East Africa modding - sources

[elvain]

There have already been few threads suggesting how this region should be improved and they all did a great job, to name the most advanced, it is Korbah's North African expansion and Mad King James' Horn of Africa provinces
But none of them is now in use for players AFAIK.

My goal is to get as many information sources about the region as possible for my part of SWMH mod
but at the same time this is meant to serce everyone, who'd be interested in doing his own mod.

Here is map of medieval East Africa which I managed to make with all sources available to me.

What I do believe is that together we can make this map even etter and anyone who would wish to mod this region would be able to customize it for his own needs.

I do have a sketch of province borders for this region for SWMH mod, but IMHO it is yet too imperfect and it also needs.
What I can say is that there certainly need to be 2 kingdoms: Abyssinia and Nubia, and from the map you can pretty easily read the main duchies for them. Then every mod can customize its own number of provinces, province borders, cultural and religious setup and based on this de-facto borders and characters. But what we do need for this is more sources...


So if there is anyone, who could help with this, provide links to any sources, history articles or books which would help to "populate" this map with more provinces, cities or tribes, it would be great if we could share them here for this great community.

My sources for this map are basicaly:
Gragam Connah's Ancient African civilizations and
UNESCO's Geheral History of Africa volume III and IV.

 

[Carbon]

Good to see you are still modding, Elvain. Been a while since I remember Holy Rome for KoH

Anyways, I found this and hope it will help:

 

[elvain]

Good to see you are still modding, Elvain. Been a while since I remember Holy Rome for KoH

Anyways, I found this and hope it will help:

Thanks, it certainly does help!

PS: hehe, those were very humble begginings

 

[CrackdToothGrin]

Suggestions to your reference map:

City of Asaita (Aussa), located to the west of the Djibouti bay area (Harak Bodoyta) where Zaila is. Important as the future capital of the Aussa Sultanate (The Afar people were tied by tribe to local sultanry.) The region should potentially "be" Aussa/Asaita, and Harar should be functionally independent since it ends up being a city-state later in history too. This city should have primary influence on the northern coastal city of Berbera, located on the coast just south of Yemen and southeast of Zeila. That region should be named Awdal, and could also contain the city of Borama located southwest of Berbera.

Area west/northwest of Mora should be home to the Afar peoples. You can call it Afar, or Danakil. Primary industry is salt mining (even to this day), and it is one of the harshest environments on the planet.

Northwest of Tigre, is Sera'é, and then Marya, those two regions contain the cities of Hamasén and Bogos.

Gafar should be higher, just northwest of Shewa/Shawa/Shwa (which should contain a bishopric named Debre Asbo). In Gafat's place, but just a notch west, it should be named Genz.

The area west of Hadiya should be called Kambaata. Kaffa region should be a little bit northwest, and the area currently occupied should be the home of the Welamo and Goma.

Waj is too far north, Dawaro needs to go southeast, and then between them should be the region of Sarka. Katata, Sarmat, Silalish, and Warjih need more southeasterly adjustment. Ifat should go south on the western edge of the river. The land between the rivers south of Ifat should be Fetegar (directly north of Sarka). The area directly west of Lasta and southwest of Semien is Dembiya.

The area between Kassala and the Red Sea is called Ma'ikele Bahr (or Medri Bahri later-on) and should have the cities of Shire and Debarwa. The split between the White and Blue Nile should be the home of the Funj people and known as Sennar. Since you have Tegali, you should continue south on the river and before it bends back east, the area is known as Shilluk and has an important city known as Fashoda. North of Kassala is Anseba (should not touch the sea).

The rest of the coast should be occupied by the Beja/Blemmyes, and probably just called Blemmyes. This should reach up to Aydhab, although it's probably good to note that the Fatimids conquered Aydhab in the 10th century and eventually Suakin takes precedence as the port to Arabia. It might be worth it to make a "land connection" between Suakin and Aydhab to Mecca-Medina.

