In a recent publication the American political scientists Soeren Henn and James A. Robinson argue that Africa remained decentralized relative to Eurasia because Africans were highly averse to living in politically centralized communities.

They claim that Africans saw state structures as antagonistic to maintaining the valued institutions of the local community, and thus devised mechanisms to block centralization.1

These claims have been amplified in more popular venues, including by ‘The Economist,’ under the headline: How anarchic was Africa?

Robinson is also widely known as the co-author, with Daron Acemoglu, of “Why Nations Fail,” which advances the argument that institutional differences account for long-run disparities between the Western world and other regions. That thesis, like their more recent claims about African state-building, has attracted sustained criticism.

One critic advised Acemoglu and Robinson to “stop by the history department, grab a book, and read the whole thing.” In my previous essay reviewing the African sections in ‘Why Nations Fail’, I showed that Acemoglu and Robinson misrepresented their sources in order to support theoretical claims that weren’t grounded in historical evidence.

In this article, I examine the claims of Henn and Robinson concerning centralized states in precolonial Africa. I demonstrate that their analysis contradicts their sources, flattens history, and advances an essentialist interpretation of African political development that posits a uniform ‘preference for decentralization’ over time.

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PATREON

Misreading Jan Vansina’s “Equatorial Tradition” and Decentralisation in Central Africa.

In the introduction, Henn and Robinson begin with the claim, one that is far from uncontested**, that the path of state formation took a different arc historically in Africa. They argue that Africa did not develop the type of large bureaucratized states common to Eurasia, and political power remained largely decentralized.

**A critique of these reductive and impressionistic claims would require far more space than is available here. Their veracity relies entirely on the reader’s unfamiliarity with the historical development of state systems in Africa and Eurasia, and on whether societies within each continent were ever sufficiently uniform internally, or sufficiently distinct from those of the other, to justify treating them as separate analytical categories.2

This problem is especially evident in the authors’ reliance on a selective reading of regional case studies, to which I now turn.

For their main interpretative framework, Henn and Robinson draw on the work of the historian Jan Vansina, and his research on societies in ‘Equatorial Africa’ (mostly in present-day D.R.Congo), in the book titled: ‘Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa’ (1990)

The authors reproduce a truncated quotation taken from Vansina’s work in a way that significantly distorts its context and meaning. Since this passage serves as a central pillar of their analysis, it is worth quoting in full, with the omitted sections restored:

“In the final analysis, the [Equatorial] tradition retained its ability to determine the future, to reject unwanted innovations, and to invent institutions, ideologies, values, and concepts to cope with its new environment. It maintained its own criteria of significance.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its retention of the cherished principle of local autonomy and decentralization, even while creating the institutions necessary to accommodate the rise of a single huge economic space around an integrated system of distribution. This feature cannot just be dismissed by pleading the corrosive effects of the Atlantic trade on centralizing authority.

This remarkable achievement again emphasizes that the ability to refuse centralization while maintaining the necessary cohesion among a myriad of autonomous units has been the most original contribution of western Bantu tradition to the institutional history of the world.”

This passage comes from the conclusion of Vansina’s five-chapter analysis of social organization in the regions within and adjacent to the Equatorial Forest, excluding the savannah regions to the south, where large centralized polities such as the Lunda and Luba kingdoms emerged.

Read in its proper context, Vansina’s argument is not that states in this region remained small. Rather, he is highlighting the most distinctive form of social organisation among a wider range of institutional forms that developed in the region, some of which included classical state formations such as large chiefdoms and kingdoms.

Map showing some of the kingdoms described in Vansina’s work. Based on the maps provided by Jan Vansina and John Thornton, which are included in this essay.

While the reader may be misled by Henn and Robinson into thinking that Vansina was writing about the history of small communes resisting centralization, his study is in fact a survey of the development of socio-political institutions in the region.

Like most works of history, Vansina’s book ultimately traces processes of social differentiation and the expansion of political scale, even as he seeks to emphasize the diversity of alternate paths to social and political change.3

Much of the historical material in the book is concerned with the concentration of power among rulers, and the transformation of “House-societies” into Villages, Districts, Chiefdoms, and Kingdoms.

In anthropology and historical literature, a “House” is the basic level of social organisation. In Vasina’s schematic model, the “Village” was an aggregate of Houses whose leader was assisted by the leaders of the other Houses in a council. A “District” comprised a collection of villages, united by an alliance of Houses. In some regions, a successful leader of this alliance transformed the district into a “Chiefdom.” A ruler who subjugated multiple chiefdoms founded a “Principality.” And once principalities conquered others, they became “Kingdoms,” representing the highest territorial level.4

Therefore, rather than ‘othering’ African forms of state-formation like Henn and Robinson do by setting Africa in opposition to Eurasia, Vansina’s work reveals the shared trajectories of state formation in Central Africa and Eurasia that, in some cases, resembled classical models about the origin of the state.

So similar was state-building in the Lower Congo region to Eurasia, in fact, that Vansina acknowledges this resemblance in order to illustrate the dynamism of what he calls the “Equatorial tradition”:

“The tale of relentless territorial centralization from big man to king that has been told in this section seems to confirm long-held and beloved stereotypes about the origin of the state. Many a reader may conclude that this is how social scale is enlarged, this is how complex societies necessarily arise.

But that is simply not true, as the institutional history of all the other societies of people in the rainforests show… The next chapter will show very different paths toward achieving greater social scale and will document yet two other pathways of development in the rise of kingdoms.”5

Engraving of São Salvador (M’banza-Kongo) by John Keyse Sherwin, 1782. It is miscaptioned as a city of South America, but is infact based on a famous engraving of Kongo’s capital by Olfert Dapper in 1668.

King and Queen of Kongo. King Garcia II of Kongo (seated) receiving a Dutch embassy in 1642, engraving by Olfert Dapper, colourized in 1843. Traditional costume. “Mani-Monbada, Queen of Congo” ca. 1780. engraving by Pierre Duflos

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According to Vansina’s research on the Lower Congo region, “the dominant process in the institutional history of this area has been one of increasing centralization”. Here, large kingdoms such as Kongo, Loango, and Tio had emerged by the 14th century, with an estimated population of 500,000 for Kongo, in contrast to earlier House-societies of just 40 people. These large kingdoms were surrounded by smaller kingdoms and chiefdoms, whose institutions they influenced and became centralized.6

He also explains what he means by centralization. Placing the kingdom of Kongo at the top of the spectrum as the most centralized kingdom in terms of tribute collection, judiciary, military organization, and the possession of a national currency.

Next was the kingdom of Loango, which, like Kongo, had “officials in charge of departments of government such as justice, revenue, and the army, and officials of the royal household”. Last was the Tio kingdom, where the king received tribute, but military campaigns were organized by local princes.7

The city of Loango. Taken from ‘View of Loango & Congo, Africa’ by Henri Abraham Chatelain 1718, based on engravings of Olfert Dapper, 1668.

He then explains how the effects of the Atlantic system later resulted in the decentralization of the region. He starts with Kongo’s disintegration in 1678 and its partial restoration in 1709. Power then fell into the hands of a few new “big men” among the former aristocracy, each ruling small chiefdoms.

In Loango during the 18th to 19th century, Kingship became sacralized as central authority devolved into the hands of a few families, each of which was the center of a large House, led by a titled merchant. In Tio during the same period, the spiritual preeminence of the king was maintained, but the lords became nearly autonomous. The kingdom was only saved from complete disintegration by a settlement between the king and the lords in 1840, a few decades before colonization.8

According to Vansina’s research, decentralization of the Lower Congo in the 18th and 19th centuries was a product of specific historical processes. It was not because the inhabitants were highly averse to living in politically centralized communities.

Further inland and along the coast from Western D.R.C to the coast of southern Cameroon, where large centralized territorial polities had never existed, local groups began organizing themselves into House-societies during the 17th and 18th centuries. These grew into “Business Firms” with populations ten times larger than an ordinary House.

But the legitimacy of their rulers was precarious, being based solely on their wealth, and was vulnerable to changes in military strength, ideology, and religion. While associations and traditions of common origin provided some social cohesion, there were no centralizing institutions. For purposes of defence and trade, some firms settled together to form a town of up to 10,000 people, like Kinshasa, but without a single formally acknowledged leader.

After the region became more closely integrated in the Atlantic trade system during the 19th century, competition between the “Business Firms” became rife, and the relative strength of each Firm shifted dramatically, such that no chiefdoms or kingdoms emerged, even as trade expanded and economic exchanges grew.9

It’s in this exact section that Vansina provides the quotation that was misrepresented by Henn and Robinson. He explains that while the Atlantic trade system overwhelmed the “Equatorial tradition,” it did not destroy it but forced it to adopt, using pre-existing institutions, such as the House, the matriclan, and the association.

The Equatorial Tradition thus proved resilient throughout the 19th-century period of social upheaval and economic growth.

This is the time period and geographic region that Vansina emphasizes in his “final analysis” in the quote mentioned in the introduction above. This was a time when social organization was dominated by “Business Firms” that “refused centralization while maintaining the necessary cohesion among a myriad of autonomous units” such as agglomerated towns.

It’s this specific system of Central African “Business Firms” that Vasina chose to highlight as the Western Bantu’s contribution to the institutional history of the world, and it is evidently the only one that Henn and Robinson thought could be extrapolated to represent the rest of Africa, even though it barely represented the Equatorial Region!

For his part, Vansina stresses that these “Business Firms” were not the only forms of social organization in the region. His chapter on the north-eastern D.R.C returns to the more classic outline of state-building, bringing forward the first of the “two other pathways of development in the rise of kingdoms,” mentioned earlier.

These pathways deviate from the type of state-building witnessed in the Lower Congo that resembles similar patterns in Eurasia, but nevertheless produced centralizing processes in the earlier periods, before they were later reversed in the late 19th century.

In this region, he mostly follows the evolution of the Mangbetu kingdom. Initially a “House” polity, it expanded through matrimonial alliances and overran larger “House-chiefdoms” to become a substantial “kingdom.” These House-chiefdoms had previously subdued weaker Houses using specialized semi-mercenary warriors. They were internally differentiated and had established an orderly succession of leadership that was ultimately subverted by Manzinga, the Mangbetu founder.10

King Munza and the Mangbetu queens in the public hall, ca. 1870, illustration by Schweinfurth.

According to Vansina, the political innovations found in the House-chiefdoms were induced by the loss of equilibrium of military strength between the preceding House-polities. By the mid-18th century, these House-Chiefdoms would in turn be subjugated by King Manziga, who founded the Mangbetu kingdom. His son and successor, King Nabiembali (r. 1800-1859) , would then expand the state through military conquest.

However, this expansion did not keep pace with institutional growth, which ultimately led to the kingdom’s disintegration and the region’s reversion to small-scale polities.

“Mangbetu political institutions remained those of a House chiefdom. Nabiembali continued to gather kin, wives, clients, and slaves around him. Political relationships continued to be tagged with kinship terms, and relations between House-chiefdoms within the state were still though of in matrimonial terms…

Nabiembali also failed to create new judicial, military or financial institutions. The core of the military remained the royal bodyguard comprising professional mercenaries, close relatives, and dependents of the king. After the 1850s, income from tribute and trade became more important, but tribute was still explained in terms of gift giving. No centralized and hierarchical judiciary system developed at all.

As long as Nabiembali kept his sons in check the system worked. But when his eldest son Tuba rebelled and deposed him in 1859, the system collapsed. Tuba lacked both the military power and the prestige to align the other chiefs behind him. A series of civil wars followed and the last king, Mbunza, fell in battle in 1873. The kingdom broke up and was replaced by a number of smaller entities which began expanding into new lands shortly after Tuba took over.

By the 1870s, general unrest was extreme, because both Azande princes and slave traders from the Sudan became active in the area. So serious was this situation that an older war charm, the nebeli, now evolved into a secret self-help association to protect its adherents against both outside enemies and chiefs.”11

In this account, the centralization and later decentralization of the North-Eastern D.R.C isn’t attributed to some essentialist African attachment to small-scale polities, but is instead a product of historical processes unique to the region.

Henn and Robinson assert that Africans created internal mechanisms to ensure polities remained small by avoiding the concentration of power in one lineage or ruler. But the historical evidence shows that it was only after the collapse of centralised authority that subjects repurposed a pre-existing war charm used by centralising kings in the earlier periods into a protective association against petty chiefs.

Moving to the Eastern region, Vansina provides the second alternative to state formation, which also created centralized societies that were later broken up by the 19th century, but this time, due to external influences.

He divides it into two regions: Northern Maniema and Southern Maniema. (These more accurately correspond to the West and East as shown in the map he provides below.

In Southern Maniema, the lands were rich in trade and contained nodes of sizeable population density, which allowed for the accumulation of wealth and the emergence of an overarching hierarchical sociopolitical association. These were graded associations that borrowed the political tradition of centralization based on a sacred kingship from neighbouring groups, which became the framework for their kingdoms.12

Village in Manyéuma (Manyema/Maniema), Congo. Illustration from Across Africa by Verney Lovett Cameron, 1877

However, this occurred relatively late, with such states only emerging in the 19th century. According to Vansina, the region extending from the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika to the west of Lake Edward was dominated by kingdoms that resembled smaller, earlier versions of the large kingdoms of the Great Lakes region:

“They strike us as theater-like states, because their minuscule size was matched by elaborate rules of succession, accession to the throne, and royal burial, by a complex titulature surrounding the royal office, and by intricate royal rituals and a plethora of emblems, as if these district-sized kingdoms were the equals of the great kingdoms that lay beyond the rift itself.”13

In contrast to the rest of the equatorial region, Vansina observes that social organization in Northern Maniema was the most egalitarian and least socially differentiated. House-societies grouped in villages were widely dispersed, and rules of exogamy limited the ability of leaders to accumulate power through marital alliances, while high mobility further restrained their ability to create larger communities based on shared clan traditions.

He suggests that this decentralization wasn’t internal to the region, but was instead directly caused by the domination of merchant-rulers from Zanzibar (notably, Tippu Tip and Rumaliza), who, in the closing decades of the 19th century, subsumed pre-existing societies into a vast state, and forced great changes in settlement patterns, leadership, and cultural traditions in the area.14

Ruins of a Swahili-style mosque in Isangi, eastern D.R.Congo, ca. 1894. NMVW.

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On the Evolution of State Building in Equatorial Africa.

Vansina explains that, contrary to unilineal social evolutionists, the “Equatorial Tradition” produced multiple pathways to social complexity that included kingdoms, associations, and segmentary lineage societies. In all cases, the basic units of social organization: Houses, Villages, and Districts, survived because the overarching institutions were built upon them, rather than displacing them.15

Vansina identifies several other regions in the central and western parts of D.R.C where different pathways of development led to the rise of kingdoms such as Kuba, Boila, and Ngwi in the 17th century.

Their emergence followed an uneven concentration of resources between Houses, accompanied by an ideological exaltation of leaders and military conquests. These states created new administrative and judicial institutions, maintained firm central control over external trade, and survived well into the colonial period.16

It turns out that the Kuba kingdom, which is singled out by Acemoglu and Robinson for its supposedly unique level of centralization and bureaucratic institutions compared to most of pre-colonial Africa17, was in fact not exceptional, even in the Equatorial region, where numerous kingdoms with a greater level of complexity and territorial scale could be found.

In an excellent summary, Vansina outlines the conditions that enabled the emergence of centralized kingdoms in Equatorial Africa:

“A kingdom could emerge out of a whole social and political system when people had come to accept the idea of a supreme title as a desirable outcome to the dynamic drift of their political institutions. No doubt both population density and insecurity played a role in the rise of the kingdom, but they were only background factors among others…

The ancestral system [the Equatorial tradition] had been well adapted to low densities of population and limited trade. When these conditions changed, innovation had to follow. Once trading exchanges became frequent in areas across ecotones with very different resource bases or over longer distances… certain localities became strategic spots for settlement. The Houses and villages which occupied them grew rich, attracting dependents and at the same time facing more challenges than others.

Over time systematic inequality developed among Houses and their big men and led to innovation. The changing environmental and economic base clearly was crucial for the

dynamics of innovation. It would be dangerous, however, to reduce the dynamics of innovation to an environmental determinism of the sort that claims that kingdoms arose only in open landscapes with diversified resources.

The only defensible generalization is that centralizing societies began in areas of rich resources. Even so, not all areas-with rich resources provoked centralization. The correlation between centralizing innovations and areas rich in resources is only apparent and superficial. It takes no account of the fact that resources exist only in the eye of the beholder.

Innovations responded to shifts in environmental bases and economics, but the latter do not wholly explain the phenomenon. Historical accident was important. A particularly attractive or effective personality, luck in trade or in war, a new tactic in battle, a particular incident during a ritual—all could happen by accident and provoke change.

Yet although incidents in physical reality occurred all the time—the weather is never twice the same—innovation took root only when it moved from the physical realm to conscious acceptance in the cognitive realm.”18

The emergence of centralized states in the region was therefore the outcome of multiple human and environmental factors, and must be understood as historically contingent. States arose whenever the underlying conditions and political innovations were favourable.

From this overview, it becomes difficult to sustain Henn and Robinson’s claim that they used Vansina as a “jumping off point” for a broader theory of African state formation without having engaged with the work in its entirety.

Vansina’s celebrated historical research on the “Equatorial Tradition” is not without its critics from among his peers, especially concerning the origins of matriclans and the effects of the Atlantic trade system on political and economic developments in the Equatorial region.19

However, nothing in his work suggests that decentralization was a historical constant. The evidence instead points to the dynamic nature of social and political changes that were generated by historical processes unique to each region.

Central Africans did not create mechanisms to keep the scale of political society small, but instead created multiple forms of social organization that, depending on historical circumstances, included both small-scale and large-scale polities.

This political evolution is excellently illustrated in John Thornton’s maps of West Central Africa from 1650 to 1750 to 1850.

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The Centralization and Decentralisation of Somalia in Historic Perspective.

Henn and Robison provide examples of how non-centralized societies, such as the Igbo (Nigeria), the Kikuyu (Kenya), and the Somali (Somalia), innovated a plethora of mechanisms to preserve the autonomy of the community and the clan, supposedly to protect it from the state. (pg 16-17)

Much of their explanation for the persistence of decentralization in these cases relies on anthropological studies conducted in the early to mid-20th century. While valuable in their own right, these sources generally lack the historical depth required to assess whether decentralization was a long-term structural constant, as the authors imply.

Fortunately, in some of these societies, such as the Somali, there’s sufficient historical data since the late Middle Ages which demonstrates that earlier processes of centralization and expansion of political scale were reversed after the 17th century.

The highly decentralised communities described by anthropologists in Somalia during the early 20th century do not reflect the long-term historical organization of societies in the region.

Henn and Robinson draw heavily on I.M. Lewis’ anthropological study of Somali society in the mid-20th century, which emphasizes the segmentation of political units in the absence of formal administrative hierarchies or institutionalised offices of authority, and the ease with which political alliances could be reconfigured to preserve clan autonomy. (pg 16)

However, the authors disregard historical scholarship on Somali society by scholars like Lee V. Cassanelli, who reconstructed traditions about the Ajuraan sultanate, vast territorial state that dominated Southern Somalia from the 16th to the 17th century. Its rulers, the Gareen imams, established a theocratic government, appointing emirs and naa’ibs as agents, and relied on holy-men from Yemen in judicial matters and tax collection.

Marriage alliances reinforced ties of agnatic and religious loyalty among the leading families. The administration collected tribute from cultivators, herders, and traders and conscripted a servile labor force to undertake an unprecedented program of construction of stone wells and fortifications. Alliances with the coastal city of Mogadishu bolstered the imam’s power by providing an outlet for surplus grain and livestock, and a source of the luxury goods that symbolized his high status.20

According to Cassanelli:

“A series of local and regional alliances underpinned and legitimized the apparent concentration of power in the hands of the Gareen imams. From this perspective, the phenomenon of Ajuraan “domination” represented not a break with the typical Somali system of clan alliances and patron/client links but an extension and elaboration of it. What gave the polity its overall cohesiveness and unusual longevity were the rudimentary administrative procedures and the theocratic ideology introduced by the Gareen.”21

Cassanelli also observes that the emergence of the Ajuraan state coincided with similar developments in the northern part of the country (Somaliland).

From the 15th to the late 16th century, the medieval empire of Adal (Barr Sa’d al-Din), briefly dominated the northern Horn of Africa, subsuming much of the Ethiopian empire. Its rulers, known as the Walasma dynasty, had been displaced from the kingdom of Ifat by the Christian Ethiopian monarchs in the early 15th century.

The Adal sultans imposed their power over many pre-existing Muslim polities, including Hūbat, the coastal city of Zaylaʿ, the Ḥārla region surrounding Harar, and parts of northern Somalia. An emir was appointed by the sultan to head each territory, with the prerogative of levying taxes (ḫarāǧ and zakāt) on the population.

An impressive network of stone settlements was built in this period, whose function was mostly associated with agriculture, indicating that, like in Ajuraan, sections of the pastoral Somali communities had become sedentary, with populations concentrated in large, nucleated settlements.

16th century Map of the Northern Horn of Africa showing Ethiopia, Adal, and the ruined stone settlements of Somaliland.

Miḥrāb and niches of the Maduuna congregational mosque. image by StateHorn

However, by the early 17th century, both the Ajuuran and Adal empires had disintegrated, the processes of centralization were reversed, and later polities which emerged in the region during the 18th and 19th centuries were relatively small.

These dramatic changes are captured in the archaeological and documentary record.

