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A few photos and descriptions...

Meroe, Pyramids:



Yeha, Ethiopia (Askumite):



Fes, Morocco



Djenne, Mali:



Sankore University. Timbuktu, Mali (1325 A.D.)




Benin City, prior to British colonialism:





Great Zimbabwe




Tomb of Askia




Al bakri on Ancient Ghana:

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The capital of Ghana is called Kumbi Saleh. The city consists of two towns lying on a plain, one of which is inhabited by Muslims and is large, possessing 12 mosques. The town also possesses a large number of judges and learned men.

Surrounding both towns are wells of sweet water from which they drink and near which they cultivate vegetables. The town inhabited by the king is six miles from the Muslim one and is called Al Ghana. The area between the two towns is covered with houses made of stone and wood. The king has a palace and conical huts, surrounded by a wall-like enclosure. In the king’s town, not far from the royal court of justice, is a mosque. The Muslims who come on missions to the king pray there. There is one great avenue, which crosses the town from east to west.

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We stayed one night in this island [Mombasa], and then pursued our journey to Kulwa, which is a large town on the coast. The majority of its inhabitants are Zanj, jet-black in colour, and with tattoo marks on their faces. I was told by a merchant that the town of Sufala lies a fortnight's journey [south] from Kulwa and that gold dust is brought to Sufala from Yufi in the country of the Limis, which is a month's journey distant from it. Kulwa is a very fine and substantially built town, and all its buildings are of wood. Its inhabitants are constantly engaged in military expeditions, for their country is contiguous to the heathen Zanj.

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"Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective of town planning."

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Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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^It is often implied that the architecture is somehow in *** style *** Islamic, but the Tomb of Askia and other monuments like it in reality are just fine examples of the monumental mud-building traditions of the West African Sahel.

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On the subject (and I know this doesn't have anything to do with what I just said) does anyone know the validity in the claim that materials from Mecca were used to build the Askia tomb?

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Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Sundiata:
Benin City, prior to British colonialism:

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A plan of Benin City prior to its sack in 1897 in turn shows the palace at the center, surrounded on most sides by the compounds of lesser chiefs, craftspeople, and other court members. The map and the plan, both of a roughly concentric design, bear out Benin ideology. In Benin thought, the sacred king is the center point. From him, a sequence of circles radiates outward. The first circle includes his chiefs, protectors, and supporters; the next embraces guilds of craftspeople and artists. Next are villagers that pay allegiance and tribute. Farther out still are hostile enemy peoples, and beyond these are the unknowable realms of gods, imagined by the Edo as coextensive with the ocean which they believe encircles their world.

In processions and other ceremonies, the oba is central among his court members, flanked by, with his arms often supported by, designated titleholders. He is transformed by his costume and regalia into a work of art, a walking pyramidal assemblage of a symbolic materials and emblems. He wears cloth woven by his weavers' guild and embellished with many regal motifs. His tunic and headdress are fashioned of coral beads, his armlets of ivory. His hoop skirt creates a wide conical base, expanding him to monumental size, as befits a divinity. His headdress points upward to the celestial realm while adding height to the regal image.

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The Portuguese first dealt with the kingdom accordingly, on a more or less equal basis, exchanging ambassadors…

Their highly centralized political structure allowed them to rule over an area 150,000 square km, almost the size of Uganda, stretching south to the Zaire estuary. They acquired a mastery of metallurgy, law, weaving and textiles. The art of the Kongo remains, even today, one of the most elaborate in Africa, making use of wood, cloth, terra cotta and even stones. Kongo not only survived contact with the Portuguese but continued expansion and development into a centralized state until civil wars in the late seventeenth century. The memory of the magnificent kingdom which proclaimed very early the achievements of black men, is still present in the minds of many intellectuals and leaders of Africa today.

