World History › Section M · Medieval sub-Saharan Africa › Topic M.1
Culture and society in medieval Africa
Between about 500 and 1400, African societies ranged from village communities with no kings to great Christian and Muslim states. This topic looks at how they were organised, how they remembered their past, and how Christianity and Islam took root and took on African forms.
In this topic
- Many ways to organise a society
- Kinship, lineage and wealth in people
- Keepers of memory
- Egypt's desert monks and the Coptic Church
- Christian Nubia
- Ethiopia: Zagwe and Solomonic kings
- Worked example: reading the churches of Lalibela
- Islam travels with traders
- Worked example: al-Bakri's Ghana
- Blending faiths
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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