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Post by zemelmete on Sept 30, 2005 7:00:43 GMT -5
I see that many here think that people in the past used term "black" in the same way as it is using today in Western world - to name negroid people. It is funny to read how some really believe that "black" people, mentioned in medevial texts, were people of african origin or something like that. That's not true.
I will provide one good example. In medevial russian texts were often mentioned black people who live east from Ural mountains. The most beleviable these "black people" were ob-ugrians or samoyeds.
Why russians called them "black"? Because these nations lived in northern latitudes. North associated with darkness, black world to russians, so no wonder they called people living there "black" ("people who live in black world"). As you see, "black" here has nothing to do with skin colour or ancestry.
Such misinterpretations are often also in case of other medevial sources. Let's provide for example "black irelanders", "black prince" etc. in western Europe. I believe they have nothing to do with black skin colour or with african ancestry.
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Nist
Junior Member
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Post by Nist on Sept 30, 2005 7:32:56 GMT -5
I see that many here think that people in the past used term "black" in the same way as it is using today in Western world - to name negroid people. It is funny to read how some really believe that "black" people, mentioned in medevial texts, were people of african origin or something like that. That's not true. I will provide one good example. In medevial russian texts were often mentioned black people who live east from Ural mountains. The most beleviable these "black people" were ob-ugrians or samoyeds. Why russians called them "black"? Because these nations lived in northern latitudes. North associated with darkness, black world to russians, so no wonder they called people living there "black" ("people who live in black world"). As you see, "black" here has nothing to do with skin colour or ancestry. Such misinterpretations are often also in case of other medevial sources. Let's provide for example "black irelanders", "black prince" etc. in western Europe. I believe they have nothing to do with black skin colour or with african ancestry. This is true. If they talked about negroids they just called them negroids. |
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Post by Mike the Jedi on Sept 30, 2005 11:43:19 GMT -5
You're right, Zemel. In ancient times, black Africans would have been called "Ethiopians." In Shakespeare's day, other names popped up, such as blackamoor. Or just Moor (even if indeed black Africans were a minority in the Moorish ranks, their prevalence would have been exaggerated by Europeans due to their exoticness).
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Post by dplacid1 on Oct 2, 2005 15:00:22 GMT -5
1.look up the a picture escutcheons and corsica coat of arms of the 11,12,13,14,15 centuries.
2.look up a pic of st maurice the german hero.
THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAURE
THE AFRICAN CONSCIENCE OF HUMANITY
The AUF flag and emblem is called the Maure or U Moru. It was adopted by the AUF on account of important historical considerations, some of which are explained here, but also because masks, and the imagery of the head, are symbolically significant in all African communities. Below is a brief account of the origins of the Maure and its significance to Africans everywhere.
The term Maure derives from the Phoenician term Mahurin (Westerners). From Mahurin the ancient Greeks derive Mauro meaning black, and later Greeks derive Maurikios after them, the Latin derive Mauri meaning Black African. From the same root we derive: Maur, Maurus, Marra, Moro, Morisco, Mohr, Moritz, Moor, Moru, Maru, Morelo, Maureta, Mauretania, Mauritius, Maureen, Maroon, Morocco, Moore, Maurice, Meuric, Meurig, Morien, Morin, Moryan, Moreto, and such. At one time the whole of the western arm of Africa (what is now West Africa, from Libya to Nigeria and around the Atlantic coast), was called Mauretania. The word Mauretania was interchangeable with all the names of what is now Africa: 'Ethiopia', 'Kemet', 'Netdjer', 'Sudan', 'Libya', 'Cush', 'Guinea' and the now defunct 'Negroland'.
Since the 11th century, the heraldic term Maure refers to the symbol of an African head, or more specifically any blackened image of an African, or a part of an African, or an item associated with or representing Africans.
The most ancient version of the Maure/U Moru in heraldic and vexillologic tradition around the world is generally known as the Black Madonna which predates Christianity and is appropriately associated with the worship of ancient African (and black-skinned) female gods, including Abuk, Apedemak, Ceres, Hathor, Sekhmet, and especially Isis. These legendary symbols of mythological African women appear in most civilizations, many as matriarchs, but also as military leaders and priestesses. Some representations of female oracles and priestesses may include the blindfold as part of the process of prophecy, symbolising insight, wisdom and judgement.
