Were African empires really on par with anything else in the world at the time? Like the most "we wuz" of all...

Were African empires really on par with anything else in the world at the time? Like the most "we wuz" of all, Mansa Musa's empire.
Or would it be like glorifying the Celts as an advanced culture when you had Mesopotamia and the mediterranean with far more sophisticated cultures?

If we're talking about the Sahel empires

They were about contemporary Mesoamerica/Russia/Japan tier

Nothing too much to brag about, but certainly not "barbaric"

Are there any books on the subject? Or is there a lack of knowledge on African civilizations?

If you want primary sources try to find an Anglo-French translation of the Tarikh As-Sudan, the Travels of Ibn Battuta, or Leo Africanus

>Or is there a lack of knowledge on African civilizations?

no, we know a lot actually. I suggest going over to historum, their posters are a lot more knowledgeable than Veeky Forums posters

>Great Zimbabwe Empire
>that far down south with no Arab or European influence

What the fuck? How does this exist?

The Swahili Coast was pretty indistinguishable from anywhere else in the Indian Ocean region in terms of development. Ethiopia, while not up to date by Western European standards, would be relatively indistinguishable from the Balkans or Eastern Europe in terms of development.

Mansa Munsa's empire was a unified state with a leader that could trek to mecca and back without it collapsing while he is gone. They were comparable to the celts once but I don't think it is accurate from that point on.

It doesn't. The culture that built Great Zimbabwe and other stone structures in the region was a chiefdom, not a state, and not even close to an empire. As for why they flourished in that area, it has fertile land which is mostly free of tsetse flies and a large supply of gold which they traded with the Somalis/Swahilis/Arabs at the coast. They weren't directly influenced by Muslim culture, but their economic influence helped it develop.

This is about right. The Swahili Coast, Sudan and Ethiopia were about on par with many of Eurasia's civilizations, depending on the time period you're looking at. Still, they were generally peripheral on a world stage and could never really compare with the 'core' areas (except maybe Aksum). You could compare them with places like Tibet or medieval Russia.

West Africa was less integrated with the rest of the world, and it only really adopted parts of Islamic civilization very late in its history. There were impressive civilizations there, but they were nowhere near on part with most of their contemporaries (of course there were plenty of other parts of the world even less developed). It doesn't really make much sense trying to compare them anyway.

Mined gold and sold it to the coastal cities which traded it with India and Arabia. You have to realize that the coastal cities of East Africa, particularly along the Swahili coast, were absolutely crucial to trade in the Indian Ocean.

The grazing/farm land was good enough for a higher population density

There was already a tradition of small stone buildings growing

I think historum is full of pretentious fucks, I was on it and left. I cannot remember anything good about that website.
I rather go to askhistorians or something.

Apart from Ethiopia, none of the sub saharan "empires" had a hint of writing system being in use.

They were literally a few steps in front of the fucking stone age.

The Swahilis, the Nubians, the Malians/Songhai and Hausa all had writing. The only civilizations without writing were the ones in the Guinea Coast like Ife and Benin.

As a /pol/ack I find this a bit stupid.

>great
>zimbabwe
>empire

>Apart from Ethiopia, none of the sub saharan "empires" had a hint of writing system being in use
But that's wrong you fucking retard.

Why should writing be the definition of civilization?

>"we wuz"
Just stop

Moroccan empire was best empire.

We shouldn't have left Mauritania and Mali go independant,they should have remained our slaves.

>posting the shopped map

Wow.

I saw this map with real legend just today.

No. But that doesn't make them uninteresting.

Japan was leagues ahead of Mesoamerica.

What was the original map supposed to be?

I think it's lion habitats historically and today if I'm not mistaken.

African empires were characterized by high density populations in moderately sized empires. Nigeria for example was where the vast majority of people lived, therefor It's empires were small but powerful compared to their larger landmass-wise neighbors

The Sahel is comparable in size and population to Metropolitan France at the time. Empires like Sokoto and Songhai had quite respectably sized populations for their comparatively small landmass.

That said, comparing them to their contemporaries is hard because they were rather isolated expect via trade until the 1800's. I'd say that Songhai was a contemporary power in the same sense that Japan was.

The Incas didn't have a writing system either and academics still suck their dicks at how advanced their engineering was.