text: # Arab and Moslem Influences  
  Several events during our present era have had a lasting effect upon Africa, its peoples, and its cultures. Beginning in the seventh century, Moslems first conquered North Africa and then began their southward penetration both along Africa's East Coast and into the Sudan regions of the interior. This conquest not only introduced a new ethnic element-the Arab-but brought with it a new religion and philosophy as well as new institutions. Directly and indirectly this Moslem invasion influenced the political organizations and social structures of many African regions. Arab traders linked these regions with the world markets of those days. Some African towns such as Timbuktu, founded in 1150, became centers of trade, and as such were centers of learning of the then civilized world. The empires of the Mandingo and Songhai, not to mention the ancient kingdom of Ghana, reflect in culture and organization all those attributes which we associate with the feudal institutions of the European Middle Ages.