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When the Portuguese ambassador reached Mbanza Kongo in 1491, 7 years before reaching Mombasa, the city was already quite spread out, according to Cuvelier who gives us a detailed description:

The streets were not aligned, nor the houses of the ancient Kongo kingdom, no avenues lined with palms or ornamental trees. Narror paths were running in all directions through the tall grass. The living quarters of the most important people were located close to the king's quarters. Spread out, according to their taste or their fancy, they occupied sometimes quite a considerable space. The houses were made of straw without any ornaments, except inside, where there would be a palm cloth hanging on the wall, representing an antelope or an other animal. The houses of the important people could be distinguished from those of the simple ones, because they were larger and had more painted palm cloths. The houses were surrounded by a fence made from very strong trees: the mingienge, mpesempese, African poplars, cactus (dizza) with a sap which could poison spearheads and war knives. Toward the north, the mountain was crowned with dark woods, a sacred place where the noise of a hatchet was never heard. Palms, baobabs and many trees stood there and this was where the ancient kings were buried. The founder of the kingdom of Ntinu Wene was buried there. To the south, there was a large courtyard called Mbazi ou Mbazi Nkanu, the court of justice, because there, under a huge wild fig tree... which shaded a corner of the place, the kings used to administer justice. It was a large open space where crowds would gather to receive the king's blessing, to watch dances and triumphal parades.

Not far from this public place was the king's residence or enclosure, which was called lumbu by the natives. This enclosure was more than one thousand meters in circumference and was made of pales tied together with lianas...

At the gates. Mavitu were standing the royal guards and some horn blowers. Inside the fence, there was a courtyard; then one could see another fence, in the middle of which was the king's house. One could reach it through a labyrinth. The only difference between this and the other houses, was that this one was more spacious. Inside the royal enclosure, the queen and her residence surrounded by huts with her followers who accompanied her when she left the enclosure.

This description shows well that the urban centre resembled many big villages in central Africa with living quarters spread out and surrounded by hedges and gardens. The layout of the capital was probably not very different from the provincial centre, the clustering of the population resulting essentially from the presence of the king or an important chief. The Mbanza political centers exist only in relation to the holder of power and their evolution is linked. Built of earth, wood, straw and palms, these cities were fragile and their rise and fall was linked to the person who exercised the power. As elsewhere in central Africa, this type of centre gravitates around the king's or the governor's compound with their households, the courtyard and the sacred woods often used as a cemetery for the ancestor's graves. Those different elements put into space the sacred king, a sort of symbolic mechanism which mediates between nature and culture. From this symbolic nucleus, the urban center spreads and stretches following the evocative image of Balandier. The resulting settlement is a city, if one considers the number of people and a village, even if out of proportion, if one considers aspect and structure...

Even if there is a correlation between the development of the Kongo political organization and the birth of elementary urban civilization as noted by Balandier, one must admit that we do not have an urban tradition similar to those of the old West African cities, probably due to the materials used for building...

Like many cities, the location of the major cities in west-central Africa can easily be explained by a favorable ecological context and their origin could be related to the development of long-distance trade and the production of certain commodities. Their development is also connected to the rise of a complex and highly centralized society. And yet, one feels that before the arrival of the Europeans, the major urban centres did not differ significantly from the smaller villages, except for the number of inhabitants. The layout was one of open, scattered garden-cities or villages with a ceremonial and symbolic centre, as in many major tropical centres on other continents.

It seems to me that one should look more into the symbolic nature of those centres than into their rather obvious material explanations. The origin of the town is directly linked to the chief or king figure and the whole layout is a symbolic map of the essential function of the sacred kingship. The power and prestige of the king and of his city was such that long after the collapse of the kingdom, Mbanza Kongo remained the lcus of power, authority and legitimacy, the place where all the matrilineal descent groups lived together with the king. In the eighteenth century, the region of the ruined capital was called ‘Mpemba’ which referred to the ‘white’ of the other world, the ancestors, and the dead.

If one wants to know more about those very ancient and fascinating African garden-cities, one should hope it will soon become possible to carry out systematic archaeological research and that much more attention will be given from an anthropological point of view to rituals and tradition in relation to the sacred kingship/ As de Heusch has shown, in many central African societies, power must be understood in the first place in ritual terms. One must look first to the symbolic order and distinguish it from the political forms that it takes in various times and places.

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Originally posted by Jari-Ankhamun:
2. Stone materials were used in West, North, East and South Africa. Also, there IS NOTHING wrong with "Huts".
http://www.pitt.edu/~tokerism/0040/africa.html

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Danm right.

.. indeed. That hut thing is lame ..













mostly from

this man's photo stream

Simply search for 'African hut villages' or 'village of African huts'.

Also, stone building in West Africa from the aforementioned photo stream:

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Photograph taken in 1967 or 1968. Stone and mud were used instead of wood and mud for the walls of the houses at this site because of the rocky surface, which didn't allow stakes to be planted. The town was built on a hilltop for defense purposes and was gradually deserted for more accessible places during the first part of the twentieth century. That's me (1.84 metres tall) for scale.

