Sub-Saharan Africa - Etymology

Etymology

The Sub-Saharan region is often referred to as Black Africa, in reference to its numerous black populations. However, geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each area's respective inhabitants.

Commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term bilâd as-sûdân ("Land of the Blacks") for the vast Sudan region (an expression denoting West and Central Africa), or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan. Its equivalent in the southeast was Zanj ("Country of the Blacks"), which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region. Also transliterated as Zenj or Zinj, it was inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj.

The geographers drew an explicit ethnographic distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, with the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia was Al-Habash or Abyssinia, which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, who were the forebears of the Habesha. In northern Somalia was Barbara or the Bilad al-Barbar ("Land of the Berbers"), which was inhabited by the Eastern Baribah or Barbaroi, as the ancestors of the Somalis were referred to by medieval Arab and ancient Greek geographers, respectively.

Some note that Sub-Saharan Africa neither exists linguistically (Afro-Asiatic languages), ethnically (Tuareg), politically (African Union, Arab league), in terms of religion (Islam), nor economically (CEN-SAD). The African Union also prefers to see the Sahara as a bridge, not a barrier.