Chapter 14 Self-Assessment

. In the 400s, Nubian chiefs established three small kingdoms that prospered in large measure as a result of the rapid spread of ________________.

. _________________missionaries converted the Nubians to Christianity.

. During the period ____________, Nubia was a Christian kingdom along the middle Nile in the Sahara and sub-Saharan steppe.

. Power remained largely decentralized after the unification of the three Nubian kingdoms, with a dozen vassal rulers an appointed official called a(n) ______________.

. Unlike________________, where kings appointed church officials, the Coptic patriarchs of Alexandria appointed the bishops, and these would remain independent from kings.

. Archaeologists have so far discovered_____________ of a kingdom-wide taxation system in Christian Nubia.

. Interaction with the______________ allowed Nubia to adapt itself to the Christian institutions of sacred kingship.

. Nubian churches were outposts of the____________.

. The kings of Aksum and the patriarch of the Coptic Church abandoned the capital perhaps as early as the_____________ and reestablished themselves in a modest chiefdom with better agrarian resources farther south.

. The Zagwe kingdom was synonymous with "Ethiopia" or___________.

. Under the Zagwe kings, the conversion of the peoples in the central and southern highlands to Christianity____________.

. Under a king ruling by divine right, Ethiopia was a confederation of:

. In 1270, a new dynasty of kings, the_____________, emerged some 300 miles south of Aksum, in the region of today's capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.

. These new kings sponsored the composition of an elaborate foundation narrative, the______________, aimed at legitimizing their dynasty.

. According to the official foundation narrative, the kings of Aksum were not only the descendants of the Queen of Sheba and the Israelite King Solomon but also the heirs to the Israelite __________________.

. ________________is one of the earliest written histories in sub-Saharan Africa.

. The Solomonid kings continued to embrace their Christian identity in legal matters, adopting a Christianized version of ____________, called The Law of the Kings or Fetha Nagast.

. During the period 600-1450, the Swahili people emerged as an indigenous African population of:

. Coastal East African villagers, having adapted themselves to long-distance trade with the_______________, eventually evolved into an urban society, with religious scholars, sailors, fishermen, and farmers based in small port cities.

. Swahili _____________were Muslims claiming Middle Eastern descent and, by virtue of profiting from long-distance trade with the countries around the Indian Ocean, either ascended to the throne of their cities as kings or governed their cities in a council along with their peers.

. The earliest Muslim merchants in East Africa were primarily interested in the______________, a profitable enterprise in the Islamic empire.

. __________descent is the possession of genealogy going back to the Prophet Muhammad.

. The __________________ of southern Africa was the first region of the interior where a pattern of increasing wealth and population density became visible, during the period 600-1505.

. The kingdoms of ________________ and Great Zimbabwe represent the high points of southern African kingship.

. The earliest evidence for the existence of permanent agricultural and fishing settlements around Lake Upemba in central Africa points to the period around____________.

. A pattern of regional trade, urbanization, and chiefdom formation was also characteristic for the _______ and savanna of West Africa from the middle of the first millennium CE onwards.

. Ancient Ghana emerged in the 600s as the strongest group of ___________ between the Niger inland delta in the east and the Senegal valley in the west.

. The Empire of Mali was founded by Malinke King_____________.

. Mali's supply of _________ enjoyed an increased demand in the Islamic realm on the other side of the Sahara.

. ______________was the most famous ruler of Mali and a staunch promoter of Islamic culture, science, and religion, especially in the city of Timbuktu.

. The earliest of the rainforest village clusters to urbanize, Ife was the spiritual center of the _________ ethnic group and its oral traditions.

. Some of the later rainforest kingdoms achieved great feats of engineering, including elaborate moats and ramparts, the most famous of which is Ijebu's:

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