On 19th January 1469, the Songhai ruler Sunni ʿAlī entered the city of Timbuktu (in present-day Mali) at the invitation of its ruler/governor, the ‘Timbuktu-koi’ ʿUmar.

The latter’s family had inherited the office, along with its “judicial, fiscal, and other powers,” after Timbuktu was conquered by Mansā Mūsā of Medieval Mâli in 1325.1

Following Mâli’s withdrawal in 1433, however, the city was taken over by the Tuareg sultan Akil, who reportedly “stopped allowing the Timbuktu-koi his customary dues, which amounted to one-third of all taxes”.

The Songhai chronicle known as the Taʾrīkh al-Sūdān (1655), which records these events, states that the wronged official wrote a letter to Sunni Ali and provided boats for his army to cross the River Niger. Songhai’s armies subsequently expelled Sultan Akil, while many of his allies were forced to flee; some were pursued by the brother and successor of the Timbuktu-koi named al-Mukhtār.2

In the aftermath, Sunni ʿAlī and his successors reconstituted the administration of Timbuktu and other provinces across the empire according to an imperial arrangement, with clear lines of authority extending directly to the capital at Gao.

Empires of medieval West Africa. Map by A. LaGamma

The titles of pre-existing offices “changed with the change of overlord,”3 for example, offices ending with the Songhay word -koi, which first appears in an inscription from Gao dated 1146 CE4, were given to pre-conquest/“native” rulers and governors like the sultans of Jenne and Massina, who thus became the Jenne-koi and Massina-koi, respectively.5

Alongside these retained offices, the dual administrative approach resulted in the creation of appointed positions such as the Timbuktu-mondio, the head administrator/resident responsible for collecting city revenues6; the Balmaʿa, head of the garrison at Timbuktu’s river port of Kabara7; the Kabara-farma, harbour master and collector of customs dues at the port of Kabara, whose office is first mentioned by Leo Africanus in 1510.8

Other offices appear in the Tārīkh Ibn Al-Mukhtār (1667) and the Tārīkh Al-Fattāsh (c. 1842) chronicles, such as the Yubo-koi or “commissioner of the market”; the Koyra-banda-mondio, who had a supervisory capacity outside of the city’s perimeter; and the Ashar-mondio, an assistant to the qāḍī or the chief of police. In addition to these were the heads of the different quarters of the city and its hinterlands, e.g., Qāḍīs of the main mosques, and the Maghsharan-koi of the Kel Tamasheq living north of the city.9

'Timbuctoo' in 1852, by Johann Martin Bernatz, based on H. Barth

The port of Kabara, Timbuktu. ca. 1920-1939 ANOM

‘The policeman at Timbuctoo’ c. 1897. Illustration by Felix Dubois

These offices were not exclusive to the main cities of Timbuktu, Gao, and Jenne, but were found across many provinces. At least sixty-two different offices in the Songhai Empire were identified by the historian John Hunwick from the three chronicles.10

According to the historian Michael Gomez, this “impressive array of officials,” together with their control over the taxation, security, and internal politics of Timbuktu, indicates that the city was directly administered by the imperial government at Gao.11

The “native” rulers, such as the Timbuktu-koi and Jenne-koi, were incorporated into the imperial administration of Songhai. These subordinate elites assumed a mediatory position between their overlords in Gao and the local communities, allowing them to preserve much of their existing internal structure while remaining subordinate to the imperial government.

Although the Askiya (Songhai emperor) in Gao intervened in the succession to the offices of Jenne-koi and Timbuktu-koi, they were also allowed certain privileges at the imperial court and could maintain their own administrations and palaces.12

In the city of Jenne, this “native administration” would survive the collapse of Songhai, and it was preserved by the Moroccan pashalik of Timbuktu in the 17th century,13 and would continue in various forms until the 19th century.

Residence of the chief of Djenne. c. 1906. Quai Branly. This is the ‘Maiga House’ of the chief of the Songhay quarter of the city during the reign of Amadu Lobbo (r. 1818-1845)

Similar examples of Imperial administration can be found across the continent.

In Ethiopia, 14th-century Gǝʿǝz and Arabic accounts list several provinces and kingdoms which paid a fixed tribute to the Emperor ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon (r. 1314–1344)

Focusing on the Muslim kingdom or province of Ifāt (ኢፋት) and its Walasmaʿ rulers, al-Maqrīzī reports that the Christian monarch kept some of the Walasmaʿ princes at his court. He granted them “patronage,” appointed new sultans, and provided military aid, in exchange for which they were required to “obey his orders.”14

The Walasmaʿ royals nevertheless retained the governorship of Ifāt and could nominate subordinate officials to administer the province.15

Ultimately, however, this indirect style of administration came to an end when a split within the Walasmaʿ family resulted in the formal conquest and occupation of Ifāt by 1415 CE, the destruction of its mosques, and the replacement of the native elite with governors sent from the Christian capital.16

Ruined mosque at the capital of Ifat, Ethiopia.

In other imperial governments, however, “native” elites were completely sidelined after conquest.

An example of this is the Lunda province of Kazembe (present-day Zambia), whose governors were sent directly from the capital.

Direct administration in the provinces included a regular taxation system, such as in 1799, when the king sent his cilolos (a Lunda term for nobles) to the regional cilolos to “collect the annual revenue (pensões) of their lands.”17

A separate account from 1831 attributed this system of direct rule to a rebellion by native elites in 1760, which forced the Lunda Emperors to send reinforcements from the capital. After the province was pacified, “there was no more individual authority among them that was not a Campoculo [Lunda official].”18

The Lunda Empire in 1750. Map by J. K. Thornton.

Grand audience of the Kazembe. Image from Gamito and Antonio Pedroso’s “O Muata Cazembe”

Share

The best documented and oldest example of imperial administration in ancient Africa comes from Lower Nubia (present-day southern Egypt), which was subsumed into the empires of New Kingdom Egypt (c. 1570–1069 BC) and Meroitic Kush (c. 270 BC–360 CE)

The native rulers of Lower Nubia were incorporated into the Egyptian and later Kushite administrations, often through hereditary offices, while being allowed to retain their pre-conquest political structures.

These “native” elites, whose biographies and genealogies are recorded for up to three generations in the New Kingdom period (the families of Ruiu and Pennut), and up to eight generations in the Kushite period (the family of Wayekiye, c. 120-300 CE), assumed a mediatory position between their imperial overlords and the local communities.

They held a wide range of titles, including deputy viceroy, mayor, high priest, ambassador, and, in two exceptional cases, official astronomer of Kush. They were buried in pyramid tombs with richly painted interiors that reflected their hybrid identities between the two worlds of the ancient Nile Valley.

The Imperial administration in Lower Nubia and the ancient biographies of its native rulers are the subject of my latest Patreon article

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

ANCIENT BIOGRAPHIES FROM NUBIA

In Ethiopia, evidence for the first gold coins minted by African rulers south of Egypt and an abundance of documentary references to vast quantities of gold tribute demonstrate the importance of the precious metal to the ancient economies in the northern Horn of Africa.

For centuries, gold was the principal currency of international trade in Ethiopia, and was used in everything from land sales to pious donations and inheritances. Gold was a scarce commodity mined from the frontier regions, carried along long-distance caravan routes, and closely regulated by the state.

While popular literature on gold in African history is primarily concerned with its export, there’s sufficient evidence for internal demand for the precious metal, which greatly shaped African concepts of wealth and value systems long before the rise of capitalism.

This article examines the history of Gold in Ethiopia, focusing on its function as a currency and store of wealth from the Aksumite period to the 19th century.

Ethiopia in the 16th century showing the sources of gold and major trade routes.1

Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community; subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all:

PATREON

The Gold statues and Gold tribute of Aksum and medieval Ethiopia

The oldest reference to gold in Ethiopia is found in the inscriptions of the Aksumite king Ezana in the 4th century CE, which mention a gold statue dedicated to the god of war.

In his trilingual inscriptions, the king refers to himself as the son of the unconquered war god Mährém (translated as Ares in the Greek versions) and refers to metal statues erected in honour of this deity:

“In sign of recognition to he who engendered us, the unconquered Ares, we have raised statues to him, one of gold, one of silver, and three others of brass, to his glory”.2

The bases of some of the stone thrones discovered at Aksum have central sockets and depressions in the shape of human feet that served as fixings for such statues.

These depressions being three-and-a-half times the size of the average foot, it may be calculated that the statue, if it represented a complete upright human figure as the positioning of the feet would suggest, was between 5.5 and 6.0 m tall.3

According to the archaeologist David Philipson, “No other metal statues of this age are known to have approached this size anywhere in the world, although some Greek bronze and chryselephantine figures probably did so.”4

Base slab for a gigantic statue, discovered at Aksum by the DAE in 1906

Sketch showing the maximum extent of the Aksumite empire.

An eyewitness description of the 6th century Aksumite king Kaleb Ella Atsbeha, recounted by one of the ambassadors of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565), indicates that gold was the metal of choice for royal paraphernalia:

The emperor wore “gold-threaded linen clothing… around his head was wound a gold-threaded linen turban with four cords on either side and a gold collar around his neck. He stood on top of four elephants which had a yoke and four discs, and upon them something like a tall carriage covered with gold leaf, just as the chariots of the provincial governors are covered in silver.”5

The traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited the Aksumite port of Adulis in about 518–20, recorded expeditions into the interior to obtain gold from a place called Sasu, a gold-producing region thought to be near the modern Sudan border.6

Nonnonus, a later ambassador sent by Justinian to the Aksumites, reported in 530 or 540 that Aksum was fifteen days’ journey from Adulis, and that both places were ‘the chief centres of trade for gold dust, ivory, leather, hides and aromatics’.7

While the minting of gold coins at Aksum ended in the 7th century (see next section below on currencies), the multiple records of gold tribute sent to the court during and after the Middle Ages point to the metal’s continued importance in the medieval economy.

An Ethiopian embassy to Rome in 1482 carried gifts that included some unique blank gold ‘coins’, which are also mentioned in other European sources as particular to the realm of the nägäśt (Christian monarch) during this period.8

According to Francisco Alvares, who visited Ethiopia in 1520, the largest annual tribute or geber/gibre paid to the emperor came from Gojam, which, besides other items like horses and mules and textiles, included 30,000 ouquias of gold (ie; waqet, which was equal to 39 grammes9 or about 1,174 kg ):

“At the presentation of this gibre, I saw with my eyes all the gold which came covered up on ganetas (trays) and they said that it was a great quantity, and it all came in this way.”10

Alvares notes that the gold which wasn’t spent in pious donations, or in payment for obtaining the Abuna/patriach, or in trade was kept in “treasure baskets” in “pits in the earth which are designed for that purpose” that were closely guarded but often moved with the royal court. This treasury also appears in Ge’ez texts as early as the reign of Amda Siyon (r. 1314-1344) that refer to a place called Warq Wasa, ‘gold cave’, whose guards were called the ba’ala or ‘keepers of the caves’.11

The chronicler of the Ethiopia-Adal wars (1529-1543) mentions that the King’s treasure of gold and silk textiles near a mountaintop church in ‘Walaqa’ was guarded by eunuchs, but was handed over to the invaders. It mostly consisted of golden crowns, armlets, daggers, maces, bridles, and chalices belonging to deceased kings.12

João Bermudes’ account from the 1520s mentions that the ‘heathen’ people of Gurage, a region in the south, paid the King every year as much ‘fine and good’ gold as eight men could carry.13

‘Preste John, Emperor of the Abyssinians’ c. 1800 Pierre-Antoine Demachy. (right) “King of Abyssinia” (Sarsa Dengel) based on Portuguese descriptions to a Japanese Momoyama Nanban painter. c. 1609

Shoan warrior, Abyssinia, Ethiopia. ca. 1842. (right) Ethiopian shield covered with gold leaf. Peabody Museum, Harvard University, USA.

According to Poncet, who was in Ethiopia from 1698-1700, the ‘richest gold mines’ were in Enarea and Gojjam, whence ‘standing armies’ carried the precious metal to the capital at Gondar. It was refined and worked into wedges. These gold bars reached the imperial treasury and were used for the payment of troops and for court expenses.14

Pero Pais’s report on Ethiopia, completed in 1620, notes that Gojjam contributed a significant amount of gold in tribute, though it was not of such a fine quality as that of Enarea. Manuel de Almeida’s account on the same period states that certain lands in Gojjam paid 1,100 ouquias of gold a year. But the emperor gave most of these lands to royals and other lords who thus retained much of the revenue.15

James Bruce’s report of 1770 notes that several provinces paid tribute in gold, such as Lasta, Damot, Shewa, Enarea and Kuara, but adds that most of these obtained their gold from further inland.16

Unlike some of the African societies where gold comprised a significant proportion of the Royal treasury (eg medieval Mali, Songhai, Segu, and the kingdom of Asante), much of the gold in Ethiopia seems to have been used to offset the costs of imports, at least for the period of the early 17th century.

According to Manuel de Almeida’s report of Susenyos’ reign (1607-1632), the imperial treasure was relatively modest, with 1,500 oqueas/waqet of gold (about 55.5 kg), valued at 15,000 patacas (silver dollars). He attributes this “loss of so much gold” to international trade, as most imports were paid in gold dust currency, since “there is no other money in this country except gold.”17

However, it’s unlikely that this gold shortage predated the Ethiopia-Adal wars (1529-1543), as Alvares’ 1520 report mentioned above indicates a much higher tribute collection than Almeida's, who, after all, noted that insecurity in the gold-producing regions had reduced tribute from 5,000 oqueas in the reign of Sarsa Dengel (r. 1563-1597) to just 1,000-1,500 in Susenyos’ time.18

Additionally, documentary and archaeological evidence, examined in later sections, suggests much of the gold tribute before the 16th century was retained at the court and significant sums were distributed in pious donations to churches and monasteries.

King Sahela Selassie of Shewa, Ethiopia. by Sir William Cornwallis Harris c. 1844.

‘The Triumph’ at the court of Sahle Selassie. Shewa, Ethiopia, ca. 1844.

Share

Gold currency

Between the 3rd and 7th centuries, the kingdom of Aksum was the first African polity south of Egypt to issue its own coinage, centuries before similar mints appeared along the Swahili coast and parts of West Africa.

The inscriptions on Aksumite coins preserve the names of approximately twenty kings, whose reigns provide a sequence and chronology for the series as a whole.

Gold coins of the pre-Christian period of Aksum, especially those belonging to King Endubis and Ousanas dated to the 3rd-4th century, have been recovered from the northern Horn itself, with smaller numbers recorded from southern Arabia and from India.

Gold coin of Endubis, ca. 270-300. British Museum. No. 1969,0624.1

Gold coin of Ousanas, ca. 300-340. British Museum. No. G1925,1112.1

Those dating between the reigns of Ezana and Kaleb from the 4th to 6th centuries have rarely been found in the Horn, but are recorded in comparatively large numbers from southern Arabia. Many of these coins may have reached southern Arabia during the Aksumite conquests under Kaleb.19

Gold coin of Ezana. ca. 340-400. British Museum. No. 1915,0108.81

Gold coin of Eon. ca. 400-450. British Museum. 1915,0108.78

Gold coin of Ebana, ca. 450-500. British Museum. No. 1904,0404.1

Gold coin of Ousas. ca. 500-520. British Museum. No. 1989,0518.336

Gold coin of Kaleb, ca. 500-525. British Museum. No. 1910,1207.1

A hoard of gold objects from Matara included fourteen 2nd-century Roman gold coins with suspension loops indicating their eventual use as jewellery. The excavators considered that the hoard was deposited in the 6th century. A hoard of 105 gold Kushan coins was found in an ancient wooden box beneath the Debra Damo monastery in Tigray. They are dated to the 3rd century, but were likely deposited later.20

Archaeological finds of this sort are rare, and the amount of foreign money circulating in Aksum’s domains was probably relatively restricted. It is, however, thought to have influenced the minting of Aksumite currency.21

Collection of gold jewelry, including 14 coins of the Antonine era, crosses, and three chains. ca. 6th-7th century CE. (late Aksumite period) Matara, Eritrea.

The first gold coins were 93–97% pure and weighed 2.4–2.8 g, apparently based on the standard then prevailing in the Roman Empire, being half the weight of the Roman aureus. Changes in the weights of Aksumite gold coins during the late-3rd and early-4th centuries followed contemporaneous reforms of Roman gold coinage.

In the Eastern Roman Empire, the aureus of 5.45 g was replaced in 324 CE by a solidus weighing 4.54 g. There was undoubtedly a reduction in average weights of the Aksumite gold unit from that noted above under Endybis to 1.85– 2.09 g and 1.35–1.67 g for successive Christian issues of Ezana, nearly a century later.22

Rapid debasement of the coinage at Aksum could also imply that gold itself was in short supply, at least from the mid-4th century onwards, despite continuation of its use for embellishment of base-metal issues.23

Gold coin of Endubis. c. 270-300. British Museum. No. 1989,0518.1

Gold coin of Ella Gabaz. ca. 520-550. British Museum. 1929,1107.10

Under Kaleb in the first half of the 6th century, exclusive use of Greek for coinage inscriptions was discontinued: denominations in silver and in copper were inscribed in Ge‘ez, while Greek remained in use on the gold coins, which continued to circulate internationally.24

The disappearance of gold coins in the 7th century is usually interpreted as a sign of the exclusion of the Aksumite kingdom from the Red Sea trade following the rise of the Arab empire.

It wasn’t until the 14th century that the gold of Ethiopia would reappear as a major currency used in international trade. The rulers of the Christian kingdom dispatched Muslim merchants with gold and silver in exchange for imported trade goods used at the court.

A Gǝʿǝz text recounting the war between King ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon and the Waläsmaʿ general Ṣabr al-Dīn in 1332 has King ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon complain, “You took away the commodities belonging to me obtained in exchange for the large quantity of gold and silver I had entrusted to the merchants. And you imprisoned the traders who did business for me.”25

This and later accounts indicate that multiple currencies were in circulation during the late Middle Ages in both the Christian and Muslim kingdoms of Ethiopia.

The Egyptian chronicler Al-ʿUmarī (d. 1349) mentions the use of Egyptian coins, i.e. silver dinars, in the kingdom of Ifat; iron currency (ḥakūna) in the sultanates of Dawāro, ʿArābabni and Šarḫā; and that elsewhere, in the kingdoms of Amḥara, Bāli and Dāra, barter dominated.26

In al-Maqrizi’s account, the sultanate of Awfat/Ifat was using coins (dirhams) in the 1430s. Damot and Sahem are also mentioned as two locations where Ifat is believed to have obtained its gold for mintage. al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418) suggests that Ifat was using dirhams and dinars minted in Egypt.27

An Ethiopian traveller, Brother Antonio, gives us an account of 16th century Gendebelu, which was a trading centre located near Ankober. Gendebelu, he reports, was using Hungarian and Venetian ducats, and silver coins of the Moors (Muslims).28 According to the chronicle of the Ethiopian-Adal wars, in the muslim trading city of Wis, all transactions were carried out in gold.29

The main mosque of Asbari, an archeological site identified as medieval Gendevelu/Gendabelo

A document from the city of Harar recording events in the late 16th century, after the defeat and expulsion of Adal’s armies, provides the first internal evidence for the city’s use of coinage and its related units of measurement.

According to this account, a unit of measurement known as the sa’a, which amounts to four handfuls of durah (sorghum), was worth 12 ashrafi (Harari currency), a sa’a of salt was sold for 15 ashrafi, and a cow was over 300 ashrafi. As the economy recovered, food prices dropped so that durah cost four or five mahallak, the lower denomination of the ashrafi.

Apparently, one wealthy merchant, Muhammad ibn Said al-Shatiri, alone had more than 35,000 units of currency, and in each thousand, 50 were pure gold units. The document does not specify the name of the currency, but it’s estimated that a few hundred thousand coins were in circulation in the city.30

Virtually all the surviving Harari coins were made of silver and copper, and are documented in several 19th century accounts. Most of the coins are dated after 1197 A.H. (1783 A.D.), a few from the 16th century, the earliest of which is dated 910 AH. (1504 A.D.), and an exceptional piece dated 615 A.H. (1218 A.D.), about a century before al-Umari’s reference to coins used in the Muslim kingdoms of Ethiopia.31

Copper coins from Harar, issued in 1222 AH, 1304 AH (1807, 1887 A.D). University of Illinois

According to C. J. Cruttenden in 1849, gold was used at the time of ‘Emir Abd el-Shukoor’, about “two hundred years ago” (ie; 1640s). The explorer Richard Burton in 1855, reported that gold coins were by then a nominal unit known as “ashrari” and that the only species in circulation were inscribed brass coins. He also observed that “The Amir pitilessly punishes all those who pass in the city any other coin.” 32

The silver and copper currency of Harar continued to be minted until the conquest of the city by Menelik in 1887. About five years later, Harar became the first centre of mintage for modern Ethiopia when Menelik’s first coins were minted in Harar bearing the date 1885 E.C. (1892 A.D), some of which were gold coins.

