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Gronniosaw, James Albert Ukawsaw  

Vincent Carretta

spiritual autobiographer, was born around 1705 in what is now northeastern Nigeria. He was the youngest child of the oldest daughter of the king of Bornu. Gronniosaw alienated himself from his friends and relatives by constantly challenging their faith in physical objects and by his growing belief in the existence of an uncreated creator. “Dejected and melancholy,” Gronniosaw accompanied a trading African merchant to the Gold Coast, more than a thousand miles away, where he had been promised that he could play with boys his own age and “see houses walk upon the water with wings to them, and the white folks.” The local king on the Gold Coast, however, thought him a spy and decided to behead him. Gronniosaw’s obvious courage in the face of death caused the king to sell him into slavery instead.

Gronniosaw successfully implored a Dutch captain to purchase him after a French slave trader ...

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Mbogo, Nuhu Kyabasinga  

Jonathon L. Earle

prince of Buganda, and titular head of the Muslim community in Uganda, was born around 1835, a son of Kabaka Ssuuna Kalema Kansinge II (r. c. 1830–1857). Born Omulangira (prince) Ssimbwa Ssempebwa, Mbogo’s mother was Kubina, a member of the Fumbe (Civet Cat) clan. However, at an early age, Mbogo was entrusted to the care of Muganzirwazza, mother of Kabaka Walugembe Mukaabya Muteesa I (1838–1884, invested 1857). Muteesa and Mbogo were raised together under her care. Following Ssuuna’s death, Muganzirwazza had the overwhelming majority of the princes executed, a practice not unheard of by queen mothers in earlier Ganda history. Upon learning of the planned execution of Mbogo, the new king petitioned his mother, resulting in Mbogo’s release.

According to Emin Pasha s diary Islam first reached the courts of Buganda in the person of Sheikh Ahmed bin Ibrahim a Zanzibari trader whose family migrated from Oman during ...

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Ndoadidiki, Ne-Kinu a Mumemba  

Trevor Hall

a prince known in Europe as the Catholic Bishop Dom Henriques, was the son of King Afonso I of the Kongo kingdom in West Central Africa. He is renowned as the first West-Central African to become a bishop in the Catholic Church, in 1518. He was educated in theology in at the monastery of Santo Elói in Lisbon, Portugal. As the son of the Kongolese king who had converted to Christianity, Prince Ndoadidiki was raised as a Catholic in the Kongo and epitomized the acculturation of one major West African royal family into Catholic Portuguese culture. Like a few other Christian Kongolese princes before him, Prince Ndoadidiki went to Portugal to attend school. While there, he received a knighthood and the title “Dom,” signifying a Portuguese nobleman.

Kongo was the only West Central African kingdom that Portugal converted to Christianity during their first century in that part of the ...