East Africa in the Middle Ages

Comradebot

Okay, so I've decided to try and lend some help (in some of the little free time I have) to some of the good folks over at the Paradox Interactive mod forums, and see if I can't scrounge up some good data regarding East Africa during the Middle Ages. Only problem is, its incredibly hard to find much of any info on the region (for multitudes of reasons), as its a region of the world that holds a bit of interest for me and its currently almost completely untouched in the nifty mod in progress that'll expand the game to include the entire Old World. I know the basics, like the major players in the area, the religions of respected civilizations, ect... but its pretty bare bones. Does anyone happen to know a good resource for some reliable information beyond "Great Zimbabwe was in present day Zimbabwe!" If nothing else, it'd just be fun to have a new corner of history to learn a thing or two about. At best, maybe I lend a hand towards a potentially awesome gaming experience.

Niceguy Myeye

You may want to start digging with some of the cites from the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe

Some that look promising are
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416508000585
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3889086?uid=3739616&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101047802913

I haven't read these, but they're scholarly articles about its history, culture, and decline.

The PDF are behind a paywall, but that's research for you.

You may find other cites that aren't or whatnot.

CroakerBC

Maxson's history (http://www.amazon.com/EAST-AFRICA-INTRODUCTORY-ROBERT-MAXON/dp/1933202467/) gets good reviews. That said, Odhiambo's (http://www.amazon.com/History-East-Africa-Atieno-Odhiambo/dp/0582608864/) was the set reading at an introductory level when I was at school in Nairobi, and would probably generate enough references to lead to any further reading that you want to do.

Of course this also depends on how you define 'Middle Ages' and 'East Africa' ; a lot of the coast, for example, was heavily populated by the Portugese ~14/1500 , and is likely to be thoroughly covered in their sources for the period. On the other hand, the history for the area off the coastline and prior to ~1200 is (or certainly used to be) remarkably opaque, due to a lack of written records.

Kalkino

Do a search on Oman as well. The Sultanate is a bit later than what you want but I guess at a push you could classify it as late mediaeval / modern

Bagginses

Benin was pretty huge, population and advancement-wise. David van Nyendael wrote an account of the area, so that may come in handy. It's capital was among the largest cities in the world at one point. I did a class on the history of Africa, but we worked by region and I'm shit with dates. One book that we were assigned that might come in handy is "The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706" by John K. Thornton. Our weekly readings for the time range in question included a selection from this (possibly another translation), John Hunwick, “Secular Power and Religious Authority in Muslim Society: The Case of Songhay,” Journal of African History 37 (1996): 175-94, and Agustin Holl, “Background to the Ghana Empire: Archaeological Investigations on the Transition to Statehood in the Dhar Tichitt Region (Mauretania),” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4 (1985): 73-115.
For authoritative sources, UNESCO came out with a detailed history of the continent. Alternately, I just mentioned the existence of the "Journal of African History."
Is Sundiata too early for your purposes?