In medieval times the genre of the Black Madonna was augmented in France especially by an "esoteric" popular religion common among the Templars and Cathars. One of the central excuses the French monarchy issued in the persecution and destruction of the Knights Templers was the fact that they had adopted the Maure and had several "Baphomets" in the monastries. The Templars brought back with them the devotion to the Black Madonna from the Crusades. The colors adopted by their order were black and red. They wore a double black and red cord around their necks and their flag was black, white and red.
Varietations of the female Maure include representations of famous black women in both mythology and history, such as the Amazons, Andromeda, Cassiopea, Europa (mythological African woman after whom the continent is named), and the entire Odinian priesthood composed only of African females (their black male counterparts refered to as the Gentilibus Nigris by Catholic piests, were part of the Viking fleets that invaded Ireland in the 9th century). Almost all of these figures are represented consistently as black, commonly only their heads or faces, hence the variety of the significance, symbolism, and diverse representation of the Maure.
The tradition of the blindfold may have come to us unmodified, but obscured by the proliferation of Black Madonnas with haloes, garlands, veils, crowns or headbands, which may also have morphosed into blindfolds due to artistic license. The blindfold is integral to the iconography partaining to the Matriarch-as-Judge. Ancient mythology is replete with such an African figure. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the judge-matriarch of Magan [in Africa], in front of whom the protagonist is brought for justice. Indo-Tibetan scholars believe that the Hindu and Buddhist Black Goddesses and the Christian Black Madonna are a common archetype that originated in Africa.
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The snake-haired Gorgon triplet Medusa is also a female Maure. The most direct and historical interpretation of the myth of Perseus and the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa, points to the Medusa as being resident in Africa to the west, having dreadlocks for hair, and having a potent dynamic relating to vision. Representaions of Medusa are generally conflations of her head and the "mirror" of Perseus, which in fact makes a shield with the dreadhead emblazon. What is important perhaps is the fact that Medusa's head is an instrument of justice. In the context of the AUF flag, the significance of the head as a symbol of justice is what is crucial. By the sixteenth century, in Europe, the severed head of Medusa was said to symbolize the triumph of reason over the senses.
Below: The Trinacria Medusa Maure of Tindari
The only country with Medusa's Head on its flag is Sicily. The current Sicilian Medusa is not a Maure, having been modified over the centuries. However, it is a Trinacria. The oldest surviving design of a Medusan Trinicria is in the mosaic in Tindari depicting the head of Medusa (in a geometrically circular black face) with snakes for hair, and what appears to be roots. The mosaic in Tindari dates from the 3rd century B.C. According to convention, the Greeks circumnavigated the island and noted the three capes, Peloro, Passero, and Lilibeo, forming three points of a triangle in the northeast, the southeast, and the west. "Taken by its beauty they likened its shores to the legs of a woman" and represented the island with the Trinakie.
Regardless of the verity of this randy story, the people (Cartheginians) who lived in Sicily 300 years before Christ had the female Medusa Maure (moreover, on a white square ground) as their emblem. The association of Medusa with the number three has a more profound significance than the passionate legs' story suggests. The female legs establish the sex/gender of the Medusa, as well as the number of the Erinyes (the mist-walking sisters who were guardians of life whose duty it was to pursue and punish crimes not within the realm of human justice), in addition to bearing some other significant symbolism beyond the scope of this report. It is interesting to note that Tindari also has the famous Sanctuary of the Black Madonna.
The Erinyes predate Olympian rule in the territory we now call Greece. The pre-Hellenic people there recognized three immortal black maidens with serpent hair, who roamed the pre-Hellenic world in pursuit of those who dared offend the laws of kinship.
Corsica's ancient Coat-of-Arms bearing distinctly female Maure
The Maure was used in Corsica beginning in 1281, and later during the struggle for independence, by both sides, beginning in 1736. The Corsican Maure was female. General Paoli ordered the chain removed from the Maure in 1760, and a few years later had the blindfold on the coat-of-arms morphed into a headband because 'Corsicans want to see things in a clear way...'. However, the blindfold remained on the Corsican currency.
From 1281 to 1387 the Maure was used on the seals of the kings of Aragon. The white ground Maure (sans Adinkra) was the original flag of the Africans during the successful slave revolt in Haiti (San Domingo) in 1799 AD.
