Azania

Azania is a name for various subsaharanische African regions. He was first at the time of the Roman Empire to refer to the East African coast south of Cape Guardafui in Somalia used to around the present-day Tanzania. As such, he was part of the country name Tanzania (composed of Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Asania ). Today the term is mostly used by black nationalists.

The earliest attestations of the name comes from Pliny the Elder, who mentioned in his work Naturalis historia the " azanische sea", which began at Adulis. The Periplus Maris Erythraei mentioned that Azania included as southern trading center Rhapta what lay in what is now Tanzania or Kenya. Thus, the area roughly corresponded to that of the Arab Zanj. Even in the writings of Ptolemy and Cosmas Indicopleustes Azania is mentioned.

Attempts to interpret the name etymologically refer to either Arabic ʿ Adscham ( foreigner, non-Arabs ) or Zanj ( Black, slave ) or in Greek azainein ( dry scorch, parch ), which may be an indication of the particular aridity of the land in Somalia.

Modern concept

• Evelyn Waugh used the term in 1932 Azania for a fictitious island off Somalia in his book Black Mischief.
• 1958 Kwame Nkrumah made ​​to use the proposal as name Azania for South Africa at the All - African Peoples Conference in Accra. Some South African groups took over this proposal, the Azanian People's Organisation. After the end of apartheid in South Africa a renewed suggested name for the country was not wide support.
• Azania or Asania should be the name of that separate state, the Christian and animist rebels want to build in the south of the otherwise predominantly Muslim Sudan, see Civil War in South Sudan
• On 4 April 2011, was called in Nairobi (Kenya ) from another State on the territory of Somalia, which has its territory roughly in Jubaland and bears the name Azania.