The Zulu Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Zulu Empire (or rather imprecisely as Zululand) was a monarchy in Southern Africa that extended along the coast of the Indian Ocean from the Tugela River in the south to Pongola River in the north.
The small kingdom grew to dominate much of what is today KwaZulu-Natal in Southern Africa,[1][2] but when it came into conflict with the British Empire in the 1870s during the Anglo-Zulu War, it was defeated despite an early Zulu victory in the war. The area was subsequently absorbed into the Colony of Natal and later became part of the Union of South Africa. [read more]
The Ashanti (or Asante) Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896) was a West Africa state of the Ashanti, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) are a sub-group of the Akans, a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people of West Africa inhabiting an area known as ‘Akanland’. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European Firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Ghana to present day Benin and Ivory Coast, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. Continue reading →
Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
There were a number of small Nubian kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages, the last of which collapsed in 1504, when Nubia became divided between Egypt and the Sennar sultanate resulting in the Arabization of much of the Nubian population. Nubia was again united within Ottoman Egypt in the 19th century, and within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from 1899 to 1956.
The name Nubia is derived from that of the Noba people, nomads who settled the area in the 4th century, with the collapse of the kingdom of Meroë. The Noba spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, ancestral to Old Nubian. Old Nubian was mostly used in religious texts dating from the 8th and 15th centuries AD. Before the 4th century, and throughout classical antiquity, Nubia was known as Kush, or, in Classical Greek usage, included under the name Ethiopia (Aithiopia). Continue reading →
