ABSTRACT
The word ‘Sudan’ came initially from the Arab or Egyptian traders in the lands. It came into general use when the Berber-speaking peoples of North Africa began to adopt Arabic after the Muslim conquests in the eighth century ad. Little was known or understood in Europe about this process of African state-formation. It was believed by European historians that nothing new was done in distant Africa unless it was brought by Europeans and their inventions. The peoples of West Africa, for example, had one great need which the peoples of the Sahara, or those beyond the Sahara, could help to supply. The same process of city-founding and empire-building went on in the grasslands to the south of the Sahara. Between about ad800 and 1600, or thereabouts, West African communities grew more numerous, developed new and more effective ways of enforcing law and order, and evolved new ways of self-government.