In the north, imports of trade goods ceased at the end of the 16th century, the stone settlements were abandoned, and their semi-sedentary inhabitants reverted to a nomadic lifestyle.22

When Richard Burton encountered the ruined settlements in 1854, his local informants noted that their abandonment followed the collapse of a “kingdom” three centuries earlier. It’s from Burton that we get some of the earliest descriptions of what later anthropologists would associate with the Somali’s timeless aversion to centralised authority:

“The Bedouins have lost none of the characteristics recorded in the Periplus: they are still “uncivilised and under no restraint.” Every freeborn man holds himself equal to his ruler, and allows no royalties or prerogatives to abridge his birthright of liberty.23

Burton’s prejudiced account describing an unchanging Somali society since the time of the Periplus, nearly 2,000 years ago, is echoed in Henn and Robinson’s uncritical reliance on mid-20th-century anthropological literature.

In both cases, relatively recent configurations of social organisation are retrojected into the deep past and interpreted as evidence of an enduring cultural preference for clan autonomy and decentralisation.

However, this clearly wasn’t the case during the Adal period, but only reflected changes in social and political processes that emerged across Somali society in the more recent periods.

Similarly, in southern Somalia, descriptions of the region during the early 19th century suggest changes in political alliances, social organization, and settlement patterns, such that even the coastal cities were nearly abandoned.

The once bustling city-state of Mogadishu, whose multistory buildings and thriving port are described by the Portuguese in the 16th century, had by this later period lost much of its commercial hinterland network and had become depopulated.

According to one visitor in 1824, it’s “massive buildings are principally the residences of the dead, while the living inhabit the low thatched huts by which these costly sepulchres are surrounded.”24

Although the region underwent a significant economic revival in the late 19th century, these new patterns of exchange occurred under a decentralized system that relied on pre-existing intuitions of patron-client relations.

Like the House-Firms and agglomerated towns described by Vansina in Equatorial Africa, Cassanelli notes that each Somali clan in this new system maintained its segment of the operation with its own interests, and those of its allies, in mind.25

The Jama’a mosque in 1910, image from Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte

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Centralization in 19th century Tanzania.

It would be misleading, however, to generalize the 19th century as a period of increasing decentralization in Africa. While several older kingdoms were disintegrating, new centralized polities emerged in their place, even among societies that previously had no traditions of centralized leadership!

Chief among these are the Nyamwezi of central Tanzania, who lived in small polities headed by an ntemi. But in the 19th century, the combined expansion of the caravan trade from the East African coast, the Ngoni migrations from southern Africa, and the introduction of firearms resulted in the reconfiguration of pre-existing patterns of social organization.26

The Nyamwezi kingdoms of the late 19th century. Map by Tom Cooper, after Rex Parry. Note that part of Unyanwembe fell under Mirambo’s state but later reverted to its dynasty After his death.

New personalities, such as Mirambo, Fundakira, Nyungu ya Mawe, and Msiri, who were at times called “emperors” by contemporary European visitors due to the scale of their military conquests and authority, created large, hegemonic states by subsuming neighbouring chiefdoms.

Within a single generation, their Kingdoms (Urambo, Unyanyembe, Ukimbu, and Garanganze/Katanga) began regulating tribute collection from caravans and peasants, centralized the military, appointed subordinate chiefs, built large capitals, and formalised diplomatic relationships with older, neighbouring kingdoms like Buganda and Luba. Some of the kingdoms lasted until the onset of the colonial period.27

The example of the Nyamwezi again demonstrates that centralized states emerged when conditions for state formation were favourable. Neither their prior absence nor their subsequent disintegration can be attributed to any inherent African preference for small-scale polities, but instead reflects historically contingent processes specific to particular regions and periods.

Village of Nyamwezi, ca. 1891. Likely based on an illustration of a settlement in Unyanyembe by Verney Lovett-Cameron, ca. 1873-5.

“Tribal” Maps and Speculations.

Lacking this historical perspective, Henn and Robinson devote a substantial portion of their article to speculative arguments concerning population estimates, pre-colonial warfare, and economic systems, while collapsing a wide range of societies into the analytically problematic category of “Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Many of these arguments are undermined by the fragility of their central premise regarding precolonial state formation, which, as I have argued above, is not supported by the historical evidence.

The authors’ population estimates, which they admit to be largely extrapolated from colonial-period data and projected backward (pg 38-45), are of limited value as proxies for the size of precolonial states and communities, which fluctuated significantly.

To date, only John Thornton and Linda Heywood have provided detailed population estimates from the pre-colonial period, using baptismal records and state archives to compute the population of North-Western Angola since the 17th century.28 Yet even this important body of data is not without its critics.29

Such population data cannot be captured by the “tribal map” and “Ethnographic Atlas” of Murdoch (1959, 1967), on which the authors nevertheless rely heavily, despite its criticism in the specialist literature.

The major criticisms of Murdock’s map have been usefully summarised by Cogneau and Dupraz (2015). They include glaring factual errors such as the omission of important populations, confusion or dissociation of certain ethnic groups, and in other cases, some groups are repeated in several different and incompatible chapters.

Researchers using Murdock’s data take as given the “societies,” “cultures,” “tribes,” or “ethnic groups” of the map and the Atlas. However, Murdock’s groups are neither linguistic groups nor political groups corresponding to precisely dated Chiefdoms, Kingdoms, or Empires.30

Murdock’s “Ethnographic Atlas” doesn’t represent the territorial limits of any state or society in any period of pre-colonial Africa, and is of limited analytical value even for the 1960s when it was created.

A cursory examination of the map by anyone familiar with African historical geography or contemporary ethnolinguistic distributions reveals significant inaccuracies, suggesting that Murdock had a limited understanding of both the historical and contemporary realities he sought to classify.

Detail of Murdock’s Tribal Map (1959) showing the people groups of Nigeria.

Official Map of Nigerian Languages, by the National Library of Nigeria (NLN). Note that the languages are in lower case, while the State names are in upper case. Zoom in to see which Languages are spoken in each state.

Pre-colonial map of Nigeria in the 19th century. Map by Paul E. Lovejoy.

Contrary to Henn and Robinson’s claim that warfare didn’t contribute to the centralizing process (pg 18-19), the above outline explains how warfare was central to the emergence of most large-scale polities.

The rise of large kingdoms in Equatorial Africa, Somalia, and Central Tanzania was in part based on changes in the organization of military systems and warfare. European visitors in the 19th century recognised this dynamic, for example, H.M. Stanley, who referred to Mirambo as the ‘African Bonaparte’.

The authors admit that the historical literature shows that African economic systems varied systematically with political centralization in Africa, yet they generalise the example of the Tiv, “an acephalous society completely lacking political centralization”, as “typical in Africa”. (pg 24)

However, as we have examined above, economic systems could vary considerably over time, even in a single society. There was no such thing as a “typical” African system.

The organization of market systems in the Lower Congo during the 16th-17th century bore no resemblance to the economic exchanges of the 19th century. Neither did the nature of commercial control of the Ajuran period of Somalia resemble that found in the decentralised communities of the 19th century. The Nyamwezi systems that existed before the 19th century were entirely dissimilar to those implemented by Mirambo and Msiri in the later period.

Fruit market in Zanzibar, Tanzania. ca. 1888. Koloniales Bildarchiv, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main.

Market scene in Gorée, Senegal. ca. 1842-1867. Quai Branly

Conclusion: on the limits of Grand Theories.

In Summary, there’s no convincing historical basis for Henn and Robinson’s assertion that pre-colonial Africans were inherently predisposed toward decentralisation. The evidence instead demonstrates that states and centralizing institutions arose whenever the underlying conditions and political innovations were favorable.

As Jan Vansina demonstrates in the case of the Equatorial region during the early second millennium CE, these conditions did not produce a linear or predetermined trajectory of political development:

“There never was a single inherent program that automatically forced people to expand the scale of their societies continually and continuously from village to region so as to wrest power relentlessly from a multitude of villages in order to concentrate it in a single capital.

Nor was it a matter of taking authority away from the many family heads to centralize it into the hands of a single paramount, even though some societies did end up as large kingdoms.

What happened was that in different regions people developed their incipient societies by recognizing and implementing additional choices as further solutions to issues of common governance. As these choices and solutions were different in each region, each region went its own way.”31

Henn and Robinson’s argument thus rests on a reductive and methodologically weak reading of African political history.

It reflects a broader tendency in non-specialist writing to neglect sustained engagement with the historical literature in favour of generalist theoretical claims that repurpose outdated theories as groundbreaking discoveries.

A more adequate understanding of African state building requires careful engagement with the historical literature, rather than imposing grand theories that are poorly defined, flatten history, and are inapplicable to Africa’s social realities.

Contrary to popular theoretical claims that Africans only recognised “Wealth in People”, recent research across Multiple societies shows that Africans also valued their Landholdings, and that Land was neither abundant nor socially insignificant.

My latest Patreon article examines the research by the historian Mariana Candino, who uncovered internal documentary evidence for Land ownership and Control in West-Central Africa since the 17th century.

Please subscribe to read about it here and support this newsletter.

LAND AND WEALTH IN CENTRAL AFRICA

Many scholars advanced the argument that was abundant in Africa, which meant that wealth was accumulated through the control of labour. Within this interpretive framework, the accumulation of dependents, known as “wealth-in-people,” was identified as a key organizing principle in the lives of pre-colonial Africans.1

According to this interpretation, the main goal of rulers was to accumulate followers through patronage, clientage, marriage, apprenticeship, servitude, etc. The wealthy increased productivity by controlling labor or by converting goods into followers/dependents, rather than amassing land, which was imagined to be free and abundant.2

However, such theories positing a surplus of land or “unoccupied land” were not derived from an empirical examination of the historical data on pre-colonial land tenure systems. Rather, they drew heavily on assumptions formulated by colonial administrators, who were seeking to justify the expropriation of African land.

Scholars repeated the idea that Africans lacked property rights or notions of individual ownership produced by colonial bureaucrats, without critically examining how this colonial knowledge was created and for what purpose. Yet, the evidence available in the same colonial archives reveals that African rulers claimed jurisdiction and occupation rights over their lands.3

As argued by the anthropologist Steven Pierce, colonial administrators and anthropologists created the myth of static African societies with atavistic systems of land tenure. They invented new forms of land tenure, which became codified as “traditional land tenure” but were anything but traditional. “Tradition” became something other than legacies from the past.4

This dynamic reflects a broader pattern identified by Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, whereby Western knowledge systems constructed Africa through a series of oppositions.5

In this case, the reimagined notion of “traditional” African land tenure was contrasted with an equally misleading depiction of Europe as having long possessed the modern concept of land as a tradable, privately owned commodity, which was in fact only developed in the 18th and 19th centuries.6

Some scholars, particularly those ignorant of more recent African historiographic research, have cited the lack of written records on land tenure as evidence for the absence of land ownership.

This perspective is also derived from outdated colonial tropes that perpetuated images of African societies as isolated and excluded from global processes, overlooking the substantial body of written evidence on land tenure from Christian and Muslim African societies since the Middle Ages.

In a previous essay, I outlined the land tenure systems of medieval Nubia, Ethiopia, the Sudanic kingdoms of Darfur and Funj, and the West African empires of Bornu, Sokoto, and Masina. These societies produced written records that document landholding practices, including charters, grants, judicial proceedings over land disputes, and contracts of sale.

An example of these is a land document from the pre-colonial kingdom of Darfur, which contains a comprehensive listing of a grantees’ rights in his estate as such: “...as an allodial estate, with full rights of possession and his confirmed property... namely rights of cultivation, causing to be cultivated, sale, donation, purchase, demolition and clearance.”7

On the East African coast during the 19th century, a range of historical evidence from Comoros, Mombasa, Malindi, Zanzibar, and Brava demonstrates that land, estates, houses, and other forms of property were subject to well-established systems of ownership, exchange, and inheritance. These records also indicate that property rights were not confined to a narrow segment of society, but included women as well as free and enslaved persons among the property owners.8

land charter of Nur al-Din, a nobleman from the Zaghawa group originally issued by the Darfur king Abd al-Rahman in 1801 and renewed in 1803.9

It is important to emphasize that written documentation represents only one category of historical evidence for land tenure systems. Its privileging by colonial administrations and later scholarship has often obscured the significance of oral legal traditions, which structured and transmitted norms of landholding across many parts of the continent.

Multiple oral sources suggest that control over land provided a means to control people, and that the two cannot be separated.

Rulers, officials, and wealthy commoners accumulated wealth through land grants that conferred rights over territory as well as claims to the labor, tribute, and rents of those residing upon it.

The Lozi kingdom (Barotseland) of Zambia maintained a highly structured territorial system of administration, in which offices or title-holders (indunas) were tied to specific tracts of land (silalo) and the settlements on them, which were given to the indunas upon their appointment.10

This system underwent a significant transformation in the 19th century when the kingdom was invaded by the Kololo from the south, who were later deposed by the native dynasty. The latter rulers, specifically Lubosi Lewanika (r.1878-84, 1885-1916), instituted a land settlement policy known as the Muliu or redemption law, in which all landholders were required to resettle their ancestral lands occupied before the Kololo invasion.11

This policy displaced some of the indunas who had taken possession of land not formerly attached to them and naturally resented the proposal to allow such property to be reclaimed by its original owners. Despite this opposition, it revived the old territorial division of the kingdom into administrative units (Lilalo) and was later adopted by the Colonial administration.12

The Lozi concepts of land tenure and ownership have been known to Africanists since Max Gluckman’s publications in the 1940s-60s, but were surprisingly overlooked by the wealth-in-people theorists.

A strikingly similar form of territorial administration was also found in the kingdom of Asante (modern Ghana), but with added complexity. Titleholders could transfer/sale their tracts of land, along with the rents/tribute derived from the settlements on the land, to other titleholders in exchange for substantial payments in gold, or used as collateral for high-interest loans, also denominated in gold.13

This active, albeit restricted, real estate market was fairly well documented in the 19th century, but the historians Ivor Wilks and T. McCaskie have shown that it dates back to the 18th century. It was a system of land control that was closely tied to the central government at Kumasi and was often manipulated by the court for political ends.14

The king of Ashantee’s palace at Coomassie. ca. 1874

Even among African societies where land was not transferred through market mechanisms, the historian Assan Sarr argues that the inability to sell land isn’t evidence for the absence of ownership, but is instead evidence for its lack of commodification.15

He offers a more nuanced analysis of the changing values of land and labor in the pre-colonial Gambia from the 18th century, where rulers and members of prominent lineages acted as landholders (bankuttiyolu: “owners of the land”). They augmented their wealth by renting land to their followers, junior relatives, subordinates, and strangers, who cultivated it and paid taxes to the landholders.16

Some of the proponents of the wealth-in-people theory extend it to African political history, presenting illogical arguments about African warfare in which states supposedly invested insurmountable resources in raising armies whose objective wasn’t to occupy more land or expand borders, but to control and accumulate dependents.17

However, military historians and other specialists on warfare in pre-colonial Africa have long argued against such reductive interpretations. They emphasize that the fundamental cause of most wars in Africa, like in any part of the world, was territorial expansion.18

The overwhelming internal and external documentary evidence demonstrates that large-scale wars were frequently aimed at establishing control over neighbouring polities, strategic cities, lucrative trade routes, and economically productive lands.19

In many examples, most notably the Oyo empire, medieval Mali, and the Lunda empire, conquest was followed by the establishment of administrative structures designed to secure and regularize control over newly incorporated territories.

As in any part of the world, state expansion inevitably led to border conflicts, some of which were negotiated in writing or resolved by the establishment of boundary settlements/forts, and in some cases, such as between the kingdoms of Wadai and Darfur, physical borders made of stone cairns, large iron spikes, and walls were erected that resembled modern borders.20

All of this indicates that control over land mattered as much as control over people.

Ruins of the walled complex at the 17th-century capital of Wara/Ouara in Chad

Besides landholdings, Africans also accumulated “wealth-in-things” that could be traded, transferred, and bequeathed to heirs.

Even defenders of the “wealth-in-people” framework, such as Jane Guyer, emphasize that Africans produced and acquired wealth-in-things of value, such as gold objects, metallic currencies, luxury cloth, ivory, and artworks, which “moved easily into Western categories of wealth.”

She argues for a nuanced relationship between African concepts of wealth, observing that not all wealth-in-things was converted into wealth-in-people, because we know of vast storehouses of gold, cowries, and grave-goods that were taken out of circulation, rather than being used for accumulating dependents.21

Guyer also notes that many scholars tend to borrow concepts developed in equatorial Africa and generalize them for the rest of the continent.

In a line of reasoning that echoes Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, she observes that this process, whereby attributes of Central Africa become metonymic of Africa-in-general, is largely a product of Western metaphorical constructions of Africa, in which “the forest remains Europe’s image of Africa.”22

funeral of Andris Poucouta, a Mafouk of Cabinda on the Loango coast. 18th-century engraving by Louis de Grandpre. His coffin, made entirely of bundles of textiles, was 20 feet long by 14 feet high and 8 feet thick; the whole was transported by a wheeled wagon pulled by at least 500 people over a road built for the purpose.

Recent scholarship on land tenure systems in pre-colonial central Africa has uncovered internal documentary evidence from the 17th century showing that, even in this region, where theories of “wealth-in-people” were first formulated, land was neither abundant nor socially insignificant.

According to the historian Mariana Candino, evidence from the pre-colonial archives of various kingdoms and societies in what is today Angola demonstrates that societies in West-Central Africa placed value on land and other material forms of wealth, yet only their ownership of dependents was recognized by scholars.

She criticises the singular focus on the accumulation of dependents in scholarship of the region, which perpetuates colonial claims that the lands were devoid of legitimate occupants, and created historical narratives that rationalized dispossession in the name of “effective occupation.”

As in medieval Nubia, Ethiopia, West Africa, Sudan, the East African coast, and Barotseland, the empirical evidence demonstrating that political elites and commoners in Central Africa competed for land and territorial rights clashes with the colonial and scholarly trope of abundant land.

By emphasizing the absence of landed property as a central feature of African societies, scholars have overlooked how vital land was in securing social belonging, obligation, and protection.

The history of land and wealth in West-Central Africa is the subject of my latest Patreon article. Please subscribe to read about it here and support this newsletter.

LAND AND WEALTH IN CENTRAL AFRICA

The rise of the Mossi states during a period marked by the spread of Islam challenges older theories of state formation and trade in medieval West Africa, illustrating the development of complex societies with diverse religious communities under “traditional” authorities.

The Mossi kingdoms were a group of polities that extended across much of present-day Burkina Faso and northern Ghana. Despite the political and commercial transformations that reshaped neighbouring regions, these cavalry-based states retained many of their traditional institutions until the colonial period.

This essay outlines the history of the Mossi states from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

Map showing the Empires of the West African Savannah/Sahel and the Mossi states.

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PATREON

A brief background on the early history of the Mossi.

The traditional accounts of the Mossi, of which numerous versions have been recorded, diverge in many points of detail while displaying a broad convergence.1

The Mossi conceptualise the relationship between their various kingdoms in terms of the descent of the founders of the dynasties from the semi-legendary ruler Na Gbewa.

The latter had three sons: Tusugu, Sitobu, and Nmantambu, and one daughter, Yanenga. The princes are associated with the southern kingdoms of Mamprugu, Dagbon, and Nanumba, and the princess with the northern kingdoms of Yatenga and **Wagadugu.2

[**not to be confused with the medieval Ghana empire/Wagadu]

In these accounts, the founders of the Mossi kingdoms “entered” the region as conquerors. They were the nakomse, ‘possessors of political power’, a class of nobles who established their lordship by force of arms over the autochthonous fegbisi, ‘the owners of the land’, from whom they appropriated tributes.3

Initially thought to have come from the eastern bend of the Niger River, more recent analysis suggests an origin from northern Ghana. And, rather than a wave of immigrant warriors, the political revolution that gave rise to the Mossi states was a gradual process involving a shared effort between the established populations and the incoming warrior groups.4

The power of the early Mossi was based upon their possession of horses and their command of the techniques of cavalry warfare. This period of Mossi expansion is reflected in internal written accounts describing the late medieval period, when they competed for control over the northern merchant cities of Timbuktu and Walata, and occasionally drove off the armies of medieval Mali and Songhai.

Expansion of the Mossi. Map by I Wilks.

Boukary and his escort. In the vicinity of Wagadugu. Image by L. Binger, ca. 1888.

The Moro Naba of Wagadugu. ANOM. ca. 1930-1960.

The Mossi versus the empires of Mali and Songhai

According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, a chronicle written in Djenne (Mali) during the 17th century:

In 1343, the ‘sultan’ of Mossi set out for Timbuktu at the head of a large army. The armies of medieval Mali fled in fear and abandoned the city to them. The Mossi sultan entered Timbuktu, sacked the city, and looted it before returning to his land5

In the 1430s, the Mossi army came very close to Timbuktu but was driven back by a force made up mostly of the city’s residents and scholars.6

In 1480, the Mossi besieged the town of Biru/Walata (in Mauritania) for a month. The Mossi ruler asked the people of Biru for a wife, and they gave him in marriage the daughter of sayyid Anda-n-Allah ‘Ali b. Abi Bakr. At the end of the siege, the Mossi defeated the forces of Walata and took many captives, although some of these were later rescued.7

This battle is also referenced by the Genoese merchant Antonio Malfante, who travelled to Tuat (Southern Algeria) in 1447, and mentions the attack of a town called ‘Vallo’ (identified as Walata) by a ‘pagan’ king ‘with five hundred thousand men’.8

This battle at Walata coincided with the conquests of Sunni Ali (r. 1464-1492), founder of the Songhai empire.

