Początki ekspansji Arabów i islamu na terytoria Zande Mbomou w okresie przedkolonialnym

Pre-colonial history of the Zande is the history of migration and conquest, characterized by expansion, annexation, assimilation and amalgamation, followed by further expansion. In the course of the 17th and 18th centuries the clans of the Vongara and the Bandia became the rulers of the (Mbomou-) Zande and Nzakara people. Important to note in this period are divergent and ambivalent attitudes of Vongara and Bandia kings vis-a-vis slave traders and the consequences of this trade in human. From the mid-19th century Arab slave raiders and traders established permanent armed forts in south-western Sudan, the so-called zariba. With the discovery, by the Khartoumers, of the free channel of the Bahr-el-Ghazal river and the foundation of the landing stage at Meshra-el-Req in 1865, the traders were able to sail upstream the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Bahr-el-Arab, and their tributaries. As a result the watershed between the Nile and Congo-Ouban-gui basin got lined with a series of new zariba whence trading and raiding operations in eastern CAR were launched. By 1865 three major trading routes passed throught Zandeland. An increased de¬mand for slaves in the Muslim world, combined with the availability of advanced firearms and the readiness of some local chiefs to make alliances with the Khartoumers, all escalated in slave raiding and trading on an unprecedented and unimaginable scale. Slaves and ivory were traded in exchange for beads, cloth, copper, iron tools, and firearms. The upheavals caused by the slave trade and the intensifying spiral of violence had some fundamental consequences for the local societies. Agriculture changed significantly, but the most dramatic impact of the slave trade was on the region's demography.