'St.Erasm and St.Maurice' by Matthias Grunewald (b. 1470/80, d. 1528)
In medieval Europe the Maure imagery represented the Sudanese command of the German armies of the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th century. These African officers defended Swedes during the Scandinavian rebellion against Germany. Several settlements in Europe - including St. Moritz - are named after these Africans. The white flag with the black profile became the flag of several separate Orders named for of St. Maurice, that sprung up all over Europe in the 12th century. However, the name Maurice was generic and refers to many different and unrelated black soldiers in medieval European history.
In Roman times the Theban Legion was led by yet another Maurice, the warrior saint, and Primicerius (commander) of Roman troops from Thebes in Egypt. The Theban Legion was sent to suppress a revolt of the Bagandae in Agaunum in Gaul (St-Maurice en Valais) in the 3rd century. That Maurice ordered his soldiers not to participate in pagan rites. They were punished by the Emperor Maximian Herculeus first by decimation and finally by the wholesale massacre of the Theban Legion. Maurice and his fellow officers were executed in A.D. 287. Some depictions of that St. Maurice rightly portray him as black and show red flags, sometimes with a black stripe.
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In heraldic tradition that has grown out of this rich past, the Moor's Head refers to "a black's head, generally in profile, and frequently banded". There are various kinds of medieval descriptions of the Maure that include "Argent, three moor's heads couped at the shoulders proper filleted or and gules (1732-35), or, in referance to a Blackmore blazon, "on a fesse between three Moor's heads erased sable as many crescents argent"; "...a blackamoor's head couped sable"; "a cross gules between four blackamoor's heads affrontee, couped at the shoulders proper, wreathed about the temples gold (1633); "Per fesse argent and sable, a pale counterchanged three negro's heads proper".
Even long before the Crusades, on April 30 in 711, at the invitation of the sons of the late Visigoth King Wittiza, the Umayyad General Tarikh ibn Ziyad (el Moro) led 7000 troops into what was to became Spain and Portugal. His troops consisted of 300 Arabs and 6,700 native Africans. Ibn Husayn (ca. 950) recorded that these troops were "Sudanese", the Arabic word for Black people. The banner of the Maure, the negro head blindfolded on a white background became associated with Tarik's African armies.
Tarik's flag was the white flag of the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750). The Umayyads took white as their symbolic color as a reminder of the Prophet's first battle at Badr, and to distinguish themselves from the Abbasids, by using white, rather than black, as their color of mourning. The Visigoth usurper, Roderic, was defeated by the Africans on 19th July 711 at the battle of Guadalete, near Medina Sidonia. Roderic's fall ended Visigoth rule over what the Africans then called Spania (from the Amazigh word for Rabbits), or Al Andalus, and began 800 years of African and Arab control over much of southern and western Europe, but especially over Grenada in Southern Spain.
Al Hambra, Granada's citadel in the Sierra Nevada, Andalucia - Spain
After the fall of the Umayyads in Damascas, the Africans in Spain, known as the Moro were cut off and came under threat from successive invasions. However, the Moro retained the white flag and it came to be associated with negro troops specifically, whereas the Saracen Arab invaders who followed them into Spain used the red flag of the Khawarij Republican followers of Caliph Uthman III. As pressure from the Reyes Católicos (the Christian Reconquistadors) increased over the centuries, African states in Spain mutated and fell and rose many times. The most stable and longest lived African state in Spain was Grenada, with the magnificent Nasridin dynasty citadel of Al Hambra as its capitol. Al Hambra surrendered to the Reyes Católicos at dawn on January 2, 1492. Spain and Portugal followed this action with the conquest of parts of Africa, the destruction of African communities in Europe and the invasion of the Americas. Lisbon's black population, that out-numbered Europeans in 1550, was devasted by the plagues of the times. The last free blacks in Spain were expelled on April 6, 1609.
The last African flag of Grenada consisted of heraldic "Argent, a pomegranate gules leafed vert" (ie., an all-white flag, with a centred red pomegranate flower with green petals). It is unclear what the symbolic significance of the pomegranate bloom was to blacks in Spain. What is notable, however, is that the Pomegranate gave its name to Granada, as well as to the Hand Grenade which came into use in the 15th century. Moreover, the bloom has the colors Green, Yellow, Red, which coincidentally are the Pan-African colors. Perhaps most cryptic of all is the ancient saying "There is nothing in the world like the pain of being blind in Granada," probably less a reference to the blindfolded Maure and more about the beauty of perhaps the most beautiful place in Europe. Al Hambra is still only second to the Vatican in tourist visitors.