Joao de Barros, writing in the reign of Joao II of Portugal (1481-95), told how the Portuguese had tried to establish contact with the king of Mossi, a country which, according to reports received in the Senegambia, ‘began beyond Timbuktu and extended towards the Orient’. At the time, the Mossi were said to be at war with ‘the king of Timbuktu Uli Mansa’, ie, Sunni Ali.9

Street scene in Timbuktu, Mali.

In 1483, Sunni Ali defeated the Mossi ruler while campaigning in the direction of Walata.10

According to the Tarikh Ibn al-Mukhtar, another 17th-century chronicle, the Mossi ruler was nicknamed Kumdāghu. He pursued the ruler until the land of the Bambara, but the Mossi king managed to flee and establish his new capital at Arqum. Sunni Ali’s army later returned with an army from the direction of Gao, advancing south to Barkuna, which is described as a town that contains the palace of the Mossi king. He destroyed the palace and killed the Mossi.11

This battle marked a decisive shift in the balance of power in the region. While the Mossi had previously sought to control the rich trading cities of the north, the situation had changed by the end of the 15th century, as Songhai took the initiative in curbing Mossi ambitions.

In 1498, Askiya Muhammad of Songhai campaigned against the Mossi, ostensibly as part of a holy war (the only one of its kind according to the chronicler of the Tarikh al-Sudan). Initially, he sent his envoy, Mori Salih Diawara, to the Mossi ‘Sultan’ Nasiri with a letter urging the latter to embrace Islam. Nasiri responded that he needed to consult his ancestors.

The two then went with the ministers of Nasiri to the house of the priest, who compelled the king to reject Askiya’s offer to become Muslim and urged him to go to war with Songhai. The Mossi were defeated, and many were taken to Gao, where a special quarter for artisans was made for them.12

In 1549, Askiya Dawud campaigned against the Mossi. But by 1562, the Mossi had re-established their military and were able to repel a major assault from Songhai. In a third campaign in 1578, the Songhai retreated without taking anything. The Mossi are also reported to have briefly imposed themselves over the Fulbe kingdom of Masina, before they were ultimately expelled.13

THE exact relationship between the Mossi of the late medieval period and the Mossi of the early-modern period remains a subject of intense debate.14

Most historians and translators of the Timbuktu chronicles argue that the two are the same group. Ivor Wilks, who belongs to this camp, includes a tradition from the southern Mossi kingdom of Dagbon that points to an eastern origin of a hunter-founder from the direction of Lake Chad to Zamfara and thence to ‘Malle’; a country west of Hausaland and east of Gurma.15

Origins of the Mossi. Map by M. Izard

Others posit a break between the written and oral tradition, pointing to two other chronicles (an obscure 15th-century text by Abkal Ibn Awdar and a 19th-century Hausa chronicle by Malam al-Hassan), which locates the Mossi origin in the eastern bend of the Niger River. The former identifies it as Diamare (east of Niamey, the capital of Niger) while the latter pushes it further east to Zamfara (N.W Nigeria).16

Michel Izard, on the other hand, argues that the two groups were not the same; based on a comparative analysis of the oral traditions of the northern and southern kingdoms that point to a common, southern origin, and the absence of references to conflicts with Songhai. He maintains that the proto-history of the modern Mossi, as far as it can be reconstructed, is a proto-history of Mamprugu in N.E Ghana, from where the other Mossi states emerged.17

The Mossi kingdoms from the 16th to 18th centuries

According to the king lists recorded by Izard, the southern Mossi kingdoms were in place by the late 15th century, followed later by the northern kingdoms of Wagadugu in the early 16th century and Yatenga by 1540.

He suggests that the two groups, the Mossi of the 17th-century Tarikhs, and the Mossi from Mamprugu, represent two separate historical traditions. The first came from the Niger Bend region around Gurma and established their hegemony westwards along the river until it was destroyed by the Songhai wars. The second came from the Mamprugu to eventually control the upper Volta. Any relationship between the two is in the distant past, in the vicinity of Gurma, where some traditional histories seem to converge.18

The pre-existing languages of the Upper Volta belong to the ‘Gur’ language family, including the Lobi-Dogon, Grusi, Gurma, and Mole-Dagbane, the last of which was adopted by the Mossi. The autochtons presumably lacked any centralised political institutions but were organised based on areas of ritual jurisdiction (‘parishes’), each with its tengasoba/tengdana (land priest) having custody of the earth shrines.19

These priests were often left in office and sometimes vested with symbols of political authority. The communities were integrated as tengdamba/tegbisi (commoners) and assigned roles in the army. Conversely, chiefly lineages that failed to secure office in time lost their entitlements and entered the ranks of the commoners.

Their economies were predominantly agricultural ones. Surpluses were appropriated, through various forms of tribute, by local village chiefs appointed from the ranks of the nakomse. Part of these tributes was transferred to district chiefs of higher rank, who in turn passed on a share to the king, the na or naba.20

Succession in the kingdoms of Wagadugu, Dagbon, and Mamprugu was limited to one royal family, while other kingdoms had polydynastic systems where kingship rotated between two houses, each with its own capital, subordinate officials, and patronage systems.21

To counter the threat of rebellious chiefly lineages, rulers assigned new administrative functions to palace officials recruited from outside the chiefly class, a process that seems to have begun in the early 18th century.

These changes are associated with the reigns of those rulers identified in the oral histories as strongly committed to political innovation, namely, Na Atabia of Mamprungu (r. 1690-1741), Na Zangina of Dagbon (r. 1700-1714), Naba-Warga of Wagadugu (r. 1737-1744), and Naba Kango of Yatenga (r. 1757-1787).22

At least one of these figures, Na Atabia, is known from a contemporary chronicle known as the Gonja chronicle: ‘in that year [A.H. 1154] Atabia king of Ghabagha died. He is said to have reigned for fifty-odd years.’ Ghabagha/Gambaga was the capital of the kingdom, which also appears in Binger’s account in 1888.23

The chronicle also mentions a war between the kingdom of Gonja and Dagbon in A.H. 1125 (1713 CE), in which the former was defeated at Tunuma, western Dagbon. The king, while left unmentioned, was Na Zangina, a contemporary of Na Atabia.

The kings of Dagbon are known in multiple written sources. Zangina’s successors, Na Gariba and Na Andani (Aldani), are known from written accounts from Asante; while the later kings, beginning with Na Ziblim Kulunku (Kirgangu in H. Bath’s account from 1853), are known from European sources, as are other Mossi kings of the late 19th century.24

All of these rulers founded their own royal capitals. Na Atabia moved his court from Gambaga to Nalerigu, Na Zangina chose to establish his court at Agbande rather than at the older site of Yendi Dabari, and his successor Na Andani Sigili moved his court to Chele, the present-day Yendi. Na Kango of Yatenga is said to have founded Wahiguya and to have built there an imposing ‘soudanese’ palace that remained in place until 1895.25

Burkina Faso, earthen houses. ca. 1930. This has been identified as a palace belonging to a royal Mossi family on the central plateau of Upper Volta.

Outside the residence of the Moro Naba, Wagadugu. ANOM. ca. 1930-1960.

The Moro Naba and his court. Wagadugu. ANOM. ca. 1930-1960.

Trade and Islam in Mossi country

In the 18th century, there were about twenty Mossi kingdoms (Moogo) in what is today Burkina Faso, the principal ones being Wagadugu, Yatenga, Busuma, and Tenkodogo. There were two major zones of political influence: the Northwest, dominated by Yatenga, while the Central and Southern kingdoms recognised the nominal suzerainty of the ruler (Mogho Naba or Moro Naba) at Wagadugu, when it came to arbitrating conflicts.26

The Timbuktu chronicles and the early European/Portuguese reports suggest, by the very absence of comment, that in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Mossi kingdoms enjoyed little commercial importance.

It was only after the political reforms of the 18th century that an influx of muslim traders (Dyula from Mali, and Hausa from N.Nigeria) placed Mossi country at the crossroads of major West African trading routes. Most of these traders belonged to the Suwarian tradition of pacifism and were more concerned with trade in Kola and gold from the Vola basin than in proselytization.27

Dyula/Juula families, such as the Baghayogho, who were first established in Dagbon by 1660 CE and in Wagadugu by the 18th century, while Na Atabia of Mamprugu gave the imamate to the Hausa and Gurma immigrants in the latter half of the same century. Many of these merchants served as the kings’ commercial agents, while the bulk of Mossi society remained largely non-Muslim, including the royals, who resided in separate capitals away from the market towns.28

A Mossi merchant, ca. 1892.

The originally Mande-speaking merchants soon adopted the Mossi languages and were known locally as the Yarse. They dominated the trade routes extending from Timbuktu in the north to Salaga in the south, exchanging the usual staples of kola, donkeys, horses, textiles, captives, and salt. Barth in 1853 pointed to the importance of Mossi pack animals in the caravan trade.29

A number of Hausa dignitaries are also known, especially in the southern kingdoms of Dagbon and Mamprugu, where they provide arguably the only known internal written sources. One notable example was Malam al-Hassan, of Gobir, who translated the Qissãt Salaga Tãrikh Ghunjã into Hausa, and compiled the histories of Mamprugu, Mossi, Dagbon, and Grunshie in the 1890s.30

The Muslim influence appears to have been stronger in the southern kingdoms of Dagbon and Mamprugu, where Dyula and Hausa merchants were closely integrated in court politics, and capitals like Yendi developed into substantial trading towns.

According to information collected from traders in the Fezzan (Libya) by Simon Lucas in 1788/9, and by the British envoys Bowdich (1817) and Dupuis (1820) in Kumasi (Asante, Ghana), the city of Yendi, which was the capital of Dagbon, was four times larger than Kumasi and ‘enjoys great celebrity all over the African continent for its riches and manufactures.’31

Yendi’s fame as a commercial centre also carried the idea of Dagbon as a Muslim kingdom. Lucas called it ‘the Mahometan kingdom of Degombah’, but added that ‘there is reason to believe from the Shereef’s account that the Musselman and the Pagan are indiscriminately mixed’. In Asante, the British envoys’ reports that the king of Dagbon was sending muslim amulets to the Asante king have been confirmed by the discovery of an Arabic letter, now among the Copenhagen manuscripts, that was sent to the Asantehene by Na Andani of Dagbon.32

While Yendi’s importance as a merchant city was taken over by Salaga, its Muslim tradition left a deeper imprint than in other Mossi states.

Prayer at Sakhaboutenga, a muslim town near Wagadugu. Image by L. Binger, ca. 1888: “The religious ceremony takes place in a plain to the east of the village; it is quite an impressive sight. A profound silence reigned in the assembly. The faithful, arranged in rows some twenty deep, prostrated themselves and rose with perfect unison and imposing slowness. From time to time, the imam’s voice rose, and in the deepest contemplation, an “amen” could be heard from the congregation. There were approximately three thousand people of both sexes present, almost all dressed in white. The burnouses, the chechias, and this collection of black faces gave the ceremony the grandiose character of oriental festivals.”

Various manuscripts from Asante, Ghana. (left) Instructions for reading the Kīmīyā-yi Sa’ādat (’the Alchemy of Happiness’) by Persian philosopher al-Ghazali. British Library. (center) number table and instructions on how to fill it. British Library. (right) talismanic manuscripts Musée d’ethnographie, Genève

The Mossi states in the 19th century

The centralizing processes that had defined Mossi politics in the 18th century broke down in the 19th century, as the military weakness of the dominant kingdoms allowed for the smaller kingdoms to assert their autonomy.

In Yatenga, the kingdom’s military organization had largely failed to incorporate the technological innovations adopted by its neighbours. Like a feudal military, each Nakomse/nobleman answered the king’s call to arms by bringing their own forces, mostly cavalry units, that remained under their command.

Its defense relied on a series of fortified settlements manned by Mossi lineages that had been excluded from power. According to the chronicle of Yigane, few of these frontier chiefs lived to fight more than a few battles, although peace prevailed at the center.33

In the mid-19th century, Wagadugu’s territory was reduced by the emergence of Busuma to the east and Lalle to the west, each with its own Naaba/ruler. In Yatenga, a long succession crisis followed the reign of Naaba Tuguri (1806-22) but ended with the ascension of Naaba Totebalbo (1834-1850) and Naaba Yemde (1850-1877). It was reignited under Naaba Bulli (1895-1899), devolving to such an extent that in 1894, he requested military assistance from the French.34

It was in this context of political upheaval and disintegration that the French captain Louis-Gustave Binger travelled through Mossi country in 1888.

Waghadougou Residence. (Palace of King Sanom). Image by L. Binger. ca. 1888.

According to Binger, the Mossi capitals were substantial towns with a diverse population drawn from across the region.

Waghadougou (Wagadugu) had a population of about 5,000 inhabitants, while the other centers of Mani, Yako, Boussomo, Sakhaboutenga, Pisséla, Koupéla, and Ganzourgou have 3,000 inhabitants.

Waghadougou proper includes: the residence of the Naba, the group of Muslim villages (of Mandé origin), the group called Zang-ana, inhabited by Marenga (Songhay), of the Zang-ouér’o or Zang-ouéto (Hausa), some Tchilmigo (Fulani), and other non-Muslim Mossi groups.35

The ruler of Wagadugu was Naba Sanom/Sanem (r. 1871-1889), who had won the succession dispute against his brother Boukary. Apparently, the Muslim Mossi, who referred to Sanem as Alassane, claimed that the king is a Muslim and that he does his prayers hidden from the eyes of his subjects. The traditionalists, however, “say the opposite and speak with pride of their naba, who drinks dolo (beer) like them.”36

Most of the horses in Wagadugu came from Yatenga, which had two breeds of horses: an ‘Arabian’ type, and a ‘Yatenga’ type standing at up to 1.62 m, which Binger favourably compares to the French dragoons’ mount. Donkeys were bred in most Mossi regions and sold for about 30-35,000 cowries, equivalent to 60 gold francs in Kong and Bobo-Dioulasso. These were exchanged in Salaga (Ghana) for kola, cowries, and textiles.37

Horse breeds in Wagadugu. Image by L. Binger, ca. 1888.

Binger also visited the southern kingdom of Mamprugu, whose two most important centers were Oual-Oualé/Walwale and Gambakha/Gambaga, each with 2,500 to 3,000 inhabitants. The kingdom had greatly diminished in size; its ruler was apparently a Traouré (of Mandé origin), but he didn’t reside in the two main centers, which were imamates (societies led by an imam) headed by Imam Seydou Touré at Walwale, and Imam Baraga at Gambaga.38

The historian Nehemiah Levtzion suggests that the Traouré patronymic was simply adopted by the traditional rulers of Mamprugu as a praise-name, but it didn’t reflect a change in ethnicity. It was Na Atabia who moved the capital from Gambaca to the walled town of Nalerigu, partly to be safe from attacks by the neighbouring kingdom of Gurma, but also because rulers preferred to live apart from Muslims while also retaining the ability to control them.39

The existence of an imamate at Gambaga is also confirmed by the Copenhagen manuscripts from Asante, which contain manuscripts and letters written by the imams of Gambaca, dated to 1820.40

The transfer of the court to Nalerigu left Gambaga as the most important town in Mamprugu. Outsiders regarded it as the capital because that’s where they were received. Early British reports from 1898 mention that the proud Mamprugu king Nayiri Na Berega (d. 1902) refused to deal with the white men, leaving that job to Imam Baba of Gambaga. This arrangement caused some confusion in the minds of the Europeans as to the realities of political authority in Mamprugu.41

In any case, Maprungu was even less unified and more heterogeneous than other Mossi kingdoms, as reported by Binger, who observed that there were many nearly-independent Naba between Mamprugu and Dagbon, such as the Naba of Karaga. “Although his territory falls under the jurisdiction of Dagomba of Yendi, he maintains a somewhat independent position, wages war on his own behalf, and appears to care very little for the Naba of Yendi.”42

Visit to the Naba of Karaga. Binger, 1888.

Epilogue

Binger’s account suggests that the Mossi states were already in decline during the 19th century, while his expedition itself foreshadowed the colonial partition of Mossi territories in its final decade.

Around the same time, British and German reconnaissance missions from the south converged on the Dagbon and Mamprugu kingdoms in 1896-8, began to intersect with French incursions from the west. The French had already intervened in Yatenga between 1894 and 1895, and subsequently launched a campaign against the kingdom of Wagadugu from 1895 to 1897.

The last ruler of Wagadugu, Naba Wobogo, reportedly told the French officer, Captain Destenave:

“I know that the whites wish to kill me in order to take my country, and yet you claim that they will help me to organize my country. But I find my country good just as it is. I have no need of them. I know what is necessary for me and what I want.”43

The kingdom was occupied in January 1897 and incorporated into what would become modern Burkina Faso. The capital of the modern country remains the old city of Wagadugu (Ouagadougou), where horse races are still held in honour of Princess Yenenga, founder of the northern Mossi Kingdoms.

‘L’Empereur des Mossis le Morgho Naba et ses chefs de province’ Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The first Africanists (specialists who study African languages, societies, and history) were not colonial researchers, as is often assumed, but African intellectuals who were actively engaged in the production of knowledge about their own societies.

My Patreon article examines the works of al-Hajj Musa of Zinder (ca. 1870-1930), a pioneering Africanist and ethnographer.

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THE FIRST AFRICANISTS: AL-HAJJ MUSA

These pioneering scholars and cultural translators provided much of the ethnographic, linguistic, and historical information that later appeared in works of colonial writers.

Their contributions shaped a substantial portion of the documentary record on Africa, challenging the conventional distinction between “external” and “internal” sources.

This intellectual collaboration produced new epistemological frameworks for organizing and interpreting knowledge about African societies, laying the foundations for the academic disciplines that today constitute African studies.

IN June 1905, the Ethiopian scholar Aläqa Tayyä arrived at Seminar für orientalische Sprachen (School of Oriental Languages, SOL) in Berlin, Germany, to assume a position as a Lektor (Lecturer) of the Geʿez and Amharic languages.1

The 45-year-old däbtära (scholar) had received his early education in the monastic schools of the Lake Tana region before travelling to the coastal town of Imkulu in Eritrea, where he worked as a teacher for the Swedish Evangelical Mission.

He later returned to Ethiopia to complete his advanced studies, during which time he gained the acquaintance of the emperor, who subsequently recommended him to the German government for a teaching position at the SOL.2

(left) Dajazmach Gabra Sellase Barya Gabr (1872-1930), who collaborated with the German scholar Enno Littmann during the German Aksum Expedition of 1906. (right) The Swedish mission station at Imkulu, Eritrea, where Aläqa Tayyä was a teacher and translator for about 6 years, and used its printing press (the first in the Horn), to publish his first book Maṣḥafa Sawāsew (1889)

The mission station in Monkullo/Imkulu.

African lecturers and translators played a central role in the founding of the SOL and in establishing its reputation as one of the first Western institutions to lay the scholarly foundations of modern African studies.

This birthplace of academic African studies was built upon the often-unacknowledged intellectual labor and collaborative effort of African scholars, which were later subsumed by European imperial interests.

Among these was the collaboration between the Swahili ethnographer Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari (at SOL from 1900-1905) and the German linguist Carl Velten, as well as the Duala prince Njo Dibone, who, from 1885, worked with Carl Gotthilf Büttner.

The contributions of these and several African lecturers at the SOL are summarised in my previous essay on ‘The Hidden Founders of African Studies in Europe.’

Swahili lecturer at the SOL in Berlin, ca. 1911, collection of Carl Velten & Alice Carnwath. Rooftop view of Zanzibar, Tanzania, ca. 1936, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.

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The Ethiopian scholar Aläqa Tayyä's lectures attracted both ordinary students and learned orientalists.

The most notable among the latter was Eugen Mittwoch (1876-1942), who is described as ‘one of the most prominent representatives of German Orientalism during the first decades of the twentieth century.’3

After his encounter with Tayyä, he also became a leading specialist in Ethiopian languages at the SOL and transmitted his work to his students, some of whom became prominent ‘Ethiopists’ as well.4

The collaborative efforts of Eugen Mittwoch and Aläqa Tayyä between 1905 and 1907 resulted in the publication of at least three foundational texts on Ahmaric literature, for which Mittwoch properly acknowledged the contribution of Tayyä.5

Through his collaboration with Mittwoch, Tayyä gained access to Western collections of Ge’ez manuscripts that had been taken from Ethiopia, whose historical information would influence his composition of the first general history of Ethiopia published by an Ethiopian author.6

In his correspondence with Menelik, the Ethiopian scholar wrote:

“I was burning [with envy] when Europeans displayed their manuscripts in their libraries for visitors. Your majesty, I am sending you a list of Ethiopian manuscripts stolen and taken to Germany so that you can get them returned. So that the coming generation would be proud of you not only as a hero of Adwa, but also as a hero of collecting and preserving heritage and history.”7

Just like the Xhosa writer Tiyo Soga (1829-1871, South Africa), Owusu-Ansa (1851-1910) of Asante (Ghana), and many African proto-nationalists of the 19th century, Tayyä was a reformist who recognized the need to modernize Ethiopian institutions if the country was to retain its autonomy.

He urged Menilek to send young Ethiopians to Europe to study science and technology, as the Japanese and Moroccan governments had done. He advocated for the introduction of compulsory education, the establishment of a printing press, the replacement of the Maria Theresa thaler with a national currency, and the elevation of the status of craftsmen.8

Gold coin of Menelik II, ca. 1897. British Museum.