It might be worth it to find a spot for Jajura, Rahayto, Dahlak, Bur, and Erta if you're wanting to beef up the Afar Depression.

 

[theKing1988]

Seems like a good idea to get as much help from our fellow modders as possible, if you're still stuck at the East Africa overhaul Elvain.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'm also making some plans to add in a few provinces to East Africa for VIET (nothing near as ambitious as SWMH - just a few provinces to keep things more interesting; and nothing near as historically accurate, I've only done enough to keep some level of authenticity). My suggestions and ideas and random ramblings:

- Abyssinia and Nubia shouldn't be the only kingdoms in the region. I believe other kingdoms (some may be titular, but kingdoms nevertheless) I have considered would be: Somalia, Sennar/Darfur/Wadai/something to the east of Abyssinia in the area around Darfur and Kordofan, and possibly some sort of Beja kingdom. This should hopefully keep Abysinnia from going on a regional conquest as it's wont to do in vanilla.
- The Beja should dominate the area around Aydhab and south of that, like Crak'd said. According to what I've researched, they appear to be relatively powerful during CKII's timeframe - or, at least, powerful enough to resist Arab incursion to some extent. At the 867 start date they should be nominally Christian (rulers are Christian, but lower-tier rulers and provinces should remain Pagan), though by the 1066 start date they may still be nominally Muslim (the situation appears to be extremely unclear).
- The area around Darfur should be dominated by the Daju peoples. Although they are not that powerful today, and the region is dominated mainly by the Fur and other groups, the Daju were historically the dominant group in the region during CKII's timeframe. In particular, they were noted by Arab sources for having a powerful kingdom in the region. Whether this is enough for a Kingdom-tier in-game I do not know, but it is something to consider. As such the Fur, Funj, and other groups shouldn't really be that powerful during this time and either shouldn't be represented or they shouldn't have any powerful states.
- At the very bottom of the map, around and below where you've labeled Kordofan and Tigali, would be several Nilotic groups, such as the Dinka, Nuer, as well as several Luo sub-groups such as the Shilluk. The Luo in particular were pretty strong, though their most important historical achievement - their migrations to Kenya and so forth - would not happen until the tail end of CKII's timeframe. These groups, along with the Daju, can be represented as tribal "duchies" the way vanilla represents various northern and eastern European pagans as tribal duchies. There's also the Nuba people to consider; personally from what I researched I figured they were small enough that I could ignore them for VIET's purposes, but you may want to look into them more for SWMH.
- Lastly, you should probably make many of these groups in East Africa pagan, as many of these did not convert to Islam or Christianity even by the end of CKII's timeframe. I myself will be adding an East African pagan religion in VIET, complete with art and all that, so if you SWMH folks want to borrow that I'm more than happy to share, but if that's outside of SWMH's scope I would at least suggest making them the generic pagans.

 

[polskaGOLA]

The problem with this region is that while information certainly exists (Ethiopia had a writing system, as did it's Muslim, Christian, Persian and Indian trading partners) nobody has bothered to compile it into a comprehensive chronographic source that is easily accessible to the masses. Which is a real shame, as I think East Africa and Ethiopia in particular is one of the most interesting African civilizations.

However, I did come across a university team from Germany whose goal is to accomplish exactly that and have been setting out to compile an encyclopedia on all things Ethiopian.

Encyclopedia Aethiopica homepage

And available here on Google Books are the first 3 Volumes:

Volume A-C
Volume D-Ha
Volume He-N

Unfortunately I can't find anything for the fourth volume and the fifth volume (which will have lots of maps) to my knowledge, has yet to be completed.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

 

[theKing1988]

I can just as well ask my question for you from a pm here.

I was going to ask about what cultures you have considered adding for east Africa? Nubian, Beja ?

And on your province setup have you considered cutting the strait between Yemen and Harer? Cross-strait warfare was relatively rare after all, as far as i know.

