User talk:4shizzal
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Thanks for your contributions to Mali Empire and Songhai Empire. As you've probably noticed, Africa is sadly underrepresented on Wikipedia. If you're interested in continuing to work on these topics, I recommend checking out Wikiproject: Countering systemic bias and Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Africa; there's also an Africa Collaboration of the Week that you can help out with if you like. But most of all, have fun, and happy editing! --Dvyost 14:05, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
- Mistakenly put this message on your user page instead of user:Talk. My apologies! --Dvyost 14:07, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Ghana Empire expansions
Hey 4shizzal,
Glad to see you're keeping up the fine expansions--the list of rulers is particularly appreciated! I wanted to let you know that I've (at least temporarily) moved the article back to Ghana Empire pending further discussion. You make a good case for Wagadou Empire as a more accurate name (and that material is a great addition to the article), but it's important that we keep our articles in line with the way each subject is most commonly referred to in English; there's more detail about this on the article talk page now if you're interested. And if you do move a page, don't forget to move the links to it, too! This is time-consuming, but important to avoid double redirects and to keep Wikipedia as user-friendly as possible. Anyway, don't let the technical side get you down--you're doing some great stuff here! All the best, --Dvyost 17:17, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Re: Sankore Scholars
Replied at my talk page. --Ezeu 18:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Amharic
It is written like english--Halaqah 23:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Good stuff
I see what ur doing, good stuff, funny i have been working on Sonni Ali Ber et al, working my way to all the African historical topics. Check out sankore.org they translate all kinds of stuff. I added a scholar named Muhammed Shareef they delete it, I added African Code they want to delete it. I reference www.africanholocaust.net they make accusations. yes it is eurocentric democracy. If i site Henry Gates or one of their people, or one of their sites its okay, but to site a African controlled site must obviously mean i have an AGENDA--Off course i do, my agenda is the progession of true freedom and plurality, then end of racism, and African self-determination, hence i am intrested in websites we own and control. I make sure credit is given to our greats now and then in African history not the greats they select for us. --Halaqah 03:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] kouroukan fouga
hi khello. im here to ask you what part(s) of the kouroukan fouga article need to be cited or verified to bring this piece up to snuff. i saw one source that was added (not by me) that seemed to have nothing to do with the article. your help in fixing this article will be appreciated. thanks in advance Scott Free 15:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
- Hi Scott Free,
- I just came to this article as part of the wikify project (but found the topic very interesting by the way!). My only concern with the references was that there were non within the body of the article. Also, for an article about such a historical document I would have thought there would be some more academic journal/book references to use that'll really improve the article even further (to be honest i think the article is pretty informative as it is- I added the [[Category: Mali Empire]] to give more of a context to it). I also think a few "See also" links would really put the article into context. If you want help with that stuff I'd be more than happy to do so, but at the moment I don't really have access to a library so can't really help with the sourcing side. Regards --khello 16:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
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- I agree. I know of one source via UNESCO (that's how I found out about it originally). I will go through and site that one by the end of the week. thnx 4 the quick feedback. Scott Free 17:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
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- No worries- you just happened to catch me when I woke up! I'd be happy to help out with the article if you need it --khello 17:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Your edits to Mali Empire
Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia, 4shizzal! However, your edit here was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove spam from Wikipedia. If you were trying to insert a good link, please accept my creator's apologies, but please note that the link you added in is on my spam blacklist and should not be included in Wikipedia. Please read Wikipedia's external links policy for more information. If the link was to an Imageshack or Photobucket image, please read Wikipedia's image tutorial on how to use a more appropriate method to insert the image into an article. If your link was genuine spam, please note that inserting spam into Wikipedia is against policy. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! Shadowbot 19:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Atlantic slave trade
Wow! You look like an expert on the topic. I came to make more comments (probably as questions) based on your response at Talk:Atlantic slave trade. Are all African Americans assumed to be descended from slaves? How valid is that assumption? Is it possible for people (or even their descendants) to ever stop being "African Americans" and just become "Americans? I notice that Barack Obama is an African American, but his father was Kenyan, so I guess that answers my second question. Is he noticed to be different from slave-descended African Americans? I apologise if these questions are offensive—they are not meant to be—although they may be naive. Living in Australia, I don't come across many Americans, African or otherwise, although I have visited the USA. Thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 10:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Source on African History
Hey, I've seen alot of your work on the history of precolonial west africa- and africa in general- and I've been looking for the longest time for clear, concise and thorough information and history on them. Do you know of any books that contain decent information? Or what of the articles and studies used as references on their pages? Is there a way to access these and others without the use of journal subscriptions? (if that's even legal)
Even historical books on Amazon.com are scarce, many of them extremely expensive.
[edit] The sources
Hi and thnx for hittin me up. Here are some of my favorite sources. You're right; these books do get quite expensive, but I figure I owe it to my ancestors.
Books numbered 1-2 are indespensible sources for Pre-colonial African history. Books numbered 3-5 give you all the detail u ever wanted to know about the slave trade. Books numbered 6-7 have details and illustrations for African warfare; very useful Books numbered 8-9 are good on filling out the details on the respective states.
