Before we consider the socio-economic fundamentals of Azania, that is, the ideas of noblemen and the rise of mature theocratic governments that clashed with a European modernist viewpoint in the twentieth century, let us recap what we have thus far discovered. At the heart of every civilization is a knowledge system which must be refined if the culture of the people is to progress in lieu of regression or anomalous stagnation.
This knowledge system, stored in an initial tradition, survives only by addressing the exigencies of a collective. In the case of Ajantala, for example, Shango's merin-dilogun system was sufficient to keep intact a society that had evolved from a mass of coherent noblemen and wealthy merchants to a government with a singular language and domain. In Ajantala's case, the spread of the language could be attributed to it being the language of trade and commerce and the ongoing migrations of that era by wealthy noblemen and their descendants.
Of the era in global civilization-building of noblemen, Abraham of Israel is the most famous. He was, after all, the one who had Pharaoh's ear. Some might have heard of the ancient Egyptian nobleman of Aswan.
Others, yet, of Suffi saints and sages. In the course of history, during the process of cultural growth and enlightenment of various civilizations, some of these men have come into positions of influence as regards relevant issues of the day. Security. Trade. Terms.
Whether this position of influence was inherited by blood lineage or by such nearly-measurables as integrity, character, reputation, and business and political savvy, these men in a world that has largely been patriarchal, are themselves multi-dimensionally measurable indices of their civilizations.
But now, there is contention in the stratosphere. It started with the spirits of Bakongo who raised a challenge. They say that we have spent quite enough time talking about the noblemen of the Niger and Benue. "We get the picture," they say. They know that those parts once bred those whose vocation was fulfilled by the destiny inherent in the walk of great men in great eras. Spending even more time expounding on, say, Prince Eze and Banubian Astronometry is akin to being shamelessly partial to a particular space in the space-time continuum that is Azania.
Is there merit to these charges? Should a brief exposition of Baba Ibn-Ajantala have done the trick? It is hard to say. For one thing, the idea of noblemen, without the context of Abraham of Israel, is devoid of the depth and substance necessary to move on. We could, of course, peer into the house of Abraham, relieving ourselves of the quality of faith that the literary tradition of his ambience provokes, in so far as we are able to place his civilization in space and time.
But Abraham holds few mysteries since he is the backbone of a literate culture that has recorded his instance without reservation. Even if we were to eschew Abrahamic understanding for a glimpse into the very earliest of days of the priests of the theocratic movement that birth
Azania's earliest civilization, Pharaonic Egypt, we would still not be given to as thorough an understanding of the role of noblemen in the Azanian continuum. So while we do not dismiss the contentions of Bakongo, or the rumbling in ancient Ghana, or the symbols of the Adinkra, our preoccupation with Prince Eze seems wholly necessary if only so that we can extract from history's lightest touch, the ideas that have remained so entrenched as to have become the culture of a collective mass. Azania, after all, is a continuum represented at any point in history by an exposition of any part of it in relation to the fullness of its parts.
By now, you have heard of or know about Queen Nwa-Asizi-Adulu-Okwa. She is the Banubian princess whose is often seen with her child in every known form of theology on the Azanian land mass. She has been elevated, as was Alaafin Shango, to deity status-in her case as the goddess of fertility and the sacred river. She it was who birth a child when it was imagined that such the occurrence could only be the result of a miracle. Even in cultures not given to Azanian rumination, Queen Nwa-Asizi is known. As it turns out, prince Eze belongs to the clan of families tasked with keeping alive the remembrance of the religious institution that brought her to the fore as the matriarch of a collective of families who once lived in "The Sudan" and who had to provide for order where chaos seemed certain to reign away from Pharaonic Egypt.
In fact, in those days, she it was who brought much glory to the Kingdoms of Banubia which could neither postulate untheocratic nor promote ideologies devoid of a "cosmogenic" understanding of how order was attained, and because the miracle symbolized by the birth of her son, Esiri-Aziz, explained the highest context of their civilization.
There was a war, it is true. And the established order of priests and noblemen of "The Sudan" found themselves on the rough edge of history. Eze's ancestors are known to have migrated from those parts, as was the norm back then, with a solitary clan of priests whose job it was to keep alive just the remembrance of how order was maintained.
And so, with "five hundred families" departing what would have been certain enslavement at the hands of those who lived up north where the great river split into many tributaries, they set of for their promised land away from the treacherous hands of enslavers. The caravan of families was guided by a star which not only provided direction, but also hinted at the fact that the miracle of the heavens was not to be taken lightly. In this wise, then, the Banubians who came from "The Sudan" are to be considered special in their eventual role, for they brought with them not only the mature understanding of a conscious deity that spoke through the cosmos, but also a finer appreciation of the relevance of this deity through Banubian Astronometry.
By now, you say, finally, "what exactly is Banubian Astronometry?" It is an excellent question. An excellent question, for it pertains to the very core of that which we have attempted to propose from the outset of this series. Banubian Astronometry, dear friend, is the specific language through which the eternal mystery of existence viewed through the prism of those who understood the sacred river is explained by all data that is available to those who seek it. This data is overwhelming in scope, many times, but precise in its invocation. In more general terms, astronometry is the highest artistic and scientific expression of an observable culture. As such, it must be efficient enough to accommodate all aspects of said culture, in a continuum that makes provisions for expansion and its reverse. Banubian Astronometry, then, is the language of the culture of the migrant families that constituted the earliest cosmic idea of the Niger-Benue confluence, appreciable by the most finite understanding of what bound them together.
