Azania

For other uses, see Azania (disambiguation).

Azania (Ancient Greek: Ἀζανία) is the name that has been applied to various parts of southeastern tropical Africa.[1] In the Roman period and perhaps earlier, the toponym referred to a portion of the Southeast African coast extending from Kenya,[2] to perhaps as far south as Tanzania.

Ancient Azania

Pliny the Elder mentions an "Azanian Sea" (N.H. 6.34) that began around the emporium of Adulis and stretched around the south coast of Africa.

The 1st century AD Greek travelogue the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea first describes Azania based on its author's intimate knowledge of the area. Chapter 15 of the Periplus suggests that Azania could be the littoral area south of present-day Somalia (the "Lesser and Greater Bluffs", the "Lesser and Greater Strands", and the "Seven Courses").[3] Chapter 16 clearly describes the emporium of Rhapta, located south of the Puralean Islands at the end of the Seven Courses of Azania, as the "southernmost market of Azania". The Periplus does not mention any dark-skinned "Ethiopians" among the area's inhabitants. They only later appear in Ptolemy's Geographia, but in a region far south, around the "Bantu nucleus" of northern Mozambique. According to John Donnelly Fage, these early Greek documents altogether suggest that the original inhabitants of the Azania coast, the "Azanians", were of the same ancestral stock as the Afro-Asiatic populations to the north of them along the Red Sea. Subsequently, by the 10th century AD, these original "Azanians" had been replaced by early waves of Bantu settlers.[4]

Later Western writers who mention Azania include Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 – c. 170 CE) and Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century CE).

Azania was known to the Chinese as Zésàn (澤散) by the 3rd century AD.[5]

Azania as an ancient continent (geology)

The name Azania has also been proposed for an ancient continent that may have existed within the Neoproteorzoic Mozambique Ocean.[1] According to Collins and Pisarevsky (2005), Azania formed a continent consisting on central Madagascar, southernmost India, parts of Somalia and east Ethiopia and Yemen; a continent first proposed, but unnamed, by Collins and Windley (2004).[6] In this hypothesis, Azania formed a part of the early Mesoproterozoic Congo-Tanzania-Bangweulu Block and rifted off in the earliest Neoproterozoic. By 850 Ma, a west (present coordinates) dipping subduction zone developed on the east side of the island and a continental arc formed through much of Azania (in Madagascar this is the Itremo-Itsindro suite). Azania collided with East Africa at about 640 Ma forming the East African Orogeny. This was followed by Neoproterozoic India colliding with the now amalgamated Azania-Congo continent at approximately 550 Ma to form the Malagasy Orogeny.

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 Collins & Pisarevsky (2004). "Amalgamating eastern Gondwana: The evolution of the Circum-Indian Orogens". Earth Science Reviews.
  2. ↑ Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia, (Lalibela House: 1961), p.21
  3. ↑ George Wynn Brereton Huntingford, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, (Hakluyt Society: 1980), p.29
  4. ↑ Fage, John. A History of Africa. Routledge. pp. 25–26. ISBN 1317797272. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  5. ↑ The Weilüe. Draft translation by John Hill
  6. ↑ Collins & Windley (2002). "The Tectonic Evolution of Central and Northern Madagascar and its place in the Final Assembly of Gondwana.". The Journal of Geology.

External links

Look up azania in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, May 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.