But for much of Ethiopia, unminted gold currency, along with other forms of commodity money, remained the primary medium of exchange.

Manuel de Almeida’s account in the 1620s observes that “There is no other money in this country except gold, by weight… gold alone is used for buying clothing from India, carpets, silks and Meca (Mecca) brocades, and all drugs, pepper, cloves and a thousand other things that they send for to Maçuâ , Moqhâ (Mocha), Iudâ (Jedda) and Egypt in caravans which used to go by land.”33

Harar from the Coffe Stream. Illustration by R. Burton.

Subscribe now

Gold Mining and Trade

Recent archaeological finds around Aksum and across Tigray suggest that some of the gold used in the ancient kingdom was obtained from the hinterland of its capital.34

Several stone slabs in the vicinity of Aksum, which are stone basins measuring about 4.4 metres by 1.8 metres, bear the name mistah werki [= where gold is spread out to dry]. The form of these slabs is concordant with their use for washing auriferous earth in order to extract the gold, which would suggest that the material thus processed was obtained in fairly close proximity.35

According to Laurel Phillipson, areas of disturbed terrain immediately west of Aksum might have been caused by mining for alluvial gold. She also raised the question whether the deep rock-cut vats at Adi Tsehafi may have been used for gold-processing rather than for wine-making as has more usually been suggested.36

There are 16th-century records of gold being found after rain in the Aksum vicinity. In the early-17th century, Barradas recorded the wide distribution of auriferous deposits in Tigray, while a 19th century prospector was noted by Bent as having discovered gold in the vicinity of Adwa.

According to Poncet, “a great deal of gold’ was found in Tigray where the specimens he had seen he considered ‘very fine’. Such gold, he concludes, was often found in the river beds after the rains and was ‘much more pure’ than that obtained from the mines.37

The Mistah Werki at Daro Maicbew. Image by L. Phillipson

Stone basin at Aksum.

Plans and sections of the tanks and ‘rectangular stone bowl’ at Addi Tshafi, Aksum. by L. Phillipson

The rock-cut tanks at Addi Tshafi, Aksum.

Kosmas Indicopleustes recorded expeditions from Aksum to obtain gold from a place called Sasu, where a caravan was sent under the ‘governor of Agaw’.38 His account reproduces the silent trade fable, a well-known legend used by commercial monopolists to disguise the details of their exchange.39

Historians identify Sasu with the region of Fazogli, on the modern Sudanese-Ethiopian border, where gold deposits have been known since the 18th century.40 Others have suggested locations closer to Aksum, most notably, the southwestern regions of Damot, Ǧanǧäro and Gamo, where gold was exploited in the Middle Ages.41

The greater part of the gold in medieval Ethiopia was found by panning or by searching river beds, rather than mining.

Ibn Fadl Allah, writing in 1342-1349, reported that considerable quantities of gold were reaching the Muslim sultanate of Ifat from Damot (a province to the south of the Blue Nile) and that an ounce varied in value between eighty and one hundred drams/drachms.

Brother Thomas of Angot in the early 16th century also asserted that the province of Damot was ‘rich in very fine gold’, while Alvares in 1520 stated that in his day most of the gold came from Damot though an ‘inferior’ type was brought from Gojjam.

Gold, he added, could be obtained in Damot by merely digging immediately before or during the rainy season; the water then washed away the soil, leaving the precious metal on the surface. He also mentioned the practice of gold-washing near Aksum and said that he had himself attempted it, but without success.42

Trade routes in the Medieval and Early Modern period. Map by R. Pankhurst

Kosmas’ 6th-century story about the exchange of gold for iron, salt and cattle is supported by de Almeida’s 1620s account of gold obtained in his day from the western and southern provinces, where it was exchanged for textiles, cattle, salt and other goods.

Castanhoso in the 1540s tells how the Emperor stated that ‘there was much gold in his country’, and that it came from ‘far inland’ where the Cafres came to a market in the country of Damot ‘in gangs on foot with much gold in bags at their sides’.43

James Bruce in 1770 states that Sartsa Dengel, desirous of opening up communication with the gold-producing area of Enarea, crossed the Blue Nile, was ‘received with great joy’ by the Prince of Enarea and was given ‘many rich presents, more particularly a large quantity of gold’.

Susneyos, he adds, on one occasion received one thousand oqueas brought by a caravan which travelled once a year through the country of the Oromo and thence by way of the lands of the Gafats and Gongas. A 17th-century source noted that the ruler of Enarea came to Fasilidas’s capital at Gondar ‘laden with gold’.44

Market in Gondar, Ethiopia ca. 1936-41

James Bruce in 1770 indicates that most Ethiopian gold came from what he calls the country of the Gummuz south of the Blue Nile, that it was bought from them at Burye market in Damot by the Agaos who gave them copper, iron, beads and hides and skins in exchange, and that it was taken to Gondar both by Agaos and Muslim traders.

This gold was obtained by washing auriferous earth in wooden dishes, the grains which remained being stored by the Gummuz in quills. The pure metal was subsequently melted down and adulterated by the admixture of one tenth part of silver; it was then fashioned into small rods or ingots of a ‘very pale colour’.45

In 1835 an Austrian named J. Russegger wrote that the frontier region between western Ethiopia and the kingdom of Sennar (Sudan) was called dar al-Berta. Among the natives were many Dongolawi jallaba (traders) who carried on the gold trade, some of it, to Ethiopia.46

Reports from the early 19th century indicate that most gold exported through the coastal town of Massawa came from Limmu-Enarea and the neighbouring kingdoms of the Gibe region, and that much of it passed through the entrepot of Baso in Gojjam.47

The German missionaries Isenberg and Krapf, who were in Ethiopia in the 1830s, Oromo and Gurage traders from Enarea and the southern regions carried a significant traffic in coffee and gold to Gondar and Shewa, where some was retained by the royal treasury.

“The gold which comes to Shoa, is brought from Gurague and beyond, where it is found in the bed of rivers after the rain. But no Shoan subject is allowed to possess gold, which is only in the hands of the king, who would severely punish any of his subjects who had any, except the king himself had given it.”48

Returning from Shewa, Krapf was at times accosted by his guests in the northern regions of Lasta and Wag who thought he was carrying gold, despite his destitute appearance, which only convinced his guests that he was disguising his wealth, as most gold merchants did.49

The Gold trade and market towns were subjected to special taxation, much of which was collected in gold dust. Alvares in 1520 states that the important trading centre of Manadeley in Tigray paid the Emperor no less than 1,000 ouquias of gold a year in taxes from trade.50

According to Nathaniel Pearce, who visited Gondar in 1810, there was a market official known as the “Negiule Ras” who “pays yearly to government five hundred wakeahs of gold, which is called negus gibba [King’s duties] and twenty wakeahs worth of goods as a tax to government for his office called mershamyer.”

The large sum was because every horse, mule, and captive passing through the city had to pay two drams/drachms of gold (about 2 silver dollars); every ivory tusk was charged one dram, and every mule-load of imports was charged one wakeah, while one porter’s load paid six drams. At Adwa, a mule-load of imports paid half a wakeah of gold, and a large tusk two drams, while the rest of the taxes were paid in textiles.51

Adoua (Adwa) ‘capital of Tigre’ early 19th-century engraving.

The weight of the gold was standardised by an official called the buggerunde, who was also the King’s silversmith. He received two bars of salt for every wakeah of gold he weighed. In Antido he received four bars, at Socotta in Lasta he received two bars, at Adwa in Tigray, he received a gribbaub, which is a quarter measure of textiles.52

Gold came in a variety of forms. According to Mansfield Parkyns at Massawa in 1848, there were three types of gold exported to the coast;

Gold from Sennar was the best quality, and found its way to market in rings or links. The second and third quality, which are distinguished as being Abyssinian gold, were available in grains or beads, and in ingots respectively. Parkyns recorded that Sennar gold cost between 17 and 20 “German crowns (Maria Theresa)” per ounce, second quality 13 to 15 dollars per ounce, and third quality 9 to 11 dollars per ounce.53

Dowla's house, Massowah (Eritrea), ca. 1833

Measurements

From the 16th century onward, the main unit was the waqet. This term comes from the Arabic wiqīyya, reflecting the influence of the language on long-distance trade, such that the same term, wiqīyya, gave birth to the European “ounce.”

A short Chronicle of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl (r. 1508-1540) states that a waqet of gold was exchanged for 30 bars of salt and was the price of an ox. Alternative units existed, eg the 10,000 mädalw of gold spent by King Galäwdewos to create a manuscript library.54

Brother Thomas of Angot says small pieces of refined gold were employed in large transactions and were measured by weight, the unit principally used being the ouquia, roughly an ounce, the weight of ten cruzados or the equivalent of ten to twelve drams/drachms.

According to Alvares’ report in 1520:

“In all the kingdoms of the Prester John [Ethiopia] money is not current, but only gold by weight, and the principal weight is called onquia, and this, which is an ounce, makes in weight ten cruzados, and for change there is a half onquia, and then they use the drachms; ten drachms make an onquia. The value of the drachm is according to its value in the Kingdom of Portugal, or in India. It is worth three quarters of a gold ducat in gold,3 so an ounce is worth seven and a half gold ducats in gold.”55

Poncet, writing of the end of the 17th century, confirmed that gold was widely used, though it was “not stamp’d with the prince’s image as in Europe,” but circulated in wedges, cut as required in units from an ounce to half a dram/drachms. As a safeguard against adulteration, there were many goldsmiths who made “trial of its goodness.”56

During the reign of the Emperor Iyoas I (1755-1769) an oquea, or ounce, of gold was said to be worth only about eight patacas, but in Bruce’s day it was valued at ten, and sold at Mocha for 15 or 16 patacas, though Sennar gold fetched 22 patacas, being less adulterated.

The Gummuz of western Ethiopia are said to have long weighed their gold with the aid of the seeds of a tree called kuara, which is known among them as ambilish and in Amharic as korch. James Bruce, in 1770, considered these seeds as the best available choice, as repeated experiments had shown him that from the time of their being gathered they varied little in weight.57

The use of specific plant seeds for measuring smaller units of gold across Europe and the Muslim world is discussed in my previous essay on the Gold Trade of Medieval West Africa.

Given the use of multiple currencies, a commodities/currency exchange market existed in many of the major cities and towns, especially for salt bars.

According to Alvares in 1520, salt, which mostly originated in the northern regions, was “very cheap where it was obtained and very dear at court,” while in the far-off region of Damot it was said to be almost “worth its weight in gold.”

He notes that a drachm of gold would buy 120 or 130 bars where they were collected, 5 or 6 less at Corcoro market in Angot, “and so it goes on diminishing from market to market. When it arrives at Court, six or seven blocks are worth a drachm”.58

James Bruce states that at Gondar 72 to 76 bars were normally exchanged for an oquea of gold; in 1768, however, the exchange rate rose to eighty, and in 1771 it fell to 34.59

The exact weight of the waqet seems to have varied slightly in the Red Sea region, but according to Alessandro Triulzi’s study of the gold trade in Ethiopia-Sudan borderlands during the 19th century. one waqiya was 37.44 grammes.60

Native Merchandise conveyed by donkey Caravan. Ethiopia. Abyssinia (1923)

Gold smithing

The Aksumites possessed highly accomplished metalwork with items in gold, silver, iron, and copper together with their various alloys, including bronze, speculum, and brass

The corpus of excavated Aksumite metalwork reveals that a number of metalworking technologies were known, including hammering, gilding, casting, wire-pulling, riveting, and soldering/welding.61

Based on his excavations at Adulis, Roberto Paribeni suggested that furnaces from Adulis were employed in liquefying tar and in gold-working.

He uncovered what was apparently a gold workshop, with amphorae and ashes in association with a collection of gold rods, earrings, and two elaborate bejewelled crosses with chains; in a different place a stone mould for making jewellery was found.62

Ruins of the Cathedral of Adulis, Eritrea.

Paribeni also found evidence for several bronze scales called trutina, which were also uncovered in several ancient Meroitic sites in Sudan, and were usually employed for weighing precious gems, pearls and gold.

Paribeni reports that an almost complete scales was found in the church to the east of the city; two other fragments were found along the south and the east side of the altar. A pair of scales and weights was also found in later excavations. The presence of so many scales seems to testify to the involvement of the town in the trade of gold and other commodities.63

‘Metal artefacts in the African Museum in Rome’ from Adulis.

Archaeological evidence for goldsmithing has also been found in the late medieval sites of Harlaa, near the Muslim merchant-town of Harar, where small bucket-shaped goldsmith crucibles were found, likely used for making jewellery. The city of Harar is also known to have minted its own coins since the Middle Ages, although there have been few excavations within the old town.64

Besides the local goldsmiths, Medieval Ethiopian monarchs also patronized foreign craftsmen from the Mediterranean world.

Diplomatic correspondence by Ethiopian monarchs in the 15th and 16th centuries includes requests for goldsmiths from the kingdoms of Aragon and Portugal, among other craftsmen such as carpenters, bookmakers, and jewellers.65 Greek and Armenian metalworkers were employed at the court since the 17th century.

In the early 19th century, many craftsmen, mostly Ethiopian, were attached to King Sahla Sellase’s palaces at the twin Shewan capitals, Ankobar and Angolala. Carpenters, masons and craftsmen were engaged in making gunpowder, repairing rifles and producing intricate jewellery and other articles of gold, silver and ivory.66

In most of Ethiopia and Eritrea, metalworkers, both blacksmiths and goldsmiths, belonged to endogamous groups of ostracized specialists who were perceived as possessing special spiritual powers. However, because of the nature of the materials each wields, the economic status of the goldsmith was considerably better than that of silversmiths and blacksmiths.67

The English adventurer Mansfield Parkyns, who was employed as a goldsmith in Adwa for “a considerable time,” observed that the life of a goldsmith was a good one, although it did involve “appropriating a large portion of both the gold and the silver entrusted to them for work.”68

The goldsmiths of Adwa skillfully fabricated objects using a range of techniques, including filigree, gilding and stamping. Many of these artefacts, dating from the 17th to the early 20th century, can be found in Western collections, especially those captured at Magdala after the British invasion of Ethiopia in 1868.

Crown, made in Gondar, Ethiopia, around 1740. Museum no. M.27-2005. Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Detail of the crown.

Gold Chalice, ca. 1735-1740. Magdala, Ethiopia. Victoria & Albert Museum.

Armlet; made of silver-gilt. Two curved plates, fastened together in a pyramidal shape with hinges. 19th century, Ethiopia. British Museum

Armlet, Bitäwa, made of sheet silver, overlaid with gilded open-worked repoussé and joined with a pin hinge. ca. 1841-3, Ethiopia. British Museum

Share

Gold use

Until the 20th century, gold, the metal of choice for the paraphernalia and symbols of church and state, was the exclusive privilege of royalty and priests. In contrast, silver objects, while certainly used and worn by priests and royalty, were more commonly available to, and used in the production of jewelry for the non-elite.

Gold was used for coins and jewellery, as foil or inlay on items made of other metals, and for thread in weaving and/or embroidery.

Jewellery, including gold cross-pendants of clear Christian type, has been found in a hoard at Adulis. A collection of gold jewellery and Roman coins was found in the bronze vase dated to the 6th-7th century CE. Traces of gold-threaded textile were recovered from primary contexts in the 4th-century Mausoleum at Aksum, as well as items decorated with gold leaf and engraved mother-of-pearl.69

Multiple accounts from the 15th and 17th centuries refer to elite clothing with gold and silver embroidery, as well as jewelry consisting of gold chains, processional crosses, bangles, necklaces, and swords with gold hilts.70

Silk robe embroidered with silver and gold. Maqdala, Ethiopia. 19th century. British Museum.

Processional crosses cast from a copper alloy; engraved and gilded. Maqdala, Ethiopia. 19th century. British Museum.

Ethiopian monarchs, their consorts and other royals wore luxurious and costly clothes. Lebna Dengel, when receiving the Portuguese mission of the 1520s, wore “a high crown of gold and silver”, and was dressed in a “rich mantle of gold brocade”, while his feet were covered with a “rich cloth of silk and gold.”71

In the southern Oromo kingdoms of the Kaffa and Gibe regions, the insignia of the kingship consisted of a crown in the form of a helmet made of gold and silver, as well as a gold staff, chain, parasol, ear-rings, armlets, and finger-rings; and a golden sword and shield.72

Gold band ring with a large hollow spherical bezel. 19th century, Ethiopia. Victoria & Albert Museum

Ethiopian Crown at the National Museum, Addis Ababa. Wikimedia Commons

In the north, 17th century accounts describe the coronation ceremony at Aksum, during which the king would distribute largesse by flinging gold amongst the crowd as he processed over rich carpets laid out on the streets from the entrance of the town to the cathedral area.73

Almeida in the 1620s observed that “... nobles put on their necks their gold chains which are like what we call skeins with many turns of yarn wound round them. On their arms they put bracelets of the same and their swords which are very large, have scabbards covered with silver. They wear girdles or sashes of very big pieces of gold and so the court, when it is in festival, is brilliant and sumptuous enough.”74

In 1810, Nathaniel Pearce, while attending the reception of the Abuna (patriarch of the Church) by King Tekle Giyorgis I, observed that: “the priests were dressed in ornaments of gold and silver, velvets and silks, with crowns of silver and gold on their heads”75

Religious procession from the court of St. Michael at Ankobar. Shewa, Ethiopia ca. 1841-1843

Ornament; made of gold, in form of convex disc. Central repoussé design depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ on her lap. Maqdala, Ethiopia. 19th century. British Museum.

Ornament; made of gold in form of disc, depicting the Crucifixion in repoussé. Maqdala, Ethiopia. 19th century. British Museum.

Gold was used in architectural ornamentation and in embellishing manuscripts.

The 16th century chronicle of the Ethiopia-Adal wars describes the interior of the church of Makana Sellassie, which was “ornamented with sheets of gold and silver on which had been placed incrustations of pearls. The wooden doorway was ten cubits long and four wide; it was covered with sheets of gold and silver, and over the gold had been placed incrustations in various colours”

The chronicle also recounts how the church of Atronsa Mariam was pillaged after the battle. The invaders tore out rich brocaded velvets and silks, gold and silver in heaps, gold and silver cups, dishes and censers, a gold tabot on four feet weighing over 1,000 ounces, an illuminated Bible bound in sheets of gold, and innumerable other riches.76

The chronicle of the Ethiopia-Adal wars contains numerous references to gold that was stripped from the walls of churches and monasteries, and gold objects that were melted down before the buildings were burned down.

It states that the invading armies carried away much of the loot, “some of them carried two-thousand ounces of gold; some of them one-thousand-five-hundred; others of them one-thousand; and others again five-hundred”

“They had so vast a quantity of gold that at this time they made any deals with gold. When someone wanted to buy some necessity, he would take a fistful of gold, go to the market and use it for the purchase. They ignored the scales. The price of a mule went up to forty ounces of gold because gold was so plentiful.”77

Archaeological surveys of ruined churches corroborated this textual record. Among the ruins of the churches of Ǝnsǝlale and Gǝnbi in Shewa, whose walls burned at a heat high enough to melt glass, were fragments of gold plates and clearly cut gold cubes.78

Interior of Ethiopian churches; (left) Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa. (center) Arch and Capitals, Church of Bet Maryam, Lalibela. (right) Debre Berhan Selassie Church Roof, Gondar.

Poncet in Gondar wrote with admiration of the new palace with ‘more than twenty rooms’, the throne with feet of ‘massy gold’ placed in an alcove surmounted by a dome all shining with gold and azure. The sovereign reclined on great cushions embroidered in gold; the ‘great lords’, richly dressed, were ranged on either side.79

The castle of Fasiladas was repaired in the reign of Iyasu I (1682-1706). His chronicle states that the building was decorated with ivory, gold, and precious stones and was finished in 1685 by the Ethiopian architect Walda Giyorgis.80

Fasiladas’ castle at Gondar, Ethiopia.

The term wängel zä-wärq (“Golden Gospel”) is widely used today to refer to the main Four-Gospel book of a church or monastery, and is thought to be linked to the practice of embellishing books in this way.

Such decorations were only used in a few manuscripts of exceptional importance, including those destroyed in the 16th century Adal invasion.81

‘This famous manuscript, also called the Codex Aureus or Golden Codex due to its unusual use of gold leaf, was commissioned by King Dawit (r. 1379/80-1413) and was started on August 29 and completed on December 8, 1400.’ Images and Caption from PEMM.

Endowments and donations to churches, as well as fines, were made in gold dust.