Upon returning to Ethiopia in 1907, he brought with him a collection of more than 130 books and soon began composing an extensive and ambitious account of Ethiopian history. Part of this work was eventually published in 1922 under the title YäʾItyoppʾya Hizb Tarik (“History of the People of Ethiopia”).9

As its title indicates, the book wasn’t based on the model of the ancient royal chronicles, but was a history of the people of Ethiopia as a ‘nation.’

Like Samuel Johnson’s history of the Yoruba (1899, Nigeria), which combined the historical traditions of diverse sub-groups into one ‘nation’, Tayyä describes the diversity of languages and cultural traditions of Ethiopia, and outlines the history of its different components.

He doesn’t exclude the information provided in traditional historical accounts, but instead expands and reframes this pre-existing narrative framework with additional perspectives and materials acquired during his travels in Europe.10

This ‘History’ long constituted the sole reference for Ethiopian students who lacked access to the manuscripts of royal chronicles or to the publications of Western scholars. Its wide circulation is reflected in the numerous reprints it received, appearing in 1927, 1953, 1955, 1962, 1965, and 1971.

Although Tayyä succeeded in publishing only two of his works, the Maṣḥafa Sawāsew (1889) and the ‘History’ (1922), he was a prolific writer with wide-ranging interests. He left behind a substantial corpus of unpublished manuscripts, including original compositions on ethnography, theology, and other subjects.11

In this respect, he may be compared to his near contemporary, the Bornu scholar al-Hajj Musa of Zinder (in present-day Niger), who, after travelling to the Hejaz and Jerusalem between 1900 and 1904, eventually settled in Cairo at al-Azhar University.

Between 1904 and 1914, the intellectual collaboration between al-Hajj Musa and the German Orientalist Rudolf Prietze resulted in the creation of a veritable corpus of Hausa and Kanuri publications that would influence modern studies of both languages.

Over several years spent between Cairo and Jerusalem, Prietze and al-Hajj Musa met daily and worked together, with the latter composing hundreds of pages in Ajami Kanuri and Hausa on a variety of topics. These include traditional tales, fables, songs, and historical narratives that have been translated and published by the historians Ari Awagana and Camille Lefebvre.12

These unique works of literature originally belonged to the oral rather than scribal world since the bulk of West Africa’s intellectual heritage mostly consists of theological works, grammar, law, royal chronicles, and scientific writings.13

They represent some of the earliest transcribed works of West African popular literature. According to the historian Louis Brenner, the Kanuri folklore transcribed by al-Hajj Musa was a ‘repository of insights and comments on social and political life in the nineteenth century.’

In this interpretive framework, folklore and other forms of popular literature could serve to legitimize, negotiate, or subvert political authority and social hierarchies.

The ethnographic data provided by al-Hajj Musa offer an alternate perspective of the relationship between different social groups in pre-colonial West Africa, especially the non-elites, whose presence in royal chronicles often appears only at the margins of narratives celebrating the exploits of rulers and other prominent figures.

Building on this insight, my latest Patreon article examines the ethnographic meanings of the Kanuri folklore and historical narratives of al-Hajj Musa, drawing on comparative analysis of related traditions collected by European and African scholars in Bornu during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Please subscribe to read about it here and support this newsletter:

THE FIRST AFRICANISTS: AL-HAJJ MUSA

Gold mined in the region supplied the mints of North Africa and southwestern Europe, and the lure of this precious metal helped stimulate early European exploration along the Atlantic coastline of Africa.1

While the external demand for West African gold is well documented, far less is known about its internal demand within the continent. As a result, it is often erroneously assumed that the metal held little value for the communities that produced it.

External observers frequently imagined that the medieval empires of West Africa controlled vast mines worked by their subjects. The historical reality was quite different.

Although many of these states built their wealth on the gold trade, control over the gold fields remained in the hands of small-scale communities on the periphery. The political relationship between the mining communities and the large states was one of economic alliance rather than vassalage.

This arrangement created an internal market for gold. The metal circulated widely enough to support the use of gold currency, the creation of state treasuries that regulated its distribution, and, in some cases, the minting of gold coinage.

Beyond its economic utility, gold served as a definitive marker of royalty and social status, fueling urban growth and the development of specialized artisanal production, including goldsmithing, many examples of which were later removed to museums in Europe and North America.

This article examines the historical significance of gold within West African monetary and cultural systems from the medieval period

The goldfields of West Africa and the empire of Mali.

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PATREON

The State treasuries of medieval West Africa.

The region of the West African Sahel and savannah, known in medieval Arabic sources as Bilād al-Sūdān, first appears in written accounts from the 8th-9th century.

These early references describe the kingdom of Ghana (today in southern Mauritania) and its fabled gold mines,2 but most accounts remain fragmentary until the 11th century, when the Andalusi historian al-Bakrī (d. 1094) provides a more detailed description of the region.

He reports that the king of Ghana maintained a royal treasury in order to regulate the circulation of gold arriving from the mines located south of his domains.

According to al-Bakrī’s account, the kings of Ghana retain large gold nuggets while allowing only gold dust to circulate in trade, a practice intended to prevent an oversupply of gold and the consequent depreciation of its value:

“The nuggets found in all the mines of his country are reserved for the king, only this gold dust being left for the people. But for this the people would accumulate gold until it lost its value. The nuggets may weigh from an ounce to a pound. It is related that the king owns a nugget as large as a big stone.”3

This practice is well-documented in the 19th century kingdom of Asante on the Gold-Coast (modern Ghana), which maintained a monetary system based on gold as well as a state treasury, but it’s clearly of significant antiquity, as shall be examined below.

Al-Idrisi, in 1154, also reports, based on information received from Moroccan merchants, that the king of Ghana possessed a “brick of gold weighing thirty pounds made of one piece.” Ghana was later subsumed by the Mali empire in the 13th century, which also controlled the gold routes but not the mines themselves, reportedly because production would decline every time the Mansa (ruler) of Mali extended his authority southwards.4

The above account came from Mansa Musa (r. 1312-1337) while on his famous pilgrimage through Cairo to Mecca in 1324, during which he carried about 100 tonnes of gold, according to several contemporary accounts.5

These accounts don’t explain whether the gold came from the treasury or Mansa’s own wealth (or if there was any distinction between either). As I examined in my previous essay, West African pilgrims visiting Egypt and Mecca often carried significant quantities of gold for their journey, and it’s possible that their assets could have been included in the total estimate.

Detail from the 14th-century Catalan Atlas showing Mansa Musa holding a gold nugget.

The globe-trotter Ibn Battuta, who visited Mali in 1353, doesn’t mention a treasury but describes the gold ornaments found at the court of Mali, and the use of gold dust for paying court officials. He adds that near the end of the Ramathan fast, Mansa Sulayman (r. 1340-1359) “distributed money to the qadi, the preacher and the jurists” and gave 133 1/3rd mithqals of gold to the traveller.6

According to information obtained by Ibn Khaldun from a qadi of Gao, it was Mari Jata (r. 1360-1374) who reportedly “squandered the treasure” and ruined the empire.

“His extravagance and profligacy, reached such a point that he sold the boulder of gold which was the prized possession of their treasury. It was a boulder weighing twenty qintars … They regarded it as the rarest and most precious of treasures because its like is so scarce in the mines.” He adds that “In his loose living he squandered other royal treasures.”7

The Songhai empire under Sonni Ali (r. 1464-1492) ultimately conquered most of Mali’s territories and assumed control of the gold routes.

The correspondence between Askiya Muhammad (r. 1493-1528) and the Maghrebian scholar Al-maghili (d. 1505) refers to a public treasury which had been left by Sonni ‘Ali, consisting mostly of gold dust. The 17th century Timbuktu chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan reports that 300,000 mithqals of gold (approx. 1275 kg) were recovered after Sunni ‘Al’s death, some of which was spent by Askiya Muhammad on pious works during his pilgrimage.8

Leo Africanus reports that the Askiya of Songhai “possesses great treasure in coin and gold ingots. One of these ingots weighs 1,300 pounds.” He adds that the Askiya collected tribute of 150,000 ducats/mithqals from the city of Agadez (W. Niger). According to Hunwick, much of this gold likely came from the Akan gold fields via Hausaland.

He also mentions that while the king possessed a lot of gold, some of which he used to gild his furnishings. However, the King refused to pay merchants with this gold, and for this reason, Leo Africanus refers to him as ‘mean’.9

‘gold merchants’ in Timbuktu, Mali, ca. 1896

Internal and external accounts suggest that this royal treasury was spent on redistributive exchange between rulers and subordinate officials, on pious donations, and on maintaining the army.

This system of redistribution, which has been explored in greater detail in anthropological and historiographic literature on Africa (especially in Asante and Dahomey), is explicitly described in al-Umari’s account of Mali:

“The emirs and soldiers of this king have fiefs and benefices. Among their chiefs are some whose wealth derived from the king reaches 50,000 mithqals of gold every year, besides which he keeps them in horses and clothes. His [the king’s] own ambition is to give them fine clothes and to make his towns into cities.”10

The Tarikh al-Sudan reports that the invasion of Timbuktu by Songhai’s Sonni Ali in 1468 was instigated by the Timbuktu-koi (governor of Timbuktu, an official from the era of imperial Mali) because he had not been given his share of the taxes collected by the city’s Tuareg ruler Akil, which amounted to a third of the 3,000 mithqals in one day.

The chronicle explains that, traditionally, the Timbuktu-koi used this sum to buy textiles for the nomadic Tuareg (likely for redistribution rather than just apparel) and for entertaining them when they came from their camps to Timbuktu. Akil, who had seized the town after the withdrawal of medieval Mali, initially left the Timbuktu-koi in charge before he decided to assume direct control.11

With regards to pious donations, the same chronicle provides an account of the pilgrimage of Askiya Muhammad, who donated about 100,000 mithqals in the Hejaz, apparently more than Mansa Musa’s 20,000 mithqals. Neither of these figures is accurate, but they were, in all likelihood, intended to glorify the Songhai ruler, especially considering that Mansa Musa’s wealth and generosity are much better documented in external sources.12

In external accounts, the Askiya’s pilgrimage is confirmed by a letter from 1511, based on information from Jewish merchants in the Maghreb. It mentions a ‘Negro king of Guinea’ named ‘azquya’ (ie, Askiya) at the head of a bi-annual caravan from ‘Takrur’ (Muslim West Africa) that arrived in Cairo carrying a lot of gold.13

Although there is some evidence that the Askiya had funds of his own that were different from the state treasury, in practice, there was probably not a very fine distinction. Leo Africanus claims that the officials of Timbuktu, the qadi, and the major scholars were supported by the Askiya Muhammad, probably similar to the tradition described by al-Umari. 14

According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, Askiya Ishaq (r. 1539-1549) reportedly collected 70,000 mithqals of gold from the merchants of Timbuktu by ‘extortion’ (ie, more than the Zakat he was entitled to). The chronicler adds that “No one mentioned this during the askiya’s lifetime for fear of harsh punishment.” According to Hunwick, this figure is equivalent to about 315 and 350 kg of gold.15

During the reign of Askiya Dawud (r. 1549-1582), the Songhai ruler sent 10,000 mithqals of gold to the Moroccan/Saadian sultan al-Mansur (r. 1549-1603). The text indicates that this was a goodwill gift, but the latter may have interpreted it as a remission of taxes accruing from the salt mine of Taghaza, which was controlled by Songhai but claimed by Morocco.16

Dawud also donated money for the reconstruction of the Great Mosque of Timbuktu that was undertaken by the qadi al-Aqib.17 The Tarikh Ibn Mukhtar, another 17th-century chronicle, mentions that the qadi spent about 66.67 mithqals (283 grammes) on the construction.18

After his death, disputes between the Saadian ruler al-Mansur and the Songhai rulers over the ownership of Taghaza ended with the invasion of 1591.

The invading army seized large amounts of gold from Songhai, estimated to be about 100,000 mithqals, or 500kg, with other amounts arriving over the course of about a decade. Much of it was from the Askiya’s treasury, and the rest was taken from the homes of the scholars of Timbuktu and even from the soldiers, mostly in the form of gold dust and jewelry.19

There are numerous accounts (West African, Moroccan, and European) which describe the capture of this gold, virtually all of which was seized from the royals of Gao and scholars of Timbuktu, rather than obtained through trade.

To give just two examples; an English merchant, Lawrence Madoc, writes of the arrival in July 1594 of princes from Gao along with “thirty mules laden with gold.” Another English merchant in Morocco, Jasper Thomson, reported the arrival of Jawdar Pasha on 28 June 1599 with 30 camel loads of gold dust, as well as pepper, horses, captives, and some of the royals of Gao.20

For context, Mansa Musa took about 100 camel-loads (about 12 tonnes) of gold on pilgrimage, so the quantities of gold taken from Songhay must have been equally significant.

Map showing some of the empires mentioned in this essay.

After the collapse of Songhai, imperial administration was reconstituted in the 18th century following the rise of the Bambara empire at Segu, and the Tukulor empire of Umar Tal, which conquered Segu in 1861.

Like their medieval predecessors, the rulers of Segu reportedly kept a state treasury, part of which consisted of gold. Most accounts describing this gold come from after Umar Tal’s conquest of Segu.

At Segu, Umar found storehouses full of treasure, which he distributed among his army. The value of the gold alone was reportedly worth 20 million francs, according to an account by the French traveler Eugene Mage, who visited Segu in 1864, although he later suggests that the figure may have been exaggerated.21

In his travel account, Mage notes that a gold gros from the Bouré gold fields south of Tukulor is worth 12.50 to 18 francs, and that 12 grams of gold in Segu was worth 36 francs. This suggests that the treasure was worth between 110,000 and 160,000 gros, or 666.7 kg of gold.22

He provides other figures he consideres more reliable, including a gift of 800 gros of gold from Umar Tal (r. 1854-1864) to the Kunta shaykh of Timbuktu; a trader who had received 340 gros of gold from the king and gave it to Mage for safekeeping; and a departing gift from Umar’s successor Ahmadou Tall (r. 1864-1893) of two gold bracelets, each worth 100 gros.23

Palace of Amadou at Segou, Mali. ca. 1863-8, Engraving by Eugene Mage.

Chronicles of Umar Tal’s conquest, which were written in the late 19th century, describe this treasure in more detail:

“When the Shaikh came to his [Ali’s] private chambers, he found his [uneaten] food. The bowl was made of gold, the soap dish was gold, the wash basin was gold, the carpet was of woven gold, his walking stick was gold, ... even his bed was made from gold. The Shaikh entered the storehouse and found it partitioned into various apartments. He found stores of gold of such an amount that no one had ever counted its value.”24

It’s suggested that the Tukulor rulers also kept a treasury, containing gold obtained through tribute. According to the French traveler Paul Soleillet in 1878, the Bure gold-producing region initially paid al-Hajj ‘Umar a tribute of 10,000 gros of gold, but later stopped after he had shifted his campaigns northward. (c.1855).25

Another chronicle recounts that Umar distributed a large number of gold and silver coins (possibly imported Thalers) and great quantities of cowries, salt, and cloth to the talibés (his followers/soldiers).26

Umar also kept the gold and wooden ‘fetishes’ from the palace of the defeated Bambara rulers to serve as a proof text, in the religiously couched ideological dispute he had with their ‘protectors’; the Muslim state of Massina/Hamdallaye and the Kunta of Timbuktu. Ironically, Umar spent a large sum of gold recruiting the non-Muslim Dogon of Bandiagara shortly before he was defeated by the Massina and Kunta.27

The gold and wooden objects kept by Umar Tal at Segu had been used in annual rituals that recalled the founding of the Segu state in the 18th century, and it was this treasure that would later be seized by the French and carried off to Western museums after the colonial conquest.

At the time of its capture, the treasure contained just 75kg of gold, as well as over 160 tons of silver.28 ( $10m worth of gold, $351 m of silver based on current prices)

Gold necklace from Ségou, Mali. Taken as spoils of war by Colonel Archinard, 19th century. Quai Branly.

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Gold as currency in medieval West Africa: gold coins, gold dust, and measurements

There are also several references to the use of gold coins in West Africa from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, whose corroborating archaeological evidence has only recently come to light.

The first of these comes from al-Bakri in the 11th century, who mentions that in the medieval town of Tadmekka (Mali) “Their dinars are called “bald” because they are of pure gold without any stamp.”29

Leo Africanus’ description of Djenne in the early 16th century also mentions that “the coinage used by these blacks is unstamped gold,” while iron was used for smaller purchases. He adds that Timbuktu, “instead of coined money they use pieces of pure gold,” while cowries were used for smaller purchases.30

Excavations at Essouk-Tadmekka in Mali have uncovered evidence of gold-coin moulds and crucibles from occupation levels from the 10th to 12th centuries CE. Similar coin moulds had also been found during excavations at the site of Tegdaoust in Mauritania.

The gold from Essouk’s crucibles has a high level of purity (atleast 98%), and given the absence of refining waste, was likely obtained in its natural form, which fits with analyses of modern West African nuggets. The Archaeologist Sam Nixon suggests that the Almoravids brought an end to Tadmekka’s coinage as they tried to reduce the importance of competitor coinages to their own.31

Map showing Essouk, Gao, Bentyia, and the goldfields of S.W Niger. Map by Paulo de Moraes Farias

Fragment of ceramic mould for producing gold coin blanks, excavated at Tadmakka, shown together with radiograph (top right) and close-up of individual prills trapped in surface. Images by S. Nixon.

East-west view across the central area of ​​the Tadmekka ruins. Image by S. Nixon.

It’s been suggested by Paulo de Moraes Farias that the mint at Essouk was supplied with gold from the mines south of Bentyia, rather than the better-known mines of Bambuk and Bure. Bentyia was a medieval town south of the Songhai city of Gao, which was later also associated with the Wangara gold trade. Archaeological surveys have recovered small clay crucibles at some of these sites, suggesting that the metal was smelted in the area.32

In addition to these finds, a 10th-century gold dinar was found at Gao (Mali), six Almoravid gold coins were found near Tegdaoust, and at least five silver coins and a copper-alloy coin were recovered from excavations at Essouk. The origin of these silver coins is unclear, but they may have also been of local manufacture.

It’s relevant to note here that silver coins are also mentioned as currency in al-Umari’s 14th century description of the Kanem empire, which was east of Essouk and was apparently its suzerain in the previous century. A 15th-century account also describes the presence in Egypt of silver coinage from ‘Bilad al-Takrur’, a generic name for West Africa. These imported coins were considered illegal in Mamluk Egypt and were brought to be melted down.33

These archaeological discoveries, which are fairly recent, suggest that historical references to indigenous West African coinage should now be more seriously considered.

According to Sam Nixon, given the historical evidence from Djenne and Timbuktu, it shouldn’t be surprising that the presence of abundant gold and exchange with coin-based economies led to the production of coinage.34

Copper-alloy and silver coins from medieval Essouk-Tadmekka, images by Sam Nixon.

The empire of Kanem during the late Middle Ages.

In the post-medieval period, the most suggestive of this historical evidence of local coinage comes from the 19th century, describing the ‘Nikky dinar’ of the Wangara traders in Borgu (Benin) and the gold dinars of Araouane (Mali).

According to the British consul Joseph Dupuis, who visited the kingdom of Asante (Ghana) in 1820, from where he obtained two of the gold coins minted at Nikky. He explains that in the eastern neighbours of Asante, the mithqal was simply a “nominal coin” for they are not manufactured there, “they are only partially current from the influx of specie brought by the northern traders.”

He then adds that “Nikky, the capital of Bargho or Killinga, is the great mint of Soudan, south of the Niger, as Bornou is that of the north; such was the similitude used by my informers, who shewed me two pieces of money of the description, which were stamped, as clearly as I could discern, with characters similar to the mitskal of Morocco, although the impression, from the purity of the metal, was too much defaced to enable me to trace the year or the whole of the writing. I was told they were the coin of Kilinga [Borgu] and that they were current not only in Wangara, but also in Bambarra, Maroa, Fillany, Haussa, some parts of the desert, and even in Egypt.”35

Dupuis suggests that the gold from which the Nikky mithqal was minted came from Bonduku; from there it was sent to Salaga, Yendi, and other towns to the north-east of Asante, from which it reached Nikky by way of Zogho [Djougou] and other intermediate towns. At Nikky, which Dupuis calls ‘the great metropolis of the great kingdom of Bargo’, he states ‘it is transformed into trinkets and ducats (mitskal)’.36

Dupuis notes that its value was reckoned at thirteen to the Ashanti benda, about 11s. 2d. Sterling. and that it never varied ‘from the standard that passed for currency in all parts of the continent.’

The coin was used along the routes used by the Wangara traders, but the social upheaval of the era was beginning to disrupt the trade at the time Dupuis was writing. Nikky eventually came under the control of the emirate of Katsina (a province of the empire of Sokoto), and by mid-century had evidently ceased to mint gold coins.37

Archaeological research in this region, which remains limited, has yet to recover the Nikky coins, which may have been melted or converted to jewelry. Recent excavations at the site of Bogo-Bogo in northern Benin yielded a number of metal objects from occupation levels dated to the 19th/early 20th century, including a coin made from an unidentified metal, with one surface decorated, that was seemingly used as a pendant.38

These dinars could have been a relic of an older monetary system of the medieval period (described in Tadmekka, Kanem, and Songhai) that was quickly becoming displaced by the mass importation of cowries, which only reached the interior in significant sums during the 18th and 19th centuries.

When Hugh Clapperton visited Kano in 1822-4, which he described, with some exaggeration, as the best-regulated market in Africa, he mentioned that the governor of the market fixes the exchange prices between the two main currencies: cowries and silver.