I'm very much looking forward to some pluralism in the area. The solid Ethiopian/Somali cultural blocks in SWMH and Miaphysite religion block just seems so wrong

 

[elvain]

Suggestions to your reference map:

Thanks for them all. they are helpful. I hope you won't find it any bad if I check them and ask before putting them directly on the map.
So far I only had time for few of them:

Northwest of Tigre, is Sera'é, and then Marya, those two regions contain the cities of Hamasén and Bogos.

I guess these come from this Wiki article, precisely from this map, right?

I forgot to put Sera'é (though it already has province in my preliminary province map for SWMH), but for others I have yet failed to find other references... and I usualy prefer to have Wiki sources confirmed by some other source.

Gafar should be higher, just northwest of Shewa/Shawa/Shwa (which should contain a bishopric named Debre Asbo). In Gafat's place, but just a notch west, it should be named Genz.

Yup, I will certainly mov it (hopefully within few days there will be the reference map's update).
However according to Wolf Leslau it should be SW of Gojjam, which would mean halfway between Gojjam and Damút (on my map), is that right?

The area between Kassala and the Red Sea is called Ma'ikele Bahr (or Medri Bahri later-on) and should have the cities of Shire and Debarwa. The split between the White and Blue Nile should be the home of the Funj people and known as Sennar. Since you have Tegali, you should continue south on the river and before it bends back east, the area is known as Shilluk and has an important city known as Fashoda. North of Kassala is Anseba (should not touch the sea).

I especially appreciate this, as these territores are quite empty and I do need some provinces to make the Beja at least little as powerfull as they should be (at least in the 867 and 1066).

The rest of the coast should be occupied by the Beja/Blemmyes, and probably just called Blemmyes. This should reach up to Aydhab, although it's probably good to note that the Fatimids conquered Aydhab in the 10th century and eventually Suakin takes precedence as the port to Arabia. It might be worth it to make a "land connection" between Suakin and Aydhab to Mecca-Medina.

The coast certainly will be under Beja control.
However I am not sure if it is good to make land connection between Suakin and Hijaz - AFAIK there were no remarkable military campaigns across the Red Sea, were they?
If there was anything notable, it will certainly be a thing to consider.

Anyway thanks for all the suggesttions, they are all very helpfull and will be soon displayed on the reference map!

I'm also making some plans to add in a few provinces to East Africa for VIET (nothing near as ambitious as SWMH - just a few provinces to keep things more interesting; and nothing near as historically accurate, I've only done enough to keep some level of authenticity). My suggestions and ideas and random ramblings:

You are right in most cases and I hope you won't mind I'm not addressing directly to each of them yet.
- from the current SWMH setup it is for sure that there will be more than 3 de jure kingdoms in the region. And due to the necessity for any county to be inside a de jure kingdmo I am considering to make Darfur-Kordofan-Waddai region a kingdom (which will be part of Kanem-Bornu-Hausa region update, which is now also being developped).
- As for East African pagans, I think something like that will be necesary. From the perspective of 867 update of the Sahara, which is all inhabited by pre-islamized Berbers who can't all be west african pagans, there will have to be something done - enen though I'm not a big fan of adding new religions, just because SWMH is not here to add new gameplay features, which are necessary for a new religion.

However, I did come across a university team from Germany whose goal is to accomplish exactly that and have been setting out to compile an encyclopedia on all things Ethiopian.

Encyclopedia Aethiopica homepage

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Wow! Just WOW! This is awsome! I will check if my former university has this and (more importantly) if I can get access to the entire work even as a non-student. If not you gave me my best christmass gift now in the middle of summer

I can just as well ask my question for you from a pm here.
I'm very much looking forward to some pluralism in the area. The solid Ethiopian/Somali cultural blocks in SWMH and Miaphysite religion block just seems so wrong

Sorry I didn't answer, the reason is simple: I can't say now.
You can be assured that the monolithic block will be broken down in SWMH, that's for sure...
Though, so far I can't say precisely how - there will have to be Pagans and probably also Jews - and this needs to be discussed in the SWMH team before I make the final decision.