An Ethiopian text referring to the reign of Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob (r. 1434-1468) mentions that the pious ruler built a church dedicated to the Virgin, and gave it so many precious liturgical utensils that access to it had to be monitored. He also bestowed 30 ecclesiastical vestments woven with gold, 7 ecclesiastical garments made of silk, 7 gold fans, and other valuable objects alongside 150 ounces of gold, 2000 oxen, and vast land to the monks of Däbrä Libanos.82

In the early 16th century, both Alvares and the Chronicler of the Ethiopia-Adal wars describe a church constructed by Na’od (r. 498-1508) and finished by Dawit II (r. 1508-1540), whose walls and doors were covered with gold and silver plating.83

In November 1730, Empress Mentewwab (d. 1773) granted land and thirty pieces of gold to the monastery of Qwärät’a Wälättä P’ét’ros. Among the principal landholdings of Mentewwab’s QwesQwam church was a land in Tegray called Dambila, which paid an annual tribute of twenty gold dinars.84

Empress Mentewab’s Banqueting Hall of the Dabra Sahay Qwesqwam complex, outside Gondar

Gold wealth and property.

Land sales, landholdings and other forms of property were valued in gold, among other currencies.

One of our earliest references to the sale and purchase of land dates to the 13th century. His hagiographer informs us that Emperor Lalibala “bought with his own gold” land on which he built the now famous rock churches of Lalibela.85

In a document concerning land sales dated to the reign of Emperor Takla Giyorgis I (1786-1800), it is reported that one Wayzaro Trengo, a woman of high birth, sold a third of her property for the then considerable sum of over 70 ounces of gold.86

Sales of measured plots of Land in 18th century Ethiopia. Image by Donald Crummey

Documentation of such transactions wasn’t restricted to large estates of wealthy royals, but also includes smaller units of land held by non-elites, e.g., a sale of 11.5 fields for 5 ounces of gold in 1738, by a woman called Walatta Kessos, and in September 1740, the purchase of one-half of Selondis’s field [meder] in Qobla by Yashalaqa Takla Haymanot for 6 ounces of gold.87

Some of the private wealth in gold was at times deliberately concealed from both the public and the authorities.

According to Nathaniel Piece in 1810, an elderly woman whom he’d known as a travelling beggar “with scarcely a rag to cover her” gave her priest 82 wakeahs of gold (about $470,000 in current value) for her tezkar (memorial feast), a few hours before she passed away.

He adds that “when the inhabitants heard of her leaving so much money for the benefit of her soul, there were as many assembled at her cry in the market-place, as if she had been the daughter or wife of a king.”88

Jewellery of Ethiopia. from ‘The history of the feminine costume of the world’ by Paul Louis de Giafferri, 1926.

By the end of the 18th century, gold dust was largely replaced by imported silver coins known as the Maria Theresa Thalers (berr).

A record of land sales by a woman named Sanayt in the province of Bagémder in the early 1780s indicates the prices of at least two of the sales, one of them expensive at 7 ounces of gold, the other more modest at 17 berr.89

The Thaler was first minted in Austria in 1751 and re-struck many times thereafter to satisfy the demand for silver currency, particularly in those countries involved in trade along the Red Sea. It was the 1780-thaler that became the principal coin of choice. 1780 was the year Maria Theresa died, and all subsequent thalers carried this date.

Subsequently, most of the private wealth in the 19th century sources was valued in silver thalers, land, and cattle, rather than gold.

An example is Walda Sellase, a ruler of Tigray in the early 19th century, who is known to have accumulated considerable personal fortune.

At his death in 1816, he is said to have possessed 75,000 Maria Theresa dollars, 50 waqet, or ounces, of gold, and “a number of gold and silver ornaments,” besides 15,500 cows, 4,100 plough oxen and 1,730 ploughshares.90

By the time of Yohannes’ coronation in 1872, land purchases and donations to churches were made exclusively using thalers.91 Taxes from the various provinces that had been previously paid in gold began to be valued and remitted in silver thalers.92

Gold remained an important medium of exchange and store of wealth in Ethiopia well into the 20th century. The precious metal constituted a significant share of the revenues collected during the reign of Menelik II (r. 1889-1913), some of which was used to mint the first currency of the modern state.

Gold coin of Menelik II, ca. 1889. British Museum. No. 1935,0401.9310

Ethiopian artefacts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Africa was a haven for religious minorities (“heretics”), political exiles, and other refugees from beyond the continent during Late Antiquity.

Recent discoveries of Zoroastrian constructions in Madagascar and Ibadi mosques along the East African coast provide archaeological evidence for the presence of religious minorities across the region, whose existence has until now been known primarily from written sources.

My latest Patreon article examines the history of these mixed communities of “pagans”, “heretics,” and foreign refugees in Africa from the 8th to the 13th centuries.

Please subscribe to read more about it here

FOREIGN HERETICS IN MEDIEVAL EAST AFRICA

In 615, following the persecutions in Mecca, the Prophet sent some of his followers to seek asylum from the Najāshī (King) of the Christian kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia.

In the earliest account of this migration, preserved by the biographer Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767) and copied by Ibn Hishām (d. 833), the Prophet chose Aksum because its king was a just ruler:

“If you were to go to Abyssinia (it would be better for you), for the king will not tolerate injustice and it is a friendly country…”1

The account then lists those who migrated to Aksum and describes how the Najāshī protected the exiles, refusing to return them to Mecca after their persecutors sent a delegation demanding their extradition.

Although the historicity of these events remains debated among modern scholars,2 the tradition of religious minorities and political exiles seeking refuge in Africa is supported by other historical accounts of the continent during Late Antiquity.

The Messengers of the Prophet to Abyssinia, under the leadership of Ja’far ibn Abi Talib, and the Negus’ refusal to hand them over to the Quraysh messengers. Jame’ al-Tawarikh. Or Ms.20, page 52r. Edinburgh.1306

When Aksum declined, and pirate activity in the Red Sea disrupted maritime trade, the Umayyads, under Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 685–705), occupied one of the Dahlak Islands off the coast of Eritrea.

Control of the islands subsequently oscillated between the Aksumites, Arabs, and local chieftains, while their strategic position made them a haven for political exiles, independent merchants, and pirates.3

Besides the exceptional ruins of a Nestorian Church and ancient cisterns similar to those found along the coast, the island’s necropolis contains hundreds of stelae, the earliest of which date to 864 CE.

The stelae refer to various tribes from as close as Suwakin (Sudan) to as far as Byzantium and Persia. Some reflect the influence of the minority Ismail sect, and the presence of merchants from Kwiha in Tǝgray (northern Ethiopia) by the 9th century.4

Ruins of a medieval mosque at Dahlak.

‘Cisterns attributed to the “Furs” (Persians) on the main Dahlak island; from CRStor, pl. lxvii’ (Encyclopædia Aethiopica, Vol 2)

Ras Mider and Ras Gherar. Ancient cisterns near Masawa, Eritrea. ca. 1873. by Guillaume Lejean.

During the 7th century, a section of Umayyads known as the Hunayhín was reportedly sent to the medieval Ghana Empire (present-day Southern Mauritania), where they decided to settle and adopt “the religion of the people of Ghana.”

Al-Bakri, who recorded this account in 1068 CE, mentions that the capital of Ghana was populated by both polytheistic and Muslim communities, and that some of the King’s ministers were Muslims, although the King and most of his subjects weren’t.5

Some of the polytheistic West African religious systems described by al-Bakri were centered around serpent deities that were widespread across West Africa during the Middle Ages, and were later transplanted to the Americas.

[ see: The serpent deities of the African Atlantic ]

In North-West Africa, the independent Imazighen (Berbers) who refused to accept the mainstream Sunni Islam of their Umayyad enemies adopted the “heretical” Ibadi and Sufri sects by 740 CE, which were considered relatively egalitarian. Many withdrew into the deserts and mountains, where they established a Sufri state at Sijilmasa (Morocco) and an Ibadi imamate at Tahert (Algeria), among others.6

Ibadism spread southwards to West Africa, and is attested at Essouk-Tadmekka (N.E Mali) by the 9th century. Ibadi documents concerning Essouk and Tahert during this period also link them with the medieval city of Gao (Mali), whose ruler and subjects the geographer al-Muhallabi (d. 990) described as “pretend[ing] to be Muslim.”7

Nearly a century later, al-Bakri in 1068 records that the majority of Gao’s population remained polytheists.

Additionally, the presence of inscribed epitaphs associated with Sunni traditions at both Essouk and Gao reveals the religious pluralism of medieval Mali, where “paganism,” “heresy,” and Islamic “orthodoxy” coexisted.8

Location of Sijilmasa, Tahret, Essouk and Gao.

Commemorative Stela for Queen (Malika) S.wa of Gao, d. 1108. In situ at the Dyula quarter of Gao, Mali.

In the mid-11th century, Ghana, Tadmekka, and Gao became the target of the more reformist Almoravid movement, which ended the influence of Ibadism, facilitated the adoption of Islam by the Ghanaian royal court, and popularised the Maliki school of Sunni Islam that remains the dominant tradition across the region today.9

While some aspects of religious pluralism survived in the former territories of Ghana and Gao up to the late Middle Ages, traces of Ibadism disappeared across West Africa. However, the influence of Ibadi architecture can still be seen in some of the religious architecture of the region.10

Among the clearest evidence for religious pluralism in medieval Africa comes from Eastern Africa, where African traditional beliefs, Persian Zoroastrianism, and Islamic minority sects coexisted.

For centuries, African societies across the region stretching from present-day Somalia to Madagascar harbored religiously diverse populations as well as refugees who had fled Western Asia during periods of political upheaval and religious persecution.

These disparate communities found asylum in the emerging coastal towns, where traditional African religious systems were extensively documented in external accounts until the 13th century.

Records by visiting Chinese, Arab, and Persian travellers between the 8th and 10th centuries describe mixed religious communities; maritime links between Madagascar, the Swahili coast, and Somalia; as well as political upheavals and persecutions in Southern Arabia and the Gulf that forced many groups into exile in Africa.

Recent discoveries of Zoroastrian constructions in Madagascar and Ibadi mosques along the East African coast provide archaeological evidence for the presence of religious minorities across the region, whose existence has until now been known primarily from written sources.

My latest Patreon article examines the history of these mixed communities of “pagans”, “heretics,” and foreign refugees in Africa from the 8th to the 13th centuries.

Please subscribe to read more about it here

FOREIGN HERETICS IN MEDIEVAL EAST AFRICA

The city of Malindi is one of the oldest urban settlements in East Africa.

Several clusters of stone ruins abandoned in the 18th century have been associated with the medieval city, as archaeologists and historians continue to debate its precise location.

Malindi is most famously (or infamously) known as the home of the pilot who guided the first Portuguese fleet to India. During the 16th century, it became the capital of Portugal’s East African possessions, using its alliance with the Portuguese to supplant the regional hegemony of its rivals.

Yet Malindi’s significance predates its relationship with Portugal.

The cosmopolitan city exerted an outsized influence across the Indian Ocean world, sending envoys to China before the famous voyages of Zheng He reached the city, and establishing diasporic communities along the coast from Kilwa to Madagascar.

This article outlines the history of medieval Malindi and its significance in the Indian Ocean world.

Trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Map by S. Pradines.

Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community; subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all:

PATREON

Medieval Malindi: History, Archaeology and the “Lost city”

The medieval city of Malindi first appears in the account of the 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi as “a town of the Zanj”, which “lies on the shore, at the mouth of a river.” “They own and exploit iron mines; for them iron is an article of trade and the source of their largest profits”.1

Al-Idrisi also refers to traditional priests and sorcerers by their still-used Swahili term of mganga. About a century later, Abu al-Fida (d. 1331) also mentions that there were “many sorcerers” in Malindi, adding that “the king of the Zanj lives at Malindi.”2

Malindi appears in Chinese accounts from the 14th to 15th centuries along with several kingdoms from Eastern Africa such as Zanzibar, Pemba, Ethiopia, and Mogadishu whose envoys visited the imperial court.3

[see: Historical contacts between Africa and China from 100AD to 1877 ]

The city twice sent a giraffe to China, first indirectly through the sultan of Bengal, Saif-ud-Din, in September 1414, and the second time directly in October 1415. This second giraffe was brought by Malindi’s envoys two years before the 5th expedition of Zheng He reached the city in 1417 and brought back the envoys.4

The discovery at Mambrui (in Malindi) of sherds of Ming Yongle (1403–1424 CE) imperial kiln blue-and-white porcelain and a ‘Yongle Tong Bao’ copper coin cast between 1403 CE and 1424 CE, which were made exclusively for the central government and imperial family, confirms the presence of the fleet on the East African coast.

Giraffe presented to Ming Emperor Yongle by the African city of Malindi, 1414, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

(a) Ming Yongle imperial kiln blue-and-white porcelain; (b) ‘Yongle Tong Bao’ copper coin. Images by Dashu Qin and Yu Ding

According to the archaeologist Mark Horton, medieval Swahili towns were made up of a cluster of neighbouring settlements between the continental mainland and the coastal islands that relied on each other for provisions, labour, military aid, and trade goods.

Each conurbation was tied together by bonds of kinship, political and religious authority, and some expression of shared or complementary ethnicities.5

The conurbation centered on Malindi Old Town included the site of Mambrui to the north and the sites of Gedi, the small ruined sites in the Mida Creek, and the Watamu sites to the south.6

The difficulty, therefore, lies in determining which of these major sites constituted the medieval city of Malindi.

Archaeologists have debated whether Gedi, Mambrui, or the Malindi Old Town itself represented the principal urban centre in the 12th century, and whether that settlement was the same city encountered by the Portuguese three centuries later, and what date each of these settlements was abandoned.

The Malindi conurbation and related sites on the Kenyan Coast. Map by S. Pradines.

Excavations at Malindi Old Town and Mambrui by Ceaser Bita and Dashu Qin from 2006 to 2013 found numerous locally made Early Iron Age wares (dated 2nd-6th century CE), Triangular Incised Ware (6th-13th century), and Swahili Tradition wares (SW) used until the 18th century, a few imported Chinese wares (9th-20th century), and Islamic wares (10th-16th century). They also uncovered house foundations, sanitary facilities, city walls, furnaces, and iron slag.7

The oldest occupation sites at Malindi Old Town and Mambrui are dated to the period from 850-1000 CE. Extensive iron production and imported wares appear in the 11th-12th century, followed by the construction of coral structures and the first mosques in the 13th-15th centuries.

Both sites covered atleast 30ha at their peak. Malindi continued to flourish during the 16th- 17th centuries, and well into the 19th century, with large pillar tombs and an increase in Chinese imports, but Mambrui went into steep decline after 1640.8

C. Bita suggests that Mambrui was probably medieval Malindi, which is supported by the results of Dashu Qin’s excavations, but the latter clarifies that it was mostly contemporaneous with Malindi Old Town, which developed rapidly from the 13th to 16th century.9

However, few of the old monuments survive, save for two mosques, the 15th-century pillar tombs, Vasco Da Gama’s pillar of 1498, and a 16th-century Portuguese chapel.10

mosque, Malindi.

Pillar Tomb, Malindi. Early 15th century.11

Pillar tombs decorated with imported ceramics in Mambrui, Kenya. Image by Yu Ding.

The well-preserved ruins of Gedi are located about 10 miles south of Malindi and 6km inland from the coast.

The 20-30 ha archaeological site contains a large palace, six mosques, hundreds of domestic houses, and several tombs dated 1050-1450 CE. Paradoxically, this large Swahili settlement doesn’t appear in any historical documents from the period.12

According to James Kirkman, who excavated the site in 1948, Gedi was associated with Malindi, likely as a breakaway polity that later became a dependency of the ruler of Malindi, and may have been destroyed as a result of a punitive expedition sent by Mombasa against Malindi in 1529.13

Later excavations by Stéphane Pradines in 2003 suggest that Gedi was probably the site of the medieval city of Malindi, and the city would have been displaced at the same time as the course of the Sabaki River at the beginning of the 15th century.

A section of Gedi’s population emigrated to a coastal village situated at the new mouth of the Sabaki River during the late 14th century to mid-15th century. This village was to become the city of Malindi, visited by the Portuguese in 1498. Cut off from its access to the Ocean, the ancient city of Malindi/Gedi fell into obscurity after 1589, and the city was abandoned in 1631.14

However, since the more recent excavations at Malindi Old Town and Mambrui provide evidence for settlement continuity from the 9th century, this interpretation may be considered tentative.

Archaeological surveys of the ruined sites in the Mida Creek in 2021 have revealed the remains of mosques and tombs that are contemporary with the period of Gedi’s expansion.

The excavators, supporting Pradines’s theory that these sites functioned as Gedi’s (original) access to the sea, suggest that the sites operated as a shoreline facility to accommodate beached or moored vessels carrying goods destined for Gedi and the return journey to the Indian Ocean.15

In conclusion, since Malindi may not have been confined to a single settlement at all times, the question of which site should properly be identified as “medieval Malindi” remains unresolved.

Ruins of Gedi, Kenya. Images from ETH Zurich

Share

Political organisation of Medieval Malindi.

Malindi was for most of its early history the largest settlement among several smaller town sites in the Sabaki Delta, and its rise may have predated its southern rival, Mombasa. But Mombasa had the advantage of a much better harbour, and at some stage between the 13th and 15th centuries, it began to supplant Malindi as the leading international port in this section of the coast.16

The development of Swahili city-states was driven by commercial competition and political rivalry for control of a region. The coastal cities formed an ethnic and cultural interface between the African mainland and the Indian Ocean world. Two political systems characterised Swahili society: the Wangwana council of elders/patricians of the African type, or a sultanate of Islamic influence.17

The difference between the two was the election of the main leader to head the governing council, and whether the ruler could, in later periods, create a dynasty through hereditary leadership.

In the early 16th century, cities like Barawa (Brava), Lamu, and Mombasa were often described as oligarchic republics, whose elected leaders were erroneously titled as ‘kings’ or ‘Queens’ in external accounts, while Kilwa, Pate, and Nzwani (Anjouan) were ruled by a hereditary monarch or ‘Sultan’.

Malindi’s political system appeared closer to the latter group, but included aspects of the former.

From the city’s official correspondence with the Portuguese king Dom Manuel (r. 1495-1521), the first ruler in 1515 was titled “Sheikh,” while his successor in 1520 and those that came after were titled “Sultan.” It's thought that the former was only the son of the ruler.18

The title and names of the author of the 1520 letter: ‘Ali ibn Sultan ‘Ali, Sultan of Malindi’, indicate that he was a hereditary monarch. He addresses the Portuguese king Manuel as the ‘great Sultan’.19 Portuguese kings would later grant his successor, Sultan Muhammad, the prestigious title of “Brother in Arms of the King of Portugal.”20

According to the Portuguese chronicler Joao de Barros, at the beginning of the 16th century the king of Malindi claimed to be descended from the sovereigns of “Quitau” (Kitau), a town located in the Tana delta, which once reigned over the whole region. It was at the time only a “poor village” whose imposing ruins attest to its past splendor.21

Correia in 1550 writes of a “supervisor [regedor] of land production,” a “supervisor of the sea,” and a qadi in charge of justice at Malindi in 1498. These seem not to have been true state officials, but instead representatives of lineages which exerted authority in designated areas, sometimes on a hereditary basis.22

Malindi appears as a minor power on the Swahili coast at the beginning of the 16th century in the shadow of Kilwa and Mombasa. The city’s population is significant, but its political importance is not equal to the two metropolises.

Its territorial claims extend from Kilifi in the south to the sites of Oja along the Tana River (see map above). Still, they are heavily contested by Mombasa and the leaders of the smaller towns.23

Despite this competition, the Malindi diaspora could be found as far south as Kilwa, and is mostly associated with religious offices.

According to the Swahili version of the 16th-century Kilwa Chronicle, all the amirs and qadis in the city were settlers from Malindi. This is supported in the Arabic version by the great prominence which Malindi settlers achieved at Kilwa during and after the reign of Kilwa’s sultan al-Malik al-Adil Muhammad (1412-21). One of them, named Faqih Muflah al-Malindi, was the uncle of the author of the Arabic chronicle.24

A small ruined mosque at Kilwa, dating to the 14th-15th century, was still called by the people of Kilwa the Malindi Mosque in the 20th century, and the name may reasonably be connected with the establishment of settlers from Malindi.25

Malindi mosque at Kilwa, Tanzania.

Share

The city of Malindi in the Indian Ocean world.

When the Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama first arrived on the Swahili coast in 1498, the Malindi sultan welcomed them as useful allies against its rival Mombasa, which had been attacked by the same fleet. The Sultan offered provisions for their four-month-long stay and an Indian pilot named Malemo Canaqua (not Ahmed Ibn Majid) to guide Vasco de Gama to India.26

According to Hernan Lopes de Castaneda’s description of Vasco Da Gama’s visit;

“The town is well built. The houses are of stone and mortar, handsome on the outside and furnished inside with many rich decorations and paintings. The natives of the land are dark-skinned, with woolly hair, but well disposed.

The foreign residents are Arabian Moors. The nobles wear clothes above the arms, and turbans with silk and gold tassels. Their arms are short swords, lances, daggers, and bows and arrows. The greater number of the merchants who live in this town are from Guzerat in the kingdom of Cambaya. Gold, silver, ambergris, ivory, tar, and wax are found in this country.”27

Vasco da Gama pillar at Malindi.

The alliance between Malindi and the Portuguese was mutually beneficial, providing a base of operations in exchange for military aid and a redirection of all coastal trade to Malindi.

