African states and the culture of Asia, America and Africa

Ottoman culture produced poets (for example the poet Mihri Hatun), architects and geographers. The famed architect Hodja Sinan led the building of more than 300 structures, mosques, madrasas, palaces, fountains, baths and bridges. The seafarer Piri Reis made the “Bahriye” atlas; Evliya Çelebi’s “Book of Travels” and Hajji Khalifa’s “Cihannüma” describe the countries of the world (Sinan and these authors lived mostly in the 16th–17th centuries, after the end of the Middle Ages). In Korea under King Sejong the Great (1418–1450) the tax system was changed and learning and agriculture flourished: a new calendar, instruments to measure rain and wind, sundials and water clocks and a star map were produced, and scholars of the royal academy devised the Korean alphabet. The Maya created writing in the early centuries CE: priests wrote hieroglyphic signs, decorated with pictures. They made one of the most exact calendars, used a sign for “zero” in mathematics, built an observatory at Chichen Itza and predicted solar and lunar eclipses, and built stepped temples and palaces. The Aztecs created a solar calendar and used pictographic writing (drawing to help remember information); their religion was polytheistic, and Tenochtitlan had separate schools for children of nobles and of commoners. The Incas had no writing; information was kept in the quipu, knotted cords; they were knowledgeable in mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and their calendar had 12 months. In Africa legends and tales passed from generation to generation and count as a historical source; in Aksum a local script reform was made in the 4th century, the alphabet is still kept in Ethiopia, and palaces, churches and underground tombs were built. In West Sudan Arab masters and architects built mosques, palaces and madrasas, and in the madrasas of Timbuktu law, history, mathematics and astronomy were studied alongside religious sciences. Bronze reliefs and statues found in the palace of Benin show hunting, war and court life.