Odious Delirium
VIP
i didn't disagree with that im going off this. i know the empire of mali was Sahelian/west/north african but it didn't reach anything in modern day central africa which chad is also considered a part ofThe Sahel is a geographic belt, and the Malian empire was a Sahelien empire:
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Chad is not a Central African in any formal disciplinary texts I have read dealing with various diverse topics (technically, the southern parts touch upon it strictly geographically). That label was designated to the tropical countries below it, quintessentially the rainforest of the Congos.
Since it is between North Africa and Central Africa, people call it Sahelian, and a big chunk of it is Saharan from a broad terrain landscape perspective on the northern side. Chad exists as a transitional zone, suitably fitting that intermediate positional categorization.
Based on the conditions of a historical-relational (proximal) view, the country was associated with the Sudanic region and Saharan Africa but is designated as the Sahel. As the landscape configuration stretches to West Africa, the belt covered a significant part of where the Malian Empire once stood. That is why people call it Sahelian, a topographical significance.
Classifications are rarely neat and are judged from a value hierarchy of relative context signifiers. I don't consider Sudan a Sahelian region. The Nile Valley with the Sahara is the main character. The term "Sub-Saharan Africa" was always obsolete in northeast Africa, with the Horn of Africa as an extension. There was never a Saharan "ocean" barrier in Eastern Africa to Egypt since the river served as a corridor resulting in the mixing of groups since always.
It's relative, the conditions are context-specific and relevant based, so we can't be tone-deaf to the realities. Even if technically Chad is in the central and The Malian Empire was in Western Africa, it gives little value to what we use labels for when you look at the ground.