Seems like a good idea to get as much help from our fellow modders as possible, if you're still stuck at the East Africa overhaul Elvain.

Well, yes, especially if there is still a lot to do with 867 update, where I do need to make a lot wth "my regions" of Sahara, West Africa and Bohemia
Though, fortunately, I'm not stuck at all. I believe I already have enough Wikipedia information which would be fairly sufficent for making a mod map and for filling it with characters, but, as you know, this is not enough for me. The SWMH ambition is little higher

 

[theKing1988]

The coast certainly will be under Beja control.
However I am not sure if it is good to make land connection between Suakin and Hijaz - AFAIK there were no remarkable military campaigns across the Red Sea, were they?
If there was anything notable, it will certainly be a thing to consider.

Anyway thanks for all the suggesttions, they are all very helpfull and will be soon displayed on the reference map!

I think it would definetely help create more historical outcomes to cut strait access between Arabia and East Africa, at the moment the Yemenites trash the East Africans even more often than the Somalis/Hareris do, and as far as i know, that is very wrong.

 

[polskaGOLA]

Wow! Just WOW! This is awsome! I will check if my former university has this and (more importantly) if I can get access to the entire work even as a non-student. If not you gave me my best christmass gift now in the middle of summer

Heh, that's a happy coincidence. I'm glad to be of service!

If you do get access to it, I wouldn't mind using it to expand on the More-Provinces-Mod for EU3. (And EU4 when it comes out)

 

[elvain]

Heh, that's a happy coincidence. I'm glad to be of service!

If you do get access to it, I wouldn't mind using it to expand on the More-Provinces-Mod for EU3. (And EU4 when it comes out)

I'll see in upcoming weeks. Anyway this thread is meant to serve the whole modding community (that's why I don't want to post particular outcomes for our mod).

 

[cybrxkhan]

You are right in most cases and I hope you won't mind I'm not addressing directly to each of them yet.

No problem. Currently besides you folks I think I'm the only modder working on changing parts of Africa at all, my case just happens to be much less ambitious and historically accurate (more for the lulz really), so it's good we can share ideas and so forth - I already know as a fact I've gotten some ideas from this thread. I hope to get something out for East Africa (maybe Central Africa?) within a week, so maybe you can look at it too just to see some of my ideas - which I assume overlap with some of yours, in action.

- from the current SWMH setup it is for sure that there will be more than 3 de jure kingdoms in the region. And due to the necessity for any county to be inside a de jure kingdmo I am considering to make Darfur-Kordofan-Waddai region a kingdom (which will be part of Kanem-Bornu-Hausa region update, which is now also being developped).

Currently in VIET I'm planning to have the Darfur-Kordofan-Waddai region be within the Kingdom of Sennar. Technically it could be the Kingdom of Darfur too, but the historical Sultanate of Darfur was founded in the 1600s while Sennar was aroun 1500, making Sennar closer to CKII's timeframe.

- As for East African pagans, I think something like that will be necesary. From the perspective of 867 update of the Sahara, which is all inhabited by pre-islamized Berbers who can't all be west african pagans, there will have to be something done - enen though I'm not a big fan of adding new religions, just because SWMH is not here to add new gameplay features, which are necessary for a new religion.

If you're interested I can provide you with art assets for the East African pagans.



One other thing I sort of hinted at in my previous post, and I think is pretty important to emphasize (and one you're almost certainly already well-aware of), is that the history of East Africa is pretty dynamic and changing, and the groups in power today or even during EUIII's timeframe were not necessarily that powerful during CKII's timeframe. This was a mistake I think NAE didn't account for in some aspects - for instance it had the Fur peoples, while in reality the Fur were rather insignificant during CKII's timeframe, the region being dominated by the Daju peoples. Another thing this brings up is that some of the duchies and kingdoms will probably be from outside of CKII's timeframe. The Kingdom of Shilluk, for instance, would probably be a decent Duchy, but it was founded in the 1600s and was at its heydey in the 1700s - actually, a good number of the potential duchies/kingdoms, be they Ouaddai, Sennar, Darfur, and so forth, are kind of like that.

