The African voyages of Sataspes under Xerxes, and of Eudoxus of Cyzicus under Ptolemy Euergetes II, cannot be regarded as of much importance. Neither probably reached Cape Verde (even if we are to attach any belief to their narratives). Sataspes[[71]] declared that his ship was stopped by obstructions in the sea at a point where lived on the ocean shore a people of small stature, clad in garments made of the palm-tree.[[72]] This was "many months'" sail south of Cape Soloeis or Cantin, and may stand for the neighbourhood of the Senegal, if it be not a mere traveller's tale invented by Sataspes, as Herodotus seems to have thought, to excuse his failure to the Great King. Eudoxus[[73]] claimed to have sailed so far, first along the eastern and then, along the western, coasts of Africa, that he practically circumnavigated the Continent; but all the details with which we are favoured go to disprove his claim. For instance, he implies that the Ethiopians reached by him on his farthest point S.W. "adjoined Mauretania." On the eastern coast he picked up a ship's prow from a vessel which he was told had been wrecked coming from the westward, and which mariners of Alexandria identified as a ship of Gades—a very unlikely story in the face of the currents on the East African coast.
According to Pliny,[[74]] Polybius the historian also made a reconnaissance down the West coast of Africa, in the lifetime and under the order of Scipio Æmilianus. He seems to have passed the termination of the Atlas chain, but Pliny's language does not warrant us in going any further.[[75]] He interweaves in his narrative the voyage of Polybius with the great measurement of the Roman world under Augustus by Agrippa, which is perhaps in part commemorated by the Peutinger Table, and which evidently took into its view the Hesperian Promontory,[[76]] and the Chariot of the Gods. Some have claimed for Polybius a voyage as far as the latter point, but this, if understood in the sense of Sierra Leone, is highly improbable.
We must not here delay over classical attempts at African continental exploration; but it will be right to notice briefly: That in the age of Pliny, as shown by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. 70 a.d.), and in the age of Ptolemy, as shown in his Geography (c. 139-162 a.d.), the knowledge of the Græco-Roman world was extended down the East coast of Africa at least as far as Zanzibar and its neighbourhood, and down the Western coast to Cape Soloeis, or Cape Cantin: That beyond these points only vague ideas obtained, though occasional travellers had ventured further: That in the interior of Africa only the North coast region, viz., Egypt and the "Barbary States," were thoroughly well known, though expeditions had at times crossed the Sahara, reached the Sudan, and ascended the Nile to the marshes situate in 9° N. lat.: That, even if never seen or visited, at least something had been heard of the African Alps in the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes, as well as of those lakes themselves: That Ptolemy's work marks the highest point of ancient knowledge in Africa, which began to decline from the age of the Antonines: That it is not probable even Ptolemy had any definite notions about the Niger, though his text names such a stream in West Africa, and his Map lays it down in a position not very distant from our Joliba: That it is clear he was conscious of the vast size of the Continent in a way that none of his predecessors had grasped, while utterly ignorant of its shape towards the South, so that he even denied the primary fact of its practically insular form.
Leaving to another section any notice of ancient exploration among the African islands, it would also appear that Statius Sebosus, Juba, and Marinus of Tyre all made contributions to the knowledge of West Africa. These contributions are now only preserved in the allusions or paraphrases of other authors; but it is clear that Sebosus, perhaps identical with a Sebosus who was a friend of Catulus and a contemporary of Sallust and Cæsar, had made independent inquiries concerning the West or Ocean coast of the Continent;[[77]] that Juba,[[78]] who made the Nile rise in Western Mauretania, did similar work in the time of Augustus; and that Marinus preserved some original records of Roman expeditions which crossed the Great Desert,[[79]] apparently from Tripoli and Fezzan to the neighbourhood of the Central Sudan States.
As the Roman Empire broke up, geographical knowledge naturally suffered, and Africa shared in this loss. But a considerable recovery was effected through the work of the Arabs, to whom the Infant Henry owed much.