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Sundiata:
Ibn Battuta on the Swahili Coast:
"We stayed one night in this island [Mombasa], and then pursued our journey to Kulwa, which is a large town on the coast. The majority of its inhabitants are Zanj, jet-black in colour, and with tattoo marks on their faces. I was told by a merchant that the town of Sufala lies a fortnight's journey [south] from Kulwa and that gold dust is brought to Sufala from Yufi in the country of the Limis, which is a month's journey distant from it. Kulwa is a very fine and substantially built town, and all its buildings are of wood. Its inhabitants are constantly engaged in military expeditions, for their country is contiguous to the heathen Zanj."

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African vs. Asiatic Perspective:


Asiatic Perspective: Swahili as Predominantly Asiatic

Proponents of this view, e.g. Coupland (1956), Hollingsworth (1951), Kickman (1963, 1974), Chittick (1965, 1984), etc., see the historical Swahili as consisting of people of Arabic and Persian origin and from intermarriages between the Asians and African women.

Coupland (1956) portrayed the whole of historic East African coast as a colony of immigrants from the Middle East. Coupland further observed that, indigenous inhabitants of the region were relegated to the roles of wives and slaves for the immigrants. Earlier, Hollingsworth (1951) had alleged an existence of a Persian or Arab-Persian Empire called Zenj Empire along the East African coast before the 15th century. Accordingly, he argued that civilization that took place in the region during that time was inherent in the Asian settlers. Coupland and Hollingsworth observations were based purely on historical and cultural narratives and assumptions.

The Asiatic perspective was supported further by Kirkman (1963, 1964), and Chittick (1965, 1984). Kirkman (1963) in correlating physical evidence from his archaeological excavations in Gedi and other sites of historical towns along the Kenyan coast with cultural and historical narratives concluded that the sites were Arabic colonial settlements. A year later, James Kirkman in his Men and Monuments on the East African Coast, reiterated the Asiatic view as thus:

The historical monuments of East Africa belong, not to the Africans but to Arabs and Arabised Persians, mixed in blood with the African but in culture utterly apart from the Africans who surround them. (Kirkman, 1964)

A similar historical interpretation was suggested by Neville Chittick in his archaeological works in Kilwa Kisiwani (Chittick, 1965) and Manda in the Lamu archipelago (Chittick, 1984).

In Kilwa Kisiwani, Chittick implied Asiatic connection of the towns inhabitants from the names of a number of Kilwa rulers engraved on excavated locally minted coins. On the basis of dynastic history, he claimed that the rulers were from a Persian city called Shiraz. To Chittick, Kilwa Kisiwani was a Persian colonial settlement. He argued that the Persians had a period of settlement in southern Somalia before they landed in Kilwa Kisiwani (Horton, 1996). It is important to note here that for some unknown reasons, Chittick in his later two volumes work on Kilwa (Chittick, 1974) avoided association of the towns population with Persians. Instead he advanced the towns population as an amalgamation of Arabs and Africans by which albeit the latter constituted the greater part of the amalgam, they were however absorbed into the society as wives, slaves or otherwise (ibid:245). In Manda, Chittick revived his old idea of colonisers from Shiraz in Persia. That he did on the basis of mainly excavated imported pottery. He modified the idea a little bit by arguing that, the initial point of settlement of the Shiraz Persians was not southern Somalia as earlier contended but the Lamu archipelago (Chittick, 1984; Horton, 1996).

Chittick's position and perhaps that of Hollingsworth on the origin of historic Swahili could have been partly influenced by the Kilwa Chronicles. The latter is a controversial compilation in Arabic language of what was essentially an oral-historical composition about Kilwa from its foundation to about 1550 when the compilation was made. According to the compilation, the founders of Kilwa originated from Shiraz in the land of Persia. They arrived in Kilwa in a ship led by Ali bin al-Hasan one of sons of the sultan of Shiraz. The story goes on to suggest that in addition to the ship that landed in Kilwa there were six other ships each led by one of five other sons of the sultan and himself. Five of the ships landed in different points along the East African coast including Mombasa, Pemba, and perhaps Shanga. The last ship landed in the Comoro islands. Interestingly, the chronicles gave the reason for the immigration of the whole sultanate to East Africa as being a bad dream the sultan had which he claimed to have correctly interpreted as a prophecy of destruction of his country. From the Kilwa Chronicles therefore, most of the early urban civilisations that sprang along the East African coast before about the 16th century were a result of the immigrants from Shiraz in Persia.

