They called it "Africa." Usually restricted to North Africa, the regions bordering the Mediterranean. It was the Roman name for the area, and those areas were still the most accessible to medieval Europeans.
Around your period, the area was a number of independent sultanates, with the biggest and most important being the Mamluk Sultanate, which covered Egypt and parts of Libya and extended east into the Levant.
The Mamluks were the ruling class of Egypt, originally Turkish slave soldiers who rebelled against their masters and seized power for themselves in 1250. 'Mamluk Sultanate' is a modern historians' term; the Mamluks themselves called their country 'Dawla al-Turkiyya' ('Turkey') which would be very confusing to a modern person! Foreigners mostly still called it 'Egypt'.
Who do you acually mean when you say 'European'? People living in what today is Spain, Greece, Sweden or the UK would have had different ideas about 'Africa'. A lot of the above answers seem to be from a Brit/UK pov.
But educated Christians from all of those places except Greece would have communicated with each other in Latin, in which the name would still be "Africa." We are just assuming the Christian and non-Byzantine parts, true, but the OP hasn't gotten any more specific.
You are right; I did get sidetracked from the name. I started thinking about the 'idea' or 'image' of Africa people would have had... so interesting, this com...
The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, written some time around AD 630, was perhaps the closest mediaeval Europe had to an encyclopedia. The book was found in virtually every monastic and university library, and would have formed the basis of what any educated person would know about the world.
Isidore describes the world (orbis terrarum) according to the classic 'O-T' shape: a circle of land surrounded by ocean, with Jerusalem at its centre, divided into three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa) by a T-shape of water - the Mediterranean forming the shaft of the T, the rivers Don and Nile its arms.
He uses the name Africa' for the whole continent, 'Libya' for the northern strip adjoining the Mediterranean, and 'Ethiopia' for the southern region where - according to him - the sun is so hot it scorches the inhabitants' skin black, and wild beasts like giraffes and basilisks roam.
I recall Shakespeare (or one of his contemporaries) using the form "Afric" instead of "Africa", though that might be an adjective and not a word for the continent.
"Afric" is in the song "The Rose of Allendale" which dates from the 1840s.
"And when my fever'd lips were parched On Afric's burning sands She whispered hopes of happiness And tales of distant lands"
Note -- this is, of course, purely to fit the scansion rather than because it's idiomatic Victorian usage, and I'm pretty sure Shakespeare uses "Afric" for the same reason. However, if it's a 19th C or modern character trying to give a dramatic, cod-historical vibe, "Afric" might just work. But otherwise, yeah, it's Africa and always has been.
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Around your period, the area was a number of independent sultanates, with the biggest and most important being the Mamluk Sultanate, which covered Egypt and parts of Libya and extended east into the Levant.
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Who do you acually mean when you say 'European'? People living in what today is Spain, Greece, Sweden or the UK would have had different ideas about 'Africa'. A lot of the above answers seem to be from a Brit/UK pov.
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Isidore describes the world (orbis terrarum) according to the classic 'O-T' shape: a circle of land surrounded by ocean, with Jerusalem at its centre, divided into three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa) by a T-shape of water - the Mediterranean forming the shaft of the T, the rivers Don and Nile its arms.
He uses the name Africa' for the whole continent, 'Libya' for the northern strip adjoining the Mediterranean, and 'Ethiopia' for the southern region where - according to him - the sun is so hot it scorches the inhabitants' skin black, and wild beasts like giraffes and basilisks roam.
Here's a quote from his chapter XIV, from here :
The ocean flowing around on all sides surrounds its territories in a circle. The land mass is divided into ( ... )
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"And when my fever'd lips were parched
On Afric's burning sands
She whispered hopes of happiness
And tales of distant lands"
Note -- this is, of course, purely to fit the scansion rather than because it's idiomatic Victorian usage, and I'm pretty sure Shakespeare uses "Afric" for the same reason. However, if it's a 19th C or modern character trying to give a dramatic, cod-historical vibe, "Afric" might just work. But otherwise, yeah, it's Africa and always has been.
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