 

[elvain]

Currently in VIET I'm planning to have the Darfur-Kordofan-Waddai region be within the Kingdom of Sennar. Technically it could be the Kingdom of Darfur too, but the historical Sultanate of Darfur was founded in the 1600s while Sennar was aroun 1500, making Sennar closer to CKII's timeframe.

The problem is that such a kingdom would divert Sennar too much westwards - IMO it is not good to tie it with those regions. So despite some ahistoricity I believe it would be better to keep that region separate. But I may be wrong due to my actual lack of (good enough) knowledge about this region.

If you're interested I can provide you with art assets for the East African pagans.

Would be great!

One other thing I sort of hinted at in my previous post, and I think is pretty important to emphasize is that the history of East Africa is pretty dynamic and changing, and the groups in power today or even during EUIII's timeframe were not necessarily that powerful during CKII's timeframe. (...)

Absolutely. Honestly I don't give a damn about how the region looks today or how it looked in times of European colonization when doing research about time a millenium ago. Looking at current map and current population is really the last thing to do.

For instance I have little problem with using Kassala as province and holding name as it was established after the end of CKII timeframe. And there are others. In some areas, however, it seem impossible to find anything more relevant.

Spoiler

(in most of West Africa, though, I believe I managed to avoid using modern settlements which did not exist in the actual CKII timeframe, probably due to fact that the "Soninke region" was well much more developed (and populated) before AD 1000 than in any other pre-modern period).
Something similar can be used also to East Africa, or at least some of its regions (certainly Nubia).

 

[theKing1988]

^ Nubia should definetely be the easiest region for you to create a setup to Elvain

 

[cybrxkhan]

The problem is that such a kingdom would divert Sennar too much westwards - IMO it is not good to tie it with those regions. So despite some ahistoricity I believe it would be better to keep that region separate. But I may be wrong due to my actual lack of (good enough) knowledge about this region.

Ah, that would be a concern for cross-Saharan shenanigans (one of the legitimate concerns of people opposed to adding Hausa/Kanem/Sudan all in). In my case I've decided to not do a direct land-bridge from Darfur to Kanem-Bornu, ahistorical as that might be. Although I do think it depends on what the de facto set-up is. If the region is de facto kind of like Ireland or 867 start Baltics in vanilla, then having a lot of tiny county and duchy-tier realms will in and of itself be a hindrance to expansion.

Would be great!

Speaking of stuff you guys can borrow, I have over the past few weeks done a number of African namelists, all posted in the new cultures section, which you guys may or may not find useful, including (off the top of my head) the: Zaghawa, Hausa, Kanuri, Beja, Fur (although as discussed they are sort of outside of CKII's timeframe), Daju, Luo, and Dinka (the last two I've personally combined into a single Nilotic culture in VIET, wrong as that might be, sort of for the same reason Breton+Cornish or Komi+tons of random Siberian and Uralic groups are lumped together into one culture in vanilla). Some of these are rather inaccurate and contain a lot of random words to beef up the name list, but I believe they should suffice for any of your purposes.

Absolutely. Honestly I don't give a damn about how the region looks today or how it looked in times of European colonization when doing research about time a millenium ago. Looking at current map and current population is really the last thing to do.

For instance I have little problem with using Kassala as province and holding name as it was established after the end of CKII timeframe. And there are others. In some areas, however, it seem impossible to find anything more relevant.

Spoiler

(in most of West Africa, though, I believe I managed to avoid using modern settlements which did not exist in the actual CKII timeframe, probably due to fact that the "Soninke region" was well much more developed (and populated) before AD 1000 than in any other pre-modern period).
Something similar can be used also to East Africa, or at least some of its regions (certainly Nubia).

