In keeping with the pedagogical goal of centering Africa, my medieval unit begins on that continent, where, as I emphasize to my students, both Christianity and Islam spread from southwest Asia relatively swiftly and comprehensively. Early in this unit it is important for my students to have had some background reading in medieval Africa and to get used to the phrase “medieval Africa” itself (Conrad 2005; Berger 2016).

At the very beginning of our unit on medieval history, I usually ask students to write down any words, phrases, or images that come to mind when I say “medieval.” This brings up a host of ideas mostly filtered through icons of popular culture many scholars refer to as examples of “medievalism” — or “manifestations of the middle ages in postmedieval times” (quoted in Matthews 2015, 1) — like Game of Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, or even the irresistible campiness of Medieval Times dinner-theater jousts. It seldom occurs to them immediately that regions outside of western Europe also have a medieval period.

The term “medieval” is itself not without its problems, but its near-universal usage for the period c. 500–1500 in textbooks and other resources that influence state standards merits its use here (Fauvelle 2018, 11; Holmes and Standen 2018, 1-2). My goal in this article is not to critique terms of periodization but to offer teachers of the medieval world, especially at secondary and higher education survey levels, some guidelines as a non-specialist teaching a topic that was new to me just a few short years ago.

For context, while I have a Ph.D. in early medieval European history, I have recently produced primary source lesson plans on the medieval period from a global perspective (Terry 2021). My aim here is to provide resources for history teachers and to embolden them, regardless of specialist training, to illuminate an important area of world history typically erased by centuries-old narratives of imperialist self-interest.

In this case, my students are remarkably self-aware about their previous assumptions when they are tasked with researching, contextualizing, and teaching key medieval African primary sources such as the royal epics the Kebra Nagast and the Epic of Sundiata, the oral legal code the Manden Charter (a source whose debates and challenges I will discuss below), and the much more famous travel accounts of Ibn Battuta.

For one project I ask my students to design a lesson centered on primary source evidence. One of them observed that, while medieval Europe “is generally depicted as a dark time in the realms of art, science, and education, I assumed that African history would follow the same trend” (Student M, interview by author, March 15, 2022).

Through historical inquiry, they learned that not only were their assumptions untrue in both cases, but that centering medieval Africa “challenges preconceptions shaped by western narratives.” (ibid). A classmate shared similar conclusions after the teaching exercise: “I feel like it just formed a much more complete picture of what the world was like during that time,” a world in which Africa’s “sophistication and achievements” were (at minimum) comparable with regions elsewhere in the world (Student I, interview by author, March 17, 2022).

Another student was genuinely surprised by their research into the Manden Charter, “one of the oldest constitutions in the world albeit in oral form” (UNESCO 2009), because they “expected medieval Malian society to be patriarchal as so many ancient civilizations were.”

Responding to modern oral versions of Charter that emphasize the equality of social classes, that student was “shocked to find that that was not the case […] Medieval Malian society valued gender equality, both in culture and in law. Unexpected insights like these are what make learning about medieval African cultures so vibrant and engaging” (Student T, interview by author, March 14, 2022).