He notes the “great convenience of the cowrie, which no forgery can imitate; and which, by the dexterity of the natives in reckoning the largest sums, forms a ready medium of exchange in all transactions, from the lowest to the highest.”39

Further east in Bornu, the Sheikh al-Kanemi reportedly requested that Dixon Denham, Clapperton’s companion, send equipment for minting gold, silver, and iron coins to replace the cloth-currency that was in use at his capital, Kukawa.40

Further east in the town of Logone-Birni, where both gold and silver were unavailable, and cowries hadn’t been adopted, Clapperton reported that the traditional currency was thin, horse-shoe-shaped plates of iron, for which there was a lively currency market.

“The money market of Loggun, has its fluctuations: the value of this “circulating medium” is settled by proclamation, at the commencement of the weekly market, every Wednesday; and speculations are made, by the bulls and bears, according to their belief of its rise or fall.”41

Reception of Monteil by Bornu’s courtiers, army, and spectators at Kukawa, Nigeria. ca. 1891

Aerial view of Logone-Birni, Cameroon. ca. 1932 Quai Branly

Aerial photo of the city of Kano, Nigeria in the early 1930s

At the time of René Caillié’s visit in 1828, the only market in which solid gold currency prevailed was the town of Araouane, north of Timbuktu:

“Cowries, which are the current money of Soudan (West Africa), do not pass at El-Arawan. There, nothing circulates but gold and silver —neat pieces of the value of a mitkhal, in imitation of the money of Morocco. The gold mitkhal increases in value as you approach the coasts.”

He adds that the value of the gold ‘mitkhal’ is about twelve francs, and the silver mitkhal about four.42

The Austrian explorer Dr. Oskar Lenz, who traveled from Morocco to Timbuktu between 1879 and 1880, found that gold coins had disappeared from both Morocco and Araouane.

He explains that the mithqal in use at El Arouan and at Timbuktu was a unit of weight, not a coin, weighing ‘about 4 grams’. By his time, the gold-dust currency had ceased to circulate, such gold as was in circulation being in the form of rings, small gold plaques, and small grains.43

Lenz observed that because the Moroccan gold coins were made of very high-purity gold, they were hoarded or exported to Europe for profit, leaving only debased or common metal coins in circulation. A similar fate had likely befallen the Nikky dinar and the unstamped coins of Tadmekka and Djenne before them.

Remains of the old town of Araouane, now largely abandoned and partially submerged by the surrounding dunes. Image by Anthony Ham

Timbuktu from the terrace of the traveller’s house. H Barth, 1853

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The measures of Gold currency in West Africa

The mithqal, which is derived from the Arabic word for weight, was the standard measure for weighing gold dust, averaging 4.25 grams; any variations were due to custom and weighing techniques. It was the only pre-colonial Western African measure corresponding to an actual weight as opposed to a quantity, and was also used as a standard unit of account.44

One of the earliest references to the use of scales/weights in the conduct of West African gold trade comes from the Portuguese trader Andre Alvares de Almada, who described trade in Sutuko (Gambia) in the 1560s:

“At the village of Sutuco there are transactions in gold, which is brought there by Mandinga traders who are also men of religion. The gold is of good quality, most of it golddust but some of it in pieces. These traders are very knowledgeable regarding weights and everything else. They have very sensitive balances ... and silk-thread strings. They [also] have little writing desks made of leather, without fasteners, in the drawers of which they keep the weights. These are in brass and look like dice; [but] the marco [eight ounce weight] looks like a sword pommel.

The gold is brought in quills of big feathers and bones of cats, hidden and strapped in their clothing. These traders spend much more than six months on the trip;... they travel in obedience to the orders to the Black Emperor, whom all the Blacks of this Guinea we are talking about obey. He is called Mandimanca [king of Mali] ..The inhabitants of the Mina (El-mina in Ghana) refer to this king as ‘Big Elephant’.”45

Gold scales with weights 18th-19th century, Akan, Ghana & Cote D’ivoire. Houston Museum of Fine Arts

Jeweler’s scale. Trarza, Mauritania. ca. 1938. Quai Branly

While variations in certain measures rendered comparisons difficult, the gold weight or mithqal was apparently a stable 4.25 grams across most African markets, and it served as a common unit of account from Kumasi to Cairo, which formed the basis of currency exchanges between silver, crowries, and salt bars.

The price of the cowrie shell money remained stable in the region from the late 17th until the early 19th century, with an exchange rate of around 3,000 cowries to the gold mithqal. In the mid-19th century, the price of cowries varied greatly even within West African markets. But in the course of the century, the shell money progressively lost value due to import-led inflation.46

At the time of Leo Africanus, a camel-load of salt (about 250 lbs) was worth eighty ducats/mithqals of gold.47 When Mungo Park visited the region in 1795, he reported that most of the gold was exchanged for salt and other merchandise. He provides an exchange rate of one slab (2.5ft long) for 2 pounds 10 shillings sterling (ie, £2 10s. 0d sterling), and one mithqal at I2s. 6d. sterling. Meaning 4 mithqals of gold bought one slab of salt.48

Changing value ratios of gold, silver, and cowries in the ‘western Soudan’. image by Philip Curtin.49

He mentions that each trader carried his own small balances for weighing gold, and that both gold dust and wrought gold had the same value. The unit of measurement was the minkalli/mithqal, valued at I2s. 6d. sterling. It could be subdivided further for small purchases measured using a teelee-kissi (black bean), of which six were equivalent to a mithqal.50

René Caillié found that merchants at Kankan (Guinea) used gold dust as both currency and a trade item, and carried “small scales made in the country.. Which are as accurate as ours.” The weight of the gold was measured against the black seeds of a particular tree, two of which were equivalent to six francs. The gold at Kankan came from Bure, often shaped into earrings valued at between 6 and 25 gourdes (Spanish silver), or as gold dust kept in quills.51

Gold weights at Djenne, Table by Marion Johnson.

It’s relevant here to note that in Europe and Asia, the mithqal, like the ounce, was usually subdivided into grains, and often also into larger divisions, also based on common fruits or seeds. Most of the European grains resolve themselves into three groups, based on the troy grain, which is the barley grain (0.0648 grams); the wheat grain/ Roman grain, about 0.75 times the weight of the barley grain; and an intermediate grain, about five-sixths of the barley grain.52

The English troy weight system, and some of the Arab systems, are based on the barley grain; the Dutch use the ass, a wheat grain three-quarters of the weight of a barley grain. The Spanish grao used in gold weighing was about the same size as the Dutch; but in gold weighing, there were only 600 to the ounce. The French used the intermediate size of grain, about 0-82 of the troy grain, counting 576 grains to the ounce.

In West Africa, the seed of Arbrus precatorius formed the basis of a grain-mithqal system. It has a conventional weight of about I.25 troy grains, and is the basis of the Akan gold-weights system, being usually 1/24 ackie. In the Fezzan (Libya), this was known as ‘ain el Dik and had the conventional weight of half a Kharub (carob) bean, 2 wheat grains, or I.5 barley grains. Interestingly, the Fezzan seed was reported to have been brought from West Africa, and is associated with a dynasty claiming West African origins.53

Grains, ounces, and mithqals across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Table by Marion Johnson.

Internal textural evidence indicates that scribes were also paid in gold, and books were purchased directly with gold; their prices could vary considerably.

The colophons of the Mukham of Ibn Sidah, which was copied in Timbuktu in 1573, indicate that the copyist was paid 1 mithqal of gold, while the proofreader was paid 0.5 mithqals.54 In the same city, the 16th century historian Mahmud Kati found for sale the dictionary, al-Qamus of al-Firuzabadi (ca. 1410), costing 80 mithqals, and he sought the gold to buy it from Askiya Dawid.55

Various manuscripts from private collections in Timbuktu, some of which date back to the 15th and 16th centuries, indicate the prices of the manuscripts in mithqals and the amounts paid to copyists and proof-readers, which points to the importance of gold currency in the local book market.56

In Mungo Park’s account from 1795, two mithqals could purchase a dyed cotton garment of local manufacture, one could purchase a bullock, three could purchase a musket, and 10-17 mithqals could purchase a horse.57 In René Caillié’s account from 1824-8, the merchants of Kankan “attached great value” to their gold, “and exchanged it for none but the choicest articles.”58

By the time of Eugene Mage in 1864, gold was rarely used in most market transactions, but was instead almost exclusively used in the import-export trade, especially for firearms.

copy of the al-Qamus of al-Firuzabadi (ca. 1410), 18th century, Aboubacar Ben Said Library. Timbuktu, Mali. images from HMML Reading Room with the permission of SAVAMA-DCI, Num. SAV ABS 03132.

19th cent. manuscript from Hamdullahi, Mali. commercial agreement on trade in several West African cities, including the costs of constructing a house in Massina (Hamdullahi). All prices in gold. Mamma Haidara Library, Mali.

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Gold mining in pre-colonial West Africa.

There are several brief references to the mining of West African gold in external accounts, most of dont provide useful historical descriptions of the activity. The exception is found in Al-Umari’s 14th century description of the mining in medieval Mali.

He notes that gold was obtained from ‘pagan’ nations, in exchange for copper at the price of 100 mithqals of copper to 66 2/3rds of gold. “The gold is extracted by digging pits about a man’s height in depth and the gold is found embedded in the sides of the pits or sometimes collected at the bottom of them.”59

Gold fields of West Africa

Four centuries later, Mungo Park observed a similar process of gold mining in Kamalia (eastern Senegambia, part of the Bambuk goldfields), where gold was extracted by both reef and alluvial mining. Mining activity was organized by the town’s Mansa (ruler), and usually occurred at the end of the harvest season.

The miners were residents of the town (ie, free labourers, not captives), with the men digging the pits and women washing the gold. The earth removed from the pits was drawn up in large calabashes until the miners encountered a gold vein. This ore was then sent up for washing to obtain the gold grains and nuggets. The gold is then kept in quills, and part of it is converted into jewelry for the women.60

His journal describes a similar process at Shrondo and Dindikoo (In the eastern Seneg-Gambia region), where gold was mined from relatively shallow pits (about 10-12 ft deep) next to which were wash pits, on the top of each were different coloured stones that marked each person’s mine. He also describes the process of converting the gold into ornaments using the lost-wax method to make “massy and precious” rings.61

Gold hoop earrings of flattened, flanged design with floral or wheat stalk design incised on both sides and inside of each earring. Senegal. mid-20th century. Smithsonian Institute.

(Top) gold washing (bottom) cross-section of a mine. Shrondo, Senegal. sketch by Mungo Park.

Another traveller, Gaspard Mollien, visited the gold-producing region of Bambuk in 1818, which he describes as a ‘kingdom’ situated to the east of Bundou (Futa Bundu). He reported that when the “king of Bondou goes to war, the proprietors of the mines are obliged to deliver to him the gold which they have amassed, and for which they are paid in flocks and slaves at the end of the campaign.”62

He describes the various mythical traditions associated with the goldfields that were meant to discourage foreign traders from seizing them, and the gold-mining and washing process, similar to that observed by Mungo Park, and mentioned by medieval Arab authors. He estimates that there were thousands of pit mines, the largest of which was 20-25ft deep, and 20ft wide, with steps for descending, but the sides were not reinforced.

“The continual invasions to which the Bamboukians are liable have rendered them so suspicious that they seldom permit strangers to enter their rich country, especially Europeans, whose cupidity is known to them and against whom they have had to defend themselves.”63

Mollien also reported on the goldfields of Bure/Bourré, much further south, “which possesses more gold than all Bondou and Bambouk together. The negroes dig deep to find the metal, and make very long subterraneous galleries.”64

Boolibani, the capital of Futa Bundu, in 1820

The Bure goldfields were later visited by Lieutenant Vallière, when he travelled across the Upper Niger in 1879–1881. Bure did indeed have signifıcant resources of high-quality gold, but it was a very small region. Vallière argued that people talked up the quality of gold mined elsewhere by naming it “gold from Bure.”

After the breakdown of Medieval Mali, the goldfields of Bure were controlled by various polities and confederations, among which Kangaba was the most important. In the 1860s, the region fell under the orbit of, but not the direct control of El Hadji Umar‘s Tukulor empire, which, like medieval Mali, only controlled the trade routes, but not the mines.65

The Bambuk gold fields enjoyed nearly a millennium of notoriety in the Muslim world and in Europe. The earliest among the latter were the Portuguese in the 15th-17th century, who made several unsuccessful forays into the region. They were later followed by the French in 1858-60, whose attempts at extracting the gold using modern techniques failed.

During the colonial period, the French, who despised the extraction methods used by the Africans and replaced them with modern mining technology, found that the gold content of the ores was not uniformly distributed, and thus produced a low average gold content per ton of ore.

According to the historian Philip Curtin, gold could only be mined using less intensive methods during the pre-colonial era because the opportunity cost of labour was low in the dry season, but this had since risen with the increased labour mobility in the colonial period, thus making gold mining largely unprofitable.66

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Biconical gold and silver bead. Fulani, Senegal, 19th-20th century. Detroit Institute of Arts

Biconical pendant on a gold-plated silver-alloy necklace. Tukulor artist, Senegal or Mali. Smithsonian Institution.

Goldsmithing and consumption in West Africa.

Al-Bakri, in the 11th century, provides one of the earliest references to the internal demand for gold in West Africa. He reports that the king, his attendants, his horses, and even his dogs are adorned with gold jewelry, while soldiers carried shields and swords decorated with gold.67

Various medieval Arab accounts mentioned above refer to the presence of gold ornaments in the various royal courts of medieval Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, including the firsthand account of Ibn Battuta, the pilgrim caravan of Mansa Musa described by al-Umari and later sources, and the Portuguese descriptions of Mande traders at Elmina (Ghana).

Archaeological evidence suggests that although populations in the Sahel and savannah wore gold, they rarely chose gold to accompany them in death. Excavations of tumuli dating from the Middle Ages in contemporary Senegal and Mali have unearthed only a handful of objects, mostly from the pre-Islamic period, such as the famous Rao Pectoral from the 8th century, as well as gold chains and gold beads from the Wanar and Kael Tumulus, dated to the 6th century CE.68

Rao pectoral, 8th century CE, Senegal, Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop.

Several internal accounts also describe the political, monetary, and cultural value of gold in the kingdoms of the West African Sahel and Savannah.

The wealth of rulers such as Mansa Musa and Aksiya Muhammad was tied to their control of gold ‘mines’ like Bitu/Begho. The foundation of kingdoms and cities in the interior, such as Gonja (N.W Ghana) and Bonduku (N.E Côte d’Ivoire), is attributed to the southern expansion of the Wangara/Juula, and the beginnings of the exploitation of the Akan goldfields of Ghana.69

The Wangara were a commercial diaspora whose name was synonymous with the gold trade networks from the Portuguese coastal fort of Elmina (Ghana) to the trading towns of Libya and beyond.70

Map of west Africa showing the dispersion routes taken by the Jakhanke (yellow), Juula (green) and Wangarawa (red)

Ethno-archaeological research in the town of Djenne during the 20th century indicates that goldsmithing was an old and established profession, undertaken by a diverse community of artisans (Songhai, Somono, Fulbe, Arma). They used the same technology as blacksmiths, to make a variety of gold jewellery and ornaments. They were the wealthiest group of artisans.71

In a broad summary of the ‘arts and manufactures’ of the interior regions of West Africa (principally in the Mandinka regions), Mungo Park observed that

“Most of the African blacksmiths are acquainted also with the method of smelting gold, in which process they use an alkaline salt, obtained from a ley of burnt corn-stalks evaporated to dryness. They likewise draw the gold into wire, and form it into a variety of ornaments, some of which are executed with a great deal of taste and ingenuity.”72

Describing the marriage between Aksiya Dawud and princess Nara, the daughter of the Mali ruler Magha Kanta in 1558, the Tarikh al-sudan mentions that she was sent to Gao along with “a magnificent train” containing jewellery, furnishings, and household goods and utensils “covered in gold leaf.”73

Gold jewellery, Wolof artist, Senegal. early 20th century. Houston Museum of Fine Arts

Gold necklace pendant in the form of a butterfly. Wolof or Tukulor artist, Senegal. early 20th century. Smithsonian museum

Earrings. gold and silver. West Africa. 19th-20th century. Quai Branly

In the later periods, the internal demand for gold can be inferred from the account of Mungo Park, who described some of the gold jewelry made by local smiths in Kamalia, in Mandinka country, that included “massy” earrings “which are commonly so heavy as to pull down and lacerate the lobe of the ear”, and necklaces of gold beads and plates that display “great criterion of taste and elegance.” He notes that “When a lady of consequence is in full dress, her gold ornaments may be worth altogether from fifty to eighty pounds sterling.”74

These large gold earrings are also mentioned by Gaspard Mollien at Timbo (Guinea) in 1818-975 and by René Caillié at Brakna (S.W Mauritania), as well as in the cities of Jenne and Timbuktu.76 Mage (1864) makes several references to prestige textiles and velvet skullcaps embroidered with gold that were worn by the men of Segu, as well as a variety of jewelry worn by the women.77

Commercial and legal records from the old merchant towns of Mauritania, like Tichitt, reveal that gold circulated in quite large quantities for much of the 19th century, some of which was kept in the form of ornaments (often, large rings) and gold dust.78

Gold necklaces and rings from these regions of pre-colonial West Africa are today found in many African and Western museum collections, where they are displayed alongside other objects like gold bracelets, chains, anklets, hair-pins, and pendants made by local goldsmiths.

The tradition of goldsmithing, like most ancient West African artisanal activities, continues to this day in the modern countries of Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, and Senegal, which remain some of the major producers (and consumers) of Gold on the continent.

Tukulor gold necklace with a “basket-of-flowers” pendant on a gold chain. early 20th century. Smithsonian Institution.

Hair ornaments made of Gold. Wolof artist, Senegal. Early 20th century. Houston museum of fine arts

Large gold-plated silver alloy pendant in a variation on the basket of flowers design and heavily decorated with filigree and openwork, with a central, tiered flower. Senegal. mid-20th century. Smithsonian Institution.

Historians and Archaeologists have long observed that West Africa’s earliest texts in the Arabic script come from precisely the same areas where ancient engravings in the Tifinaɣ script were found.

From 1103 to 1489 CE, hundreds of funerary inscriptions and engravings were produced in the medieval sites of Essouk, Junhan, Gao, and Kukyia, in what is today eastern Mali.

These inscriptions are a unique register of internal historical evidence, and the only extant body of dateable medieval texts written in medieval West Africa.

My Latest Patreon article explores the history of the Tifinaɣ script and Arabic inscriptions of medieval Mali (ca. 500-1489 CE), and their significance in the reconstruction of West African history.

Please subscribe to read about it here and support this newsletter:

THE TIFINAGH SCRIPT OF WEST AFRICA

In the western half of the Old World, historical inquiry on the development of writing systems primarily focuses on the Egyptian writing system, from which most of the world’s alphabetic scripts originated.

The oldest securely attested alphabetic inscriptions were discovered at the Wadi el-Hol site in Egypt ca. 1900-1800 BC; these were largely influenced by concepts and signs borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

This early alphabetic script, called Proto-Sinaitic, branched into the South Arabian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and numerous other scripts with varying degrees of modification between the late 2nd and mid 1st millennium BC.1

The ABCD Family Tree by Ryan Starkey

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Despite the widespread adoption of the alphabetic scripts, several writing systems existed independently in the same region.

Some of these scripts, such as the Sumerian Cuneiform and its variants, as well as the Aegean Scripts, were developed before the adoption of the alphabetic scripts, and later abandoned after the adoption of the latter. Others, such as the Brahmic scripts, were developed after the spread of the alphabetical writing systems, and some remain in use today.

Focusing on the African examples, the alpha-syllabic scripts of Ge’ez and Meroitic, and the Libyco-Berber alphabet were developed in the late 1st millennium BC by local scribes who had been in contact with older writing systems, such as South Arabian (for Ge’ez), Demotic-Egyptian (for Meroitic), and Phoenician-Punic (for Libyco-Berber).

However, these writing systems were not directly derived from their presumed “parent” scripts, but were essentially endogenous creations inspired by foreign examples. These new scripts were used concurrently with the older scripts, and in some cases came to displace them entirely.

For example, the use of the Libyco-Berber script begun in the 6th century BC during the Carthaginian period, but it employed different signs from Punic and didn’t undergo an intermediate stage. The existence of bilingual Libyan–Latin inscriptions from the Roman period, suggests that the script functioned as a marker of identity for the native Berber-speaking populations.

Most surviving inscriptions are short texts, such as funerary or commemorative engravings, though a few appear in more formal contexts. It fell out of use shortly after the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 7th-8th century CE, but survived in the central Saharan area, where it is known as Tifinagh/Tifinaɣ.2

The Kerfala stele, Algeria. ca. 1st century BC-2nd century CE. Museum of Antiquities in Algiers. Figure holding a “chief’s staff”, horse near the base of the legs, engravings in the Libyco-Berber alphabet.3

Cast of the bilingual Punic-Lybian inscription from Dougga,Tunisia. The first 5 lines in Punic, the remainder in Lybian. Louvre Museum. late 2nd century BC, dedicated to King Massinissa.

The Meroitic script of Kush (Sudan) was developed in the 3rd century BC as an alpha-syllabary, diverging from the mixed logographic-consonantal system of Demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Meroitic hieroglyphic signs in turn originated from the cursive script, rather than from their Egyptian counterparts.

Majority of the 2,000 extant Meroitic texts that include royal chronicles, funerary inscriptions, and engravings, were written in cursive. A few brief Egyptian hieroglyphs found in royal funeral contexts indicate that the older writings systems also remained in use.