Finding good settlements and perhaps even the de jure realm set-up for CKII's timeframe can be difficult, and I won't hold it against you for taking some liberties with that as NAE had (especially since some of these regions may not have had any settlements whose names have survived to this day to begin with). The de facto realm set-up should be the easiest to keep some degree of historical semblance, though, and I've found surprisingly that Wikipedia by itself already gives me enough information to do a passable de facto set-up for VIET's purposes (and even though SWMH's Africa stuff will be 10000 times better than VIET, I suspect Wikipedia's information will also be at the least a good foundation for the de facto set-up of SWMH).


Lastly, a couple other minor points I forgot to mention in my initial post, for stuff you may or may not have already gone over:

-Northeast of the Daju peoples in Darfur would be the Zaghawa and the Toubou, who I believe could be represented, like the Daju and various other Nilotic groups, as tribal duchies. Amazingly enough, Wikipedia lists several Toubou clans and the approximate dates of their rise to power and even maps of migration patterns and movements, particularly in the Tibesti region in the Tibesti mountain article. The Zaghawa are a bit harder to pin down given Wikipedia's scantier article on them, but the few academic sources I've looked up do seem to confirm they were an important group during CKII's timeframe.
- This is a bit outside of East Africa, and having looked at the SWMH map, this might be *just* a little too south of the map but it's worth mentioning. The Sao civilization was an ambiguous and little-known and possibly legendary culture or kingdom that existed within the entirety of CKII's timeframe a directly south of Kanem-Bornu/Lake Chad. Their most prominent modern-day descendants include the Kotoko peoples. They could be represented in-game as a titular Kingdom or duchy. Although again I'm not sure whether they would be a bit too south on the map. Personally though I'm figuring out if I can fit them on VIET simply because they just sound so cool.
- If you're adding Socotra (and I think you should - it's cool!) it would probably be in the de jure Kingdom of Arabia (or Yemen if you guys have that), as the people living there spoke and speak a South Arabic language and it's always appeared to have closer relations with the Arabian peninsula.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I just found this on google books about the Kingdom of Alwa/Alodia, one of the Nubian kingdoms from the period. Not sure how reliable it is, but it's worth a shot as it also includes some maps too.

http://books.google.com/books?id=t9...OyQHd64Eg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[VorpalNeko]

I'm not completely certain, but I don't think Korosko is a settlement, but rather a desert through which an an overland trade route passes, starting from Abu Hammad and avoiding that giant Nile bend.
Lower Nubia is the region between first and second cataracts of the Nile. Qasr Ibrim is a bit to the south of the middle of it, but your map is pretty barren there.

Here's a map of the region in the Nubian "Classic Christian" era (ca. 850-1100) overlaid a snapshot from Google maps. Sorry it's a small region; the horizontal stripe about a third of the way up is the modern Egypt-Sudan border, so together with Aswan, you can probably orient yourself well enough.

I'll try to expand more on this tomorrow.

 

[VorpalNeko]

Archaeological eras of Nubia (not political):
Ballana: ca. 350—550
Early Christian: ca. 600—700
Classic Christian: ca. 850—1100
Late Christian: ca. 1100—1300 ('feudal')

Unfortunately, I don't have as much free time as I thought I would, but here as some maps:




The last five are probably the most useful here.
Fig 71 shows the settlements in the classic christian era (as above).
Fig 78 shows the settlements in the late christian era, the area between first and second cataracts being especially active then.
The rest may be useful for context.

Let me know if you need anything specific about this.

Source:
-- Adams, William Y. Nubia: Corridor to Africa. Princeton University Press, 1977.

 

[VorpalNeko]

Nubia and a bit south:

Source:
-- Oliver, Roland (ed). The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 3: c. 1050 to c. 1600

Got some maps from UNESCO because I moronically forgot that you have that volume.

Oh well.