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Azania is the name that has been applied to various parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In Roman times -- and perhaps earlier -- the name referred to a portion of the east African coast south of Cape Guardefui, extending south perhaps as far as modern Tanzania. In modern times, it was a colloquial name for South Africa, most often used by black nationalists.
Origin of Name
The earliest attestations for the name Azania do not explain it. John Hilton alludes to a number of etymologies propsed in the nineteenth century that sought to explain the name from an Arabic or Persian word referring the dark-skinned inhabitants of Africa, which he dismisses as examples of the colonial mindset of that period.
More recently, G.W.B. Huntingford offered two suggestions for the origin of this word. The first was from the Arabic `ajam ("foreigner, non-Arab"). The second, which he is more enthusiastic over, comes from the Greek azainein ("to dry, parch"), which fits his identification of Azania with the arid coastline of modern Somalia.
Ancient Azania
Pliny the Elder mentions an "Azanian Sea" (N.H. 6.34) that began around the emporium of Adulis and stretched around the south coast of Africa. The slightly later Periplus of the Erythraean Sea offers more details about Azania (chapters 15,16,18). From chapter 15 of the Periplus, Huntingford argues that Azania properly refered to the Somali coast, plausibly identifying the "Lesser and Greater Bluffs", the "Lesser and Greater Strands", and the "Seven Courses" of Azania with landmarks of that country. However, chapter 16 clearly describes Rhapta, located south of the Puralean Islands at the end of the Seven Courses of Azania, as the "southernmost market of Azania." Modern identifications of Rhapta place it on the coasts of either Kenya or Tanzania -- indicating that Azania refered to a far longer stretch of East African coastline than Somalia, perhaps an area identical to the later Arab Zanj.
Later writers who mention Azania include Claudius Ptolemy and Cosmas Indicopleustes.
Modern Azania
Evelyn Waugh used Azania for a fictitious island off the coast of Somalia in his novel Black Mischief in 1932. Azania appeared again in 1958, when the name was proposed as a replacement name for South Africa in 1958, at the All-African Peoples Conference hosted in Accra, Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah.
But the modern use of Azania as an alternative name for South African only began to become popular in 1979, appearing in the names of organisations such as the Azanian People's Organisation. At the time of the 1994 multi-racial elections, some proposed "Azania" as an alternative official name for the country, but this never received widespread support. While South Africa had diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the People's Republic of China officially referred to South Africa as "Azania".
The name Azania may also refer to a locality in Arcadia in Greece, named for Azan.
Bibliography
- G.W.B. Huntingford (trans. & ed.). Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Hakluyt Society. London, 1980.
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