East African Civilizations

Rising from the dry scrub of the Sudanese desert, some two hundred kilometers northeast of modern Khartoum, more than two hundred steep-sided, slender pyramids mark the site of Meroë.

To the ancient Egyptians, the lands south of the Nile’s first cataract were known as Kush, a distinct world of sophisticated trade, industry, and power that repeatedly challenged and reshaped the destiny of the Nile…

Long before the medieval world shrank into isolated pockets of power, a single merchant empire commanded the critical maritime arteries linking Rome to India.

Long before modern borders defined the East African coast, the seasonal monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean carried merchants, wealth, and ideas to a small island just nine degrees south of the equator.

In 1270 CE, Yekuno Amlak claimed descent from the ancient Aksumite kings, and ultimately from the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, to overthrow the Zagwe dynasty and establish an imperial line that would…

On the shores of the great inland sea of Nalubaale, the kingdom of Buganda took shape in a land of small green, flat-topped hills, nurtured by reliable equatorial rains and exceptionally fertile, resilient soils.

The crackle of gunfire in the Chungu territory of Central Africa earned Hamad ibn Muhammad ibn Jumah ibn Rajab ibn Muhammad ibn Said al Murjabi the moniker Tippu Tip, a name he claimed mimicked the sound of his weapons.

The path to the throne of Ethiopia for the boy born Sahle Maryam began in a fortress prison.

Long before he was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, the young nobleman Tafari Makonnen was already consolidating power, serving as Regent Plenipotentiary under Empress Zewditu and securing his path to the throne by…