Subsequent expeditions will reinforce this close collaboration and the advantage that Malindi could derive from it. The Malindi king sent his own envoy to Portugal in the company of Vasco Da Gama, and the envoy successfully returned with the fleet of Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, bringing letters from the King of Portugal.28

The sultan took the opportunity of Cabral’s fleet to India to complain about an incursion from Mombasa. In 1503, the city suffered another attack from Mombasa, and the Portuguese retaliated by blockading Mombasa. In 1505, the ruler of Mombasa was once again at war with Malindi, ostensibly over Malindi’s alliance with the Portuguese. Malindi defeated Mombasa, and the latter was sacked by the Portuguese forces under Francisco de Almeida, who also attacked Kilwa.29

According to Joao de Barros, there is little doubt that the innumerable conflicts between Swahili city-states predate the Portuguese arrival, and were caused by disputes over territorial claims which the Portuguese captains did not always perceive. Thus Mombasa and Malindi disputed in the early 16th century Kilifi and “Chiona”, dominions of Malindi according to its sovereign.30

In 1506, the Malindi sultan requested that the Portuguese fleet under Tristao da Cunha invade the neighboring city of Oja, described as a beautiful walled city (likely near the ruined site of Shaka). Contrary to the sultan’s claim that Oja resented Malindi for its alliance with the Portuguese, João de Barros suggests that the conflict predates the Portuguese incursion.31

In an exemplary letter concerning the attack on Mombasa in 1542, João de Sepúlveda reported that, “the King of Malindi asked me to destroy some neighboring place with whom he had been at war for many years, which I did.” In the late 16th century, Malindians not only used the Portuguese to subdue and extract tribute from the island of Pemba, but also settled the island with members of the ruling Malindian Sultan’s family.32

Ruins of Shaka, Kenya.

Pillar tombs and mosque (in background), Ras Mkumbuu, Pemba Island, Tanzania.

Malindi would remain the main base of operation for the Portuguese from 1509 to the founding of Fort Jesus at Mombasa in 1593.

A position of “captain of the coast of Malindi” (capittio da costa de Melinde) was put in place, and his office was mostly centered on issuing safe conducts to ships. The only military operations were all based on requests from Malindi and Zanzibar seeking to reduce Mombasa’s hegemony, but were often inconclusive given the lack of permanent garrisons before 1593.33

In 1585-9, the war between the Ottoman corsair Ali Bey with his allies at Mombasa and the Portuguese with Malindi ends with the defeat of the former, with assistance from the Segeju, a mainland African group.

The Segeju occupied Mombasa and Kilifi, apparently at the request of Malindi’s ally known as Watamu, and later handed Mombasa over to Malindi. The Malindi royal family then moved to the Portuguese fort at Mombasa, where it received a third of the revenue.34

Fort Jesus, Mombasa, Kenya. Image by World History Encyclopedia

Subscribe now

The extent of Malindi’s international trade is revealed in Portuguese documents from India during this period.

In 1511, Malindi was included among several Swahili cities whose merchants were reported in the city of Malacca (in Malaysia) by Tome Pires, alongside Kilwa and Mogadishu.35

In 1515, the king of Malindi, Sheikh “Wagerage,” asked for authorization to send one of his ships to Goa. In 1586, Sultan Muhammad of Malindi sent a ship to the Portuguese settlement of Bassein. In 1596, the same king wrote to Philip II of Spain requesting free passage to the Portuguese outposts in India and a trading mission to China.36

In 1606, the Franciscan friars met a mwalimu, described as an “old Muslim Negro” and a “Melindano” (a native of the coast of Malindi) who in 1597 had guided the ship of Francisco da Gama, the future viceroy of India, from Mombasa to Goa.37 A letter written in 1619 mentions muslims from Malindi passing through the capital of the Estado in Goa, India.38

In 1694, the leader of the Swahili community in Goa was Faki Wali wa Mwinyi Matano, who was titled “Governor of the Moors of Malindi.”39 These may have been the same group as the government pensioners found in records at Goa dated to the early 17th century, who were from East Africa and were called ‘noblemen of Malindi’.40

Lamu Dhow in Malindi.

In Malindi, the continued influx of foreign merchants seems not to have altered its disadvantaged commercial position relative to Mombasa.

A small community of Portuguese merchants, settlers and priests was established in the city during the early 16th century. These seem to have become acculturated into the Swahili mode of commercial transactions based on personal ties and exchanges conducted in private residences rather than large markets.41

Indian Merchants from the city of Cambay in Gujarat were found at Malindi and many other towns on the East African coast at the time of the Portuguese arrival.42

Cabral’s account from 1500 found three large ships from Cambay at Malindi, each with a capacity of 1/3 of a ton. A report from 1517-18 mentions that the merchants of Malindi “are great barterers, and deal in cloth, gold, ivory, and divers other wares with the Moors and Heathen of the great kingdom of Cambaya; and to their haven come every year many ships with cargoes of merchandise, from which they get great store of gold, ivory, and wax.”43

Besides the Portuguese and Indians, a report from 1608 mentions the arrival of Hadrimi sharifs from Yemen who were “pale and white, differing very much from the color of the Moors [ie; Swahili]”; and could be found “among the principal gentlemen of the whole coast of Malindi”44

Historical traditions mention intermarriages with the ruling family of Pate and how the latter then supplanted the Bauri, the Shirazi clan who formerly had ruled at Ozi and Malindi.45 The ascendant clan with links to Pate, who were known as the waVumba, after their main town that is today located at the Kenya/Tanzania border, subsumed several of the older towns in the region and reinvigorated external trade.46

The Sharifs, alongside the Swahili of Malindi, were involved in trade from northern Madagascar.47

Northern Madagascar and the Swahili Coast. Map by G Campbell

In 1614, Luis Mariano observed that “The entire coast between Mazalagem and Sadia speak a language analogous to those of the Cafres, that is to say the language of the countries of Mozambique and of Malindi” [ie; Bantu-Swahili] and the inhabitants of Northern Madagascar “resemble in pigment and in culture the Negroes from Africa from whom they apparently derive” In the interior, the language of “Buque” [ie; Malagasy] is spoken which was “totally different from the African tongues and very similar to Malay”.48

Diogo do Couto (d. 1616), recounting the exploration of the coast by Lobo de Sousa in 1557, reported that: “The Moors of the coast of Malindi, who have come to Madagascar for a long time, have founded two cities there, where their descendents still live today under the authority of shaiks; one of these cities is built on an island located in the middle of a bay named Manzalage ... and the other is on the northeastern coast in another bay called Bimaro.”49

Note that Portuguese sources of the 16th and 17th centuries make an almost systematic distinction between the “Mouros da terra” (the native Muslims) or “Naturals da costa” (natives of the coast) or “povo Melindano” (people of the coast of Malindi) or Moors of Malindi, who were friendly to the Portuguese, and the “Mouros da Arabia” (the Moors of Arabia) who represented a competing religious and economic order, and were mostly associated with the city of Pate.50

Tombs of Mazalagem, Antsoheribory Island, Madagascar.

[ see; The African settlement of Madagascar ]

Malindi after the 16th century: Decline, Invasion and Re-emergence.

Despite these developments, Malindi fell into decline during the 16th and 15th centuries. Its alliance with the Portuguese, while politically useful, hadn’t translated into significant commercial gains.

A small Portuguese “factory” (residence of a factor) set up to control outbound trade in 1509 was closed by 1512.51 Letters from the Malindi ruler addressed to the Portuguese king in 1520 complained about Portuguese captains along the coast who monopolised trade and captured passing ships.52

Malindi didn’t have a good harbour for large ships, and as early as 1569, the sea had encroached on large parts of the settlement, leaving it in ruins.53

In 1606, a visitor to Malindi reported that “the houses of which are lofty and raised from the ground, but are already very ancient. Their inhabitants are Moors who, although formerly rich, now live in utter poverty.”54

Letter by the Malindi Sultan ‘Ali bin ‘Ali, addressed to the Portuguese king Dom Manuel (r. 1495-1521). Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.

In Mombasa, the importance of the Malindi dynasty declined after the rebellion of Prince Hassan in 1631. By 1661, an incursion against the Portuguese by an allied force from the island of Pate and the Omanis briefly forced the remaining population on Malindi to flee to Mombasa.55

By 1640, sections of the Segeju, who were still allies of the Malindi ruler, were settled in parts of the old town. They had since been acculturated to the typical coastal lifestyle, adopting Islam and the Swahili language.56

The Malindi diaspora remained prominent in the southern towns, and could be found in Mombasa, the Kerimba Islands of Mozambique, and in Zanzibar.57

In Kilwa, they served as secretaries, courtiers, and religious figures. An epitaph in Kilwa dated to March 1712 records a certain Mwinyi Said al-Malindi, who may have been part of the ‘Malindane’ amirs and courtiers of the king of Kilwa when the French visited the island in 1711.58

Malindi Cemetery, Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania.

Malindi didn’t contribute significantly to the defence of Fort Jesus when Portuguese rule collapsed in 1698 to a combined Omani-Swahili coalition, nor to the brief Portuguese restoration in 1728-9 when the Swahili turned against their erstwhile allies when their rule became overbearing.59

The old town was reportedly sacked by the Omani Arabs during the 1720s, and finally abandoned. By the time of the Dutch visit in 1776, their Swahili informants reported that Malindi was inhabited by “evil natives,” “very ill-natured people,” and that “even the Arabs did not dare to come there with their ships”.60

Half a century later, the narrative of the British Naval Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen, who reached Malindi in 1824 and inspected Vasco Da Gama’s pillar, corroborates the Dutch report and identifies the group which occupied the old town as the Oromo:

“The Sowhylese [Swahilis] the native inhabitants of the country, and the slaves, alone remained, who, hitherto trusting to others for their defence, were ill able to maintain the city against the attacks of such formidable enemies as the Galla, by whom there can be little doubt it was ultimately taken and destroyed; and as a descendant of the native kings of Maleenda [Malindi] was still living at Mombas, it is more than probable that those of the inhabitants who escaped fled to that place forprotection.

The territories of the ancient kingdom of Maleenda are at present totally occupied by the Galla, who are much dreaded by the Arabs in their coast navigation; and our pilot informed us that they never attempted to land, as the enmity of these savages is so great that they are constantly on the watch to entrap them.”61

About two decades later, in 1845, the German missionary Ludwig Krapf visited Malindi and described it as “a ruined and deserted town”. He also transcribed the historical tradition about the ruined town/place of ‘Shunguaya’ [Shungwaya] near Pate, the original home of the ‘Suahili’ [Swahili], from where they were forced to migrate southwards to Malindi and Mombasa following its invasion by the Oromo.62

The Shungwaya tradition refers to a period of social upheaval during the late 17th to mid 18th century that was associated with the expansion of southern Oromo speakers along the coast, but is also thought to represent long-standing relationships and conflicts on the northern Swahili coast.63

The old Swahili town at Malindi was refounded in the late 1850s or early 1860s under the direct encouragement of the Omani Sultan of Zanzibar specifically for the production of food grains for export. Its population quickly grew, mostly because of captives who came from Zanzibar.64

In the 1870s, both Malindi and Mambrui were settled by the Omanis, the Washela (Swahilis from Shela in Lamu), and Hadrami migrants and soon developed into the foremost cereal-producing region on the coast. Malindi and Mambrui together supported a population of about 9,000.65

Malindi came under British colonial rule by 1890, as did most of what would later become Kenya. Today, the old town is a tourist centre, while many of its historical sites have faded into the background of the modern city.

Malindi in the early 20th century.

Ancient pillar tomb in front of the modern Juma mosque, Malindi, Kenya.

About 2,500 years ago, the Egyptian king Necho II (610–595 BC) commissioned an expedition that circumnavigated Africa and successfully returned to Egypt. Soon after, the Carthaginian sailor Hanno (fl. 500 BC) explored the Atlantic coast of Africa, reportedly reaching parts of West Africa.

My latest Patreon article examines the historical credibility of these ancient expeditions, as well as the archaeological evidence for contacts with Central Africa during the 1st millennium BC.

Please subscribe to read more about it here;

ANCIENT CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA

In 1851, archaeologists discovered three clay sealings of King Shabako of Kush in the Palace of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (r. 705-681 BC) near modern-day Mosul, Iraq. The sealings preserve the impressions of cords once used to secure bags containing papyri, providing material evidence of Kushite presence in the Assyrian capital.1

Later excavations uncovered records of Kushite officials, chariot-drivers, horse trainers, and horses in Assyria during the 7th century BC.2 By the 5th century BC, aithiopian contingents in the army of Xerxes were present in mainland Greece at the Battle of Plataea, where they made a strong impression on Greek artists.3

Baked clay sealing with seal impression. Kouyunjik, Iraq. British Museum, No. 84884

Clay seal of Shabaqo found in Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh (Iraq) depicting the pharaoh sticking a foe. There is an additional seal impression showing two persons, in Assyrian style. Image by J. Pope.

Following the rise of the Ptolemies in Egypt in 305 BC, this movement of people and knowledge became increasingly reciprocal.

Greek travelers such as Bion of Soli visited Kush (aithiopia), leaving accounts of their travels and itineraries listing the cities between Egypt’s southern frontier and the Kushite capital of Meroe.4

As long-distance trade networks connected the African interior with the Mediterranean, the Romans, who took control of Egypt, sent an expedition of two centurions in 63 CE, who were given Kushite escorts for their southern journey up to the Sudd marshes in present-day South Sudan.5

Roman expeditions to Central Africa.

Copper-alloy coin, issue of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II struck between 305 and 246BC. Found at Meinarti, Sudan. British Museum No. EA80702

Aithiopian/Kushite cities and towns known to Bion of Soli in the 3rd century BC, and their modern place names. Table by L. Torok

While archaeological evidence for Greek and Roman trade goods currently extends only as far south as the Kushite royal capital, Meroitic material, including scarabs, amulets and wheel-made pottery, has been found considerably farther south at Kotsi, a few hundred kilometers north of the Sudd marshes (see map above).6

Roman skippers likewise reached the East African coast during the 1st century CE, where they found an already established trading network linking the Red Sea region with the East African interior, as well as flourishing port cities such as Rhapta in what is today Tanzania.

Archaeological excavations on Tanzania’s Mafia Islands have uncovered Roman material remains including shaped stone blocks, inscribed pottery, glass beads, and surface finds of coins, indicating the presence of Roman traders in the region.7

(left) Roman coins from Kimoni near Tanga in Tanzania, issue of Emperor Carus (A. D. 282-284) and Constans (as Caesar) (A.D. 335-337), photo by N. Chittick. (right) Roman pottery, Terra Sigillata fabric. From Juani, Mafia Islands, Tanzania.8

Partially submerged cement blocks at Mwamba Ukuta, from a ruined city wall near Mafia Island, Tanzania. Image by Hannah Jane and Alan Sutton.

Share

In the early 2nd century CE, a sailor named Diogenes travelled 25 days inland from the metropolis of Rhapta, eventually encountering two lakes from which the Nile was believed to flow near the “Mountains of the Moon” (Ptolemy, Geographia 1.9, 4.8).

These enigmatic mountains, which became an object of fascination for explorers in the 19th century, are thought to be the snow-capped peaks of Kilimanjaro, rather than the more distant Rwenzori Mountains whose rivers in fact contribute to the waters of the Nile.9

This remarkable account illustrates the extent of geographical knowledge of the African interior and the maritime trade of Africa’s coastal societies by the Roman period.

Yet such knowledge had much earlier precedents.

Centuries before Diogenes’ journey, the Egyptian king Necho II (610–595 BC) commissioned an expedition that circumnavigated Africa and returned to Egypt. Soon after, the Carthaginian sailor Hanno (fl. 500 BC) explored the Atlantic coast of Africa, reportedly reaching parts of West Africa.

Historical accounts of these expeditions describe exotic lands and fauna beyond the southern reaches of the known world, where the midday sun was observed to the right of the sailors, suggesting that they had rounded the southern tip of the continent.

While skepticism toward these accounts persists among modern historians, archaeological evidence from sites in the Horn of Africa and the East African interior has lent some support to claims of ancient maritime trade and long-distance contacts during the 1st millennium BC.

Finds of ancient trade goods from Neolithic sites in the interior of Kenya and Tanzania dated to the 9th century BC, inscriptions along the coast of Somalia dating to the 8th century BC, and epigraphic evidence of trade links between ancient South-Arabian polities and Egypt by the 6th century BC all point to a flourishing coastal trade at the time of Necho’s expedition.

Additionally, a re-examination of Hanno’s itinerary down the Atlantic coast suggests that Carthaginian sailors undertook some of the furthest recorded voyages southward before the modern Age of Discovery, which would not be surpassed for nearly two millennia.

My latest Patreon article examines the historical credibility of these ancient expeditions, as well as the archaeological evidence for contacts with Central Africa during the 1st millennium BC.

Please subscribe to read more about it here;

ANCIENT CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA

Characterized by their kaolin-whitened faces, almond-shaped eyes, elaborate hairstyles, and serene expressions, these masks have long attracted the attention of art collectors and scholars.

Western collectors first encountered them in the late 19th century. Their striking appearance soon captivated European artists, including Pablo Picasso, who prominently displayed one of the masks in his studio.

Many speculated about the sources of their exotic aesthetic and even proposed possible Asian influence based on their resemblance to Japanese masks, though the art form was in fact indigenous to southern Gabon.

Early explorers and missionaries documented their significance to local religious systems and secret societies, but also sought to destroy them and suppress the beliefs with which they were associated.

The few that survived these cultural purges were sold to Western museums, but were an enigma to curators and art critics. Their symbolic meanings remained poorly understood, leaving art historians to speculate about their original functions.

Today, these ‘white’ masks of Gabon are widely recognized and admired for their artistic sophistication. Produced by several different communities, they range from highly naturalistic portraits to extremely abstract forms.

This article explores the origins of the white masks of Gabon and the cultural meanings of the “foreign” features of these celebrated artworks.

Languages and people groups of Gabon.1

Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community; subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all:

PATREON

From Gabon to Picasso: A brief background on the “white” masks before the early 20th century.

The white masks first appear in the account of the French traveler Paul Belloni Du Chaillu in 1864 during his stay among the ‘Apono’ (baPunu) in the interior of southern Gabon :

“They greatly enjoy the game of the Ocuya. A man carrying a large piece of wood carved into the shape of a giant, adorned and dressed in a bizarre manner, walks around and dances on stilts. This costumed figure wears a white mask with thick, open lips, revealing two rows of teeth in which the middle incisors are missing, following the fashion of the Aponos.

A long garment, dragging down to the ground, hides the stilts. What struck me most in this masquerade, as one of the most comical coincidences, was that the giant’s hairstyle looked unmistakably like a lady’s bonnet, at least before chignons came into vogue.”2

About a decade later, in 1873, the French traveler Victor de Compiègne described the funeral of a local ruler named King N’Combé in the same region:

“At eight o’clock in the evening, a famous priest arrived, destined to play the role of the iassi (a formidable and powerful spirit); he wears a white mask on his face and is clothed in a multitude of those little braids [platted raffia fringes] made by the Ivéia. His arrival is the signal for new ceremonies”3

Masks resembling those described by the explorers; (left) White Mask, Ogowe. Congo, Brazzaville. Leo Frobenius, 1898. (center) Fang Mask, undated, Musée Barbier-Müller. (right) Wooden mask with filed incisors from the area north of the lower Congo. Mpongwe, Gabon. Acquired 1896. Number: III C 6306. Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

Ancestral figures in a Gabon household. Engraving taken from: ‘Three voyages in West Africa’, P.S. de Brazza, Le Tour du Monde, 1880

The missionary fathers of Saint-Pierre in Libreville, also refer to this spectacle, the dance of “Okoitkoué,” during the celebration of July 14, 1890.

According to Father Pouchet, who was active in the region during the 1940s to 60s, the Okoukwé is a dance on stilts, which is performed with great dexterity, by a man dressed in a raffia costume, holding a flywhisk. It is said to the uninitiated that Okukwé is a revenant, a young woman who has died and returned from the land of the dead, whose “cold beauty is sometimes associated with the moon.”4

The masked performance is the cultural signature of secret societies, which are found under across multiple groups under different names: the Yasi among the Galoa, the Ngil among the Fang, the Mwiri among the Bapunu.

They represent a sort of Freemasonry found throughout Central Africa. They play an important role in religious, political, and social affairs, especially at important festivals like initiations and funerals, as well as laws concerning marriages and infidelity.5

The secret societies represented the only form of overarching political institution over what were essentially acephalous societies.

They were initiation orders where the adepts learned to understand the nature of man, his exact place within the cosmos, the mysteries of life and the universe, and the transcendental character of the spiritual principle of human nature.

The initiates were divided into three categories: those who were masters of the temples and presided over the sessions; those who prepared the sessions and played the main roles; and the newcomers who only attended the sessions.6

Traditional religion in pre-colonial Gabon involved ancestral worship, in which living people gave offerings to the dead, who were considered capable in the afterlife of influencing the destiny of their descendants.