The Asiatic perspective about historical Swahili people has also been defended linguistically. Most such defences have been centred round a popular assumption that earlier Swahili language was an ancient mixture of Arabic and Bantu languages (see Horton, 1996).

African Perspective: Swahili as Predominantly African

By denying Africans any significant link with historic Swahili people, the Asiatic perspective implies that Africans per se had little to do if any with the evolution of historical towns in their own region. This contradicts sharply with records of ancient travellers and geographers who visited the East African coast and recent archaeological findings. For example, during his visit to Mombasa and Kilwa in 1331, Ibn Battuta, a famous Moroccan traveller, described Kilwa as a large city along the coast whose inhabitants were black meaning Africans (see Sutton, 1990:81). Ibn Battuta went even further to mentioning that the inhabitants had tattoos on their faces, a facial feature which is common in a number of Bantu speaking tribes including the Makonde who resides in the area around Tanzania and Mozambique border which is within very close proximity of Kilwa. Some Chinese descriptions of inhabitants of early settlements along the East African coast also indicate strongly that the inhabitants were Africans (see Allen, 1993:21-26).

Perhaps the most interesting and credible evidence against the Asiatic view is founded in findings from recent archaeological surveys and excavations. For instance, an archaeological interpretation based on recent archaeological excavations on the Kenyan north coast suggests that historic Swahili were offspring of a Pastoral-Cushitic group from the Rift Valley and northern part of Kenya (see Horton, 1984, 1987, 1990; Abungu, 1989, 1994). On the basis of excavated cattle and camel bones, Horton (1984, 1987) argued that the Pastoral-Cushitic people founded a number of settlements in the northern coast of Kenya between the 8th and 10th century. He envisaged that the settlements were market centres that provided opportunity for the African inhabitants to come into contact with foreign traders. The contact is believed to have resulted in increased knowledge about trade to the inhabitants and some inter-marriages. According to Horton, the early coastal Cushitic settlements were the origin of Swahili urbanisation. From the Kenyan northern coast, it spread southwards to the rest of the East African coast through Cushitic immigrants or influence.

There is reasonable consensus that some early coastal settlements along the northern coast of Kenya were of Pastoral-Cushitic origin. However, the theory that there were these settlements that provided the beginning of Swahili urbanisation for the whole East African coast has been questioned and even refuted all together (see Chami, 1998; Haaland, 1994; Schmidt, 1994; etc.). Chami (1998) using materials from recent archaeological surveys and excavations in the central coast of Tanzania asserted the existence of Bantu settlements along the coast as early as the first five centuries of the first millennium. He continued that the Bantu settlements evolved between the 6th and 10th century with changing trading opportunities, new technologies, and population growth giving rise to a new form of coastal urbanisation that spread to the northern and southern coasts of East Africa. According to Chami therefore, the early urbanisation along the Kenyan northern coast was influenced by the Bantu urbanisation in the central coast of Tanzania during the second half of the first millennium.

The findings from recent archaeological excavations indeed suggest that the inhabitants of early settlements along the East African coast during the first millennium were Africans. However, what have remained unresolved are the conflicting claims about where the early African urbanisation along the East African coast started and its subsequent spreading to other parts of the coast. The main argument so far has been on whether it originated in the northern Kenyan coast or the central Tanzanian coast by Cushitic and Bantu speaking people respectively. My belief is that such point of influence is unlikely to have existed at that stage of the urbanisation of the East African coast. In other words, African settlements that existed along the East African coast before about 10th century are likely to have evolved independently involving different Bantu and Cushitic groups that had no common cultural or linguistic bases. It is this lack of common cultural tradition that the African settlers of the early settlements along the East African coast are not classified as Swahili but rather the precedents of Swahili people.

If as it is now indicated that Swahili people are descendants of the Africans who settled along the East African coast in the first millennium, the question then is how and when did this process of metamorphosis from non-Swahili to Swahili took place? How did the identity of Swahili people evolve over different historical epochs of the East African coast? Why were the African roots of Swahili people suppressed by the proponents of the Asiatic perspective? These crucial questions about the builders of East African coastal historical towns would be addressed in the proceeding sections of this paper.