We have spoken, earlier, of Alaafin Shango, but we did not speak of how his families and ancestors arrived at the confluence. We do know, however, that they did arrive there because there is evidence to suggest that this migration occurred. Many argue that the migration occurred from the upper Nile, but this is not our business, since Shango was deified and expanded in cosmic reign as one of the primogenitors of a vast body of families bound by an astronometry that is spectacular and impressive. Eze, however, never was deified. The process his spirit underwent has no name available to historians. This separation is revealing because we find that the manner in which Eze is viewed, in relation to Shango, promotes ideas of cross-cultural communication and cooperation such as was necessary for Eze's clans to be able to live in harmony with Shango's when eventually the Banubians found their way west. So let us, for a moment, consider the migration of Eze's
ancestors.
Queen Nwa-Asizi, it is known, was the mother of a great warrior. No man is born without a woman, so no culture exists without a matron-deity. This is all well and good, we suggest, but the metric for understanding the role of women in a cultural environment is often in relation to this matron-deity. Then, understanding that Eze's ancestors valued the female aspect of the cosmos is key to getting a clearer picture of how the astronometrists who led their migration saw the need for inter-communal interaction before they arrived at their own land of milk and honey.
The clan of priests that were responsible for keeping intact the understanding of the queen's role in their culture vis-à-vis the necessity of a matron-saint for the survival and propagation of said culture, they were a rather quiet bunch in those times. Because they were involved with spiritual matters, their influence on matters temporal was limited to advice to the elders of the "five hundred families" who had fled Eastern Banubia. This advice, we find, found itself less weighty the further the families got from Banubia and as time went by, because the aura of Queen Nwa-Asizi was most conspicuous in the temples that were built at her behest in the better days of the larger confederation. In this wise, it is not surprising that by the time the families discovered the land replete with "one thousand rivers," generations removed from the original displacement from Banubia, the astronometry assigned to the queen a more mundane role.
She became deified as the water goddess, known to kidnap the children of those who strayed from the mores of accepted Banubian culture.
The astronometry of the male deities, however, remained virile. By the time Eze was born, the cosmos was described in its entirety by male gods who controlled the weather, the flow of the rivers, the abundance of fish, and the outcome of wars of expansion which were waged, from time to time, against the pockets of organized indigenes inhabiting the outskirts of "New Banubia." Eze was born into this society at a time when, because of the absence of a strong theology supporting the erstwhile primary figure in the astronometry, Queen Nwa-Asizi, a powerful force was necessary to keep intact the now blossoming clan of families. The problem was, because the New Banubians found themselves distanced in time and space from their original point of origin, interpretative skill was needed in order to maintain a new tradition that was arising based on just this thing. This tradition, dispersed from ideal Banubian cosmogony by factors attributable to environment, was coming into its own as the predominant cultural force that united the extended family of Banubians who had come to make east of the Niger-Benue confluence their home.
It is precisely because of the need for interpretation of tradition that the idea that eventually became the "twelve tribes of Eze" found fertile ground. Each of the twelve tribes were, really, philosophical schools for which their primary common ground was their understanding of the cosmos through the fading eyes of the Old Banubia from which they had migrated.
Indeed, indeed, you will find that whenever and wherever tradition must be interpreted, and for whatever reasons, competing schools of thought find themselves separated only by perspective, but not by history. And this was the case with Eze's Banubians. And so it was, that by the time Eze was an adult, it was the strength of his interpretative perspective that solidified his status as a great leader with insight, vision and wisdom. According to his philosophy, because his people were not privy to the depths of their original tradition, the way of the sacred river, this was no reason not to utilize their current environment to revive what had remained an intrinsic part of their collective consciousness that came from their original point of origin. And, to boot, the current environment that Eze's Banubians found themselves in required, instead of a return to their ancient ways, a modern understanding of how to best master the environment and use it to further the existence of the people.
It was in this light that Eze was chosen as an administrator over his people. He was the first such, for till this time, a theocratic understanding had led the children of Banubia across the other side of the universe to this their new home. And so, it took a leap of faith for the society to accept Eze as the wisest of those who could interpret tradition. This acquiescence to Eze's mastery of the society must be seen as unusual, for it was a revolutionary change, and these often come with social upheaval. No such thing was the case in Eze's instance, and largely because the economic situation required a pragmatic approach to matters the like. While there were those still in tune with the theocracy of Banubia and the importance of the Queen-mother, Nwa-Asizi, the most urgent exigencies of this collective were involved with administering the booming fish market and the agricultural commodities that were needed for trade with the other clans who lived within the limits of the collective existence of the group. It was, certainly, a different environment from original Banubia and the cosmogony of the old era would be out of place here near the confluence.
The first thing Eze set about doing, once he wielded administrative power, was organize the society into a stratified chain that relied on value, each sector dependent on every other sector. The life-giving forces that the society relied upon were agriculture and fisheries. In this regard, Eze constituted a body of keen-eyed sorts who would determine what skill every member of the society was gifted with, after which would come assignment to a certain sector in the stratified chain.
At this point, it is key to note that a pragmatic approach to this new Banubian civilization took precedence over the previous theocratic approach that had been brought from Old Banubia. Once Eze had stratified society, the now famous Banubian Astronometry took hold. As we continue, we will see how this new astronometry led to a singularly flourishing kingdom that, the bird's say, lasted for three hundred years until the effect of a lack of continuance, such as was the case upon the initial migration from old Banubia, led to its decay. But for now, a very robust calabash of palm wine is in order. Then we can sit down and talk like the good old days.
Guides