According to the ethnographer Louis Perrois (1979):

What struck observers, travelers, missionaries, and ethnographers alike was the profoundly religious sense of these populations. Philosophy or religion, one might say, in any case, an innate sense of the afterlife. The evidence of the duality of humankind, both flesh and spirit participating in the forces of nature and the cosmos, is common to all members of the group.

The appetite for religious beliefs and behaviors explains, for example, the spread of mask types between ethnic groups hundreds of kilometers apart and the development of syncretic sects like the Bouiti of the Fang (a complex mixture of Christian and animistic symbols).7

Each community had specific rites and ritual equipment consisting of sculpted figurines. Ancestor statues, placed on reliquary baskets or sewn bark boxes, were kept with all the ritual equipment in a small hut built for this purpose a little way from the village. The masks, on the other hand, were kept in the communal house, and frequently replaced since they were a highly temporary double.8

These secret societies, which are a cog in the wheel of social life, used statues, masks and other ceremonial instruments. These are the same objects that were brought back as souvenirs by missionaries, explorers and colonial administrators from the 19th century to the early 20th century.

The handful of masks from the late 19th century were acquired through intermediaries at the coast, since only interior groups used the masks, but these had little contact with European traders along the coast. Significant collections of masks were thus only obtained after the formal colonization of the interior regions during the 1910s.9

Wooden dance mask with very delicate features. Gabon, south of Ogooué River. Collected on 14th December 1875. Pitt Rivers Museum

Mask, Villi, Congo Brazaville. c. 1898, Leo Frobenius.

The first known white mask was acquired by the English merchant Robert Bruce Walker for the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford before 1884, and others were catalogued by the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius in 1898, who awkwardly ascribed them to coastal groups like the Vili and Mpongwe. Later masks were collected in the early 20th century by intellectuals and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vlaminck, Derain, and Matisse.

According to Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s early companion, he was especially fond of the white mask from Gabon, which may even have been the first mask he acquired. Olivier observed that “Picasso particularly loved a small mask of a woman, in which the white colour of the face contrasts with the wood color of the hairstyle, giving her a particularly soft expression.”10

(left) Ramon Pichot in Picasso’s studio on Boulevard de Clichy, 1910, photo by Picasso .(right) the Punu mask on wall. Picasso Archives, Paris .

Share

Examining the White Masks of southern Gabon and their “foreign” features.

The collection of white masks in Western museums isn’t representative of the sculptural genre, but may instead reflect the aesthetic preferences of Western collectors.

The aesthetic appeal of these masks, entirely devoid of zoomorphic traits, made them especially amenable to the European taste. As the Danish art collector Carl Kjersmeier (1938) observed: “The best of these masks belong to the most refined ever created in Africa, and make us instinctively think of the art of the Far East”.11

(left) Wooden mask. Gabon, acquired 1896. Number: III C 6298. Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. (right) Wooden mask. Punu, Gabon, undated. number: III C 40171. Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

Modern analysis of these masks by art historians instead reveals a great stylistic variety. Some are naturalistic/realistic while others are stylized; a significant fraction of them are black, ochre, or polychrome, and some are decorated with ornamental scarifications while others are plain.

The white masks, which are referred to by a variety of names including Okouyi/Moukouyi/Moukoudji/Mukudj are found among several groups in Gabon, including the Fang, Eshira, Bapunu, Baloumbou, Mitsogho, Bandzabi, Batsangui, and Mindassa. They are especially common in the south, making attempts to attribute their creation to specific ethnicities a difficult, if not superfluous, activity.12

White masks. Punu, Gabon. Acquired; 1964. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium

White masks. Punu, Gabon. Acquired; 1964. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.

Polychrome masks. Punu, Gabon. Acquired; 1979, 1964, 1987. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.

The white masks feature a shell-shaped headdress, an oval face, almond-shaped eyes and arched eyelids; a realistic nose and full lips often painted red; prominent cheekbones; a pointed chin; and stylized ears and distinctive tattoos on the forehead and cheeks.

These features, such as the tattoos, hair, and white and red pigmentation, are noted in Du Chaillu’s description of the Aponos/Bapunu, whose masked dancer had hair like a ‘lady’s bonnet’ :

The women beautify themselves by tattooing their foreheads with a sort of scar. These are most often small round bumps, numbering nine, and about the size of a pea, arranged in a diamond shape between their eyebrows. Ornaments of the same kind stand out on their cheeks. They redden their skin with a certain powder extracted from the red wood of commerce. They dress their hair in different ways, but never in raised masses, according to the fashion of the Ashiras.13

In general, the masks often mirror the hairstyles, dress, and adornment of women in pre-colonial southern Gabon, albeit in a stylized rather than realistic/naturalist form.

In particular, some of the hairstyles can be matched with images and photographs of women from Gabon in the late 19th to early 20th century, although not many of these images are accessible, and few if any are of the interior groups that made these masks.

(top) Hairstyles of Okanda women, Gabon. (bottom) Gabonese women from Glass. ca. 1875 images by Victor Dupont Marquis de Compiègne.14

White mask, Gabon. Acquired 1964. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium

Femme Gabonnaise, ca. 1896. Quai Branly

White mask, Gabon. Acquired 1964. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium

Portrait of the first wife of King Denis Rapontchombo (1780-1876), chief of the left bank of the Gabon River. ca. 1861-1862. Quai Branly

White mask. Gabon. 19th century. Quai Branly

In more recent times, carvers create mukudj masks as representations of specific beautiful women and may even ask them to sit for these portraits. When a mukudj is displayed, people often claim to recognize the person represented and compare it to a photograph. However, this practice may represent more recent influences of photographic portraiture on pre-existing traditions. Importantly, many of the older white masks include representations of men.15

Close attention to the origin of these white masks is tied to hypotheses about their apparent Far Eastern prototype, with speculated links to the Japanese Noh theater and European influence.16

Such speculative connections, especially to Japanese art, have been dismissed by professional Art historians and ethnographers, who note that the special features of these masks do not fall outside the limits of the morphological features of traditional African sculpture.

Louis Perrois compares this tendency to ascribe exotic origins to Central African art with the initial reaction to the arts of Benin and Ife, which clashed with Western collectors’ preconceived ideas of ​​”primitive art.”

He notes that those who advanced the idea that such artworks were too sophisticated to be produced locally “forget rather quickly that great kingdoms with flourishing crafts had occupied the heart of Black Africa even before the European Middle Ages.”17

Masks with these distinctive hairstyles, scarification marks, almond-shaped or slit eyes, and white pigmentation can be found among numerous groups in Gabon, as well as among distant groups such as the Chokwe of Angola/Congo, as examined below.

The rendering of the eyes in particular was not meant to reproduce the “phenotype” of living persons, but instead represented an idealized image of the dead;

“The mask is a portrait of a deceased ancestor, sometimes a woman. It is held in front of the dancer’s face, who can see through the slits for the eyes.

The triangular face, whitened with kaolin-pembe, has eyes barely open in arched slits, accentuated by heavy, coffee-bean-shaped eyelids. The gaze is veiled, giving an impression of serenity, the kind one wishes the dead possessed, since, quite often, they pursue the living with their malice.”18

(left) Tsogho mask, Gabon, 20th century. Musée Picasso, Paris. (center) Kwele Mask, image by M. Itzikovit. (right) Loumbou mask. Southern Gabon. Image by Louis Perrois

Share

The “Whiteness” of Gabon’s masks and race in pre-colonial Africa.

The historic masks of southern Gabon are generally painted in several colors, although white masks were the most common. White is obtained from white clay, kaolin; ochre from ordinary clay; black from charcoal, and red from padauk powder or small plant seeds. White is the color of the dead and the spirits of the dead. This form of colour symbolism is found in many Central and West African traditions.19

In the historiography of Central and West Africa, this color symbolism predates European contact. There is, however, speculation among art historians regarding the supposed ideological and visual links between the “white” artworks of African societies living near the Atlantic coast and the “white” foreigners who collected them.20

While a presumed link between the “white” European traders coming from the sea and the world of the dead is mentioned early in the 17th century on the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Kongo, 21this ideological connection doesn’t seem to have been attached to their skin colour, especially given the lack of linguistic evidence to support such claims

For example, the white colour in Kikongo languages is mpembe, like the colour of kaolin clay (ie; Kaolin-pembe), while “white”/Europeans were, since the 17th century, called mundele (bandele/bindele), derived from the word for ‘whale’, which refers to their ships. As the historian John Thornton explains: “It was their craft and not their skin color that marked them as different.”22

A similar etymology is inferred for the ubiquitous East African term ‘muzengos’ (Lacerda, 179823) and ‘ba-Zungu’ (Livingstone, 185724), which stems from the common Bantu word —zunga (Wilhelm Bleek, 185625) referring to the aimless wandering of European explorers, and is different from the words for the actual color ‘white.’

Like the term mundele in Kongo, the fact the term muzungu in East Africa was unrelated to the skin color of Europeans is evidenced by the fact that it first appears in an account from 1599 written by the Swahili ruler of Malindi (Kenya) referring to a semi-sedentary African ethnic group in the hinterland, who were known as the “Muzungulos” (Muzungulu/ Muzungulo), corresponding to the modern Mijikenda.26

Similarly, in 19th-century dictionaries for the languages of Gabon’s coastal populations, such as the Mpongwe and Bakele, the white color pumi/pimi is differentiated from the generic exonym for Europeans, ntangani, which Du Chaillu and later western travelers were called, and is thought to be associated with their ships/vessels.27

Ethnographers and anthropologists working in colonial and post-colonial Africa often assume that, ideologically and visually, the colour “white” was interchangeable with the western racial concept of “whiteness”.

But such inferences are based on an uncritical interpretation of historical and linguistic data, and the projection of modern racial concepts into the pre-colonial period.

As previously noted, groups living in the interior of Gabon had no direct contact with Europeans before Du Chaillu's visit in 1864, and even after, only had limited contact with them until the colonial occupation in the 1910s.

Therefore, colonial influence and feedback from external sources such as collectors and missionaries have muddied contemporary interpretations of Central African color symbolism.

This is particularly relevant for ethnographers studying these traditions long after their demise, especially with regard to the presumed contrast between the white (mukudj) and black or polychrome (ikwar) masks.

(left) Black mask with traces of red and golden pigment. Punu/Lumbo, Gabon. Late 19th-early 20th century. Smithsonian Museum. (right) Black mask with scarification. Gabon. 19th century. Quai Branly.

White mask with scarification. Gabon, undated. number: VIII A 9354. Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

It’s not uncommon for art historians studying masks from Gabon to relate them to modern concepts of race, suggesting that the persons depicted were exotic, mixed, European, or even mythological like fairies. Such interpretations, at times obtained from modern sculptors, are reproduced uncritically, disregarding the effect of external feedback in local traditions.28

It’s important to note that these were originally ‘pagan’ objects associated with secret societies and traditional religions that had long been suppressed by Christian missionaries well before modern ethnographers conducted their fieldwork among populations who had by then given the masks new cultural meanings.29

For example, using information obtained from modern sculptors in the 1990s, the art historian Alisa LaGamma interprets the Mukudj/Ikwar contrast as a dichotomy between female and male, between idealized beauty and its subversion, between dances organized for the community and judgments to punish criminals/sorcerers. But she also notes that mask carvers claimed that such gendered iconographical parameters were not stringently adhered to before independence (1960).30

However, Louis Perrois, whose field research was conducted in the 1960s, made no mention of such a dichotomy, pointing out that white masks were “mourning masks” linked with death, and that the same masks could be painted black, transforming them into masks of justice, with the power to unmask sorcerers: “The same form, can take on different meanings through a simple change of color… Black masks do not constitute a separate stylistic variant: they are simply white masks that have been used in a particular way.”31

Both scholars nevertheless contend that their studies were conducted long after the demise of the sculptural tradition, more than half a century after the colonial occupation.

Regarding the hairstyles and scarifications, most scholars rightly reject associating them with specific ethnic groups since they are generally not exclusive to those groups. It is nevertheless possible, through the combined analysis of a number of morphological elements, to identify some major groups of objects that were at the time of their collection associated with a cluster of neighboring ethnic groups.32

For example, songs performed by the Punu people recount their migration and genealogy; the nine children of the founding ancestor Ilawu, and the origin of their nine clans.

Alisa LaGamma draws a correlation between the nine clans and the nine points arranged in a lozenge shape on the foreheads of the masks and designated by the term magumbi. These scarifications were indeed already observed by Du Chaillu in his 1864 account noted above, which identifies such tattoos on the foreheads and faces of baPunu women.33

However, many masks contain more points arranged in various forms, or none at all. Their meaning may be lost to modern researchers, but could represent a type of shared symbolism across central Africa where symbols are prominently displayed on the foreheads of masks made by the Chokwe of Eastern Angola.

Chokwe masks share a number of features with the white masks of southern Gabon, including elements of naturalism that are mostly representations of women, serene expressions with closed eyes that are almond-shaped, prominent eyebrow arches, elaborate hairstyles, and symbols on the foreheads resembling tattoos.

Their masks were also used by dancers on stilts, who represented an overarching secret society that played a prominent role in the social and political life of the region.

The significance of these features in examining the indigenous origins of the white masks of Gabon is explored in the next section.

(left) White mask with 9-point scarification. Punu, Gabon. Late 19th-early 20th century. Smithsonian Museum (right). White mask with 6-point scarification. Lumbo, Gabon. Acquired 1951. British Museum.

THE MASKS OF THE CHOKWE: a shared cultural tradition

Like the mask-makers of Gabon, the Chokwe of eastern Angola had little contact with the Atlantic coast before the 19th century.

But, following the expansion of the commodity trade in ivory, wax and rubber during the 1830s, the Chokwe who exported these trade goods became one of the major economic and military forces of central Africa. Ambitious and affluent Chokwe rulers sought to heighten their standing by commissioning works that portrayed them as heirs to the legendary cultural icon Cibinda Ilunga, to enhance their royal ancestry.

Chokwe categories of art ranged from purely decorative objects, such as the wood sculptures, to religious paraphernalia, symbols of the power of chiefs, such as thrones, staffs, masks, ceremonial axes, musical instruments, and intricately carved household objects, such as combs, knives, and chairs.

[ see my previous article on: Revolution, Trade, and Art among the Chokwe of 19th-century Central Africa ]

Modern distribution of the Chokwe. Map by Alisa LaGamma.

In 1878, the Portuguese naval officers H. Capello and R. Ivens, who left a detailed account of the Angolan interior in the Chokwe and Lunda territories, encountered figures wearing wooden masks and standing on stilts, called mu-quiche.

Like the priest-figures of pre-colonial Gabon, they represented an old, religious and cultural institution (secret society) found across many groups, although the European visitors only got to see them during public festivals.

“The office of a mu-quiche would appear to be a traditional one, retained in certain families among many African tribes. An absolute secrecy is observed respecting the person who fills it. He is known also to inflict prompt chastisement for grave offences.

It may therefore be assumed that the mu-quiche, not withstanding his special character of a fetish-man [priest], exercises utilitarian functions, such, for instance, as the castigating misdemeanants, the punishing shameless women, and the accusing criminals.

The mu-quiche has been more than once employed as a spy for special purposes ; and natives have been even known to adopt the costume with a view to discover any real or presumed infidelity of their wives. We have heard of husbands and wives at masked balls in Europe putting on dominoes for a somewhat similar purpose, showing how little difference after all there is in mankind, though ages of civilization may lie between them !”34

Images by H. Capello and R. Ivens, c. 1878.

Among the key mask genres of the Chokwe sculptural tradition is pwo, “woman,” or mwana pwo, “young woman.” Although pwo embodied the ideal of Chokwe womanhood and ancestry, it was worn by male performers.

Pwo, archetype of womanhood, is an ancestral female personage. The eyes closed to narrow slits are thought to evoke those of a deceased person.35

Chokwe mask, D.R.Congo. Acquired 1948, Inventory number EO.1948.20.165. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.

The ethnographer Hans Himmelheber (1938) observed that these masquerade ensembles were the property of individual elders, who wore them for public theatrical entertainments that were staged in the dancer’s own and neighboring villages in order to elicit remuneration from the audience.

According to Himmelheber, these masks were “half portraits” that were based both on a stylized image of an idealized beauty, as well as a naturalistic image of specific individuals known to the sculptor.36 It is, however, unclear whether this interpretation can be applied to the pre-colonial period, given the profound changes undergone by Chokwe communities since Capello’s account.

The masks feature several distinctive coiffures, some of which can be identified in the photographs of Angolan women taken in the early 20th century. One of these is the helmet-like hairstyle made up of carefully knotted tufts of hair that are worn close to the scalp and smeared individually with red earth37

Mask of a woman adorned with tattoos, earrings and an elaborate coiffure. Chokwe, Angola. Early 20th century. Smithsonian Museum.

Portrait of a woman, Angola. ca. 1951, Angola. Etnografiska Museet, Sweden.

(left) Portrait of a girl (center) Woman from Gambos (right) Woman from the Luvando tribe. ca. 1951, Angola. Etnografiska Museet, Sweden.

Share

“Foreign” crosses on Chokwe masks

One of the most distinctive features of the Chokwe masks are the tattoos/motifs found on the foreheads of the masks; some have a zig-zag shape, apparently resembling the Gabon viper, and others have a double-arc shape. Still others have a variety of symbols that have yet to be studied.

But the one symbol that captured the attention of Western art collectors is the dotted-cruciform motif, called cingelyengelye. There are many variations of this shape, which, according to art historians, is thought to have been introduced to the region in the 17th century by the Portuguese and is thought to denote divinity in Chokwe culture.38

Chokwe masks with non-cruciform motifs on their foreheads. Acquired in 1946, 1979, 1939, 1939. D.R.Congo. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.

Note the motifs on the first mask, which resemble those found on Gabon’s masks, but is a 4-point tattoo.

Chokwe masks with cruciform motifs on their foreheads. Acquired 1946, 1939, 1979. D.R.Congo. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.

Mask with prominent cruciform motif. Chokwe, Angola. Acquired 1971. Smithsonian Museum.

Historical evidence for crosses in the African Atlantic, however, predates Portuguese contact.

Early Portuguese chroniclers noted the presence of the symbol specifically in the kingdoms of Kongo and Benin, but not in other kingdoms like Jolof (Senegal) or the Gold Coast (Ghana), which were encountered in the same period.

The Art historian Cecile Fromont notes that the sign of the cross played a central role in the visual, religious, and artistic encounter between Portuguese Christianity and Kongo worldviews in the early modern period, because the symbol preexisted Portuguese contact.

“At the time of the advent of Christianity, and independent from any European influence, the cross was already a predominant motif of Central African art.

Cruciform designs appeared in rock paintings, weaving patterns, and engravings in their simplest expression as two intersecting lines as well as in intricate geometric derivations inspired by weaving patterns.

Elaborate textiles and carved ivory tusks eagerly collected by the early modern European elite for their cabinets of curiosity as well as archeological material illustrate the prevalent Kongo visual syntax at the time of the entrance of the kingdom into European history.

Across the media, design patterns articulated lines, intersections, and overlaps in varied knot-like motifs organized around a central focus point and ultimately suggesting a diamond shape.”

Even after the adoption of Christianity in Kongo, the cross wasn’t exclusive to the religion, but was prominently displayed by adherents of traditional religions like the Kimpasi secret society, whose prominent display of cross-like signs on its temples, paraphernalia, and rituals enraged visiting Capuchin priests during the 17th century.39

‘Schematics of Kongo rock painting and engraving designs. Drawings by the author based on Kongo rock paintings and engravings published by Raul Raymaekers in P. Raymaekers and H. van Moorsel, “Dessins Rupestres Du Bas Congo,” Image and caption by Cecile Fromont

Some ambiguity surrounds the crosses of the West African kingdom of Benin (Nigeria), which appear in its 16th-century artworks, and a few documentary accounts of the kingdom that associated them with traditional priests, who were strongly opposed to Portuguese missionary activity.

When the Oba (King) sent an embassy to Lisbon in 1540, the Portuguese chronicler De Barros, who recorded their visit, noted that one of the envoys was wearing a brass cross ‘a holy and religious emblem similar to that worn by the Knights of the Order of Saint John’ that the Oghene, a ruler of an interior kingdom, bestowed on those who visited him on the accession of a new Oba.40

Figure wearing a cross, with a hammer in left hand and staff in the right hand. 18th century, Benin City, Nigeria. British museum

The identity of the Oghene (or Ógànẹ), who appears in 14th and 15th-century accounts as a ruler of an interior kingdom, is still debated, but scholars suggest it could be the medieval kingdom of Ife, whose famous artworks (c. 1200-1400) include depictions of crosses.41

It's nevertheless suggested that, like in Kongo, the significance of the pre-contact symbol of the cross in Benin may have been enhanced by the kingdom’s very brief adoption of Christianity during the early 16th century.42

Debates over chronology notwithstanding, the significance of the cross in Central African symbolism may have been similarly enhanced by its shared use by both Christian populations in Kongo and non-Christian groups in the interior like the Chokwe, who had limited external contact.

