"This book is the liveliest account of African history ever written, covering over [one] thousand years of trans-Saharan trade. "Finely written and researched. ... This edition will no doubt whet the appetites of a fresh generation of scholars and students for greater knowledge of parts of Africa still surprisingly little-known to the outside world." -- Journal of Islamic Studies "A unique source book." - The New York Times "Utterly enthralling ... splendidly romantic." -- The New Yorker Read more

The inspiring story of three young Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, facing life-threatening perils, ultimately finding their way to a new life in America. Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live.They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and the purity of their child's-eye-vision, Alephonsian, Benjamin, and Benson recall by turns: how they endured the hunger and strength-sapping illnesses-dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever; how they dodged the life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles and soldiers alike-that dogged their footsteps; and how they grappled with a war that threatened continually to overwhelm them. Their story is a lyrical, captivating, timeless portrait of a childhood hurled into wartime and how they had the good fortune and belief in themselves to survive. Read more

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. Read more

Accessible and interesting study of Egypt's neighbours to the south over 3,000 years from the A Group to the arrival of Christianity in the Sixth Century AD. KMT Magazine says of this book; "of the several book treatments of these cultures appearing in the 1980s, the present volume is easily the most accesssible and concise. reading it one has the sensation of encountering a wholly alien, yet thoroughly fascinating civilsation for the first time. Afrocentrists take note". Read more

A groundbreaking exploration of 500,000 years of African history, cultures and identity.Historian, archaeologist, and anthropologist Luke Pepera takes us on a personal journey discovering 500,000 years of African history and cultures in order to reclaim and reconnect with this extraordinary heritage. He tackles the question many people of African descent ask - Who are we? Where do we come from? What defines us? And it explores how knowledge of this deeper history might affect current understandings of African identity. Through thematically-linked chapters that explore aspects of African identity from nomadic culture and matriarchal society to beliefs about the afterlife and the tradition of oral storytelling, and interwoven with Luke's own experiences of exploring his Ghanaian family history and his personal questions of identity, this is a comprehensive, relevant and beautifully told new history of Africa, and how it has shaped the world we know today. Read more

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan is an 1899 book written by Winston Churchill while he was still an officer in the British army. The book provides a history of the British involvement in the Sudan and the conflict between the British forces led by Lord Kitchener and Dervish forces led by Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, heir to the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad who had embarked on a campaign to conquer Egypt, to drive out the non-Muslim infidels and make way for the second coming of the Islamic Mahdi. The River War was Churchill's second published book after The Story of the Malakand Field Force, and originally filled two volumes with over 1000 pages in 1899. The River War was subsequently abridged to one volume in 1902. Read more

The Darfur conflict exploded in early 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, struck national military installations in Darfur to send a hard-hitting message of resentment over the region’s political and economic marginalization. The conflict devastated the region’s economy, shredded its fragile social fabric, and drove millions of people from their homes. Darfur Allegory is a dispatch from the humanitarian crisis that explains the historical and ethnographic background to competing narratives that have informed international responses. At the heart of the book is Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Abusharaf’s critique of the pseudoscientific notions of race and ethnicity that posit divisions between “Arab” northerners and “African” Darfuris. Elaborated in colonial times and enshrined in policy afterwards, such binary categories have been adopted by the media to explain the civil war in Darfur. The narratives that circulate internationally are thus highly fraught and cover over—to counterproductive effect—forms of Darfurian activism that have emerged in the conflict’s wake. Darfur Allegory marries the analytical precision of a committed anthropologist with an insider’s view of Sudanese politics at home and in the diaspora, laying bare the power of words to heal or perpetuate civil conflict. Read more

An unforgettable journey into the forgotten history of medieval AfricaFrom the birth of Islam in the seventh century to the voyages of European exploration in the fifteenth, Africa was at the center of a vibrant exchange of goods and ideas. It was an African golden age in which Ghâna, Nubia, and Zimbabwe became the crossroads of civilizations, and where African royals, thinkers, and artists played celebrated roles in an increasingly globalized world. François-Xavier Fauvelle brings this thrilling era marvelously to life. A book that finally recognizes Africa's important role in the Middle Ages, The Golden Rhinoceros carefully pieces together the written and archaeological evidence to tell an unforgettable story that is at once sensitive to Africa’s rich social diversity and alert to the trajectories that connected Africa with the wider Muslim and Christian worlds. Read more

