ISLAMITES AND ITALIANS
When Egypt had become part of the Byzantine dominions, all interest in
the Nile sources had died away, and men’s minds were mainly centred on
religious controversies of greater or less violence. Greek Christianity
penetrated to Abyssinia and south of Abyssinia to countries not far
from the north end of Lake Rudolf. Most of the Nubian kingdoms became
nominally Christian, and Christianity was the religion of the people
on the Nile banks as far south as the confluence of the Blue and White
Niles. It is thought by the missionaries of the White Fathers’ Mission
to Uganda that the sign of the cross and the idea of baptism, with one
or two other practices found in the old heathen religions of Unyoro and
Uganda, may have reached those countries from Abyssinia. Greek and Arab
Christians in the first six centuries of the Christian era certainly
penetrated to the East African coast, but after the official adoption
of Christianity by the Roman Empire all mundane knowledge began to
decay. Christianity inspired a contempt for science, and the only ideas
of geography which floated about the world were connected with the
wanderings of propagandists or pilgrimages to the shrines of saints.
Arab enterprise, moreover, in these sad centuries suffered a curious
eclipse. Far to the south, in Zambezia, no doubt the invasion of the
country by the earlier and later sections of the Bantu Negroes brought
about the destruction of Sabæan power; and the somewhat degenerate
successors of the Sabæans from the south coast of Arabia only occupied
the coast emporiums dotted along the littoral from Somaliland to Sofala.
Then came one of the great landmarks of the world’s history, a movement
productive of a little good and some harm to civilisation. Christianity
had first been organised as a socialistic religion, grafting on to
the beautiful and indisputable precepts of its Founder the reaction
of poor, ignorant, starved, and enslaved people against the unmoral
philosophy, unequal wealth, and excessive materialism of the time. It
then grew to be a somewhat dismal faith, taking no heed of the beauty
of this world and of mundane opportunities for happiness; and above
all it waged an active warfare with sexuality, not merely curbing
immorality, but (wisely or unwisely) opposing polygamy and advocating
celibacy. The Arab and the North African were not ripe for such a
faith, and Judaism had already biassed them against the polytheistic
tendencies of Greek Christianity. Muhammad, the prophet of western
Arabia, founded on a basis of phallic worship and animistic belief
the third great Semitic religion--Islam. His teaching was a direct
challenge to Christianity, and soon became iconoclastic in every sense
of the word. Though the Persian, Syrian, and Iberian elements of the
Arab Empire for a time revived and perpetuated in somewhat grotesque
aspect the science of Greece, the art of Persia, and the lore of India,
the Muhammadan religion sealed most parts of Africa to European and
Christian research. It is true, however, that the conquests of Islam
enabled Arabs to penetrate further into the interior of tropical Africa
than before, though from the dawn of civilisation they had been the
most constant explorers of the eastern part of that continent.
The Arabs began to mention names connected with the Niger and the
western Sudan to the geographers of Italy and Sicily. Under the impulse
of Islamic, Persian, and Arab colonies the east coast of Africa and
the north coast of Madagascar came partially under Muhammadan rule in
the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Arabs there carrying on almost
continuously the commercial enterprise founded by their predecessors
and brothers, the Phœnicians and Sabæans. Invasion after invasion
crossed from Arabia, and passed over the lowlands surrounding Abyssinia
to the central Sudan; or higher up, through Egypt, to Mauritania.
But the Arabs who crossed the Nile in the latitudes of Khartum and
Assuan made no attempts to follow the White Nile, the Blue Nile, or
the Bahr-al-Ghazal to their sources,--left in fact all the Nile basin
above the confluence of the Blue and White rivers absolutely untouched
and unexplored. Egypt itself came under Arab rule in 640 A.D., and
subsequently formed an independent principality under the Fatimite
Khalifs.
The Crusades brought French, Germans, and English, Aragonese and
Flemings to the Delta of the Nile in more or less disastrous
expeditions against the Saracen power,--a power which was fast becoming
that of the Turk. A curious relic of these crusading days in the Nile
Delta is or was (for the present writer is not aware if they still
exist) several Spanish (originally Aragonese) monasteries, which were
established with the consent of the Muhammadan rulers of Egypt in order
to mitigate the woes of Christian captives and to arrange terms for
their release.
[Illustration: AN ARAB TRADER (MASKATI).]
Venice, however,--which had somewhat held aloof from the religious
ardour of the Crusades in order to build up a great commerce with the
Muhammadan East,--Venice became during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the great neutral go-between for the trade of India, Persia,
Egypt, Arabia, and Syria with the Byzantine Empire and the rest of
Europe. Venetians (in Arab dress, of course) ran less risk than other
Europeans when travelling in Egypt in the days before the Portuguese
discoveries. Through the Venetians Europe became acquainted with
several strange African beasts which were brought from the Sudan
for public exhibition in Muhammadan Egypt, and in this way European
interest in the sources of the Nile was occasionally revived. It
is remarkable to reflect that the name of Venice will probably
never die out (as far as etymology is concerned) in the very heart
of Africa. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and perhaps
later, Venice manufactured in her arsenals improved types of guns.
She also acted as an intermediary in exchanging muskets (manufactured
elsewhere in Europe) with the Arabs and Turks, who at that time could
not construct these firearms for themselves. Thus the Turks and Arabs
became accustomed to call any improved type of musket a “Venetian”
(Bunduqi).[12] In this way the name of the most beautiful city in the
world has penetrated beyond the explorations of any European into
the very heart of Africa, as it has also circulated through all the
Muhammadan East.