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There were many kingdoms and empires in all regions of the continent of Africa throughout history. A kingdom is a state with a king or queen as its head. [1] An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant centre and subordinate peripheries".
[3] [1] These powerful empires would extend their hand of power over African trade by directing trade routes through the major cities and taxing the travelling merchants and their goods. [1] Through the power of the empires, many of the trade routes were secured and the merchant profession became a prosperous one. [1]
The most powerful of these states was the Songhai Empire, which expanded rapidly beginning with king Sonni Ali in the 1460s. By 1500, it had risen to stretch from Cameroon to the Maghreb, the largest state in African history.
The terms African civilizations, also classical African civilizations, or African empires are terms that generally refer to the various pre-colonial African kingdoms.The civilizations usually include Egypt, Carthage, Axum, [1] Numidia, and Nubia, [1] but may also be extended to the prehistoric Land of Punt and others: Kingdom of Dagbon, the Empire of Ashanti, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Mali ...
Empire size in this list is defined as the dry land area it controlled at the time, which may differ considerably from the area it claimed. For example: in the year 1800, European powers collectively claimed approximately 20% of the Earth's land surface that they did not effectively control. [ 8 ]
The Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires were among the most powerful states in pre-colonial West Africa, controlling and benefiting immensely from trans-Saharan trade. The Mali Empire, under the rule of Mansa Musa, is particularly noted for its extraordinary wealth. Mansa Musa's legendary pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 showcased the immense resources ...
Egyptian Empire. In 2002, the journal Nature published a game-changing report that revealed an incredible economic disparity in ancient Egypt. The vast majority of ancient Egyptians, it turns out ...
The Kingdom of Axum had one of the most powerful militaries in the world during its era. It was compared with Rome and other world powers of the time. The Empire ruled vast territories from today's western Yemen, Djibouti, southwestern Saudi Arabia, eastern Sudan, most of Eritrea and the north and central part of present-day Ethiopia.