When South Sudan's war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut's dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa's longest war, the continent's biggest country split in two. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented experiment. Many have fought, but South Sudan did the impossible, and won. This is the story of an epic fight for freedom. It is also the story of a nightmare. First Raise a Flag details one of the most dramatic failures in the history of international state-building. three years after independence, South Sudan was lowest ranked in the list of failed states. War returned, worse than ever. Peter Martell has spent over a decade reporting from palaces and battlefields, meeting those who made a country like no other: warlords and spies, missionaries and mercenaries, guerrillas and gunrunners, freedom fighters and war crime fugitives, Hollywood stars and ex-slaves. Under his seasoned foreign correspondent's gaze, he weaves with passion and colour the lively history of the world's newest country. First Raise a Flag is a moving reflection on the meaning of nationalism, the power of hope and the endurance of the human spirit. Read more

Since it sprang from obscurity to international headlines in 2004, the name “Darfur” has become synonymous with war, massacre, and humanitarian crisis. The crisis had, however, been brewing for far longer, its causes neglected by both scholars and Sudanese leaders.War in Darfur and the Search for Peace is a series of essays by leading Sudanese and international specialists on Darfur, combining original research and analysis. The book provides in-depth analysis of the origins and dimensions of the conflict, including detailed accounts of the evolution of ethnic and religious identities, the breakdown of local administration, the emergence of Arab militia and resistance movements, and regional dimensions to the conflict.The study also focuses on the search for peace, with contributions by those most closely engaged in local and international efforts to resolve the conflict. This includes documentation and analysis of the warring parties’ ideologies and agendas and how they have changed in the course of the conflict, and examination of the efforts made by Sudanese civil and political leaders, the African Union, and other international actors to bring the war to an end. Read more

When Lady Lugard sat down to write A Tropical Dependency, it was not her intention to inspire generations of Africans to regain the independence of their countries. Lugard writes of slavery as though it was a God-given right of Europeans to own Africans as slaves. Ironically, her text on Africa's place in history reaffirms the belief that "If Africa did it once, Africa can do it again!" Read more

Civilizing Women is a riveting exploration of the disparate worlds of British colonial officers and the Muslim Sudanese they sought to remake into modern imperial subjects. Focusing on efforts to stop female circumcision in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1920 and 1946, Janice Boddy mines colonial documents and popular culture for ethnographic details to interleave with observations from northern Sudan, where women's participation in zâr spirit possession rituals provided an oblique counterpoint to colonial views. Written in engaging prose, Civilizing Women concerns the subtle process of "colonizing selfhood," the British women who undertook it, and those they hoped to reform. It suggests that efforts to suppress female circumcision were tied to the continuation of slavery and the rise of commercial cotton growing in Sudan, as well as to concerns about infant mortality and maternal health. Boddy traces maneuverings among political officers, teachers, missionaries, and medical personnel as they pursued their elusive goal, and describes their fraught relations with Egypt, Parliament, the Foreign Office, African nationalists, and Western feminists. In doing so, she sounds a cautionary note for contemporary interventionists who would flout local knowledge and belief. Read more

The dramatic story of the siege of Khartoum and Britain’s extraordinarily violent 1882 campaign in Egypt and Sudan.In the 1880s, British control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield that Prime Minister William Gladstone wished to avoid—until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war. It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought, and civilians were often caught in the crossfire. Among the famed British officers involved were figures who would later adopt starring roles in World War I, such as Egyptian Army officer Captain Herbert Kitchener. By turns shocking and dynamic, Chain of Fire examines the terrible desert wars using the testimonies of the men who fought there. Read more

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For several years, the armies of Napoleon III deployed some 450 Muslim Sudanese slave soldiers in Veracruz, the port of Mexico City. As in the other case of Western hemisphere military slavery (the West India Regiments, a British unit in existence 1795-1815), the Sudanese were imported from Africa in the hopes that they would better survive the tropical diseases that so terribly afflicted European soldiers. In both cases, the Africans did indeed fulfill these expectations. The mixture of cultures embodied by this event has piqued the interest of several historians, so it is by no means unknown. Hill and Hogg provide a particularly thorough account of this exotic interlude, explaining its background, looking in detail at the battle record in Mexico, and figuring out who exactly made up the battalion. Much in their account is odd and interesting, for example, the Sudanese superiority to Austrian troops and their festive nine-day spree in Paris on the emperor's tab. The authors also assess the episode's longer-term impact on the Sudan, showing that the veterans of Mexico, having learnt much from their extended exposure to French military practices, rose quickly in the ranks, then taught these methods to others. Read more