Confining our attention to Continental exploration, we may remark among other particulars: (1) That the Arab migration[[80]] to the East coast beyond Guardafui in the eighth century began the extension of Moslem trade-colonies, which at last reached Sofala. (2) That the coast near Madagascar, as well as that island itself, seems to have been known to the great Arab traveller and geographer Masudi ("Massoudy") in the tenth century. (3) That the same writer considered the Atlantic or Western Ocean unnavigable, but that even he preserves a record of one Arab voyage thereon.[[81]] (4) That Edrisi, in the twelfth century, records another voyage which touched the African mainland a good distance beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.[[82]] (5) That Ibn Said, in the thirteenth century, relates a discovery of Cape Blanco.[[83]] (6) That overland communication between the Barbary States and the negroes of the Sudan was originated by the Arabs, as a regular line of commerce, probably from the eleventh century at least.
This last point is one which requires special consideration. By sea the Arabs did scarcely anything to prepare the way for the Christian discoveries of the fifteenth century in Africa (except along the Eastern coast), but by land they were the most important helpers and informants of Prince Henry.[[84]] Islam effected the conquest of the Barbary States, politically in the seventh century, dogmatically in the course of about 200 years after the days of Tarik and Musa. By the end of the eleventh century the faith of Mohammed had begun to spread and take deep root in the Sudan,[[85]] having already made its way into many parts of the Sahara. With the Moslem faith came the Moslem civilisation. The caravan trade across the desert now commenced between Negroland and the Mediterranean; "Timbuktu" was founded by Moslems, probably drawn in large measure from the Tuareg, in about 1077-1100; and the Central Sudan States, from Sokoto to Darfur and Kordofan, passed under Mohammedan influence between a.d. 1000 and 1250. With the fresh migration of Nomad Arabs which seems to have taken place about a.d. 1050, from Upper Egypt to West Africa, a distinct advance of Islam in Central Africa is to be noticed by way of Kanem, Bornu, Sokoto, and the Niger Valley; this new wave reached Jenné, Ghiné, or "Guinea", on the Upper Valley of the Niger.
Even earlier than this a movement seems to have been in progress from the opposite direction—first south along the west coast, and then east up the valley of the Senegal and similar inlets. The tradition preserved by John Pory[[86]] is approved by the most recent research—at least in its general conclusions. The Moslems "pierced into" the Sahara in, or a little after, 710, and "overthrew the Azanegue, and the people of Walata;" in "the year 973 (others say about 950) they infected the negroes and first those of Melli." During the ninth century, Islam made progress among the Sahara tribes, and the influence of this faith promoted intercourse between the desert tribes and the great commercial centres of the North African coast—a movement which was furthered by the Almoravide revival of the eleventh, and the Almohade of the twelfth, century. The former started from a reformed Moslem "community," settled on an island at the mouth of the Senegal—in other words, it shows Islam already finding centres for recovery and expansion in Negroland, exploring the Sudan from the north and west, creeping along the Atlantic Ocean, and spreading from the neighbourhood of Cape Verde into the interior of the populous land to the south of the Great Desert.
Here we may notice that Edrisi takes a point called Ulil as his starting-place in reckoning measurements, and especially longitudes, in the Sudan. This Ulil is fixed by all our authorities as close to the sea, in the centre of a salt-producing district; and it may be supposed to have been in the neighbourhood of the Senegal estuary.[[87]] To the east, Ulil bordered on Gana, Ghanah, Guinoa, Geneoa, or "Guinea," which, at least in name, was the first objective of Prince Henry's expeditions, and was famous for its slave export, and its money of "uncoined gold."[[88]] The name of the country was probably derived from its chief city of Jenné, variously described by Leo Africanus, in the sixteenth century, as a large village; by the earlier geographers—especially Edrisi in the twelfth century, and Ibn-Batuta in the fourteenth—as a spacious and well-built city on an island in the Niger, lying west from Timbuktu.
Between Ghanah or Jenné, and Ulil, according to some writers, lay the kingdom of Tokrur, while Andagost was on the northern boundary of Ghanah close to the Sahara. All these were Moslem states like Melli or Malli (W.S.W. from Timbuktu), and carried on trade with Barbary across the desert long before the days of Prince Henry. One of the earliest important converts to Islam in the Sudan was Sa-Ka-ssi, of the dynasty of Sa in the Songhay country on the Middle Niger (c. a.d. 1009-1010). From this time the states on the Middle Niger became a centre of Mohammedan influence, especially after the foundation of Timbuktu about 1077. When Ibn-Batuta visited these parts in 1330, he found the negroes of the Niger full of Moslem devotion, enjoying a commerce with Mediterranean Africa, and mostly acknowledging the lead of Melli, which kingdom, according to him, had been founded in the early thirteenth century by the Mandingo.[[89]]