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The escutcheons (coat of arms) of the blackamoor proliferated in both private and civic European Orders throughout the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Heraldic descriptions such as "Argent, three blackamoors' heads couped sable, capped or, fretty gules" on coats of arms became common shortly after 1096. Even today, Sardinia's coat of arms bears four African heads each displayed in one of the four quarters created by the cross on the white shield. The traditional explanation is they represent four Moorish emirs of 11th century Spain. (N.B. Africans settled Sardinia and founded settlements around the gulf of Cagliari as early as 6000 BC).
Other sources of inspiration for the AUF Maure include celebrated Africans in ancient world history & mythology, including the Magi, the Arthurian knights Pallamedes (who wore two swords on account of his being ambidextrous), and Moren (whose skin is described as being remarkably black and who taught chivalry to the other knights). Others include Ogham, the black war leader of the Celts, and Prester John, the Christian King of Ethiopia (Africa), and Cepheus the father of Andromeda. In Nubian Twilight Alex Keating shows that popular European stories including Hans and Gretel, and Cinderella were taught to Europeans by Sudanese soldiers serving in Germany around the time of the Crusades. Cinderella especially means black skin...and may have originally simply referred to a real black girl (or several of them in similar situations). The representations of Africans among the ancient African culture, and in cultures of the world, is the inspiration for the AUF emblem.
The fall of the Kushites, the Phoenicians, the conquest of Egypt, the Rise of the Romans, the advent of Asian slave trade in African persons, and consolidation of Reconquistador attitudes in 17th century Europe, all heralded a nasty turn in the treatment of Africans in world culture. Shakespeare's insightful Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and the ill-fated Othello reflect the crises and despondency that gripped human society as African civilization succumbed under the persistent attack by Europe and Asia.
Another Medieval Maurice: Ancient European Statue of African Knight
As late as the 19th century major European states were still using Black heads on their armorials. The French added the Maure to the fleur-de-lis but removed the blindfold. At first, the French government gave to the new department of Corsica, arms where the Moor's Head was side by side with the fleur-de-lis and with a motto: The Law, the King. But from 1792, this motto disappeared although the Moor's Head and the fleur-de-lis still remained. When Paoli formed the Anglo-Corsican kingdom, the Moor's head which was associated to the arms of the king of England, became again, from 1794 to 1796, the official emblem of Corsica."
U Moru has powerful saddening symbolism as well. It encapsulates in a single image the suffering of Africans. The number of interpretations in this regard are endless. Like the Clenched-Black-Fist, or the Chained-Black-Hand, both important African Empowerment emblems, U Moru's blinded and bound face tells eloquently the story of African survival in the face of overwhelming historic aggression and oppression. The bound face of an African is also symbolic of our oppression, or the African Holocausts perpetated against us on account of our Africanness and our appearance, and we must not forget that millions of our people continue to die and to suffer in bondage at the hands of proxy neocolonial governments and at the hands of racist anti-African regimes. It is important to bear in mind that some African-Profile armorials of Europe in the middle ages bore chains in addition to the blindfold. This was especially true of the maps of the time. Although there are no references that point to the existence of official standards with a gagfold covering the mouth rather than the eyes, they do appear from time to time and signify African silence, or more specifically the suppression of African _expression.
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Post by yigal on Oct 5, 2005 12:25:22 GMT -5
in russia caucasians are called black That's right. Isn't that funny?  not really the average caucasian is a great deal darker than the average russian, there are exceptions of course, there are many russian looking chechens but in Russia when they think chechen they think Curly Haired Olive Skined Bignosed Hairy Person |
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Post by penetratorx on Oct 5, 2005 12:42:05 GMT -5
There is a people spread over parts of South East Asia called the 'Thai Dam' or Black Thai, they are a typical South East Asian racial type but a little darker than their neighbours.
Only a matter of time I guess until the afrocentrics get to hear about them and claim achievements like Angkor Wat as theirs !
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Post by zemelmete on Oct 6, 2005 6:13:21 GMT -5
I think she meant it's ironic that the actual Caucasus people that white folks are named after are called "black" by the Russians. Exactly. I can imagine how will laugh in USA if some russian will say (in english, of course):"caucasians are black!". He is talking about caucasians from Caucasus, but americans will imagine people of northwestern european ancestry lol. Well, different cultures... |
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