The Meroitic script was discontinued in the 5th century CE, after the fall of ancient Kush and the rise of medieval Nubian kingdoms. These sucessor states developed their own writing system called Old Nubian, that was largely based on the alphabetical Greek and Coptic scripts, with a few Meroitic signs.

Stele of prince Tedeqene displaying both scripts; Merotic hieroglyphs of the invocation of Osiris and cursive writing for the invocation of Isis. ca. 200–100 B.C, Beg W, pyramid 19, Meroe, Sudan. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Royal stela of Queen Amanirenas and King Akinidad, ca. 1st century BC, Hamdab, Sudan. British Museum.

The Ge’ez script is named after the language of the Aksumite kingdom (in Ethiopia and Eritrea), of which two scripts were employed for writing around the 2nd-3rd century CE.

The first was the so-called ‘ASAM’ script [Ancient South Arabian Monumental], which closely replicated the South Arabian script used in the pre-Aksumite period (mid-1st millenium BC). The second is the ‘Ethiopic’ script which is more closely related to that used in extant Ge‘ez manuscripts found across Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Both scripts appear in royal inscriptions, but only ‘Ethiopic’/Ge’ez was used for other media such as manuscripts and engravings. In addition, a number of royal inscriptions and many early Aksumite coins include Greek inscriptions, indicating the coexistence of multiple writing systems within Aksumite society.4

The Ge’ez writing system was retained long after the fall of Aksum, and remains the main writing system of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Ge’ez Manuscript: ‘Harp of Praise’, 16th century, Ethiopia. Berlin State Library.

Ge’ez Psalter: Psalms of David and Miracles of Mary. 19th century, Brooklyn Museum.

In West Africa, archaeological evidence suggests that the Nsibidi script was developed independently following a long evolutionary sequence from the 6th century CE.

It’s a semasiographic script, whose symbols represent concepts or ideas directly, as opposed to the more common glottographic systems listed above, which represent linguistic units.

Nsibidi was mostly used in private/esoteric contexts, and ocassionally in more public settings like recording court proceedings, as well as in various forms of visual display, including engravings, body markings, and textiles. A handful of Nsibidi manuscripts were also written by formerly enslaved Africans in Cuba.

Nsibidi symbols on an Igbo or ibibo fan, ca. 1859. National Museums Scotland

Nsibidi Manuscript written in 1877 by an Abakua society member in Cuba, private collection

The bulk of the surviving written material from West Africa, and across much of the continent since the Middle ages, utilized the Arabic script and its Ajami variants, to produce the vast manuscript collections found in Timbuktu to the East African coast.

In other parts of the continent, the Latin script was adopted by a variety of societies, from west-central Africa (Kongo and Cahenda in Angola), to the West African coast ( Warri in Nigeria).

The coexistence of multiple writing systems in West Africa (Tifinaɣ, Nsibidi, Arabic, and Latin), influenced the invention of new scripts, through the same endogenous processes that had resulted in the creation of the Ge’ez, Meroitic, and Libyco-Berber scripts.

The development of these later scripts often involved local innovation inspired by contact with existing literate traditions rather than simple borrowing or imitation.

Few regions of the world rival West Africa for the sheer scale, diversity, and dynamism of its indigenous writing traditions. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, at least 27 scripts were invented in the region extending from Senegal to Cameroon, the oldest of which are the Vai script of Liberia (ca. 1833-present) and Njoya’s script (1897-1931) of the Bamum kingdom in Cameroon.5

Drawings of Houses and House plans with description of their construction written in the Bamum script, attributed to Ibrahim Tita Mbohou, early 20th century, Quai Branly.

West African script invention, ca. 1832-2011. Map by Piers Kelly

While these were mostly syllabic scripts rather than the consonantal/alphabetical scripts of Arabic and Latin, historical traditions indicate their creators were prompted to develop their own writing systems to enhance their prestige and assert their identity in a competitive political landscape.

This “creative tension” is made explicit in the historical traditions regarding the inventors of the Vai script, who challenged themselves to write letters as good as the intelligent “poro” (foreigners). The Vai emphatically maintain that “There are three books in this world—the European book, the Arabic book, and the Vai book.”6

Nearly 1,000 years before this, the adoption of the Arabic script in west Africa was prompted by similar internal processes, but in reverse.

The presence of Tifinaɣ engravings in what is today North-Eastern Mali during the late 1st millennium CE, prompted local Muslim converts to inscribe the landscape with the Arabic script, as a way to display their identity and mark their ascendancy.

Historians and Archaeologists have long observed that West Africa’s earliest texts in the Arabic script come from precisely the same areas where older Tifinaɣ engravings were found. In some cases, both scripts were written side by side, suggesting that the adoption of Arabic writing did not entirely displace earlier writing traditions.

From 1103 to 1489 CE, hundreds of funerary inscriptions and engravings were produced in the medieval sites of Essouk, Junhan, Gao, and Kukyia, in what is today eastern Mali.

This epigraphic corpus consists of inscribed royal tombstones, engravings and stelae made of marble and chloritic schist, some of which are impressively carved in ornamental Kufic.

These inscriptions are a unique register of internal historical evidence, and the only extant body of dateable medieval texts written in medieval West Africa.

They document the emergence of kingship in the region, the presence of Queen regnants who ruled with full authority, the complex ethnic landscape of medieval West Africa, and the origin of aristocratic titles which were adopted by the imperial administration of Songhai.

My Latest Patreon article explores the history of the Tifinaɣ script and Arabic inscriptions of medieval Mali (ca. 500-1489 CE), and their significance in the reconstruction of west African history.

Please subscribe to read about it here and support this newsletter:

THE TIFINAGH SCRIPT OF WEST AFRICA

Despite its seemingly peripheral location, Sijilmasa was central to the story of the medieval global economy, connecting the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds.

Founded as an independent city-state in the 8th century, Sijilmasa later became the principal gold-minting center for successive empires of north-western Africa.

For over seven centuries, this cosmopolitan hub maintained control over a significant portion of the supply routes for the precious metal and established itself at the crossroads of intra-African commerce and cultural exchange.

This essay outlines the history of Sijilmasa and examines its significance within the economic networks of the medieval empires of North-Western Africa.

Map showing the empires of North-Western Africa and Trade routes across the Sahara.

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The early history of medieval Sijilmasa (ca. 500-790 CE)

Medieval Sijilmasa was located in the Tafilalt basin of eastern Morocco, an oasis filled with alluvial sediments eroded from the Atlas Mountains by the Ziz and the Gheris rivers.

Archaeological excavations at the site suggest a long occupation before the founding of the medieval town. These include occupation sites beneath the central mosque, dated to the mid-1st millennium CE, as well as substantial pre-Islamic cemeteries and hillfort sites in the vicinity of the Medieval city.1

Surveys on the hilltop sites revealed that they were likely permanent dwellings, each one containing several structures of unusual design and dimensions, which can be identified as collective places or monuments of power. Their proximity to the Ziz River would have allowed some agricultural cultivation of the riverbed ceramic artefacts collected on the sites suggest a pre-Islamic dating2

Jabal Afilal and its pre-Islamic settlement on the top of a hill, view from north-east. Image by C. Capel.

Aerial view of Jabal Afilal, surrounded by cliffs and overlooking Wadi Ziz. Image by C. Capel.

The northern wall of the Jabal Afilal settlement. Image by C. Capel.

Historical tradition dates the origin of the medieval caravan city to the beginning of the 8th century.

According to the 11th-century Andalusian historian al-Bakrī, Sijilmāsa was established in 757 by a section of the Miknasa, a section of the Zenata Berbers/Imazighen, who gathered scattered Saharan pastoral communities under the belief in the khariji sect of Islam.3 Its early history is associated with Abu al-Qasim Samgu ibn Wasul, a nomadic shepherd of the Miknasa, and his grandson Midrar, a blacksmith from Andalusia, after whom the dynasty is named.

“The Bani Midrar governed Sijilmasa for 160 years. The first of them was Abuʾl-Qasim ibn Samgu ibn Wasul al-Miknasi. . . . He had met, in Ifriqiya, Ikrima the freedman (mawla) of Ibn Abbas and heard [hadith] from him. He was possessed of flocks and often used to seek pasture on the site of Sijilmasa. A group of Sufriya joined him, and when they had reached 40 men [in number] they made Isa ibn Mazid the Black their leader and put him in charge of their affairs and began to build Sijilmasa. This was in 140/757–758.”4

The city of Sijilmāsa emerged in the context of a wider upheaval in north-west Africa marked by the Berber revolt of 740-742, and the rise of the Kharijite-Sufrite movements. In this period, the area witnessed both a widespread adoption of Islam and a dynamic of political renewal. The uprising was sparked by punitive taxation and discriminatory treatment of the Imazighen by Arab (Umayyad) governors.5

Consequently, the Miknasa, Ghumara, and other groups rebelled under the banner of Kharijism, which preached that all Muslims were equal, irrespective of tribe or ethnicity. This upheaval resulted in the creation of new political dynasties and the development of large urban centres at Nakūr, Fās, Sijilmasa, and Āghmat between the 8th and 9th centuries.6

Medieval Morocco between the 8th and 11th centuries, showing the cities of Sijilmasa, Fes, and Nakur. Wikimedia Commons.

The polity at Sijilmasa was initially established as an elective imamate in accordance with the egalitarian doctrine of the Khariji.

al-Bakrī’s account notes that forty men formed the first group of sufrites at Sijilmasa, who elected ʽĪsā Mazyad al-Aswad “the black”, an imam who was a highly respected figure among the Kharijites, according to Ibn Khaldūn. But after a reign of 15 years, al-Aswad fell out with his supporters and was deposed in favour of ibn Wasul, who reigned for 13 years until he died in 784.7

The explanation for why al-Aswad was chosen over Ibn Wasul isn’t provided. Although this is traditionally attributed to the egalitarian doctrine of the Kharijites, this founding group appears to have quickly abandoned such doctrines when Wasul would later be succeeded by his son, thus creating a dynasty.

According to the archaeologist Chloé Capel (2020), the name of Abu al-Qasim Samgu ibn Wasul, whose ancestry appears predominantly Arab (the patronymic ibn Wasul and the kunya Abu al-Qasim), also contains the Amazigh term: Samgu, whose root SMX, means slave/servant. She argues that Ibn Wasul’s status may explain why Al-Aswad was chosen over him, rather than the Kharijite doctrine of egalitarianism.8

Capel (2017) argues that Sultan ʽĪsā Mazyad al-Aswad could have been part of the pre-existing population that had been settled in the Tafilalt for several generations before the founding of Sijilmasa. And that he was elected as the first chief of the young Khariji community because he had an important position in the pre-existing system, which the sufrites initially sought to preserve, before ultimately subsuming it.9

Al-Bakrī’s account mentions that the overthrow of al-Aswad was instigated by Abd al-Khattab, who referred to the sultan derisively as Sūdān. (in this context meaning, ‘black’, non-Muslim). Al-Khattab was an Arab belonging to a Yemeni tribe and an Ibadi imam who led a major revolt of the Imazighen against the Abbasid Caliphate. He was elected as the leader of the short-lived Ibadi Imamate of Tripolitania in 757, before he was defeated and killed in 761 by the Abbasids.10

So he would have been dead for over 10 years before Al-Aswad was overthrown after a relatively long reign of 15 years (i.e., in 757-771/2). This complicates al-Bakri’s account.

The historian Mahmoud Abd al-Raziq (1985) interpreted the election of al-Aswad as an ethnic rivalry between the pre-existing “black” population and the incoming Miknasa Berbers. But the historian Paul M. Love Jr (2010) rejects this false dichotomy of ‘black’ vs ‘Berber’, arguing that identities in medieval Sijilmasa would have been based on tribal affiliation rather than ethnicity. He cites Ibn Khaldun’s account that the Miknasa converted according to the religious affiliation of their tribal leadership. And that while differences in physical appearance may have contributed to disputes, their overall importance during this period seems to have been minimal.11

**The historiography of “race” in North Africa continues to pose challenges for modern scholars seeking to understand how such ideas were interpreted in classical times,12 in late antiquity13and in the early modern era.14

This topic will be examined in greater detail in future essays. Please check the footnotes 12 & 13 for a brief outline of scholarly debates regarding this topic.**

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The Golden Age of medieval Sijilmasa under the Midradids (791-958 CE)

Ibn Wasul was succeeded by his son Abu al-Wezir al-Yasʿa, who was later violently deposed in 791 by his brother Al-Yasʿa. According to al-Bakrī, Sultan Al-Yasʿa was considered a despot, “impetuous, harsh, and violent”. He “subjugated all the Berbers who dared resist him,” “levied a fifth of the produce from the mines of Derä” and “had the walls of Sijilmasa built”. 15

al-Bakrī’s description of Sijilmasa mentions houses with gardens, a city wall built with stone at the base and mudbrick at the top, as well as baths and wells in the city.16 This account has been partially corroborated by excavations that uncovered a number of elite structures as well as several hydraulic features in the medieval city.17

While the structures are poorly preserved, owing to their long abandonment and looting, the excavations have shown that the site wasn’t a singularly built settlement enclosed within a wall since its foundation, but instead represented several successive urban settlements that occupied different parts of the site.18

Archaeological surveys of the medieval city indicate that the course of Wadi Ziz was artificially diverted for agricultural purposes, forming a secondary channel along which the old city of Sijilmasa was settled. Chloé Capel suggests that the cutting of Ziz occurred in the 9th century, during the reign of al-Yasaʿ, and was likely connected to his construction of the city walls, or possibly, the shifting of Sijilmasa itself to the location of medieval ruins.19

Curiously, there are several oral traditions from Sijilmasa about a despotic sultan who built the city walls and attempted to control the water supply of the Ziz River. One set of traditions recounts that Sijilmasa’s fields were enclosed by a circuit wall during his reign to confine the city’s population within the walls. This ruler is commonly identified as Sultan al-Khal, “Black Sultan,” suggesting that the oral traditions conflated Sultan Al-Yasʿa with Sultan ʽĪsā Mazyad al-Aswad, “the Black.”20

Map of the current irrigation network of Tāfīlālt, largely built on a scheme setup in medieval times, even before the foundation of Sijilmāsa (in the centre of the oasis), whose location is based on it. Image by C. Capel.21

The Bou Himara dam along the Ziz river. Image by R. A. Messier, J. A. Miller

Archaeological map of the Siğilmāsa site. Map by Thomas Soubira

View of the 12th-13th century wall. Image by Thomas Soubira

Remains of a house in Sijilmasa with a water supply structure. Image by Thomas Soubira

water supply and sanitary features: (left) pipeline, (center) manhole and drain, (right) cistern. Images by Image by Thomas Soubira.

Concrete lime tank in sector A4. Image by Thomas Soubira

Al-Yasʿa died in 823/4, and was succeeded by his son Midrar, whose reign was beset by a violent succession dispute involving his sons. It is this sultan whose name was retained for the dynasty; the Midrārids (or Banū Midrār). Midrar was briefly overthrown by his son, restored, and ultimately deposed by the people of Sijilmasa for attempting to hand over power to Ibn er-Rostemiya, an outsider from the Rustamid dynasty (of Tahret, Algeria). They instead chose his son Ibn Thakis el-Amir as their new leader, who would rule until 877 and establish a relatively stable line of succession for about a century.22

During the 10th century, the wealth and importance of Sijilimasa rivaled those of other major cities in the Maghreb, such as Kairouan (Tunisia). It thus became the target of a campaign by the Ismaili Fatimids in 910, briefly became a vassal, rebelled, and was invaded again in 958. In the intervening period, one of the city’s last independent rulers, Mohammed ibn al-Fath, abandoned Kharijism in favour of Malikism. He assumed the title of Amir al-Mu’min (“Commander of the Faithful”) and minted coins in this capacity.23

Sijilmâsa. In the foreground: terracotta paving belonging to the upper occupation level of the archaeological sequence (13th century). In the background: modern mud-brick walls (mid-15th to mid-17th centuries). Image by R. Mensan.

Ruins of medieval Sijilmasa. Images by C. Capel.24

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Trans-Saharan Gold trade in medieval Sijilmasa during the Fatimid and Umayyad period (958-1055)

At the end of the 10th century, Sijilmasa became the main caravan stopover on the route extending south to Āwdāghust and the Ghana empire, which controlled the routes to West Africa’s gold mines.

The city’s prosperity was such that from 922 to 934, the province of Sijilmâsa brought 400,000 dinars in taxes to the Fatimid treasury in Kairouan (Tunisia), half the total revenue that the Maghreb brought to that treasury.25

This account comes from Ibn Hawqal, who visited Sijilmasa and Awdaghust in 951: “I saw a bill in Awdaghust certifying a debt owed to one of [the people of Sijilmasa] by one of the traders of Awdaghust, who was himself of the people of Sijilmasa, in the sum of 42,000 dinars. I have never seen or heard anything comparable to this story in the East.”26

Selection of gold dinars from Sijilmasa, Morocco. Image by J. Lankton, reproduced by S. Nixon.

Ring excavated at Sijilmasa, Morocco, 9th/ 10th century. Gold, diameter 1.9 cm. Fondation nationale des musees du Royaume du Maroc, Rabat. Photograph by Abdallah Fili and Hafsa El Hassani. COG Image.27

The Midrarid dynasty of Sijilmasa made one last attempt at independence from 963 to 976. Arabic texts make vague references to two sons of al-Fath who ruled successively. By then, though, the Sijilmasa gold trade had become a prize sought by more powerful entities: the Fatimids of Ifriqiya, who had controlled it for brief periods, and the Umayyads of Cordoba (Spain), who seized control through their Zanata clients under Khazrun Ibn Falfal al-Maghrawi.

Alternating periods of gold minting by the Umayyads and the Fatimids seem to be correlated with changes in their control of Sijilmasa. The Fatimids established the mint in the early 10th century, and the Umayyads began to strike their coins in the Sijilmasa mint during the late 10th century. Between those, at least two local rulers minted their own coins, the last of whom was Masʿud Ibn Wanudin, who was killed by the invading Almoravids.28

The Trans-Saharan trade developed during the Islamic period, as a market for rare and highly sought-after products, such as salt, copper, gold, and slaves, was grafted onto the pre-existing network dealing with essential goods like textiles, grain, kola, alum, dates, etc.29

In the 10th century account of Ibn Ḥawqal, the route from Egypt to medieval Ghana (Kumbi Saleh, Mauritania) and the city of Gao (Mali) passed through Sijilmâsa. Sultan Ibn Tulun of Egypt (r. 863-883) had decided to close the caravan routes leading from the Kharga oasis in southern Egypt to the Maghreb and Sudan due to raiders and sandstorms, thus encouraging the route through Sijilmâsa. In al-Zuhrī’s 12th century account: “Caravans from the land of Egypt and from Wāraqlān reach [Gao], and a few from the Maghrib by way of Sijilmāsa.”30

Recent archaeological finds from the site of Tadmakka (Mali), in the form of coin moulds and crucible fragments, have provided compelling evidence for a developed gold trade by at least the 10th century. Additionally, geochemical analysis of gold objects from North Africa suggests a shift in the gold chemistry of North African coins during the 9th century, possibly related to the increased arrival of West African gold or the opening of a new West African source.31

The medieval cities of the Sahara. Map by D. Mattingly

10th-12th century mosque at Kumbi Saleh, Mauritania. Image by Denise Robert-Chaleix et al.

9th-10th century ‘Long house’ at Gao Ancien, Mali. Image by Takezawa & Cisse.

Fragment of ceramic mould for producing gold coin blanks, excavated at Tadmakka, shown together with radiograph (top right) and close-up of individual prills trapped in surface. Images by S. Nixon.

Al-Yaʽqūbī described one of the earliest “gold routes”; the tarīq lamtūnīya route, which ran from Sijilmâsa to Āwdāghust. In the mid-12th century, Al-Masʿudi wrote: “All that gold which the merchants obtain is minted in the town of Sijilmasa.” At about the same time, al-Istakhri wrote: “It is said that no other mine [the one between Sijilmasa and the land of the Sudan] is known to have more abundant or purer gold, but the road there is difficult and the necessary preparations are laborious.”32

Along this route lay the silver and copper mines of Tāmdult, which represented the last inhabited point before crossing the desert. The caravans mainly brought salt, a commodity so vital that it was traded for its weight in gold according to al-Bakrī. An important route also linked southeastern Morocco to Ghana, starting from Sijilmâsa heading east, with the salt mine of Taghāzā as an intermediate point.33

An account from the 14th century describes the organization of the trans-Saharan trade, with partners in the trading centres north and south of the Sahara. Five brothers of the Maqqarl family settled in Tlemcen (Algeria), Sijilmasa, and Walata (Mauritania), from which places they could control the trade in all its stages, by responding to the fluctuations of supply and demand at both ends of the route.34

The urban community of medieval Sijilmasa would have been made up of people of different ethnic backgrounds, including the Imazighen (Miknasa, Zenata, Sanhaja), Jews, Arabs, Andalusis, merchants from Basra and Kufa, and itinerant West African Muslims and captives.35

One of the few scholars known from Sijilmasa during the medieval period was the 15th century jurist Ibn Hilāl al-Sijilmāsī (d. 1498), who, among other works, wrote a treatise criticising the preaching of al-Maghīlī regarding the Jewish community of Tuwat.36

The traveller Walter Burton Harris, who visited the oasis of Tafilet (Tafilalt) in 1893, found the composition of its population had remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages, although the successive dynasties of Morocco had transformed the identities of the different Imazighen confederations (Zenata and Sanhaja).

