The Origin and meaning of Africa…
The cognomen ‘Africa’ or ‘ifriqiyya’ as it is named in Arabic, was originally a referent to the northern region of the continent known today as Tunis, and was known in ancient times as ‘Carthage’ or ‘Qartaagena’, from which the term ‘cartography’ originates. There are many interpolations of the name ‘Africa’ by the scholars and earlier geographers. Some of the first interpolations were that the name was taken from ‘Ifriqish’ the name of one of the descendents of Ham ibn Nuuh, who was the first to settle in the region and after whom the region was named.
According to earlier historians this Ifriqish was the son of Abraha bin ar-Raa’ish who rose up in war against the Assyrians in Asia Minor. He was eventually vanquished and he fled with his armies westward until he reached the region of Carthage, whose people he fought and defeated and then constructed a city there named after himself called ‘Ifriqiyya’.
A second interpolation is that the name ‘Africa’ came from the Latin word ‘separatus’ (in Arabic ‘fareeq’) because the continent was a land mass separated from Europe and parts of Asia by the Mediterranean and Red seas respectively.
