(Africanus, 400 ), and the material and ideological imprint of these “forren”
influences appears across the text. Africanus asserts, for example, that the Ro-
mans named the marketplace of Fez, “the principall citie of all Barbarie,”
“Caesaria,” after “that renowned conqueror Iulius Caesar” (Africanus, 416 ,
438 ).^21 More importantly, he explains in some detail how the Christianity
brought in by the Romans and Goths and the Mohammedanism introduced
later by the Arabians displaced and replaced “the African religion,” initially
“idolatrie” (Africanus, 162 – 63 ).^22 With these changes in religion, “original”
customs disappeared. Though at one time “euery African towne had their pe-
culiar feast,” Africanus reports, “when the Christians once enioied Africa”
those feasts “were vtterly abolished and done away” (Africanus, 428 ). So too
in the case of the presumably more isolated Negroes. Africanus at first under-
scores their religious autonomy (albeit through a quasi-Christian vocabulary):
in the beginning, the Negroes worshiped “Guighimo,” “The Lord of Heaven,”
inspired not “by any Prophet or teacher” but by “God himselfe” (Africanus,
163 ). Yet under the influence of outsiders, they turned to Jewish, to Christian,
then to “Mahumetan lawe” (Africanus, 820 ). It is the latter that comes to de-
fine them, as they become colonized by the Africans to the north. “First
subiect vnto king Ioseph the founder of Maroco, and afterward vnto the fiue
nations of Libya,” Africanus explains, “they learned the Mahumetan lawe, and
diuers needfull handycrafts: a while after when the merchants of Barbarie
began to resort vnto them with merchandize, they learned the Barbarian lan-
guage” (Africanus, 820 ). And learned it so well, in fact, that they themselves
destroyed all the Christians, Jews, and practitioners of “the African religion”
in their midst, “certaine of Mahomets disciples” having “so bewitched them
with eloquent and deceiueable speeches, that they allured their weake minds
to consent vnto their opinion” (Africanus, 163 ). Cultural identity appears here
not given but made—and made from the materials of other peoples. Even as
Africanus describes the “African religion” in the north, he reaches forward into
other cultures, comparing the “ancient Africans” to contemporary Persians
who make gods of fire and the sun, and to the “Romane Vestall virgines” who
kept the fires burning, and directing readers wanting more information to “the
Persian and African Chronicles,” as if these are all of a piece (Africanus, 163 ).
These histories raise the complex question of what actually is “African.”
Africanus wrestles with the issue explicitly, wondering whether the northern
peoples ever “had a kinde of letters peculiar vnto themselues,” before they em-
braced the Latin language of the Romans and “vsed the letters of the Arabi-
ans” (Africanus, 166 , 167 ). His answer is “yes,” but to derive it, he speculates
144 chapter six