The Tafilet population of the 19th century comprised Imazighen (Aït-Atta and Haratin), Arabs (The Shereefian families; Ahl Subah Arabs; Beni Mohammed; Tafilet Arabs), and Jews (Dads).37

Two ketubah-s from Sijilmassa, Morocco: from 1929 (left, courtesy of the Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv and the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem); and from 1911 (right, Courtesy of The Israel Museum and The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).38

While no extant written accounts have been recovered from the city, Sijilmasa was considered one of the earliest centers of learning in Morocco. According to Ibn Hawqal, its inhabitants “distinguish themselves from other people in the Maghrib by their comportment. We sense in them a love of science (ilm), a sense of modesty, elegance, virtuosity, kindness, and moderation.”39

It was the ulama (scholars) of Sijilmasa who invited the leaders of the Almoravid movement to come from deep in the Sahara to free them from the oppression of the rule of the Bani Khazrun, clients of the Ummayads. They told Ibn Yasin, the Almoravid imam, of the injustice, contempt, and tyranny suffered specifically by the men of science and religion at the hands of their amir, Masʿud Ibn Wanudin. The latter was subsequently killed in battle with the Almoravids in 1055, and the city was occupied.40

Sijilmasa in the imperial era (1055-1393)

Sijilmasa would play a key role as a leading source of revenue and a flashpoint for political rivalry within three successive Moroccan empires: the Almoravids (until the 1150s), the Almohads (until the 1260s), and the Marinids (from the 1260s until the fall of the city in 1393)

The Almoravids were a reformist movement that began along the south-western edge of the Sahara among the Gudala and Lamtuna Imazighen of the Ṣanhāja group, living in what is today Southern Mauritania, just north of the Senegal River.

Their leader, Yaḥyā b. Ibrāhīm hailed from the Banū Gudala division of the Ṣanhāja, was closely allied with Wārjābī b. Rābīs (d. 1040) was the first Muslim ruler of the Takrūr kingdom of Senegal. The Takrūri, an ethnonym which became synonymous with West African Muslims in the central Islamic lands, are known to have provided auxiliaries for the Almoravids.41

The Almoravid movement began in 1048, sacking the Zenata town of Āwdāghust a few years later in 1054/5 (which is described in graphic detail by al-Bakri), and capturing Sijilmâsa 1055/6. Archaeological evidence for the Almoravid presence in Sijilmasa is much stronger than in Āwdāghust, which remained a flourishing caravan town well into the 12th century.42

10th-13th century ruins at Awdaghust, Mauritania. Wikimedia Commons.

The West African empire of Ghana at its height in the 12th century, extending from Āwdāghust to Tadmekka. Map by D. Lange

While the Almoravids certainly didn’t conquer the Ghana empire, the ruling dynasty of the empire soon adopted Islam by 1076 CE, and maintained an alliance with the Almoravids, extending Ghana’s territorial control as far as the cities of Gao and Tadmekka.

Al-Idrisi’s 12th-century account describing the trade in wool, copper, and glass, gold and slaves, between Takrur (Senegal) and the Almoravids via the Sijilmasa route, points to a continued alliance between the two states.43

During the Almoravid period, the name of Sijilmâsa continued to appear on coins throughout the dynasty. They began constructing a series of low dams and an associated network of canals to divert the Ziz’s water into irrigated fields. After the capture of Marrakech by the Almohads in 1147, Sijilmasa remained a major commercial capital, as its population increased and its Grand Mosque was expanded.44

However, the Almohads exerted less control over the southern gold trade than their predecessors. Historical sources from the period describe Awdaghust as a “small town in the desert, with little water [and] there is no large trade.” Additionally, there were tensions with the Muslim dynasty of Ghana.

In a late-12th century letter from Sijilmasa’s governor to “the king of the Sūdān in Ghāna”, the former complained of the ill treatment of his merchants. Al-Idrisī’s account from around the same period noted that Ghana’s ruler delivered the khuṭba in his own name, while evincing nominal fealty to the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, suggesting that he rejected Almohad suzerainty.45

The letter also suggested that traders from Ghana were operating freely in Sijilmasa, unlike the situation in Ghana, where traders from Sijilmasa had been imprisoned:

“We have heard about the imprisonment of poor traders and their being prevented from going freely about their business. The coming to and fro of merchants (jallaba) to a country is of benefit to its inhabitants and a help to keeping it populous. If we wished, we would imprison the people of that region who happen to be in our territory, but we do not think it right to do that.”46

Sijilmasa was later conquered by the Marinid dynasty in 1274, and the city contained an estimated population of 30,000 by the end of the 1300s. The Marinid sultans constructed the Bab Fez, the Gate of Fez, one of the few medieval monuments of Sijilmasa still standing today. However, Sijilmasa’s monopoly over the gold trade diminished as the imperial administration allowed other groups along Morocco’s desert frontier, such as the Saadians (Arab sharifs) of the Draa Valley (150km east of Tafilat), to conduct the precious trade.47

Dinar of Abu Inan Faris (r. 1348-1358 CE), struck at Sijilmasa. Gold, diameter 1.0 cm. Bank al-Maghrib 533341. Photograph by Fouad Mahdaoui. COG Image.

Fragments of wood veneer painted with geometric designs from the Midrarid occupation of Sijilmasa, 9th/10th century, no longer extant. Photograph by Chloe Capel, 2011. COG Image.

The Bab Fez (Gate to Fez) stands at the northern limit of Sijilmasa. Ancient arcades over a portal were restored in a more recent era. Photograph by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, 2017. COG Image.

Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, who stayed for four months in Sijilmâsa before proceeding to the Mali empire in 1352–1353, wrote that the city was one of the most beautiful he had ever visited. He unfortunately doesn’t provide a detailed description of the city. The Marinid sultan Abu Inan (r. 1329-58), who had sent Ibn Battuta on the mission to Mali, died in 1358 when he was strangled by his own vizier, and the Marinid state disintegrated in a civil war that would engulf Sijilmasa.48

Competing Marinid princes had battled for control of Sijilmassa in 1331-1333, 1361-1363, and in 1387. The city had been repeatedly occupied, sacked, and traded between warring parties.49

According to Leo Africanus, who visited Tafilalt in 1511, the city had been completely abandoned in 1393. The inhabitants rebelled against the governor, killing him and demolishing the city wall. The population took refuge in the surrounding fortified settlements (qsur), many of which were subjugated by the Maʽqil Arabs.50

The civil war was followed by a period of salutary neglect during which Sijilmasa was only intermittently controlled by the successive Wattasid and Saadian rulers of Morocco. The Tafilalt region became decentralized in terms of both political power and its settlement form. A new landscape of a multiplicity of qṣurs (mud-brick walled villages) and kasbahs (citadels or castles) was created.

Excavations within the Sijilmasa mosque, with exposed walls from the “ Filalian” period. Photograph by MAPS, 1996.

The archaeological site of Sijilmâsa: stony glacis, eroded hillocks, mud-brick walls. Image by R. Mensan

View of a section of a post-medieval wall of Saadian origin and restored by the Alaouites around 1700, it limits the citadel sector to the north of the archaeological site of Sijilmâsa. Image by C.

‘In Tafilet’ Image by Walter Burton Harris, 1895. “Near the ruins of Medinat el Aamra, or Sijilmassa, is the largest and deepest canal I saw, the channel bricked and bridged wherever the road or a track crosses it. This channel must be from 20 to 30 feet in breadth, and although my visit was made after a long and exceptionally dry summer, the water was some 4 to 6 feet in depth, flowing very swiftly.”

An example of a 17th-century fortified residence; Kasbah Amridil in Skoura, Drâa-Tafilalet, Morocco. Top image: ‘KASBAH OF SEKOURA’ by Walter Burton Harris, 1895.

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Resettlement and later destruction. (1548-1818)

Sijilmâsa was repopulated under the Saadians in 1548, and the third sultan, Muḥammad eš-Šaykh, who intended to restore the unity of the Moroccan empire, organized this territory. From 1537 to 1548, the Maʽqil Arabs raided caravans along the route from Sijilmâsa to Fez until they were defeated. But internal conflicts in the Saadian empire resulted in rebellions, during which Sijilmasa was ruled by local marabouts like Abū Mahālli (1611-1623).51

In the early 17th century, the Tafilalt region served as a base for the expansion of the Alaouite dynasty, a Sharifian family of Arab descent who currently rule Morocco.

The inhabitants of the Tafilalt pledged fealty to Moulay Sharif in 1631, who then began a campaign of territorial conquest. The author al-Ziyani, who lived in Sijilmâsa, reports that Sultan Mawlāy Ismaïl (1673-1727) had many sons and relatives who resided in 105 houses in the city. Two governors of Sijilmasa during this period were Elmamoun, who was succeeded by Youcef. They were protected by 500 horsemen chosen from among Mawlāy’s black guard. The restoration of the section of the city north of the ruined medieval city is attributed to this sultan.52

Large abandoned residence near Risanni, Morocco. Flickr image by jimsawthat

Al-Ziyani reports that Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah (r. 1757-1790) established Sijilmasa as a residence for his children, and displaced the Ayt ʽAṭṭa Bebers from the fortified villages (ksour) of the city, in favour of the Arab sharifs. Tensions between the Arabs and Imazighen during the reign of Mawlay Sulayman (1792-1822) led to several uprisings, one of which briefly seized Sijilmasa until it was retaken by the Sultan’s army in 1801.53

One of the last accounts of Sijilmâsa dates from the early 19th century. In 1818, the Ayt ʽAṭṭa, a powerful independent Imazighen confederation, arrived at the city gates and destroyed it, considering it the last symbol of Arab domination in the Tafilalt.54

Among the travelers who visited the region, René Caillié, who crossed the Tafilalt in 1825, does not mention the city of Sijilmâsa in his travel account. It only appears in the work of Walter Harris, who visited the region in 1893 and provided a brief account of Sijilmasa’s history and its abandonment:

“In local wars that occurred at the end of the last century, Sijilmassa was destroyed, and nothing remains today of the great town but acres, almost miles, of shapeless ruins, with a mosque still in tolerably good condition.”55

A small market town was later established at Abu Am, near the ruins of the medieval city. By the close of the nineteenth century, however, the French, who were expanding into the Sahara, constructed a railway to Béchar, a desert town about 47 kilometers east of the site, effectively marking the end of the caravan trade in this region of the Sahara.56

Although much of the city now lies in ruins, the Tafilalt provenance of the Alaouite rulers of modern Morocco has enshrined Sijilmasa’s place in both memory and history as one of the important cities of Medieval Africa.

The ruins of Sijilmasa.

Located along the southern border of the Roman Empire, the ancient kingdom of the Gramantes (S.W Libya) flourished as one of the few independent African polities

My latest article on Patreon examines the history of the Garamantes and the scholarly debates surrounding the ancient trade networks of the Sahara.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

THE GARAMANTIAN KINGDOM

After the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the Roman Empire came into direct contact with a number of African states with whom it shared a long and open frontier extending from the northwestern tip of the continent to the Red Sea coast.

Over the following two centuries, a shifting pattern of alliances and conflicts along this frontier gradually reshaped the political landscape.

Polities such as the kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania (in northern Algeria and Morocco) were gradually incorporated into the Roman sphere, the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt was defeated, while the Kingdom of Kush (Sudan) successfully resisted Roman expansion.

This period of sustained military and diplomatic activity led to the dispatch of a number of expeditions into the African interior, whose itineraries south of the Sahara remain a subject of intense debate.

Roman Expeditions into Africa, Map by Author.

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The least disputed of these was the journey undertaken by Praetorian guards down the Nile River between 61 and 63 CE. The Praetorians were sent by the emperor Nero on a reconnaissance expedition to assess the region for a potential conquest. The project was ultimately abandoned, apparently because of the region’s arid environment. (Pliny, N.H. 6.181-2)

Starting from Aswan in Egypt, they traveled through Hiera Sycaminos (Maharraqa), Tama (Gezira), Primis (Amara), Acina (Tagab), Pitara (Kawa), Gagaudes (Megauda), Articula Island, Tergedum (Tergis), Napata, and then to Meroe, the capital, which was “ruled by a woman, Candace.”

Pliny’s account (N.H. 6.183-9), which provides fairly accurate names of Kush’s cities and distances between them, ends at this point and says nothing about the regions farther south.1

This southern portion of the journey is instead described by Seneca (NQ 6.8), who claims that Nero’s expedition sought to discover the source of the Nile. Seneca does not provide a detailed itinerary for the centurions, but notes that a king ruled at Meroë and “supplied them with assistance and furnished letters of introduction to the neighbouring kings.” The explorers then reached “huge marshes,” where the river was so entangled with vegetation that it could not be navigated by boat or traversed on foot.

Both accounts are generally accepted by scholars of Nubian history as reflecting genuine expeditions into the middle Nile region, especially the itinerary provided by Pliny. Seneca’s account, while less detailed, nevertheless appears to describe with some accuracy the Sudd, the vast marshland in what is now South Sudan.2

Apedemak temple at Naqa, Sudan, depicting the co-regents Queen Amanitore and King Natakamani smiting their enemies. The Queen is thought to have reigned around the time of Nero (54-68 CE).

The Sudd wetland of South Sudan.

Extent of the kingdom of Kush based on known archaeological sites.

The itineraries for the rest of the Roman expeditions into Africa are dubious and poorly-defined.

Claims that the campaigns of Lucius Cornelius Balbus in 19 BC extended southwards as far as the Niger River in modern Mali are rejected by specialists such as David Mattingly and Thomas Insoll. Balbus’ campaign against the Garamantians of S.W Libya, for which Pliny provides a detailed itinerary of towns in the Fezzan region (NH 5.35–7), was confined to Libya and was solely concerned with the pacification of the region.3

Pliny also provides an account of Rome’s westernmost expedition by Suetonius Paulinus in 40 CE, who crossed the Atlas mountains until he reached a river called Ger (NH 5.14). It is often claimed that this river might have been the Senegal River, a hypothesis based largely on speculative etymological grounds.

This interpretation, however, has been rejected by specialists in the history of north-west Africa, who maintain that Paulinus probably did not travel beyond the Guir River of southern Morocco, and that his attempt to pacify the interior of Mauretania ultimately failed. A further expedition to subdue Mauretania was dispatched the following year under his successor, Gnaeus Hosidius Geta.4

[**The Roman province of Mauretania was located on the northern tip of Morocco and Algeria, and should not be confused with the modern country of Mauritania.]

Map showing the route of the expedition of Suetonius Paulinus. Map by R. A. Messier and J. A. Miller.

Map of Roman North Africa (146 BCE - 395 CE) By World History Encyclopedia

In the second half of the 1st century CE, three expeditions were sent into and beyond the Garamatian territories in close succession.

The first of these was undertaken by Septimius Flaccus and Valerius Festus as part of a pacification campaign following the war between Lepcis and Oea in 69 CE. Festus’ journey, which is mentioned by Tacitus (Hist. 4. 49-50) and Pliny (NH 5.38), only describes a campaign to recover stolen booty from the Garamatians, “except what the nomads had already sold among the inaccessible hut-settlements of the far interior.”

Nothing is said of a southern expedition, across the Sahara, certainly not to Timbuktu or Nigeria, as is at times speculated.

Map of the Roman provinces in north Africa during Septimius Severus's reign in the late 2nd century AD, showing the extent of the Garamantian kingdom

The ruins of ancient Jarma. Image by D. Mattingly.

The 2nd century account of Claudius Ptolemy (Geog. 1.8), who quotes the geographer Marinus of Tyre, stated that Septimius Flaccus took 30 days to reach the Garamatian capital with his army and then marched south to the land of the Aithiopians. A few years later, he was followed on this route by a certain Julius Maternus who proceeded south in the company of the Garamantian king on a journey of three months to the land of Agisymba ‘where the rhinoceros is to be found’.

Ptolemy strongly rejects the veracity of the account describing a three-month journey to the south, arguing that these men simply “told travelers’ tales.” This criticism is based on his own view that the Garamatians were themselves Aithiopians, had the same king as the latter, and were distributed primarily along an east–west axis. According to Ptolemy, Marinus’ informants may therefore have mistaken this latitudinal distribution for a north–south extension.5

The historical evidence for Roman expeditions south of the Sahara is thus disappointingly limited and highly speculative.

Many of the accounts traditionally interpreted as descriptions of long exploratory journeys were, in reality, relatively brief military expeditions directed against known polities situated along the southern frontier of the Empire, such as Mauretania (in Morocco) and the Garamantes in Libya.

Modern scholars who accept Marinus’ account and disregard Ptolemy’s criticism, argue that the two expeditions of Flaccus and Maternus reached the Lake Chad region as part of an ancient Trans-Saharan trade controlled by the Garamantian kingdom.

The kingdom of the Garamantes, like ancient Kush, represented one of the last independent African polities along the southern frontier of the Roman Empire. Yet, unlike the generally favourable descriptions of Kush found in classical sources, the same authors portrayed the Garamantes as a warlike and barbarous people who threatened the imperial frontier from their desert strongholds.

Recent archaeological discoveries in the Fezzan region of Libya have revealed a dense cluster of ruined cities and fortified settlements within the Garamantian heartland, providing evidence for a sophisticated civilization employing advanced irrigation technology long before its first contacts with Rome.

Large segments of the population lived in substantial mudbrick or stone-built settlements, qualifying the Garamantes as the first urban, state-level society of the central Sahara, flourishing from about 300 BC to AD 500.

My latest article on Patreon examines the history of the Garamantes and the scholarly debates surrounding the ancient trade networks of the Sahara.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

THE GARAMANTIAN KINGDOM

At the time of his writing, the so-called “curse of Ham,” which had for centuries provided religious sanction for the exploitation of African labour, was being supplanted by the pseudo-scientific ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ in which a civilizing “caucasiod” race migrated to Africa and founded its ancient civilizations.

Both versions are now recognized and dismissed as myths by most professional scholars. However, their ideological remnants are still found in popular literature concerning ancient Egypt and West Africa, and they directly influenced the racial ideologies that led to the Rwandan Genocide.

While existing scholarship on the Hamitic myth emphasizes its external intellectual origins, from Jewish and Muslim writers to European colonialists, written sources produced by African scholars indicate that the story of Ham had already been adopted in different forms across the continent since the medieval period.

This essay examines the Hamitic myth from the African perspective, outlining the use (and misuse) of the story of Ham in both its religious and pseudo-scientific versions by African scholars since the late Middle Ages.

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PATREON

A brief background on the Hamitic myth from ancient Israel to late medieval Europe.

The original version of the idea of the “Hamites” derives from the Old Testament, in the story of the dispersal of the sons of Noah after the Flood in Genesis 9-10. In this account, Noah had three sons called Shem, Japhet, and Ham, who were held to be the ancestors of the various peoples known to the ancient Israelites.

In the story, Noah’s curse is directed (not very logically) specifically against Canaan, the son of Ham, because his father had found Noah lying drunken and naked. Shem and Japheth receive their father’s blessing, while Canaan is to be the slave of each of them. Genesis proceeds with the Table of Nations (10:1–32), according to which Ham’s first three sons, Cush, Egypt, and Put, live on the African continent (10:6–20), while his fourth son, Canaan, has two sons in western Asia; Heth (Hittites from Asia Minor) and Sidon (the Phoenician coastal cities)1

The biblical account of Noah’s curse is very clear about who was cursed. Although it was Ham who behaved improperly, it was not Ham whom Noah cursed, but rather his son Canaan. Why Canaan was cursed if it was Ham who sinned is a question that has been debated for well over the past two thousand years.

Scholars who study the Hebrew myths of Genesis argue that the curse was intended to justify the Israelite occupation of eastern Palestine and the dispossession and subjection of the indigenous Canaanites.2

Despite the Bible’s explicit statement, we find writers who claim that although the curse was pronounced against Canaan, it affected Ham and all of his children, hence “the curse of Ham.”

The Roman-Jewish author Philo (d. 50 AD) was the first to make a false etymological claim connecting the name Ham with ‘heat’, ‘darkness’, and “sin”. He allegorizes the “blackness” of the Ethiopians as evil, suggests that Nimrod’s bad character was because he was one of the grandsons of Ham through Kush, and claims that Canaan was punished because he acted upon the evil thoughts of his father. His interpretation was followed in Rabbinic and early Christian literature by scholars such as Origen (d. 253), who elaborated on the allegory of Noah’s curse, “blackness”, sin, and slavery.3

This early literature, in turn, greatly influenced several Western-Christian and Muslim scholars as early as the 7th century, as explored in greater detail by the historian David Goldenberg.4

While the writings associating the biblical Ham or his descendants with “blackness” may have initially been figurative, they soon came to be linked with all dark-skinned people, including both Africans and non-Africans.

The genealogies were often confused, at times having Canaan as father of Kush (instead of his brother), and drawing from older, non-biblical sources, such as the 2nd century BCE scholar Eupolemus, who recounts a Babylonian myth about “Canaan, the father of the Phoenicians. To him was born a son, Chum, whom the Greeks called Asbolus [literally, ‘soot’], the father of the Ethiopians and the brother of Mestraeim, the father of the Egyptians.”5

It’s from such sources that both Rabbinical (Jewish) and Muslim authors extend Canaan’s descendants to include other dark-skinned African peoples, in a way that contradicts modern/Eurocentric racial categories.6

To cite a few examples, Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) groups the Nuba, the Zanj [East Africans], the Zaghawa [Chad], and the Habasha, together with the Qibt [Egyptian-Copts], the Barbar [Berbers], and the people of “the land of Hind and Sind.”7 Eutychius, the Alexandrian Melkite patriarch (d. 940), specifies that the “blacks” who received the curse of Ham included “the Egyptians, the Sudan, the Abyssinians [Habash], the Nubians, and the Barbari.”8 Muḥammad al-Kisāʾī (ca. 1100 CE) includes the “Berbers and Sind and Hind” among the other African groups in the list of the children of Ham.9 As late as 1526, the Maghrebian scholar Leo Africanus argued for a common origin of all Africans.