The cross was, however, only one of several motifs that appear on the Chokwe masks, and its apparent importance could reflect the aesthetic and cultural values of Western collectors who may have chosen to acquire and display certain masks over others that may not necessarily have been privileged by the Chokwe themselves.

Like the white masks of Gabon, Western collections of Chokwe masks may not be representative of the sculptural genre.

They were, after all, only temporary objects made from a perishable material that were intended to serve a specific function and discarded after short periods of use. Their aesthetic value was subsumed under this larger cultural utility.

This paradox, between the cultural value of the mask to its African creators, versus its artistic and economic value to Western collectors, is excellently summarized by the art critic and curator Roger Pierre Turine:

The ultimate goal of enthusiasts of non-European art is to find a lost style of original purity in an object that predates the arrival of the whites, or that at least wasn’t corrupted by their presence.

As a result, the plastic qualities sought after by the Western sensibility embody a form of rejection, a negation of Western identity. And yet it’s in the name of this same identity and its capacity to judge that African works are weighed in terms of aesthetic and market value: making business out of art.

Another paradox arises from the introduction to the market of works that were never intended to be considered for their stylistic qualities nor to be sold. It is nevertheless just these stylistic qualities of secondary importance which ended up being appreciated and even sought after by creator and user alike.43

Pende masks in the reserves of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium.44

Conclusion: the white masks of Gabon in their historical context.

Traditional Gabonese sculpture today falls more within the domain of archaeology or art history than ethnology.

As early as 1934, authors noted that art had completely disappeared in Gabon, mostly due to missionary opposition to traditional religions. Masks, ancestor statues, and other “pagan” artworks were seized from the villages, collected, and burned, or thrown into the rivers.

The few that remained were collected by antique dealers and sold to Western museums, just as the last vestiges of the traditional religious systems and their sculptural traditions were dying out.45

Interpretations of these artworks are therefore constrained by the near-complete erasure of the cultural traditions in which they were produced.

Although their symbolism can now only be partially reconstructed, the historical context outlined above shows that these celebrated masks were only one expression of the dynamic religious and social institutions of pre-colonial Central Africa, long before they entered museums as masterpieces of African sculpture.

Mask, Punu, Gabon. Sothebys

Nearly two centuries before the formal abolition of Slavery, an African prince from the kingdom of Ndongo (modern Angola) spearheaded an international legal case against the kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity.

My latest Patreon article explores the international travels and abolitionist case of Mendonça and the history of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, concluding with a review of Nafafé’s research in the context of pre-colonial African slavery and abolition.

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

A 17TH CENTURY AFRICAN ABOLITIONIST

Abolitionism succeeded thanks to the struggles of many movements, some of which were global, while others were local and emerged from pre-existing Anti-slavery laws in pre-colonial Africa that sought to protect the free subjects of individual states and kingdoms.1

From a modern perspective, it may seem paradoxical that some of the earliest and most vigorous criticisms of Atlantic slavery, as well as efforts to repatriate enslaved Africans from the Americas, came from societies that were engaged in the Atlantic trade.

This paradox is more easily explained by examining the history of “slavery” within African societies, which differed fundamentally from Atlantic slavery in both principle and practice, being governed by legal traditions that strictly defined who was free and who was enslavable.2

As the historian Benedetta Rossi explains:

“Slavery was always morally problematic, but outside abolitionism moral concerns focused on the question of who should, or shouldn’t, be legitimately enslaved and how those enslaved ought to be treated…

Critiques of slavery aimed at reform and amelioration did not result in calls for the abolition of the institution of slavery. Yet, they contained the abolitionist rationale in embryonic form and at work on a scale smaller than the whole of humanity.”3

For example, the Kongo Kings Afonso I (r. 1509–42) and Garcia II (r. 1641–61), and the famous Queen Njinga (r. 1624–63) left a substantial body of written accounts denouncing Portuguese colonial authorities in Luanda (Angola) for capturing their free subjects, and repeatedly sought to compel the Portuguese to abide by local laws.4

These documents are frequently misinterpreted by both admirers and critics, who selectively emphasize evidence of these rulers’ participation in, or resistance to, the slave trade while overlooking the legal and political context in which the documents were produced.

One of the central causes of the wars between Queen Njinga and the Portuguese during the 1620s-40s was her demand that they return the kijikos (serfs) whom they had illegally reduced to slavery and transported to work on plantations in Angola and Brazil.5

Similarly in 17th-century Kongo, one of the main sources of tension between Portuguese in Angola and King Garcia II of Kongo was that the latter encouraged many runaway slaves from Angola to enter his kingdom, where they became free men. The King, for his part, claimed that the runaways were his subjects who had been illegally enslaved by the Portuguese.6

Portrait of King Garcia II Nkanga a Lukeni a Nzenze a Ntumba, by Albert Eckhout, c. 1641

In the interior, African pre-colonial states where documentary evidence on slavery laws is available indicate that the rulers of 14th-17th century Bornu, and 16th-17th century Ethiopia promulgated and enforced anti-slavery laws to protect their free subjects.

They demanded the restoration of their free subjects who had been enslaved in neighbouring kingdoms7, and required the inspection of every slave purchase to verify the origin and legal status of each captive, thereby preventing the unlawful enslavement of free persons.8

Importantly, these laws did not abolish slavery itself but were intended to protect the rights of the free subjects of a particular state or trans-national religious community.

Those reduced to slavery as “foreign” war captives or through judicial punishment for criminal offenses could still be lawfully enslaved, although their legal status varied considerably and differed fundamentally from the chattel slavery practiced across the Atlantic.

As previously explained, 19th-century Abolitionism should be seen as the gradual process by which anti-slavery laws that were initially confined to the subjects/citizens of a given society/state were extended to everyone.

Across the Atlantic world, historians have identified several cases in which enslaved Africans were successfully repatriated through diplomatic efforts.

These include the cases of: the family of Sierra Leone’s King Naimbanna (d. 1793), whose freedom from Jamaica was obtained by the latter; William Ansah Sessarakoo, a Fante envoy to England from the Gold Coast (Ghana), who was rescued from Barbados by his father John Corrente in the late 1710s; and Queen Na Agontimé of Dahomey, whose release from Brazil was arranged by King Gezo (r. 1818-1858).9

In two exceptional cases, the repatriation involved hundreds of enslaved Kongo subjects from Brazil. These occurred after Kings Álvaro I (r. 1568–1587) and Pedro II (r. 1622–1624) exerted pressure on the Portuguese crown and colonial authorities, compelling them to return numerous free-born Kongolese subjects, including people outside the elite classes.10

These examples represent successful attempts to extend anti-slavery laws beyond the boundaries of individual states, despite the limited capacity of rulers to enforce such claims and the reliance on European diplomatic intermediaries.

In some exceptional cases, African diplomats visiting Brazil, whose movements were restricted to the colonial capitals, managed to obtain the release of their subjects. In 1604, the Kongo ambassador António Manuel, who passed through Salvador de Bahia on his way to Rome, ransomed a Kongo slave named Pedro Mambala whom he considered to be illegally enslaved.11

Bust of António Manuel ne Vunda (d. 1608), Ambassador from the Kingdom of Kongo to the Vatican. Santa Maria Maggiore Baptistery, Rome, Italy.

Share

While a few other African envoys are known to have visited Brazil in the 18th century, their movements were similarly circumscribed, and there is little evidence of direct interaction with the African diaspora in the slave colony.12

This context helps explain why the first African elite to stay in Brazil for a considerable period during the 17th century, and witness the atrocities of American slavery through interactions with the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, brought an international court case before the head of all Christendom in the Vatican for the abolition of slavery.

In recent decades, the historiography of abolition has increasingly recognized the contributions of enslaved Africans in shaping early abolitionist movements, whether through the establishment of independent maroon communities as early as the 16th century13, or through the writings of intellectuals such as Wilhelm Amo (d. 1759), Ignatius Sancho (d. 1780), Ottobah Cugoano (d. 1791), and Olaudah Equiano (d. 1797).14

These movements preceded the universal abolition of slavery, that begun with the Republic of Haiti in 1804 and was later followed by Britain’s Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.

Olaudah Equiano, c.1789

Yet nearly two centuries before the formal abolition of Slavery, an African prince from the kingdom of Ndongo (modern Angola), whose family had been exiled to Brazil for rejecting Portuguese demand for slaves, spearheaded an international legal case against the kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity.

From 1684 to 1686, Prince Lourenço da Silva Mendonça presented his case before the Vatican, calling for the freedom of all enslaved people and other oppressed groups, including Indigenous Americans and New Christians (Jewish converts to Christianity).

Having learned of the atrocities suffered by enslaved workers in Brazil’s sugar mills, albeit as a free man and royal exile, Mendonça travelled to Spain and Portugal, where he became an attorney general representing the Confraternities of Black Christians made up of former slaves in Brazil, Portugal and Spain.

Using documents from historical archives in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, and the Vatican, the historian José Lingna Nafafé has reconstructed Mendonça’s 2-year-long legal debate in the Vatican. Nafafé’s groundbreaking research has uncovered one of the earliest and best-documented examples of African agency in the fight against slavery.

My latest Patreon article explores the international travels and abolitionist case of Mendonça and the history of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, concluding with a review of Nafafé’s research in the context of pre-colonial African slavery and abolition.

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

A 17TH CENTURY AFRICAN ABOLITIONIST

Before the discovery of petroleum, the Industrial Revolution was powered by Palm Oil, an ancient West African commodity whose trade drove a period of remarkable economic growth during the 19th century.

African producers, middlemen, and migrant traders concentrated in the oil-rich Delta region of present-day southern Nigeria, where they established a thriving commercial network.

They pioneered the adoption of steamship services in the region, and some African merchants acquired their own sail ships to transport oil directly to Britain, bypassing European intermediaries.

Competition between African traders and European intermediaries sparked an intense trade war over the marketing of the oil, which ended with the displacement of the African traders and the imposition of colonial rule.

The European traders who usurped and monopolised the Oil trade saw their fortunes rise during the early colonial period, leading to a series of mergers that created Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer brand conglomerates.

This “century of palm oil” foreshadowed some of the challenges that would later characterize the crude oil industry in the postcolonial era, as Africans attempted to retain control of their resource wealth in the face of foreign commercial interests.

This article examines the history of Palm Oil trade in 19th century West-Africa and its enduring influence on the region’s modern economy.

Map of the West African Coast in the nineteenth century, showing the major sources of commodities.1

Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community; subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all:

PATREON

A brief history of palm oil before the 19th century

The earliest reference to West African Palm oil comes from the Venetian Sailor Alvise Cadamosto’s description of Senegal in the 1460s: “In this country they use a certain oil in their food, [the making of which I do not know]. It has three properties, the scent of violets, the taste of our olive oil, and a colour which tinges the food like saffron, but is more attractive.”2

The Portuguese captain Pacheco Pereira, writing of visits to West Africa in the 1480s, referred to palm oil being offered for sale along the Forcados River in the Niger Delta (southern Nigeria). As early as 1522, the kingdom of Benin (S.W Nigeria) was exporting Palm Oil to European traders, who noted that besides its consumption, Palm oil was used to light lamps in the city.3

Writing in the 17th century, Jon Barbot reported that ‘This palm oil is of great use to the inhabitants [of Guinea] in several respects, for besides its serving to season their meat, fish, etc., and to burn in their lamps to light them at night, it is an excellent ointment against rheumatick pains, winds and colds in the limbs, or other like diseases.’4

While Barbot was describing the coastal and near-coastal regions, Oil lamps were of significant antiquity in the West African Savannah and Sahel; some of the earliest were found in the medieval city of Gao, dated to 780-1000 CE.5

Mande blacksmiths and other groups such as the Senufu, Bambara, and Dogon made and used a variety of lamp forms since the Middle Ages. Most of these lamps used shea-butter oil, although some Mande groups used palm oil as they moved south to the forest region, or imported it from the near-coastal regions.6

Copper oil lamp. Kogi, Lokoja, Nigeria. ca. 1883. Quai Branly

(left) oil lamp. Bozo, Mali. 19th century. Yale University Art Gallery (center) standard lamp. Northern Nigeria, ca. 1883-1895. British Museum. (right) Oil Lamp, Benin City, Nigeria. 19th century. MARKK Museum.

Initially, the export of palm oil, while moderate, expanded with the growth of the Atlantic trade, the oil being used for provisions on the voyage to the Americas. During the subsequent centuries, an increasing quantity of the oil was traded to Europe.7

It was in the early nineteenth century, following the abolition of the British slave trade, that palm oil exports from West Africa began to increase significantly. Thereafter, palm oil was to become the quintessential commodity of the era of so-called ‘legitimate trade’ for large parts of the West African coast.

The general pattern that has been discerned for the geographical development of the palm oil trade in Africa over time has been that the trade centred on the Niger Delta area during the late 18th century, first at Calabar on the Cross River and then at Bonny at the mouth of the Rio Real.8

By the middle of the 19th century, ports like Badagry and Ouidah in the Bight of Benin, and regions such as the Gold Coast (Ghana), the Windward Coast to Sierra Leone, and the Cameroon-Gabon-Angola coastal region in the south were developed as important entreports in the Oil trade.

Calabar, Nigeria. ca. 1930-1939. MAA, Cambridge.

Rows of metal oil barrels with iron sheds in the distance. Niger River, Nigeria. ca. 1913. Pitt Rivers Museum

Subscribe now

Cultivation, Processing, and Trade of Palm Oil before the early 19th century.

The palm oil is derived from the fruit of the oil palm (elaeis guineensis). The tree is native to West Africa’s forest region and grows in a belt parallel to the Atlantic coast in West and Central Africa, extending from Cape Verde to Angola

Excavations from the Neolithic site of Bosumpra in Ghana recovered Botanical samples of various domesticates, including endocarps of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) from the 6th millennium BC (8410 ± 40 BP), indicating that it was one of the earliest plant domesticates in West Africa's forest region.9

West Africa in the nineteenth century, showing the extent of the palm produce exporting belt. Map by R. Law.

The nuts produced by the oil palm contain a fleshy outer pericarp, from which palm oil is produced, and an inner kernel from which palm kernel oil is derived.

The latter is a colourless, translucent oil, similar to coconut oil, while palm oil itself is a bright orange-yellow colour, with an odour often compared to violets. The tree can live for up to two hundred years and bears fruit for at least sixty.10

They were harvested by cutting the bunches of nuts from the tree, a highly skilled and sometimes dangerous task. Most producers relied on their own labour to do this, but in some areas labour would be provided by outside specialists such as the Isuama, Urhobo, and the Aboh Igbo, who travelled among neighbouring peoples during the season for this purpose.

The fruits would be left to store for a period, in pits, canoes, or in piles, in order to encourage fermentation and loosen the nuts from the bunch. Depending on the type of oil to be produced, the fermented fruits are later mashed or pounded, and boiled in water, with the oil floating to the surface to be skimmed off.11

The typical Yoruba oil mill (eku) was a large circular container built on an open rock surface, with the rock surface for its base. Inside it, the boiled palm nuts were pressed to extract the oil. The process, plus other ancillary processes, yielded not only the edible oil and fats, but also the palm kernel oil used for medicine and cosmetics and various fuels for lighting, for cooking, and for use in high-heat furnaces.12

The oil was then collected in earthen pots in loads of about five gallons, and taken to the markets.

Scene of palm oil production. Côte D’ivoire. ca. 1936. British Museum

Palm oil clarification. Taken from ‘The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State’ by H.M.Stanley, 1890

(left) Clay palm-oil container. Cameroon, 20th century. British Museum. (right) Market scene: calabashes containing palm oil strung with rope, on ground in front of an open structure with a corrugated iron roof. Akwete, Nigeria. ca. 1895-1905. British Museum

Initially, wild palms were the basis for production, though in time deliberate cultivation became common, especially in Yorubaland and Dahomey where the bulk of the oil came from small-scale farmers and was supplemented by that derived from estates worked by captives and client farmers.

Yorubaland had an extensive distribution of oil palms. By 1892, it was claimed, there were some 15 million palm trees in Yorubaland being used to produce oil for export, of which 15,000 tons a year were exported by the Egba of Abeokuta in 1856.13

The reason for the sharp rise in the trade lay in the increasing industrialisation of Britain during the nineteenth century and the demand this generated for tropical products. Palm oil was used as a lubricant for industrial machinery and railway stock as well as being an essential ingredient in the manufacture of soap and candles. It was valued too as an important source of glycerine and in the processing of tinplate.

During the nineteenth century the volume of palm oil imports into Britain from West Africa grew from 2,233 cwt (111 tons) in 1807 to reach a peak of 1,058,989 cwt (53,000 tons) in 1895. By the 1850s, this trade in palm oil was joined by trade in palm kernels, whose imports rose from 592 tons in 1855 to 34,186 tons by 1895. These supplied the mass market for cheap margarine, with the residue being used as cattle food.14

Equally important was the response of African producers to demand, sparked by the sharp shift in the terms of trade between Europe and Africa in this period.

According to Eltis and Jennings, the terms of trade between Africa and the Atlantic world moved in favour of Africa from around 1680 to 1870 as prices for African exports rose relative to manufactured goods. Although the export trade remained relatively marginal for West Africa as a whole, the coastal enclaves and intermediaries were greatly affected by changes in external trade.15

Palm Oil trade in the first half of the 19th century. Table by Martin Lynn

Warehouses along the River Niger used for storing palm oil. ca. 1886-1895. MAA, Cambridge.

Old Calabar Factories, Near Duketown, 1885. H.M.Stanley.

Subscribe now

Operation of the Oil Trade: Major Entrepôts and African Traders.

In general, little oil was produced within the coastal entrepôts themselves. Rather, it was their hinterland that became the major oil-producing area in the early 19th century.

In South-Eastern Nigeria, the combination of the dense clusters of oil palms and the availability of waterways for transport was crucial for the development of export oil production.

[see my previous article on Navigation, trade and civilization on Africa’s second Nile]

In the Bight of Biafra, much of the oil came from the Igbo-speaking societies in the interior, as well as the Ibibo farmers up the Cross River. Riverports such as Umon and Ikpa served as markets where Uruan-Ibibio and Igbo producers brought the oil for purchase by intermediaries, such as the Ikpa and Enyong-Ibibio, before sale to the Efik traders of Old Calabar.16

The Bight of Biafra in the 19th century, highlighting the major oil-exporting ports. Map by Martin Lynn

‘Old Calabar Port, painting by John Hughes, (c. 1880) (Source: National Museum, Calabar, Nigeria)’ Reproduced by Joseph Godlewski.

The lower Niger was a major artery for oil supplies, with markets at Ossomari, Onitsha, and Aboh collecting oil to trade down the river to Delta ports like Nembe.’ Oil from the Nri-Awka on the Anambra River passed into the trading system on the Niger and thence into the Delta; similarly, Oguta traders tapped supplies in the west of Igboland before selling to Kalabari who transported it to the Delta.17

Transportation was the major constraint to the expansion of the Oil trade outside the Bight of Biafra, where a dense network of waterways greatly reduced the costs of moving bulk goods from the interior. Producers in the Gold Coast region, the Bight of Benin, the coast of Cameroon, and the Southward coast used a combination of head porterage and riverine transportation.18

The canoes used by African oil traders/brokers for transportation were immense, with the largest carrying up to eight or nine tons or 2,400 gallons in twelve casks/puncheons of oil at a time. These canoes represented huge capital expenditure for the traders involved.

Massive fleets of canoes, each requiring up to forty paddlers or ‘pullerboys’, would set out from Bonny up the creeks of the interior to visit the oil markets. King Eyo of Old Calabar was said to have 400 canoes in his fleet in 1847; the king of Aboh 300 in 1841.19

Palm oil casks ready for shipping on Badagry Beach. Nigeria (1923). Alamy Images

Where water transport was not available, headloading provided the means of conveying oil to the coast. It is estimated that headloading was twenty times as expensive as water transport in the Sierra Leone area. Therefore, caravans of porters only reached as far as the nearest riverport, or used alternative methods like rolling casks, eg in the Gold Coast region and the Bight of Benin.20

Both the volume of trade and prices of palm oil rose sharply during the first half of the 19th century, entered its heyday in the 1850s, after which it stagnated as prices fell steeply. In the second half of the 19th century, West African producers began exporting palm oil and kernels to Germany, the USA, and France, although Britain remained the biggest market.21

In the first half of the century, most British traders relied on their ships’ captains to trade for them. Trade focused on individuals, where personal contacts and experience were at a premium.

