Africa

===Ninth to eighteenth centuries===
{{Main|Medieval and early modern Africa}}
Pre-colonial Africa possessed perhaps as many as 10,000 different states and polities<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/01/11/DI2006011101372.html|title=The Fate of Africa – A Survey of Fifty Years of Independence|access-date=23 July 2007|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|first=Martin|last=Meredith|date=20 January 2006|archive-date=2 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190502070029/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/01/11/DI2006011101372.html|url-status=live}}</ref> characterized by many different sorts of political organization and rule. These included small family groups of hunter-gatherers such as the [[San people]] of southern Africa; larger, more structured groups such as the family clan groupings of the [[Bantu languages|Bantu-speaking]] [[Bantu peoples|peoples]] of central, southern, and eastern Africa; heavily structured clan groups in the [[Horn of Africa]]; the large [[Sahelian kingdoms]]; and autonomous city-states and kingdoms such as those of the [[Akan people|Akan]]; [[Kingdom of Benin|Edo]], [[Yoruba people|Yoruba]], and [[Igbo people]] in West Africa; and the [[Swahili people|Swahili]] coastal trading towns of Southeast  Africa.[[File:Bronze ornamental staff head, 9th century, Igbo-Ukwu.JPG|thumb|upright=.7|The intricate 9th-century bronzes from [[Archaeology of Igbo-Ukwu|Igbo-Ukwu]], in [[Nigeria]] displayed a level of technical accomplishment that was notably more advanced than European bronze casting of the same period.<ref name="Honour-2005">{{cite book |last1=Honour |first1=Hugh |title=A world history of art |last2=Fleming |first2=John |date=2005 |publisher=Laurence King |isbn=978-1856694513 |edition=7th |location=London}}</ref>]]

By the ninth century AD, a string of dynastic states, including the earliest [[Hausa Kingdoms|Hausa]] states, stretched across the sub-Saharan savannah from the western regions to central Sudan. The most powerful of these states were [[Ghana Empire|Ghana]], [[Gao Region|Gao]], and the [[Kanem Empire|Kanem-Bornu Empire]]. [[Ghana]] declined in the eleventh century, but was succeeded by the [[Mali Empire]] which consolidated much of western Sudan in the thirteenth century. Kanem accepted Islam in the eleventh century.

In the forested regions of the West African coast, independent kingdoms grew with little influence from the [[Muslim]] north. The [[Kingdom of Nri]] was established around the ninth century and was one of the first. It is also one of the oldest kingdoms in present-day Nigeria and was ruled by the [[Eze Nri]]. The Nri kingdom is famous for its elaborate [[Igbo-Ukwu#Bronzes|bronzes]], found at the town of [[Igbo-Ukwu]]. The bronzes have been dated from as far back as the ninth century.<ref>{{cite web |title=Igbo-Ukwu (c. 9th century) &#124; Thematic Essay &#124; Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/igbo/hd_igbo.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204053356/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/igbo/hd_igbo.htm |archive-date=4 December 2008 |access-date=18 May 2010 |publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}}</ref>

The [[Ifẹ|Kingdom of Ife]], historically the first of these Yoruba city-states or kingdoms, established government under a priestly [[oba (ruler)|oba]] ('king' or 'ruler' in the [[Yoruba language]]), called the ''Ooni of Ife''. Ife was noted as a major religious and cultural centre in West Africa, and for its unique naturalistic tradition of bronze sculpture. The Ife model of government was adapted at the [[Oyo Empire]], where its obas or kings, called the ''Alaafins of Oyo'', once controlled a large number of other Yoruba and non-Yoruba city-states and kingdoms; the [[Fon people|Fon]] ''Kingdom of [[Dahomey]]'' was one of the non-Yoruba domains under Oyo control.
The [[Almoravid dynasty|Almoravids]] were a [[Berber people|Berber]] dynasty from the Sahara that spread over a wide area of northwestern Africa and the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh century.<ref>Glick, Thomas F. (2005) ''Islamic And Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages''. Brill Academic Publishers, p. 37. {{ISBN|978-9004147713}}</ref> The [[Banu Hilal]] and [[Maqil|Banu Ma'qil]] were a collection of [[Arab]] [[Bedouin]] tribes from the [[Arabian Peninsula]] who migrated westwards via Egypt between the eleventh and [[File:Great Zimbabwe Closeup.jpg|thumb|Ruins of [[Great Zimbabwe]] (flourished eleventh to fifteenth centuries)]]
thirteenth centuries. Their [[Human migration|migration]] resulted in the fusion of the Arabs and Berbers, where the locals were [[Arabization|Arabized]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://countrystudies.us/mauritania/8.htm|title=Mauritania – Arab Invasions|website=countrystudies.us|access-date=25 April 2010|archive-date=23 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110623125418/http://countrystudies.us/mauritania/8.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Arabs|Arab]] culture absorbed elements of the local culture, under the unifying framework of Islam.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Genetic Evidence for the Expansion of Arabian Tribes into the Southern Levant and North Africa |date=1 April 2010 |pmc=379148 |volume=70|issue=6|pmid=11992266|last1=Nebel|first1=A|display-authors=etal|pages=1594–1596 |doi=10.1086/340669 |journal=American Journal of Human Genetics}}</ref>

Following the breakup of Mali, a local leader named [[Sonni Ali]] (1464–1492) founded the [[Songhai Empire]] in the region of middle [[Niger]] and the western [[Sudan (region)|Sudan]] and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Sonni Ali seized [[Timbuktu]] in 1468 and [[Djenné|Jenne]] in 1473, building his regime on trade revenues and the cooperation of Muslim merchants. His successor [[Askia Mohammad I]] (1493–1528) made Islam the official religion, built mosques, and brought to Gao Muslim scholars, including al-Maghili (d.1504), the founder of an important tradition of Sudanic African Muslim scholarship.<ref name="multiple">Lapidus, Ira M. (1988) ''A History of Islamic Societies'', Cambridge.</ref> By the eleventh century, some [[Hausa Kingdoms|Hausa]] states – such as [[Kano (city)|Kano]], [[jigawa]], [[Katsina]], and [[Gobir]] – had developed into walled towns engaging in trade, servicing [[camel train|caravans]], and the manufacture of goods. Until the fifteenth century, these small states were on the periphery of the major Sudanic empires of the era, paying tribute to Songhai to the west and Kanem-Borno to the east.