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Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Alive-(What Box):
A good and honourable endeavor for a thread, Jari, indeed reminiscent of the old forum, compared to the utter ****-heap that this forum seems to have become at a more and more increasing rate.

I digress.



^It is often implied that the architecture is somehow in *** style *** Islamic, but the Tomb of Askia and other monuments like it in reality are just fine examples of the monumental mud-building traditions of the West African Sahel.



^Another Malian monument.



^Dogon.



^Igbo 'pyramids'.

On the subject (and I know this doesn't have anything to do with what I just said) does anyone know the validity in the claim that materials from Mecca were used to build the Askia tomb?

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Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Sorry I didn;t reply earlier but Im not too sure, but I did read that an Architect from Cairo traveled to Timbuctu to help plan the Sankore Universities and made the plans simular to some sacred sites in Mekaa(Mecca).

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Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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With that said, this thread is a breath of fresh air and much appreciated.

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Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008  |  IP: Logged | 

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^Yup, I'll believe it when a mod sezit, and even then...

Ako is the real person that's transparent

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Originally posted by Sundiata:
^^Actually your thread is more broad as the one linked to is more specific to West Africa/Islamic architecture. With that said, this thread is a breath of fresh air and much appreciated.

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by markellion:
Great thread, bellow is this video on African fractal geometry and it's very important because it seems to explain how and why many Africans organize their villages and cities the way they do and that they were not "unplanned". It makes sense when you read descriptions of Kerma and other towns

article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990727071229.htm

video: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/198

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Originally posted by Sundiata:
Benin City, prior to British colonialism:

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Originally posted by Markellion:

The bellow is from a random book I got from the local library "A History of Art in Africa", this is how it describes the city plan of Benin:

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A plan of Benin City prior to its sack in 1897 in turn shows the palace at the center, surrounded on most sides by the compounds of lesser chiefs, craftspeople, and other court members. The map and the plan, both of a roughly concentric design, bear out Benin ideology. In Benin thought, the sacred king is the center point. From him, a sequence of circles radiates outward. The first circle includes his chiefs, protectors, and supporters; the next embraces guilds of craftspeople and artists. Next are villagers that pay allegiance and tribute. Farther out still are hostile enemy peoples, and beyond these are the unknowable realms of gods, imagined by the Edo as coextensive with the ocean which they believe encircles their world.

In processions and other ceremonies, the oba is central among his court members, flanked by, with his arms often supported by, designated titleholders. He is transformed by his costume and regalia into a work of art, a walking pyramidal assemblage of a symbolic materials and emblems. He wears cloth woven by his weavers' guild and embellished with many regal motifs. His tunic and headdress are fashioned of coral beads, his armlets of ivory. His hoop skirt creates a wide conical base, expanding him to monumental size, as befits a divinity. His headdress points upward to the celestial realm while adding height to the regal image.

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Description of Kongo from this article http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/afr/projects/BOOK/dema.pdf
:

Intro:

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The Portuguese first dealt with the kingdom accordingly, on a more or less equal basis, exchanging ambassadors…

Their highly centralized political structure allowed them to rule over an area 150,000 square km, almost the size of Uganda, stretching south to the Zaire estuary. They acquired a mastery of metallurgy, law, weaving and textiles. The art of the Kongo remains, even today, one of the most elaborate in Africa, making use of wood, cloth, terra cotta and even stones. Kongo not only survived contact with the Portuguese but continued expansion and development into a centralized state until civil wars in the late seventeenth century. The memory of the magnificent kingdom which proclaimed very early the achievements of black men, is still present in the minds of many intellectuals and leaders of Africa today.

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Description of Mbanza Kongo:

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When the Portuguese ambassador reached Mbanza Kongo in 1491, 7 years before reaching Mombasa, the city was already quite spread out, according to Cuvelier who gives us a detailed description:

The streets were not aligned, nor the houses of the ancient Kongo kingdom, no avenues lined with palms or ornamental trees. Narror paths were running in all directions through the tall grass. The living quarters of the most important people were located close to the king's quarters. Spread out, according to their taste or their fancy, they occupied sometimes quite a considerable space. The houses were made of straw without any ornaments, except inside, where there would be a palm cloth hanging on the wall, representing an antelope or an other animal. The houses of the important people could be distinguished from those of the simple ones, because they were larger and had more painted palm cloths. The houses were surrounded by a fence made from very strong trees: the mingienge, mpesempese, African poplars, cactus (dizza) with a sap which could poison spearheads and war knives. Toward the north, the mountain was crowned with dark woods, a sacred place where the noise of a hatchet was never heard. Palms, baobabs and many trees stood there and this was where the ancient kings were buried. The founder of the kingdom of Ntinu Wene was buried there. To the south, there was a large courtyard called Mbazi ou Mbazi Nkanu, the court of justice, because there, under a huge wild fig tree... which shaded a corner of the place, the kings used to administer justice. It was a large open space where crowds would gather to receive the king's blessing, to watch dances and triumphal parades.