This was particularly so for the negotiations over ‘coomey’, a payment for permission to trade, paid by the British trader to the King and/or his major trading chiefs, as well as for the other charges, including payment for pilots, and the numerous payments to maintain goodwill and contacts.22

It was the ports of the Bight of Biafra that led the way in the expansion of oil exports in the early 19th century. Old Calabar was the major initial exporter of oil since the 18th century, with oil exports rising from 700-800 tons per annum before 1807, to 4,000-5,000 tons p.a in the 1830s, where they would remain for much of the century.23

Central to this growth in Old Calabar’s oil trade was the role of Duke Ephraim, who effectively created a monopoly of the oil trade and attracted credit based essentially on his personal reputation and his unprecedented tenure simultaneously of several key offices. After his death in 1834, the main Efik traders at Old Calabar relied on pre-existing institutions such as the Ekpe society to regulate trade.24

Those who had traded under the auspices of the Duke now carried on business in their own right, and negotiated their own credit. By the 1850s, there were at least ten major traders, including men of slave origin such as Black Davis, Yellow Duke, and Bassey Henshaw. These advanced in social rank by managing the businesses of their former masters, who were more concerned with political affairs, and later took control of the latter’s business after his death.25

During this period, wealthy Oil merchants who also held important political offices in Calabar commissioned the construction of prefabricated iron and wood houses that were shipped from Liverpool, some of which are still extant. They include Chief Egbo Bassey’s House from 1886 on Boco Street; the houses of Prince Edem Archibong at Offiong Street, as well as the houses of Obong Eyo Honesty IX and Chief Ekpo Udo Iko in Creektown.26

“King Eyamba’s Iron Palace”. (Eyamba V, r. 1834-1847) Old Calabar (Source: Hope Masterson Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa 1829-1858. 243) Image reproduced by Joseph Godlewski.

The Iron Palace of King Eyambo, Old Calabar, (Source: The Builder, 1843, May 13, 1843. 171). Image reproduced by Joseph Godlewski

Prince Archibong’s House, Duketown, Calabar, undated photograph (Source: National Museum at the Old Residency, Calabar, Nigeria). Image reproduced by Joseph Godlewski

House of Chief Ekpo Udo-Iko, Creek Town, Calabar, photograph, 1898, NCMM Archive.

‘Native Settlement, Old Calabar. View of Government Hill from Mission Hill (1890-1905) (Source: The British Museum, Af,A47.7). View of native town of Old Calabar showing a settlement of thatched rectangular shelters and corrugated iron shelters with two to four stories’ Image and Caption by Joseph Godlewski

Interior of a Palm Oil factory, Old Calabar, ca. 1890. Joseph Hankinson Reading.

Old Calabar’s share of the export trade was later reduced by the emergence of Bonny, whose exports rose from a few hundred tonnes in 1812-17 to 7,000-8,000 tons by the late 1840s, and 12,421 tons by 1851.27

At the heart of the Oil trading system of Bonny was the ‘canoe house,’ a lineage system that was transformed for trading, military, and political purposes. At its simplest, it was a house able to maintain a war canoe, which in turn absorbed non-lineage members including migrants, clients, and slaves, who rose in seniority on the strength of their abilities.

The Amanyanabo (King) William Dappa Pepple, who ascended the Bonny throne in 1837, is remembered as an immensely successful oil trader who opened new inland markets for the oil trade. His reign was marked by a great rivalry between the two major Houses of Manilla Pepple and Anna Pepple, and between them and his own House. He controlled the external trade, including the credit/trust contracts with the European traders and the taxes/coomey they paid.28

King of Bonny’s War Canoe. taken from ‘Côte occidentale d’Afrique : vues, scènes, croquis’ ca. 1890

King Koko of Nembe (Brass) in His War Canoe on His Way down the River, from The Daily Graphic of March 30, 1895

Three other ports in the Bight of Biafra were to develop important roles in the trade as it expanded during the 1830s and 1840s. One of these was Brass, which exported about 2-2,500 tons by the 1850s. Another such port was Bonny’s neighbour, Elem Kalabari (New Calabar), whose market was served by the same traders operating at Bonny. The last was the coast of Cameroon, whose export trade grew from just 50-60 tons pa in 1810s to 1,000-2,000 by the 1850s.29

The Bight of Biafra ports remained the heart of the trade from its first growth in the 1810s through to the middle of the century and beyond, providing over half of British imports. Yet the Bight of Biafra’s proportionate contribution to West African exports declined as the expansion of this period brought new ports into the trade, particularly after 1830.

In the hinterland of Cameroon, the quintessential precolonial middlemen were the Duala of the Wouri estuary who monopolised trade with the interior, and controlled the provision of trust from European coastal traders. ‘Kings’ such as Bell and Akwa emerged by the 19th century as the major traders of the area with their own capitals in the estuary; from these they organised their trade up the Wouri, Dibombe, and Mungo Rivers into the interior to collect oil.30

Cameroon, ca. 1890. Image by Joseph Hankinson Reading.

Palace of the Doula King Bell in 1841 and its 1905 reconstruction.

The Bight of Benin began to contribute considerable quantities from the 1830s, rising to 30% of British imports by the 1850s. Exports mainly came through the ports of Itsekiri and Badagry, while the inland kingdom of Dahomey sold as much as 2,000 tons pa through Ouidah. From the 1840s, the Gold Coast was providing around 10%, some coming from the inland kingdom of Asante, with exports rising from 248 tons in 1810 to 2,228 tons by 1845.31

‘A.O.N. yard Badagry Sept 1927. Showing palm kernels down for inspection before buying’

Elsewhere, the Windward Coast ( Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire), and the South Coast from Gabon to Angola were late to develop and provided less than 5% each to British imports by the mid-19th century, although significant exports were sent to France and other regions.

In Sierra Leone, a long-established trading network existed whereby Temne, Limba, and Mende traders brought produce to the coast. This system operated around ‘landlord/stranger’ relationships whereby African traders on the coast would provide hospitality for traders arriving from the interior. By the 1840s, Krio traders from Freetown became more settled in markets in the interior, replacing local traders in the produce and oil trade of this area.32

Palm Oil ready for Shipment. Gabon, ca. 1890. Joseph Hankinson Reading

Rider Trading Post with barrels of palm oil, ca. 1893-1925. Jaqueville, Côte D’ivoire. Quai Branly

Share

Trade wars and expansion of credit in the Oil economy of the late 19th century.

Coastal trade in most parts of the delta operated on the basis of ‘trust’, ie; credit in goods given by the European trader to the African middleman to sell in the interior markets for oil, which he would then deliver to the waiting agent on the river.

Large sums of credit could be involved in trust, often provided in the form of trade goods. In some of the Delta ports, individual traders received from between £3,000 and £5,000 worth of credits. At Bonny in 1855, British goods given on trust to Bonny traders were over £80,000. Old Calabar was an area where trust appears to have become particularly inflated: over £200,000 was owed in trust in 1851 and reportedly over £400,000 by 1857. 33

(** £1,000 in 1855 is equivalent to approximately £140,000 today)

The types of trade goods demanded varied from area to area, including cowrie-shell currency, especially in Yorubaland and Dahomey, cotton textiles (initially from India, later from Britain but also local West African cloth), and other items such as firearms, salt and copper, especially in Calabar, where it was used in the making of brass artworks.34

(left) Circular brass tray decorated with an elephant standing in front of a palm tree (right) Brass dish decorated with a punched design featuring a mermaid in the centre with a bifurcated scaly tail and wearing a crown, encircled by Nsibidi symbols. Early 20th century, Pitt Rivers Museum.

Interior of a Native House at Old Calabar, West Central Africa. Note Native Brassware. Taken from ‘The living races of mankind’ ca. 1902

The oil trade in the Delta involved a mutually beneficial relationship between African and European traders that was recognised as benefiting both. Various mechanisms developed to cement these ties, such as the use of ‘pidgin’ (a modified form of English) and the sending of the sons of traders to England for education. All of these methods had been in place before the 19th century.35

While it was in the interest of both parties to maintain the trade, the system of trust could lead to considerable friction, as markets at times ended up with far more credit than could ever be returned in oil in several years.

The consequences of this credit inflation were, at best, considerable delay, at worst, violence, as some European traders at times seized oil they felt was owed to them, and, in the later years, called for direct political intervention by consuls (representatives of their governments at the coast).36

The transition to oil exports in the 19th century from the slave trade of the preceding period was initially thought to have marked a break in West Africa’s economic history. Mass-produced imports became accessible to large numbers of people, and production came to include non-elites and smaller-scale producers, generating linkages that spread widely in the interior.37

However, more recent scholarship has shown that it was mostly established elites, rather than new entrepreneurs, who could take advantage of the economies of scale in the organisation of labour; transportation using large canoes, and the marketing of oil to European buyers. There was therefore no crisis of adaptation to the new trade, since these economic changes occurred within pre-existing patterns of exchange.38

Although the second half of the century saw continuing growth in the volume of the oil trade between West Africa and Britain, these increases in volumes did not compensate for the fall in prices of this period. The value of British imports of palm oil fell over the period from £1,697,803 in 1855 to £872,588 in 1899.

Palm Oil trade in the second half of the 19th century. Tables by Martin Lynn

This was largely due to the introduction of the new freight services via the steamship, which opened the oil trade to new, smaller traders, both European and African, and increased competition within it.

Ultimately, the main threat on the supply side came from the discovery of major sources of mineral oil (petroleum) in Pennsylvania in 1859. Petroleum, together with its derivative kerosene, was rapidly to replace other oils in the illumination and lubrication market, first in the US, and later in Britain.39

These pressures had important effects on palm producers, squeezing their incomes and obliging farmers to develop new strategies to deal with them.

The decline in prices was partially offset by the growing trade in palm kernel oil, which had previously been discarded as a byproduct of the oil processing. Other traders moved into new commodities like Cocoa and rubber, while those who stayed in the oil trade initially attempted to increase supplies to offset the slump in prices.

European traders now moved inland, establishing “floating factories” that were essentially old, disused ships (hulks) run by resident agents, and on which oil could be bulked while waiting for the steamers. Burton estimated that up to 1,000 Europeans were living in the Delta in 1864.40

Trading Hulk ‘Parraca’, Calabar. ca. 1919 - 1932. MAA, Cambridge.

Comparative size of the Delta War Canoe and a trading Hulk: ‘Chief Dore’s canoe and the government hulk, Sapele, 1896. Rhodes House Library, MS. Afr. R239 No. 2. Photograph © Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK.’

The reputation of these European traders, often called “palm oil ruffians,” was decidedly negative;

According to one report, the whites in the trade were “ignorant, brutal men with a crew of ruffians who, when drunk, were like dangerous wild beasts —a crew that had to be ruled with a rod of iron and were only kept under control by threats of having their brains blown out by the ever ready pistol.” adding that “The way in which those traders treated the natives was simply regulated by the power of the natives to avenge ill-treatment.”41

Another report noted that British officials castigated the European palm oil traders specifically in Cameroon for “showing them [local Africans] every day examples of fraud, drunkenness and violence accompanied by the most infamous and abusive language.’’42

Their floating factories became centres of large expatriate African communities such as the Krio from Sierra Leone, estimated at 2,000-3,000 in the Delta area in 1871. Some of the Krio traders competed with European traders, who inturn, thwarted the former’s attempts to utilise the steamships to export oil directly to Britain.

Incidentally, the increasing populations of European traders resulted in the decrease of social interactions with their African counterparts beyond the trade, and attempts to undermine African authorities, who in turn greatly restricted their stay and movements outside the ships, at times violently.43

At the beginning of the intense competition between African and European traders in Old Calabar, King Eyo II of Creek Town began sending oil directly to Britain on the steamer service between 1855 and 1857 using the Krio as his agents. European traders, threatened by this alliance, seized the cargo, claiming that the oil involved represented unpaid debts.

In 1857, Eyo chartered a brig (two-mast sailing ship) from Liverpool, the Olinda, which shipped oil directly to Britain in his own name. European traders again claimed that the oil represented unpaid debts, blaming the Scottish Presbyterian missionaries for encouraging Eyo. Unfortunately, Eyo II passed away in December 1858, a few months after his brig had returned.44

Similar attempts by West African traders to ship oil directly to Britain, or purchase steamboats to transport larger quantities of oil down the rivers, were frustrated by opposition from European competitors or bankruptcy, as in the case of John Ocansey of Ghana.

Ocansey famously travelled from his native Ghana to England in order to collect a bad debt of £2,678 ( £416,000 today) from the Liverpool-based trader named Robert W. Hickson, who had misappropriated the money meant for the purchase of a steamboat.

[ see my previous article on ‘Chasing English debtors: the travel account of a West African trader in 19th-century England’ ]

Ephrahim Town, with Old Calabar. King Eyo-Honesty’s canoe. Her Majesty’s Steam-sloop Rattler saluting. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 22 June 1850.

Portrait of John E. Ocansey in Liverpool and one of the family properties in Ghana.

Eyo’s failure meant that the role of intermediaries and producers was to remain circumscribed; the frontier of the trade war was to remain in Africa rather than being brought to Britain, and Africans were not to be allowed to get a footing in the oceanic trade of these years. The coastal traders of West Africa were not to become the capitalist class that would transform the region’s economy.

As the trade began to change under the impact of the steamer services, violent clashes between British and African traders and authorities became much more common, especially over taxes, credit, and the conduct of trade.45

British traders increasingly appealed to the consul, whose authority, often in the form of treaties, began to encroach upon the authority of the African sovereigns. African traders responded by forming alliances to stop trade and cut off provisions to the floating factories until they could obtain favorable terms. As a last resort, African armies halted the advance of the European competitors inland, often by shooting at the latter’s ships, or simply by putting on a show of force during negotiations.46

The severe fall in produce prices and the adverse shift in the terms of trade of the 1880s and 1890s were a new kind of threat and were seriously to affect the incomes of African traders. Attempts were made by African traders in Bonny and Brass in this period, and, most famously, by King Jaja of Opobo between 1885 and 1887 to use steamer services to trade directly with Europe.

Jaja seceded from Bonny in 1869 to establish Opobo state, becoming one of the most consummate oil African traders of the Delta. When new European traders tried to undercut his trade by moving inland and operating a price ring against Jaja to force prices down, Jaja attempted to ship his oil directly to Britain.

The companies compelled the British consul to intervene, initially by refusing to pay coomey, and later by a failed attempt at forcefully moving inland. Jaja was kidnapped, taken to Accra, and deported by the British vice-consul Harry Johnston in 1887.47

During his absence from Opobo, Johnston and successive British consuls tried in vain to break up his commercial organization by using gun-boats to beat down local opposition and escort British merchants to the inland sources of Jaja’s supplies of raw materials without the benefit of the services of Jaja’s commercial organization. The effort failed after six years of losses, and the British firms sold out to Jaja’s men in 1893 and were forced back to the coast.48

Old Calabar, West Coast of Africa (1873) (Source: Illustrated News of London, October 18, 1873. 376). Image reproduced by Joseph Godlewski

Share

Epilogue: Twilight of the Palm Oil industry, Colonial rule and the rise of Unilever.

In the last decade of the 19th century, European traders at the coast came to see political intervention as a solution to the economic problems facing their side of the trade. This push for intervention was intensified by the colonial scramble as French and German interlopers competed with established British firms along the coast for both territory and market share.49

In 1891 the Oil Rivers Protectorate (from 1893 the Niger Coast Protectorate) was established, with its headquarters at Old Calabar. Among its first actions were to set duties on imports into the protectorate and to abolish the coomey tax paid to African authorities, replacing it with subsidies to chiefs. Over the following years, the colonial administration pushed deep inland, culminating with the invasion of Nembe in 1895.50

The imposition of colonial administration — British, French, and German — in the coastal regions of West Africa during the 1890s marked the end of an economic era.

While it would take several years before the powerful coastal African traders disappeared, their role in the oil trade had ended. Their financial power was usurped by European commercial agents, who became the principal beneficiaries of the early 20th-century oil boom, at least until the interwar period and the Great Depression of 1929.51

The most prominent among these European firms were the conglomerates U.A.C. and Lever Brothers, which eventually became Unilever in 1930 after merging with the Dutch company Margarine Unie.

As these businesses merged and became multinational, they became increasingly detached from the African peasants from whose labor their wealth was extracted.

These companies’ fortunes were originally built on the trade in southern Nigerian palm oil and palm-kernels. William Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers in 1885, was one of the European traders who took over the markets previously dominated by African traders like Jaja. 52

Near the end of the colonial period, South-East Asia became a major competitor in the global market for palm oil, after the introduction of high-yielding varieties from West Africa in 1917, and the neglect of the palm oil industry in colonial Nigeria.

By 1966, Malaysia had overtaken Nigeria as the world’s largest exporter of Palm Oil, and the latter’s share of global production steadily declined in the post-colonial period, as focus was directed to the nascent trade in Crude Oil.53

The emergence of the palm oil trade illustrates the broader development of international commodity markets during the 19th century and the crucial role of West African tropical products in the Industrial Revolution.

It also highlights the integration of African producers and traders into that world market; one in which attempts by Africans to benefit from their resource wealth were curtailed by foreign commercial interests, colonial conquest, and the asymmetrical economic relationships that continue to the present day.

Adapalm, Imo State, Nigeria.

In pre-Islamic North Africa, powerful historical figures like Queen Kahena of the Aurès (N.E Algeria) and Tin-Hinan, the ancestress of the Tuaregs in Ahaggar (S.E Algeria), greatly shaped the cultural traditions of Berber-speaking groups.

My Latest Patreon Article examines the historical evidence for the pre-Islamic ‘Matriarchs’ of North Africa and the Matrilineal systems of the Central Sahara.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

MATRIARCHS OF ANCIENT NORTH AFRICA

The terms Matriarchy (maternal rule) and Matrilineality (maternal ancestry) are at times used interchangeably in popular literature to describe ancient and contemporary societies where women have greater autonomy and social standing.

While the existence of “true matriarchies” or gynecocracies is still a matter of debate among modern anthropologists, the existence of Matrilineal kinship systems is well documented in several societies across the world, both past and present.

According to evolutionary theories of the late 19th century, which have since been largely discredited in modern anthropology, matriarchy and matrilineality represented an early stage of social development through which human societies passed before becoming patrilineal and patriarchal.1

These erroneous assertions were based, in part, on historical descriptions of matrilineal systems of succession and the elevated status of women, who at times occupied the highest political office, in societies at the periphery of the Greco-Roman world during the classical period, and the Arab world during the Middle Ages.2

Medieval Arab writers and travelers, such as Ibn Battuta (d. 1369) and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), reported, often with disapproval, about matrilineal succession systems in Medieval Ghana and Mali, the southern Berber-speakers of Air and Walata, the kingdom of Makuria/Nubia, and the Malabar coast of South-Western India.3

These customs attracted particular attention in communities that had adopted Islam, as they appeared incongruous with prevailing Islamic social norms.

The Arab writers were astonished by the importance of maternal ancestry, the deference shown to the mother and sister of the King, and the transmission of property and power to the King’s maternal nephew. Many expressed disapproval of the relative freedom enjoyed by women in their speech and conduct, as well as their refusal to veil their faces.

While some of these observations about the status of women in these societies are supported by modern ethnographic studies, other aspects, such as their ability to exercise political authority, vary considerably. In particular, the presence of women sovereigns reigning with full authority appears to be just as exceptional in African history as they were in World History.

Contrary to evolutionary theories, these African women sovereigns, like the Candaces of Meroitic Kush (250BC-360 CE) and the Queens who succeeded Queen Nzinga in the kingdom of Matamba (Angola, 17th-19th century), came to power only after long periods of male rule.

They typically ascended the throne during periods of political crisis, when the emergence of capable rulers could transcend established gender norms. Their successful reigns, in turn, strengthened the legitimacy of subsequent women sovereigns.

Queen Amanitore of Kush smiting her enemies. Temple of Naqa, 1st century CE, Sudan.

Queen Njinga with captured missionaries, late 17th-century illustration, Virgili Collection (Biblioteca Estense Universitaria).

In some African societies, women sovereigns are associated with the pre-Islamic period.

In the traditional histories of the Hausa kingdom of Daura (Nigeria), the rule of the first Muslim king was preceded by the reign of queens. These bore the title of Magajiya (Heiress) and succeeded each other presumably by right of matrilineal descent. The last of these queens was Daura, after whom the city-state was named. The throne was transferred to her son and his male heirs, while the Magajiya became the Queen Mother.4

Similar founding traditions in the Hausa city of Zaria were recorded in the early 19th century, which attribute the expansion of the city-state and the construction of its walls to the 15th/16th century Queen Amina. While the city-state was reportedly named after her less flamboyant sister, Zaria, many earthworks and ramparts in northwestern Hausaland are known as Amina’s walls (Ganuwar Amina).5

The historicity of Amina is in less doubt than the Queens of Daura and their matrilineal succession system.

But what is more significant is that these figures are associated with the transitional period preceding the adoption of Islam, and some of the legendary queens are deified among the traditional religious systems (Bori) of the non-Muslim Hausa.6

Gold earrings, pendant, and ring from a burial of an elite woman, 13th-14th century, Durbi Takusheyi, Katsina State, Nigeria. NCMM

Walls of Zaria, mid-20th century.

Arguably the most significant historical evidence for maternal succession and authority in pre-Islamic Africa comes from the Berber-speaking (Imazighen) communities of the central Sahara.

