As the result of the Muhammadan invasion of Africa from Arabia—only brought to a close at the end of the 19th century—it may be stated that Arabized Berbers ruled in North and North-West Africa; Arabized Turks ruled in North and North-East Africa; Arabized Negroes ruled on the Niger, and in the Central Sudan; Arabs ruled more directly on the Nile, and on the Nubian coast; and the Arabs of south Arabia and of ’Oman governed the East African coast, and eventually carried their influence, and to some extent their rule, inland to the great Central African lakes, and even to the Upper Congo. The Muhammadan colonization of Africa was the first event which brought that part of the continent beyond the Sahara and Upper Egypt within the cognizance of the world of civilization and history. The Arabs introduced from Syria and Mesopotamia an architecture—“Saracenic”—which was an offshoot of the Byzantine[47], with a dash of Persian or Indian influence. This architecture received at the hands of the Berbers and Egyptians an extraordinarily beautiful development, which penetrated northwards into Spain and Sicily and in a modified type into Italy, and southwards reached the Lower Niger, the Upper Nile, the vicinity of the Zambezi, and the north coast of Madagascar. They gave to all the northern third of Africa a _lingua franca_ in Arabic, and besides spreading certain ideas of Greek medicine and philosophy, they taught the Koran, which admitted all those Berber and Negro populations into that circle of civilized nations which has founded so much of its hopes, philosophy and culture on the Semitic Scriptures. The Arabs, especially of Yaman and ’Oman, were the means, more or less direct (especially through their seafaring trade with India), of enlarging the food supply and means of transport of the negro and negroid, and of conveying to Europe a few useful African products, such as coffee. They had much to do with the introduction of the Indian buffalo into Egypt, and the camel into the Sahara and Libyan deserts, Nigeria and Somaliland. Similarly they extended the range of the domestic horse and ass, of goats, and sheep and poultry in Negro Africa. They certainly introduced the lime and orange, and the sugar cane, and possibly the banana; though this last may date back to pre-Islamic times, like wheat and rice. ---------------------------------------------------------------- MUHAMMADAN AFRICA Plate II. [Illustration] Sir H.H. Johnston del^t. W.&A.K. Johnston Limited. Edinburgh & London