Not far from this public place was the king's residence or enclosure, which was called lumbu by the natives. This enclosure was more than one thousand meters in circumference and was made of pales tied together with lianas...

At the gates. Mavitu were standing the royal guards and some horn blowers. Inside the fence, there was a courtyard; then one could see another fence, in the middle of which was the king's house. One could reach it through a labyrinth. The only difference between this and the other houses, was that this one was more spacious. Inside the royal enclosure, the queen and her residence surrounded by huts with her followers who accompanied her when she left the enclosure.

This description shows well that the urban centre resembled many big villages in central Africa with living quarters spread out and surrounded by hedges and gardens. The layout of the capital was probably not very different from the provincial centre, the clustering of the population resulting essentially from the presence of the king or an important chief. The Mbanza political centers exist only in relation to the holder of power and their evolution is linked. Built of earth, wood, straw and palms, these cities were fragile and their rise and fall was linked to the person who exercised the power. As elsewhere in central Africa, this type of centre gravitates around the king's or the governor's compound with their households, the courtyard and the sacred woods often used as a cemetery for the ancestor's graves. Those different elements put into space the sacred king, a sort of symbolic mechanism which mediates between nature and culture. From this symbolic nucleus, the urban center spreads and stretches following the evocative image of Balandier. The resulting settlement is a city, if one considers the number of people and a village, even if out of proportion, if one considers aspect and structure...

Even if there is a correlation between the development of the Kongo political organization and the birth of elementary urban civilization as noted by Balandier, one must admit that we do not have an urban tradition similar to those of the old West African cities, probably due to the materials used for building...

Like many cities, the location of the major cities in west-central Africa can easily be explained by a favorable ecological context and their origin could be related to the development of long-distance trade and the production of certain commodities. Their development is also connected to the rise of a complex and highly centralized society. And yet, one feels that before the arrival of the Europeans, the major urban centres did not differ significantly from the smaller villages, except for the number of inhabitants. The layout was one of open, scattered garden-cities or villages with a ceremonial and symbolic centre, as in many major tropical centres on other continents.

It seems to me that one should look more into the symbolic nature of those centres than into their rather obvious material explanations. The origin of the town is directly linked to the chief or king figure and the whole layout is a symbolic map of the essential function of the sacred kingship. The power and prestige of the king and of his city was such that long after the collapse of the kingdom, Mbanza Kongo remained the lcus of power, authority and legitimacy, the place where all the matrilineal descent groups lived together with the king. In the eighteenth century, the region of the ruined capital was called ‘Mpemba’ which referred to the ‘white’ of the other world, the ancestors, and the dead.

If one wants to know more about those very ancient and fascinating African garden-cities, one should hope it will soon become possible to carry out systematic archaeological research and that much more attention will be given from an anthropological point of view to rituals and tradition in relation to the sacred kingship/ As de Heusch has shown, in many central African societies, power must be understood in the first place in ritual terms. One must look first to the symbolic order and distinguish it from the political forms that it takes in various times and places.

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Vili Kingdom of Loango



Loango city on the Atlantic coast, in a 17th century print from Olfert Dapper’s, Description de lÁfrique (French, German, and original 1665 Dutch editions are evident in the inscriptions). Founded in the 12th century as one of a cluster of Equatorial African kingdoms, Loango was in full engagement with Europeans and global trade by the 16th century. Scenes include: king's palace; wives' compound; crier's tower; royal wine house; royal dining house; public audience court; royal garden; and wives' garden.


The King of Loango, late 17th century



Description on picture: "The King of Loango hardly leaves his palace except for solemn holidays, or for some event of great importance, such as receiving ambassadors from foreign princes, to appease conflicts, to hunt a leopard which has ravaged Loango . . . . He also appears on the first day that his own fields are cultivated, and when his vassals bring their tribute and come to pay him homage. They choose for this occasion a large place in the center of the city, where they raise his throne. It is a seat of black and white wickerwork, covered with mats that are embellished with rare objects" (Dapper, p. 330; our translation).