Written by two authors with unparalleled first-hand experience of Darfur, this is the definitive guide. Newly updated and hugely expanded, this edition details Darfur's history in Sudan. It traces the origins, organization and ideology of the infamous Janjawiid and rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. It also analyses the brutal response of the Sudanese government. The authors investigate the responses by the African Union and the international community, including the halting peace talks and the attempts at peacekeeping. Flint and de Waal provide an authoritative and compelling account of contemporary Africa's most controversial conflict. Read more

Running for My Life is not a story about Africa or track and field athletics. It is about outrunning the devil and achieving the impossible faith, diligence, and the desire to give back. It is the American dream come true and a stark reminder that saving one can help to save thousands more.Lopez Lomong chronicles his inspiring ascent from a barefoot lost boy of the Sudanese Civil War to a Nike sponsored athlete on the US Olympic Team. Though most of us fall somewhere between the catastrophic lows and dizzying highs of Lomong's incredible life, every reader will find in his story the human spark to pursue dreams that might seem unthinkable, even from circumstances that might appear hopeless."Lopez Lomong's story is one of true inspiration. His life is a story of courage, hard work, never giving up, and having hope where there is hopelessness all around. Lopez is a true role model." ?MICHAEL JOHNSON, Olympic Gold Medalist"This true story of a Sudanese child refugee who became an Olympic star is powerful proof that God gives hope to the hopeless and shines a light in the darkest places. Don't be surprised if after reading this incredible tale, you find yourself mysteriously drawn to run alongside him." ?RICHARD STEARNS, president, World Vision US and author of THe Hole in Our Gospel Read more

H. A. MacMichael was a member of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government between 1905 and 1933. This two-volume work, first published in 1922, is the culmination of almost twenty years' ethnological research conducted while MacMichael was stationed in various parts of Sudan. It provides detailed histories of the origins, movements and degrees of relation between indigenous groups in Sudan, based on oral histories gained from interviews with local people, and on Sudanese genealogical records known as 'nisbas'. These records provide a valuable insight into the construction and fluidity of ethnic identity at a local and regional level, and have been widely used as a basis for subsequent investigations concerning identity in Sudan. Volume 1 discusses pre-Islamic and contemporary indigenous groups. This book contains opinions on ethnicity which were acceptable at the time it was first published. Read more

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A medical practitioner and talented draftsman, Alessandro Ricci was born in Siena, Italy, at the end of the eighteenth century. He traveled extensively throughout Egypt and Sudan between 1817 and 1822. During his stay, he worked as an epigraphist for Giovanni B. Belzoni in the tomb of Seti I and later entered into the service of British consul general Henry Salt and English explorer William John Bankes, on whose behalf he visited and documented Siwa (1820), Sinai (1820), and Nubia (1818–19 and 1821–22). Ricci also became the physician to Ibrahim Pasha's Upper Egypt expedition and achieved fame for daringly saving the life of Ibrahim Pasha during the military campaign that led to Egypt’s conquest of Sudan in 1821–22. Upon his return to Italy, Ricci wrote a long account of all his journeys and reworked a series of ninety plates into striking form, yet failed to publish either.In 2009, Daniele Salvoldi identified a complete typewritten copy of Ricci’s Travels in the National Archives of Egypt in Cairo. Drawings intended to accompany the text as plates were tracked down in different locations in Italy and the United Kingdom. From Siena to Nubia is the English-translated critical edition, with notes and introductory chapters, of Ricci’s travel account, which provides detailed information about the countries he visited, including descriptions of ancient ruins and social customs, botanical and geological remarks, and historical and ethnographical observations. It adds to the recent, growing corpus of exploration literature on nineteenth-century Egypt as well as bringing to light obscure sources important to the early history of Egyptology. Read more