1. "Peoples and Empires of West Africa: West Africa in History 1000-1800"
by G.T. Stride & C. Ifeka (Nelson, 1986)
2. "Introduction To African Civilizations"
by John G. Jackson
(Citadel, 2001)
3. "Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links"
by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
(University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
4. "Exchanging Our Country Marks"
by Michael A. Gomez
(University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
5. "Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680"
by John K. Thornton
(Cambridge University Press, 1998)
6. "Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800"
by John K. Thornton
(Taylor and Francis, 2005)
7. "African Arms and Armour"
by Christopher Spring
(British Museum Press, 1993)
8. "Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey"
by Stanley B. Alpern
(Hurst & Co Ltd, 2001)
9. "Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred Year War for Africa's Gold Coast "
by Robert. B. Edgerton
(Free Press, 1995)
Hope this has been helpful. And make sure to sign your comments next time.
Yes, thanks for that, and exscuse the various warnings on my userpage- everybody vandalizes at one point. :P
I'll register if we discuss anything more next time, and by the way, what of the sources listed in the Reference sections on these pages?
Ah! Sorry I haven't gotten back to you in awhile, but it's simple- when I ask for "References", I'm reffering to the various journal articles, books, etc. listed in the references section of the articles on precolonial africa, specifically west africa, again. How can I get access to them?
[edit] Re: Kouroukan Fouga
Hi. Yes, feel free to turn Manden Charter into a redirect and integrate all or part of it into Kouroukan Fouga. I'm no specialist of Africa; my area of research is the Pacific. I created that page because it exists in the French Wikipedia and seemed to be lacking in the English one. Good work, by the way! Aridd 23:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Invitation
 |
You have been invited to join the WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort focused on improving Wikipedia's coverage of Africa. If you'd like to join, just add your name to the member list. Thanks for reading! |
Belovedfreak 12:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Verifying these quotes
Hey, I was the one who asked of the sources before, but I had a question- are these quotes true?
http://www.jtf.org/ -Scroll down abit to "The Truth of Black Africa"- a series of sick, racist trash articles by a known jewish terrorist outlet denigrating african history. But I wish to ask of these quotes, and of what you think about the trash this site pumps out:
"The houses of Timbuktu are huts made of clay-covered wattle with thatched roofs. In the center of the city is a temple of stone and mortar, built by an architect named Granata. [Granata was an Arab Muslim whose services were obviously required despite the "learning" of Timbuktu's Negro inhabitants.]
The city is very much endangered by fire: during my second visit, half of the buildings burned in five hours thanks to a violent desert wind.
The king [the Tuareg ruler of Timbuktu] is a declared enemy of the Jews. He forbids any to live in the city. If he hears of a Berber merchant doing business with them, the merchant's goods are confiscated. [Webster defines the Berber as a "Caucasoid people of northern Africa living west of Tripoli."]
The judges, teachers and priests are appointed by the king. He honors learning greatly. [Except Jewish learning!] Many manuscripts are imported from Barbary [the land of the Berber] and sold in the markets at an exceedingly handsome profit.
The king makes war on those who do not pay him tribute. When he wins a victory, he has all of his enemies - even the children - sold in the Timbuktu market. The people of the city have many slaves."
These all come from the works of Leo Africanus. I honestly find it, well, hard to believe that the whole of the city would burn like that, and were the minarets really that unstable? Who was Granata? Did the Mansa really engage in such intensive levels of slavery? And what was the quality of the Minarets before modern times? What was the use of the importation of so many manuscripts from the Barbary coast?
Of course the scumbag who wrote this fails to mention that Berbers are a heavily mixed people with africans, many of them having only minor levels of "white" ancestry- this being true eve before contact with the Malinese.
[edit] Mali Empire
- Happy to be of help! I'm actually going thru all sorts of different unassessed WikiProject articles. Once I got the hang of it for WP:NRHP, I couldn't stop myself. :)
- I know one of the things is one inline citation per paragraph, roughly, which you've got. I would convert all the links in the body of the article into inline citations, to make it more consistent. If you have a decent word processor (WordPerfect or Word or somesuch), copy the article text into it and run spell/grammar check. With an article that big, it's easy to miss minor misspells and that sort of thing.
- I'm gonna show you a trick I learned on the references. I'll do a few, and let you do the rest. It'll help condense the references. Gimme a few minutes.
- Any more help needed, don't be afraid to ask. We all started knowing not much; goodness knows I did. Later! --Ebyabe 20:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
- Got carried away, but you see what I mean. Btw, I'm not sure how much it'll affect going GA, but I'd reduce the number of redlinks as much as possible in the article. I know, there's a lot. Either create stubs, or delink them, or a mix of both. Sometimes it's easy to go overboard with the wikilinking, doncha know. Anyway, hope that helps. Now on to assess more articles! :) --Ebyabe 20:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Questions about Sankore and the Timbuktu Manuscripts
Hey, I again had some questions about Mali, this time involving Sankore.
The articles and pages on the Manuscripts Project are unclear on a number of topics. First off, are the manuscripts being examined indigenous to Mali or of external origin? How many were written by students, overall? How many were written by scholars? Where did the students generally come from? Where did the scholars come from as well?
In fact, I think this should be a focus of the Timbuktu Manuscripts and Sankore University articles, to clarify all these. But back on topic, what was the overall topic coverage and makeup of these manuscripts? How many were thesis works by students? Where did the students go on to work after graduation? How many of these manuscripts were based upon external works? Were there independent works held by academics and such who did field work throughout Mali? Was there a sort of catalogue system in Mali that held tabs economic processes, demographics, etc.? Did any of the students and scholars go on to work outside of Mali? Is there anywhere else in Mali that held manuscripts and scholarly works? There's just so much lack of clarification surrounding these empires...
And did Songhai continue Mali's works of scholarship? Also, since the Manuscripts are being made public online, how does that work? Will there be a paid subscription? Will there be any books released on this?