The city of Loango, in modern-day Republic of Congo, was three miles from the coast. In addition to the King's residence, Loango featured a huge market where artisans, smiths, cap makers, potters, bead makers, carpenters, vintners, fishermen, and canoe makers sold their wares.

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

http://diglib1.amnh.org/galleries/anthro/anthro.html



http://diglib1.amnh.org/cgi-bin/database/search.cgi

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Originally posted by Doug M:

Congo villages:

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Jari-Ankhamun:
Eurocentrics use European forms to compare to Africans forms and Afrocentics usally find the most European looking forms of African Architecture to "Defend" their positions.

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Posts: 455 | From: Tharsis Montes | Registered: Jan 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by thegaul:

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Originally posted by Jari-Ankhamun:
Eurocentrics use European forms to compare to Africans forms and Afrocentics usally find the most European looking forms of African Architecture to "Defend" their positions.

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You have fallen right into the "eurocentric" trap. Buildings like the ones in Gondar and Kilwa were built by locals with NO knowledge of the "european form", therefore how can it be "european" in the first place? Be careful as to what you put the "european" tag on.

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Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Jari-Ankhamun:
more Forms...









Personally I think its rather ignorant to compare Architecture as a sign of Superior culture...If that were the case the Ancients were way superior than us becuase they were able to organize and plan monuments like the Pyramids, Machu Piccu, The Alhambra...etc. without Machines...

Africa deserves its place like I said and It angers me that we dont see Images like these on book shelves..

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Posts: 70 | Registered: May 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by The_Killer_Wolofi:
Correct and that is the sad DEFINING point of Afro American low self esteem...

In order for people of African descent to be true Africanists they have to throw out the self hate and incorrect perception of AFrica and the cultures therein.

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When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghanah, the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghanah, which, according to the author of the Book of Roger (El Idrisi), and the author of the Book of Roads and Realms (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world.

Page 64

http://books.google.com/books?id=380NAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Mansa Musa, on his return, conceived the idea of building himself a fine palace. Abu Ishak showed him a model, and erected the edifice, with plaster and all kinds of ornaments, for which he received 12,000 mithkals of gold. Mansa Musa maintained an intimate and friendly correspondence with Sultan Abu-l-Hasan, of Al-Maghreb, and reigned twenty-five years.

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Posts: 2642 | Registered: Sep 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Sundjata:
Anyone have any information on African architecture that is external to the continent (besides Moorish architecture)?

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But Vlach looks more closely at old records. He traces the shotgun house to the early 1800s. Then he finds older shotgun houses in the sugar-growing plantation islands -- in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Finally, he finds that same distinctive design in West Africa....

....The shotgun house builders in Haiti had written African motifs into their exterior timber framing. Now shotgun houses in New Orleans sprouted American gingerbread trimming. By the mid-19th century, many are positively Victorian in appearance....

...When the cost of wood fell during the late 1800s, the shotgun house did indeed become the best way the poor could keep a roof over their heads. But, by then, shotgun houses had added a new element to the American architectural vocabulary.

You see, shotgun houses gave us the southern porch. We didn't previously have porches like that in America. Like the shotgun house itself, southern porches are now all over America.

So the next time you see those rows of small linear houses in poor neighborhoods, consider what you're really seeing. These are the remains of an African technology that reached considerable elegance among people of middle means in the 19th century.

And it's a technology that left an indelible and formative mark on our landscape. It propagated that outward-looking sign of community over America -- the front porch from which we've greeted friends and neighbors ever since.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

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Posts: 2642 | Registered: Sep 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Jari-Ankhamun:
Many people make the ASSumption that Africa is void of Architecture and that African live in Mud Huts, unorganized buildings...I have read 100 times of supposed Afrocentrists and Eurocentrics make arguments based on ignorant(AMERICANS) and obviously moronic and biased ideas of Africa based on what they see on T.V.

These include sub-sahran Africans did'nt use stone materials, Africans did'nt plan cities, Africans did'nt contribute to Archtecture...LOL.

Eurocentrics use European forms to compare to Africans forms and Afrocentics usally find the most European looking forms of African Architecture to "Defend" their positions.

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Posts: 1106 | From: Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged |