Status Updates From An African History of Afric...

Okay this whole section on jihadism is interesting but this maybe is the best quote: “As the emir put it to me: ‘Certain social and economic conditions are fertile ground for breeding violent movements — be they religious extremists, ethnic militias or just criminal gangs. Religion simply becomes a rallying point and ideology, but the real discontent lies in politics.’”

“The terror group Boko Haram, based in northern Nigeria, made international headlines when in April 2014 militants stole into a boarding school in Chibok and kidnapped nearly 300 teenage girls in the Christian community. Dozens remain unaccounted for.”

So before the divide of Africa by Europeans Islam and Non-Muslim could mostly coexist but later the rise of jihadism changed all of that…

Mansa Musa, worth the equivalent of 400 billion today, who spent so much he destabilized economies and took decades to repair… his spending caught the attention of Europeans and his image — “maps like this one [1375 Catalan Atlas] may well have encouraged later Europeans to invade Africa in pursuit of the riches they depicted.”

Getting the sense that Timbuktu of the Mali Empire was like the Arabic Library of Alexandria for its fame and renown. Super cool!