While contemporary Berber societies are predominantly patrilineal, historical documentation and modern ethnography have noted, for certain regions, the persistence of matrilineal succession, the presence of women in the public sphere, and the enduring prestige accorded to figures such as the 7th-century Queen Kahena of the Aurès (N.E Algeria) and Tin-Hinan, the ancestress of the Tuaregs in Ahaggar (S.E Algeria).

Monument to Dihya (Kahina), Baghai, Algeria.

Since Medieval times, Arab writers and travellers have constructed the veiled nomad of the Sahara as a strange and exotic figure.

The apparent coexistence of seemingly contradictory social practices both surprised and unsettled these observers. Such writers are all the more indignant about the liberal attitudes of the women and the matrilineal nature of filiation and succession, which coexisted with a strong adherence to Islam.

In the late 19th century, the Matrilineal aspects of these societies were reinterpreted by some European authors in a positive light: they saw in them evidence of chivalric refinement attributed to the supposed influence of Christianity on their social behavior, and linked them to the mythical Amazons of classical literature.

The 7th-century Berber resistance of the Queen Kahena against the Arab invasion, in particular, was transformed by French Colonialists to serve specific ideological purposes.

However, such interpretive models reveal more about the values ​​and social order upheld by outside observers than the true meaning of the practices they described.

My Latest Patreon Article examines the historical evidence for the pre-Islamic ‘Matriarchs’ of North Africa and the Matrilineal systems of the Central Sahara.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

MATRIARCHS OF ANCIENT NORTH AFRICA

The city of Agadez was one of the major urban centers of late medieval West Africa. Described as the gateway to the desert, it served as the capital of a Tuareg sultanate whose diverse population reflected broader transformations in the cultural landscape of precolonial West Africa.

Over the course of its history, Agadez was incorporated into the empires of Songhai, Bornu, and Kebbi before briefly emerging as a major regional center, where merchants supplied the Saharan Oases with commodities and manufactures from the south.

The UNESCO-designated Historic Centre of Agadez is home to one of the most iconic monuments of Sudano-Sahelian architecture: the Agadez minaret, which is the tallest mud-brick structure in the world.

While the city fell into decline in the later period, it remained a significant center of scholarship and regional trade. Its distinctive social geography was quite unlike the modern image of the desert city as a transit hub to the Mediterranean.

This article examines the history of Agadez since the late Middle Ages, focusing on its political development, architecture, and commercial networks

The empires of West Africa and the Maghreb in the 16th century. Map by S. Pradines.

Support AfricanHistoryExtra by becoming a member of our Patreon community, subscribe here to read more about African history, download free books, and keep this newsletter free for all:

PATREON

The city of Agadez was founded as the capital of the polity known as the Sultanate of Aïr/Ahir during the early 15th century.1

This sultanate first appears in al-’Umarī’s description of medieval Mālī in the 1330s, when it is mentioned as one of three independent bidān/“white” Berber kingdoms north of Mali.2

The globe-trotter Ibn Battuta, who visited medieval Mali in 1353, also met with a Berber sultan, Takarkari, in the Aïr region (present-day northern Niger). He did not specify where he resided, but mentions a matrilineal succession system associated with the rulers of Agadez.3

Agadez appears as a seat of power in the late 15th century, when the Egyptian scholar al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) wrote a treatise for the kings of Takrur (West Africa); King Muḥammad b. Sattafan, “Lord of Agadez” and his brothers, and to Ibrahim Sura (c.1493-8), King of Katsina in Hausaland (Northern Nigeria).4 Whether the name Sattafan (ie; “black”/sūdān**) denotes the identity of the king is a matter of debate.5

[**On West Africa’s pre-colonial concepts of “race,” see my previous essay: The myth of the Hamitic race in religious and pseudo-scientific literature ]

Al-Suyūṭī’s letter mentions both the King’s nephew Muḥammad b. ʻAbd-ar-Raḥmān, who was likely in power in 1501/2 when the Songhai emperor Askiya Muhammad (r. 1493-1528) invaded Agadez.

The Askiya’s expedition is mentioned in the 17th-century Timbuktu chronicle, Taʾrīkh al-Sūdān, as directed against “Tildza” in “Ayar,” from where the Askiya obtained the kakaki (long ceremonial copper horns). According to the historian John Hunwick who translated the chronicle, Tildza Tanat was the royal nickname of Muḥammad b. ʻAbd-ar-Raḥmān.6

The Askiya returned in 1516 at the head of a Songhai army which fought the reigning Agadez sultan al-’Adala. This sultan is mentioned in the Agades chronicles as being, jointly with his (twin) brother Muhammad Ahmad, the eleventh ruler of the sultanate. Their rule began in 1502-3 and ended with the ‘Askiya catastrophe’ fourteen years later.7

A contemporary account of the Songhai subjugation of Agadez was written by Leo Africanus, who visited the Songhai capital of Gao sometime between 1506 and 1513.8

He describes Agadez as a walled town of the “black”/sūdān (eg; Songhay and Hausa) closest to the towns of the “white”/bidān (Berbers). It had well-built houses, hosted a flourishing trade with the Hausa cities of Kano and Gobir.

It was inhabited by foreign merchants (presumably from the northern Sahara), as well as the sūdān, who were artisans and soldiers of the king of Agadez. The province contributed the largest tribute to the Songhai Empire, but its hinterland to the east was insecure on account of desert nomads who robbed passing caravans.

He describes its political structure as such9:

“The king of Agades maintains an important guard and has a palace in the centre of the town. But his army is made up of men of the countryside and the deserts. In fact, he springs from these people of Libya, and sometimes they dethrone him and replace him by one of his relatives.

But they do not kill him, and he who gives most satisfaction to the people of the desert is named king of Agades. In the remainder of the kingdom, that is to say in all the region to the south, the people engage in raising goats and cows. They live in huts of branches or mats which they carry on bullocks when they move, and they set these up where they pasture their animals, as the Arabs do.

The king earns a large revenue from the dues which the foreign merchants pay, and from the products of the country. But he remits a tribute of some 150,000 ducats to the king of Timbuktu.”

ÁGADES. October 12th. 1850. Drawn by J. M. Bernatz, from a Sketch by Dr Barth.

Street scene in Agadez, mid-20th century.

An oral account of the city’s early history was transcribed by the German traveler Heinrich Barth when he visited the city in 1850. Combined with the written accounts by Leo Africanus and the 19th-century account of the Sokoto Caliph Muhammad Bello, Barth mentions that the original ‘five tribes’ who founded the city were expelled after Askiya Muhammad’s conquest. These five Berber tribes originally came from Tuat in Southern Algeria, as well as Awjila, Ghadames and Misrata in Libya.

The Askiya reportedly drove out a considerable number of the Berbers, “with five hundred “jákhfa” (cages mounted on camels, such as only wealthy people can afford to keep for carrying their wives), left the town, but were all massacred.” According to Barth, a section of the Berber population remained behind and intermarried with the “Sónghay colonists”; as evidenced by their language and “mixed” appearance.10

Tuat, Awjila, and Ghadames in relation to Agadez.

(left) ‘Camel Conveying a Bride to her Husband’, 1821. Plate 16 from A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa by Captain George Francis Lyon, 1821. (right) Egypt, women on the trip on a camel through the desert, veil, camel drivers, litter, ca 1850. Getty Images.

A camel palanquin (covered litter), used to transport wives and children across the arid desert of southern Algeria, each with a central ventilation shaft. ca. 1917

[For the cultural significance of the Camel among Berber-speaking groups, see my previous essay on The Camel in African History ]

Barth surmised that Agadez was established to facilitate trade between Gao and Hausaland, and had its own gold mithqal (a unit of weight rather than gold currency). Its sultan apparently resided in the Hausa kingdom of Gobir, a fact which later made Agadez acknowledge the suzerainty of the Sokoto Caliph when Gobir was subsumed in the 19th century. He estimates a population of 30-50,000 in the 16th century, based on the built area enclosed within the 3.5-mile-long wall.11

It is unknown whether the Askiya left garrisons in the city, but several districts bear Songhay names, such as Ogouberi, Youbboutara, Bangoutara, Tanouberi, and also Gao-Gao (similar to the Songhai capital). The northern Songhay languages of Tadaksahak and Tagdal, which are heavily influenced by Berber languages, were spoken in Agadez as late as the early 20th century. It’s thought that they resulted from the establishment of Songhay-speaking merchant communities.12

The empire of Bornu to the east of Agadez is also known to have sent an expedition against Aïr in 1532 and 1560, the former of which succeeded in subjugating Agadez, while the latter resulted in a settlement between the rulers of Bornu and the nomads of Aïr, and coincided with the brief ascendancy of the kingdom of Kebbi. None of the major empires seems to have established any lasting control of the city.13

Map by Paul E. Lovejoy, depicting the position of major states in the late 18th century, with Agadez in the extreme north, Bornu to the East, and the Hausa states of Gobir, Kano, and Katsina to the South.

Subscribe now

The Historic Monuments of Agadez.

The city’s oldest architectural monuments were likely built during the 15th/16th century, although only the history of the main mosque has been examined in sufficient detail, while the city walls, the palace, saints’ tombs, and houses of officials have yet to be studied.

Historic Centre of Agadez. Image by ICOMOS, UNESCO.

Political and religious power was concentrated in the northwestern part of the city. It is there that the palace, closely linked to the great mosque, as well as the residences of the principal dignitaries and the alqali, are still located.

The palace is a two-storey composite complex entirely enclosed by walls, consisting of several courtyards and private apartments, as well as a throne-room. While its date of construction is unknown, within the palace enclosure is a small building in which Askiya is said to have prayed on his way to Mecca, and the entire structure was considerably old at the time of Barth’s visit in 1850.14

Audience-hall of Chief of Ágades. c. 1850, illustration by H. Barth

Sultan’s Palace, c. 1899. Henry Fournial.

Sultan’s palace. Terri Gold World Imagery

The Agades chronicles, which are mostly transcriptions of oral history collected at the start of the 20th century, also mention the presence of a house of the “twin sultans”, and their tombs next to the mosque in the west of the city at the time of the Songhai invasion.15

The Friday mosque of Agadez was built close to the sultan’s palace. According to the study by Cressier and Bernus, the mosque was constructed in several stages. The first building was raised in 1450 according to the Agadez chronicles; it was later enlarged after the Songhai conquest, and the first minaret tower was erected. In 1844, the south façade was reorganised, and the present minaret was built with a height of 27 m.16

According to Barth, the older tower was detached several feet away from the south-west corner of the mosque, and was “leaning much to one side, more so than the celebrated tower of Pisa”. The mosque itself consisted of low, narrow naves, divided by pillars of immense thickness, which Barth surmised were meant to support a much larger structure that was ultimately not constructed. There were ten other mosques still in use, three of which were the Msíd Míli, Msíd Éheni, and Msíd el Mékk.17

View of the High Watch-tower. c. 1850, illustration by H. Barth

Agadez mosque, image by Antonio Mesquita.

Plan of the great mosque of Agadez, fifteenth century. Image by S. Pradines.

Share

Agadez in the 17th and 18th centuries.

After the fall of Songhai in 1591, the Moroccan sultan Mulay al-Mansur sent a letter to the amir of Agades al-hadjj Muhammad al-Addal b. Muhammad b. al-Aqib, (r. 1556-1594), thanking him for his petition, stressing old friendship, and saying that he depends on his help. It was one of several diplomatic letters sent to different West African kings by the sultan before the Moroccans withdrew shortly after.18

The Agadez chronicles suggest that the 17th century was a time of dynastic stability, with only five kings reigning from 1594 to 1720, and a switch from a matrilineal to patrilineal succession. Accounts of major historical events and regional expansion are mostly associated with the long reigns of Muḥammad al-Mubārak (r. 1653-1687) and Muhammad Aggaba (r.1687-1720).19

Written accounts from Bornu that refer to Agadez, which are dated to the 17th century, suggest a complex political relationship of interdependence and competition over the caravan trade, especially the salt mines of Kawar oasis and the transhumance routes used by desert nomads.20

Most of the Bornu expeditions against Aïr did not target the city itself. One account from 1658 tells of an expedition by Mai ‘Ali, which resulted in the capture of the ruler of Aïr (presumably Muḥammad al-Mubārak) and his conversion to Islam. However, this was more likely an acknowledgement of Bornu’s suzerainty, since this sultan was a staunch Muslim who undertook the pilgrimage twice. Al-Mubārak later conducted his own expeditions against Bornu and Gobir, and established a vassal state at Ader.21

Tuareg Warrior, Illustration by George Francis Lyon c. 1821.

Agadez, ca. 1935. Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

Information on the historical development of the Agadez Sultanate does not figure in the writings of the few Europeans known to have visited the Central Sahara during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Uncertainty surrounds the odyssey of Pieter Farde, a Belgian who was captured by Barbary pirates in 1686 in the Mediterranean and sold to a man who brought him to Agadez as a slave. Farde mentions the presence of more than forty European Christian and Jewish slaves, mostly from Italy and France. The sultan during Farde’s captivity would have been Muḥammad al-Mubārak, who, together with his son Agabba, figures in the Chronicles of Agadez but isn’t mentioned in Farde’s account.22

Agabba’s reign was marked by a series of upheavals. In 1686, a two-year epidemic caused such high mortality that the city was largely deserted. In 1696, a struggle between the Tuareg** tribes of Kel Owey and the Itesan resulted in numerous deaths; a severe drought struck at the same time, leading to a terrible famine. The following year, the rains fell in such abundance that three hundred houses were destroyed.23

[**The Tuaregs are a Berber-speaking group, while the Itesan, Kel Gres and Kel Owey are confederations of the Tuaregs associated with Agadez]

In 1711, the Franciscan missionaries Father Carlo Maria di Genova and Father Severino da Silesia may have visited Agadez during the reign of Agabba. They continued their journey southward to Katsina, where they are reported to have died without leaving records of observations made during their journey.24

A number of scholars are known from Agadez in the 17th century, and the city appears to have been a regional center of learning during this period.

A scholar named Muhammad al-Taddizi, from Tadeliza in Air during the early 17th century, mentions a revolt against the Sultan of Agades, Muhammad al-Tafrija. Another scholar named Abu Bakr b. Tahir Tashi (d. 1697) was apparently close to the ruling house and wrote a brief autobiography containing interesting material on the sultanate of Agades, its wars with Gobir, and the conquest of Ader.25

The 18th and 19th centuries saw a succession of short-lived rulers, campaigns into Hausaland, and succession wars involving the various Tuareg tribes which would prefigure in the composition of the Agadez chronicles and their related controversies.26

It’s during this period that the city declined considerably. Barth notes that by 1790, most of the city’s population had moved south to the Hausa cities of Katsina, Tasawa, Maradi, and Kano.27 Perhaps related to this was the abolition of the Pashalik in Gao and Timbuktu by the Iwellemmedan Tuaregs in the late 18th century, and the rise of Katsina.

The weakness of the city-state, lacking its own military strength, stemmed from a power-sharing arrangement between an urban sultan, a religious leader who controlled the caravan routes and oversaw the development of a trading hub, and the nomadic chiefs who lived with their warriors and herds in the desert.

The sultanate, whose institutions in many respects resembled those of the southern Hausa states, appeared as an urban creation distinct from the surrounding Tuareg world.28

Entourage of Sultan Umaru Agg-Ibrahim (Oumaran). Early 20th century.

Tuaregs of Agadez, Illustration by George Francis Lyon c. 1821.

Share

Agadez in the 19th century

The Sokoto Caliph Muḥammad Bello (r. 1817-1837) comments on the instability of the peculiar political arrangements of Aïr in his Infāq al-maysūr , where the appointed sultan’s power depended on the support of the Tuareg warrior tribes.

“This province was formerly in the hands of Soodan inhabitants of the Goobér. But five tribes of the Tawarék, called Amakeetan, Tamkak, Sendal, Agdalar, and Ajdaraneen, came out of Aowjal, and took it from them; and, after having settled themselves, they agreed to nominate a prince to rule over them, in order to render justice to the weak against the powerful.

They appointed a person of the family of Ansatfén; but they soon quarreled among themselves and dismissed him. They then nominated another, and continued upon this system, viz. whenever a prince displeased them, they dethroned him, and appointed a different one.”29

At the time of Barth’s visit in 1850, the Sultan el Bákiri (Muhammad al-Baqiri “Sufu”) was described as “rather a chief of the Tawárek tribes residing in Ágades than the ruler of Ágades”. He had been deposed a few years earlier by Hámed e’ Rufäy (Ahmad ar-Raffa’ ibn Muhammad Guma), whom he again succeeded. But in 1853, upon the intervention of the Sokoto Caliph, he was again compelled to resign in favour of the former.

The investiture of the sultan required the participation of the chiefs of the Itísan (Itesan), Kél-geres (Kel Geres), and the Kél-owí (Kel Owey), and a short pilgrimage to the tomb of a marabout called Sídi Hammáda, in Tára-bére, just outside the town. The Kel Geres and the Kel Owey were reportedly rivals, but maintained an uneasy alliance of convenience against the nomadic Awelímmiden (Iwellemmedan).30

Hausa was the official language at the court, and its cultural influence is reflected in the titles of the officials (named serki/Sarkin**) in charge of the palace, regulating trade, and collecting taxes, such as the “bába-n serkí” (the chief eunuch), “sáraki-n-turáwa”, the “serki-n-káswa,” the “fadáwa-n-serkí” (royal courtier), the fadawa-n-serkí (the aides-de-camp of the sultan). Besides these were the kádhi or alkáli, and the war-chief.31

[**On the spread of Hausa cultural influence and the diaspora, see my previous essay: The Hausa trading diaspora in West Africa. ]

The town had gone into considerable decline, with many abandoned houses, some with upper stories, decorated interiors, and baths. They were constructed with sundried mudbricks, like in the broader Sudano-Sahelian Architecture. Most of their roofs had pinnacles (also found in Hausa architecture) that were ornamented with ostrich eggs, and some residents kept live ostriches, as later visitors would attest.32

Ground-plan of Ágades. c. 1850 by H. Barth.

Mohammed Bóro’s House. c. 1850 by H. Barth.

Agadez, c. 1930. House of Mallam Yaro

There were merchants from Tuat (in Southern Algeria), whose main trade was speculating on the price of millet. Besides this trade was the import of salt from Bilma in the Kawar Oasis by the camel caravans of the Itesan, Kel Geres, and the Kel Owey, which was exchanged for grain and dyed textiles from Hausaland.

The latter trade was associated with the Emgédesi, who were established in Katsina. The other trade was in the selling of camels, conducted by the Ighdalén, or Éghedel, who were of mixed Berber and Songhay origin, and spoke Sónghay.33

As early as 1780, an external account by the English traveller Simon Lucas, which was written based on information from merchants in Libya, indicates that Agadez was closely linked to the Hausa city of ‘Cashna’ (Katsina.)

His account, which mistakenly assumes that Agades was part of the ‘Katsina empire’, notes that “the salt of Bomou [Bilma] supplies the consumption of Cashna, and of the Negro kingdoms to the south, yet its owners have abandoned to the commercial activity of the merchants of Agadez, the whole of that profitable trade.”34

Quite contrary to the image of Saharan cities as entreports on the southern terminus of the Trans-Saharan trade, most of the trade in Agadez was largely confined within the central Sahara, involving exchanges of salt, grain and textiles between the Kawar oases and Hausaland.

This trade fit with pre-existing patterns of transhumance and regional travel, as the same traders who owned houses in Agadez, Zinder, Kano, also built relationships with owners of salt pans in Bilma, bred camels in the surrounding desert for transport, and established estates in Ader and Damergu where grain was cultivated.35

Market in Agadez, Niger. ca. 1945. Quai Branly

Traditional salt caravan from Agadez to the oases Fachi and Bilma. Alamy Images

Sultan’s palace and mosque. Katsina, Nigeria. ca. 1918. Bristol Archives

Agadez remained a center of learning in the 19th century, and was visited by some of the scholars of Sokoto.36 At the time of Barth, there were an estimated 250-300 students of wealthy families in “five or six schools scattered over the town”, which was relatively large, compared to the town’s population of about 7,000.37

A short biography for 32 scholars from Agadez in the 19th and early 20th century contains one of the few descriptions of intellectual life during this period. Like other West African scholars, many travelled across the region for advanced learning, mostly to Kano; some served as viziers and secretaries at the court, but most remained independent.

They left behind several works on theology, law, poetry, and history (including the chronicles). Unfortunately, Most of the writings of Agadez were lost after the French suppression of the 1916-1917 revolt. All the scholars, intellectuals, and religious figures of Agadez were executed by French soldiers in the city’s Great Mosque, where they had taken refuge, and their manuscripts were burned.38

View of Agades. Image by Angus Buchanan, c.1920

Agadez, c. 1933. Quai Branly

Subscribe now

The town’s fortunes declined further in the late 19th century, such that by the time of the Foureau–Lamy colonial expedition in 1899-1900, the city’s ruined quarters are described as “a fleeting memory of a bygone era.”