what could have been, if the much more powerful Zelanids had an open ocean lapping on their coast instead of the besieged Black Sea. The great potentials of this Kurdish maritime empire may not have been wasted and the history of the Kurdish people in general might have taken a different, less mountain-oriented turn.
http://shanana.berkeley.edu/spiro_img/94/031/94-031-032.jpg
Shirazi Mosque in Kilwa
An article straight from All Empires (http://www.allempires.com/). Very interesting to learn this endeavour, and the Persian roots of great African empires.