{UAH} Blacks established the world’s earliest universities
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5:31 AM |
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In 1517AD, the Turks conquered and occupied Egypt for several hundred years. The French and British occupations of Egypt in modern times had their impact upon the country.
Prior to 525BC, Egypt had been under native rulers. The character of Egypt today, its race, religion and culture reflects the long development of interaction between original Black Egypt and its conquerors throughout the ages.
As recent as the days of Herodotus (between 484 and 425 BC) during classical Greeks civilization, the people of Egypt were described as dark-skinned with woolly hair – in other words Africans. Hence, the brown character of Egypt is the culmination of the impact of the various civilizations and cultures upon the original black people.
Originally, the Egyptians believed in many gods, the chief being Ptah before they adopted monotheism. The 1974 Unesco Cairo conference established that the level of melanin in Pharaohs' bodies in pyramids is the same as that of Africans south of Sahara.
According to Martin Bernal in Black Athena (1991), European intellectuals acknowledged that their civilization (Greek) was derived from the Egyptians until the era of Atlantic slave trade and genocide against natives of the American and Australia when rationalization and denials became necessary to justify the subjugation of natives in the name of empire building and commerce.
As late as the epoch of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the father of science of mechanics in Europe, the famous scientist could declare in principia mathematica (principles of mathematics) that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with atomic theory, gravitation and heliocentricity (the idea that the earth moves round the sun, and not the other way round).
Teaching was conducted around temples which doubled as libraries. The Great pyramid at Giza near Cairo is probably the most famous, housing libraries, boardrooms, astronomical observatories, and royal burial chambers. Evidently, the temples acted as what is equivalent to universities today.
If the list appears incredible, the fault lies with misrepresentation of Africa's black past. When universities developed in Europe, during the middle ages, they were communities of students and teachers living together as a unit – hence the prefix uni (one).
Although the Greek, after conquering Egypt, utilized Egyptian knowledge to found universities starting with Alexandria where the headquarters of the Greek empire were transferred and the Ptolemys established themselves there as a dynasty, after the death of Alexander, the knowledge was short-lived.
The Great library founded by Aristotle, Alexandria's tutor, was destroyed by Christian fanatics on the protext of extinguishing paganism in 390AD. The occupation of Rome itself by Barbarians in 476AD more or less marked the demise of Roman civilization.
The edicts (decrees) passed by Emperor Theodosius (379-392AD) and Justinian (483-565AD) abolished the study of Egyptian mystery systems and the dark ages of Europe became entrenched.
The main impetus for rediscovering of knowledge in Europe (renaissance) came from black people, the Moors after the rise of Islam following the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (570-632AD). Islam encouraged learning and Greek works were translated into Arabic from which they were translated into European languages, especially Latin.
In 711AD, the Moors (black people comprising of Arabs and Africans) occupied Spain and thereafter established centers of learning there. The medieval universities of Europe such as Bologna in Italy were founded after the founders visited Spain to study from there.
It was crucial that the primary conflict then was between Muslims and Christians. Jews moved from the Moor territories of southern Europe and Christian Europe so freely. And so we get Jews founding Oxford in probably 1096AD and Cambridge in 1209AD by fugitives from Oxford.
When Europe (Christian) had only two universities in middle ages, the Moors had 17 located in Almeria, Cordova, Granada, Malaga, Seville and Toledo (in line Black History Studies).
The Moors were not expelled from Spain till 1492 when Columbus landed in the Americas, thus marking the beginning of Euro- triumphalism and decline of the blacks, only 500 years ago and not since eternity as detractors would have us believe.
At the time universities were established in Europe, Africa was not left behind, as the history of Sankore University in Timbuktu in present-day Mali shows.
Starting as a mosque in 988AD, the institution reached its zenith during the reign of Mansa Musa in early 14th century. It had 25,000 students with probably the largest library since the destruction of the library at Alexandria with 400,000 to 700,000 manuscripts.
Higher degrees were offered in philosophy. General subjects offered included law, geography, astronomy and languages. The knowledge and culture in those institutions of higher learning were destroyed through wars, enslavement and colonization.
The Assyrians destroyed the Egyptian great library at Thebes in 661BC. In 390AD, the Romans obliterated the one at Alexandria and Sankore was destroyed in modern times in 1591AD in an alliance between England and Morocco.
I hope to next address how colonial education made us believe that Africans never invented or discovered anything useful to civilization.
The author is a retired judge.
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