Medieval Islamic scholars inherited two principal ideas about the differences in human populations from classical sources. The first came from the ancient environmental theory that explained the differences between societies in each “clime” (latitudes), and the second were the Old Testament stories about Noah’s sons Shem, Japheth, and Ham.

As with all theories, both could be used to justify the political hierarchies between different groups and societies.

For example, the Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) argued against the notion that blackness is related to descent from Ham:

“Some genealogists who had no knowledge of the true nature of beings imagined that the **blacks are the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, and that they were characterized by black color as a result of a curse put upon him by his father, which manifested itself in Ham’s color and the slavery that God inflicted upon his descendants....

The curse of Noah upon his son is there in the Torah. No reference is made there to blackness. His curse was simply that Ham’s descendants should be the slaves of his brothers’ descendants. To attribute the blackness of the sūdān to Ham, shows disregard for the nature of heat and cold and the influence they exert upon the air and upon the creatures that come into being in it.”

For Ibn Khaldun, the explanation of physical difference lay in the Mediterranean-centered theory of climes. However, his explanations were no less disparaging for most of the people of the sūdān and ‘Slavs’ in the northernmost latitudes, with exceptions granted to Muslim kingdoms like Mali or Christians like Abyssinia/Ethiopia.10

Some of the kingdoms of North-East Africa. Map by S. Pradines, modified by author

Some of the empires of medieval West Africa (sūdān). Map by Alisa LaGamma

[**It should be noted here that most medieval Islamic writers didn’t have our modern/Eurocentric concept of “black” nor ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, but instead used specific ethnonyms for different African groups based on their places of origin. As Ibn Khaldun explains, “The inhabitants of the first and second zones in the south are called Abyssinians, the Zanj and the Sudan. The name Abyssinia however is restricted to those who live opposite Mecca and Yemen, and the name Zanj is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean.”11 ]

As mentioned earlier, most Arab writers attributed Hamitic origins to both the Imazighen (Berbers) of North Africa and the sūdān of West Africa, both of whom suffered equally from the curse of servitude to the descendants of Noah’s other sons because of Noah’s curse on Ham’s son Canaan.

Among the consequences of Arabization in the Maghreb and later in West Africa was a repudiation of this idea among the Imazighen. Several alternatives were proposed, including the idea that the Imazighen were the descendants of purported pre-Islamic Yemeni (Himyarite) colonists.

When ideas about race emerged in these regions, local intellectuals insisted that patrilineal relationships to Arab ancestors, regardless of their current skin color, rendered them Muslim bidān (**white) in opposition to the ‘non-Muslim’ sūdān (black).12

[**It’s important to note that these “white” vs “black” categories don’t exactly match our modern/Eurocentric notions of race, since “white” people from Europe are in these regions called Faranj/Nasara (ie, Frankish/Christian), while many “bidān” would in fact be considered “black” in the West.]

According to Ibn Khaldun, the Himyarite claims made by the Imazighen, which were accepted by historians like al Tabarī, al-Jurjanī, and al-Masʿudī, were all false:

“All this information is remote from the truth. It is rooted in baseless and erroneous assumptions. It is more like the fiction of storytellers.” The important issue at stake in these Himyarite stories is precisely the ability of certain Berber intellectuals to claim Semitic origins back to Noah’s son Shem, rather than accept that they are sons of Ham.13

Interestingly, the Maghrebian scholar Leo Africanus, in 1526, stressed to his European readers that both “white and black Africans have almost the same origin. Even if they descended from the Philistines, the Philistines also originated from Mizraim, son of Cush. If they come from Sheba, Sheba was the son of Raamah, and Raamah was the son of Cush. The Egyptians, according to the scripture of Moses, descend from Mizraim, son of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah.”14

Muslim theories about Africa’s genealogical unity did little to sway European writers at the time of the “discovery” of the New World, who were seeking to justify the mass enslavement of ‘black’ Africans.

According to the version of the Hamitic myth by the Portuguese scholar Gomes Eannes de Azurara (d. 1474), in service to Prince Henri the Navigator:

“[B]lacks were Moors like the others, though their slaves, in accordance with ancient custom, which I believe to have been because of the curse which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon his son Cain.”15

There was clearly little regard for the accuracy of the Biblical account on whether the recipient of the curse was Canaan, Ham, or Cain; what mattered more was the rationale for enslaving others based on race.

The myth of Ham, according to medieval African scholars

African scholars from societies that had adopted Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages, such as Aksum/Ethiopia and the empires of West Africa, also adopted the historical framework of the peopling of the world by the dispersal of the descendants of Noah after the Flood.

In medieval Ethiopia, the kəbrä nägäst (‘Glory of the Kings’), which was composed in the 13th/14th century but includes older material from the 6th century16, Noah blesses Shem and instructs both Ham and Japhet to be servants and subjects of Shem:

“And to Ham he said, “Be servant to thy brother.” And he said unto Japhet, “Be thou servant to Shem my heir, and be thou subject unto him.”

Canaan is only described as a tyrant who “seized seven cities that belonged to SHEM’S children, but eventually had to relinquish them.”17

The kəbrä nägäst is mostly an account of the visit by Makeda, Queen of Sheba, to King Solomon of Israel, the birth of their son Menelik I, and of the latter’s subsequent appropriation of the Ark of the Covenant, which he brought to Ethiopia. It therefore includes sections indicating how Noah’s blessings and curses were later interpreted.

In one section about the daughter of the Pharaoh attempting to seduce King Solomon, the former admonishes Solomon for marrying the ‘black’ Ethiopian queen Makeda, and for letting Menelik carry away the Tabernacle (Lady Zion) containing the Ark of the Covenant, to which Solomon responds that the Egyptians also belong to the “race of Ham”18

And she answered and said unto him, “Thy son hath carried away thy Lady ZION, thy son whom thou hast begotten, who springeth from an alien people into which God hath not commanded you to marry, that is to say, from an ETHIOPIAN woman, who is not of thy colour, and is not akin to thy country, and who is, moreover, black.”

And SOLOMON answered and said unto her, “Though thou speakest thus art thou not thyself of [that race] concerning which God hath not commanded us that we should take wives from it? And thy kin is her kin, for ye are all the children of HAM. And God, having destroyed of the seed of HAM seven kings, hath made us to inherit this city, that we and our seed after us may dwell therein for ever. And as concerning ZION, the will of God hath been performed, and He hath given her unto them so that they may worship her.”

The phrase “thy kin is her kin” indicates that both the rulers of Egypt and Ethiopia were considered children of Ham at the time of Solomon, and the text’s composition.

According to the Kebra Nagast, while the kingdom of Rome “was the portion and dominion of Japhet, the son of Noah,” the Roman ruler arranged for his daughter to marry Solomon. Their son, Adrami, became king of Rome, while his older brother, Menelik I, reigned in Ethiopia. Solomon then declared that “The people of Israel have taken the kingdom of Ethiopia and the kingdom of Rome.”19

This was written long after the Roman conquest of Judea and the Aksumite destruction of the Jewish kingdom of Himyar by Kaleb, who, in the text, met with the Byzantine Emperor Justin I (518–27) in Jerusalem to divide the world. The political rationale of the text is self-evident.20

“Saint Elesbaan having slaughtered Evil.” Oil on Canvas, 110 x 75 cm. Arouca, Museu de Arte Sacra. 18th-century anonymous Portuguese painting depicting King Kaleb (also known as Saint Elesbaan) defeating the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas

The Kebra Nagast describes every kingdom as belonging to Shem, including Babylon, Persia, Moab, and Amelek. Isaac, the legitimate son of Abraham and predecessor of Solomon, is said to have ruled over many kingdoms, including Judah, Babylon, and Ethiopia. Even the kingdoms ruled by the children of Ishmael (Abraham’s illegitimate son) were counted among “the seed of Shem”, including Noba and Soba (Nubia), as well as Maka (Mecca in Arabia).21

This was reportedly according to God’s will: “For as God sware He gave all kingdoms to the seed of Shem … and slavery to the seed of Ham, and the handicrafts to the seed of Japhet.”22 However, Kebra Nagast says nothing about the descendants of Ham or Japhet, and none of the kingdoms are said to belong to them, since they were all ruled by the descendants of Shem.

In the Kebra Nagast, the three continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia are exclusively ruled by the descendants of Shem, contrary to the more popular medieval theory that Europe was ruled by the children of Japhet, Africa by the children of Ham, and Asia by the children of Shem.

‘Internal’ slavery in Ethiopia and the Hamitic myth

Medieval Ethiopian legal texts such as the Fetha Nägäst (Law of Kings), which was composed in the 13th/15th century, do not use the curse of Noah as the basis for enslavement, attributing it instead to war.

According to the Fetha Nagast: “[The state of Liberty is in accord with the law of reason, for all men share liberty on the basis of natural law. But war and the strength of horses bring some to the service of others, because the law of war and of victory rendered the vanquished slaves of the victors.”23

Texts concerning slavery, such as the edict of King Gälawdéwos, which was issued in 1548, make it clear that protections against enslvaement were granted to his Christian subjects, and that enslavement could only be justified if the captive was non-Christian.24 There’s no mention of the Hamitic myth to rationalise enslavement, despite the influx of Ethiopian slaves during this time and the influences of the Portuguese and Ottomans across the region.

The Edict of Gälawdéwos in situ at the Tädbabä Maryam church, Ethiopia. “If the seller who [knowingly] sold a Christian is a merchant, whether he be Muslim or a Christian Ethiopian compatriot, let them kill him.” (see: Anti-slavery laws and Abolitionist thought in Ethiopia during the 16th and 17th centuries. )

By the late 19th century, Ethiopian traditional histories concerning Noah’s sons shifted away from the monarchical unity of Shem, towards the more popular theory that Abyssinians are descended from Ham.

According to a manuscript obtained by Enno Littmann from a priest in Tigray in 1906: “Ham begot Kush, Kush begot Aethiopis, after whom the country is called Aethiopia to this day. Aethiopis was buried in Aksum and his grave is known there to this day. Aethiopis begot ‘Aksumawi, ‘Aksumawi begot Malakya ‘Aksum, and begot also Sum, Nafas, Bagi’o, KudukI, ‘Akhoro, Fasheba. These six sons of ‘Aksumawi became the fathers of Aksum.”25

The theory of natural liberty and the absence of the ideological link between “Ham” and slavery may explain why the Hamitic theory retained its more classical version in Ethiopia.

Ideas about the enslaved ‘Hamite’ appear to have been introduced much more recently in the 20th century. Interviews of Ethiopian immigrants living in Israel, who included formerly enslaved groups from Gummuz (western Ethiopia), indicate that Ethiopian jews had become acquainted with the Western, racialised version of Ham, as ‘black’ African, supposedly distinct from themselves. Yet Ethiopian jews also face discrimination, ostensibly, because they are the children of Ham.26

The myth of Ham in West Africa

In West African chronicles of the 16th and 17th centuries, the story of Noah and his descendants isn’t mentioned, nor is the curse of Ham used to justify enslavement when captives are acquired through war.

However, in kingdoms which had long been in contact with the Imazighen (Berbers), such as Kanem-Bornu, rulers adopted the Himyarite myths, claiming to be descendants of Sayf b. Di Yazan, as early as the 13th century. This origin myth was found among the Kanuri, the Kanembu, and the Tubu, populations, historically connected with the Sayfuwa Empire.27

The Himyarite hero acquired an original “sūdān-ese” identity, and his genealogy was linked to the Qurays tribe of the Prophet; this claim was rejected as early as the 14th century by the Mamluk-Egyptian secretary al-Qalqasandí (d. 1418). At a later date, the Hausa, who at times recognized Bornu’s suzerainty, adopted a version of the myth in which the founder king Bayajidda, who is thought to have come from Arabia through Bornu, travelled to Hausaland and married a pagan Queen.28

Curiously, in the 12th century, the rulers of the Ghana empire were apparently claiming descent from a man called Salih, who was represented to be a great-great-grandson of the Caliph ‘Ali, the Rashidun Caliph. Like the Himyarite myth of the Berbers, Ibn Khaldun dismissed this connection, commenting that “this Salih is not known among the descendants of ‘Abd Allah b. al-Hasan”29

According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, a chronicle written in Timbuktu in 1655, the Tuareg, Massufa, and the Sanhaja trace their ancestry to Himyar. The author notes that “The Sanhaja trace their descent from Himyar and are not related to the Berbers except through marriage.” He says nothing about the ‘Hamitic’ origins of the people of the bilad al-sūdān, which he called home, and to whom many of the respected Muslim scholars and rulers he mentioned belonged.30

According to the Tarikh Ibn Mukhtar (1664), which presents an official version of the history of the Songhai empire, “the ancestor of the Songhay, the ancestor of the Waakaare, and the ancestor of the Wangara were full brothers. Their father was one of the kings of Yemen, whose name was Tarāsa b . Hārūn.” The three brothers migrated to west Africa, where the eldest, Waakaare/Wa’koroy “was their authority, whom they called Kaya-Magha.” 31

The three brothers are said to be the ancestors of the Wa’koroy, the Songhay (rulers of Songhai), and the Wangara (merchant-scholars from Medieval Mali). Kaya-Magha was a royal title for the rulers of medieval Ghana, which was later conquered by the rulers of Mali and thereafter by Songhai. In another section of the text, the chronicler mentions that the Za/Zuwa rulers of Gao were also descended from a legendary giant from Yemen.

12th century Funerary stelae from Gao, Mali.

Ibn Mukhtar (1664) says nothing about the biblical Ham and his relationship to the peoples and kingdoms of West Africa, despite acknowledging the west Africa was part of the bilad al-Sudan. The four early West African kingdoms are thus ruled by the sons of Shem.

According to the historian Mauro Nobili, the biblical genealogical claims about Noah’s sons were mapped onto pre-existing West African cultural norms of landlord stranger reciprocities that celebrated the foreign “hunter” who intermarried with an established community and fostered stronger political legacies.

Importantly, the 17th-century chronicle doesn’t contain any claims to justifiable enslavement along ethnic lines, all of which were added during the 19th century, in the forgery known as the Tarikh al-Fattash, written by Nuh al-Tahir of the Massina Caliphate.32

The Hamitic myth was therefore of little use to medieval West African laws concerning slavery. West African scholars and genealogists only adopted the Genesis myths of Noah to establish claims of legitimacy by linking their ruling dynasties to the descendants of Shem.

On the Hamitic myth and slavery in West Africa.

The above chronicles of Timbuktu were composed after the Moroccan invasion of Songhai, by which time the ideological link between “blackness” and servility had gained currency in Morocco. In one of his letters, the Moroccan sultan al-Mansur, whose Saadian dynasty claimed descent from the sharifs, declares that “God brought (peace) between Shem and Ham with its Sharīfian call.”33

When the Timbuktu scholar Ahmad Baba (d. 1627) was captured and taken to Morocco after the invasion of Songhai in 1591, he found himself confronted with a much more racialized discourse than he was evidently accustomed to in Timbuktu. This prompted him to write an extended rebuttal of what he considered to be the false ideas held by North Africans about “black” West Africans, such as claims that none were Muslims and could thus be enslaved regardless of their later conversion.34

Copy of Ahmad Baba’s treatise on slavery, Library of Congress

According to the historian Bruce Hall:

“nowhere in any legal sources before the eighteenth century do we find the invocation of racial labels used to mark collective groups of slaves.

The use of racial labels in the nineteenth-century forgery of the “Taʿrikh al-fattash” suggests that some thing had indeed changed since the original composition of this chronicle.”35

In West Africa, attempts at defining whole groups of people as permanently servile based on genealogical arguments only appear in the 19th century.

Several of the passages in the Tarikh al-Fattash forgery suggest that the chronicle was also intended to justify the imposition of slave status on different endogamous (and hostile) groups of the periphery of the Massina empire, such as the Sorko boatmen and the Dogon of the mountains. Sections of these groups were labeled as ‘Zanj’ or ‘Arbi’ in order to avoid confusion with the term sūdān, which was already used by West African Muslims. All three terms were later translated as ‘black’ in the French and English versions of the texts.36

A Massina-born scholar (from Mali) who met the explorer Hugh Clapperton in 1827 while in Sokoto (Nigeria), counts several tribes among the “Benoo-Hami” (the children of Ham). These included the mountain dwellers who had long resisted the authority of the Fulbe-led states of Sokoto in Adamawa, as well as the Jerma [Zarma, Songhai speakers] who, despite their supposed unbelief, “are great warriors, possessing swift and well-trained horses.”37

This marks the first connection of the Hamitic myth with slavery in West Africa, centuries after it had been established in the Atlantic world and the central Islamic lands. Like the Berbers of medieval North Africa, the West African scholars who invoked the Hamitic myth to justify slavery also tried to distance themselves from any connection with the “Hamites”/”children of Ham.”

Sokoto scholars such as Abdullahi Dan Fodio and Muhammad Al-Bukhari in the early 19th century created even more superficial genealogies for themselves, claiming descent from a union between the Arab conqueror Uqba and a Byzantine princess. These scholars, who belonged to a clerical lineage known as the Torodbe, defined themselves in opposition to the descendants of Ham, such as the non-Muslim mountain dwellers of Adamawa, who resisted their authority.38

Torodbe genealogies were, however, far from coherent and were contested even amongst themselves. (as explored in my previous essay)

This intellectual debate is hinted at by Abdullahi, who writes, “Oh critics, abstain from blaming me for I am eager to clarify my lineage and preserve my honorable rank.” His biggest critic and rival was his nephew, the Sokoto Caliph Muhammad Bello, who, in direct response to his uncle’s claims, wrote that “the origin of the Torobbe is the Bambara, a people of the sūdān” and that the original language of the Fulbe was “Wākuru, a language of the Bambara.” 39

Unlike the medieval Imazighen and the kings of Ghana, the Torodbe of Sokoto didn’t need Ibn Khaldun to dismiss their fictitious genealogies, since they had their own critics. Thus, the dichotomy between the ‘Shemite’ rulers and ‘Hamitic’ slaves wasn’t fully developed before the colonial occupation of West Africa.

Entrance to the Palace at Rey, Cameroon. ca 1930-1940. Quai Branly.

Djerma horsemen ca. 1924. Zerma-Songhai, Niger. L’archivio fotografico della Società Geografica Italiana

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Ancient Egypt and the rebirth of the Hamitic myth

Western European Enlightenment and the rise of empirical science in the 18th century challenged the religious account of the origins of race, only to give rise, unfortunately, to even more abhorrently racist, pseudoscientific concepts like polygenism.

As the conservative theologians clung to the biblical theories of enslaved Hamites, “enlightened” writers like Voltaire (d. 1778) advanced the theory that **Africans, Europeans, Chinese, Indians, etc belonged to different “species.”40

[**Importantly for this section of the essay, Voltaire grouped all ‘black Africans’, including Ethiopians, under the racial category of “Negroes”. His theory of polygenism was directly based on the findings of the Italian atomist Marcello Malpighi, who examined the skin of a deceased Ethiopian in 1666, and found a permanent layer of dark pigmentation (known today as melanin) in the innermost layer of the epidermis, which is still called the “Malpighian layer”. Despite the presence of melanin in many populations outside Africa, Voltaire took it as evidence that such superficial differences were innate.41]

A few decades later, however, almost overnight, the medieval myth of the enslaved “Negro-Hamite” suddenly gave way to the modern myth of the “Hamitic hypothesis,” in which the “Hamites” became Caucasoid civilizers from the north.

This radical reconceptualization of the Hamites as racially “white” was prompted by the discovery of ancient Egypt during the country’s brief occupation by the French general Napoleon in 1798.

The genesis of the new Hamitic myth was excellently summarized by Edith Sanders (1969)42, which I will quote here in full:

Napoleon’s scientists made the revolutionary discovery that the beginnings of Western civilization were earlier than the civilizations of the Romans and the Greeks. Mysterious monuments, evidences of the beginnings of science, art, and well-preserved mummies were uncovered.

Attention was drawn to the population that lived among these ancient splendours and was presumably descended from the people who had created them. It was a well-mixed population, such as it is at the present time, with physical types running from light to black and with many physiognomical variations.

The French scholars came to the conclusion that the Egyptians were “Negroids.” Denon, one of Napoleon’s original expedition, describes them as such: ‘...a broad and flat nose, very short, a large flattened mouth... thick lips, etc.’.

The Egyptian expedition made it impossible to hide that seeming paradox of a population of Negroids who were, once upon a time, originators of the oldest civilization of the west. Such a notion upset the main existing tenets; it could not be internalized by those individuals on both sides of the Atlantic who were convinced of the innate inferiority of the Negro, nor by those who adhered to the biblical explanation of the origin of races. To the latter such an idea was blasphemous, as Noah’s curse condemned the Hamites to misery and precluded high original achievement.

A few short years after the Egyptian expedition, there appeared a large

number of publications dealing with Egypt and Egyptians. Many of these works seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes.

The polygenist theories of race postulated that as each race was created separately, so it was endowed with its own language. Because the Coptic language was clearly related to Arabic, it was convenient to draw the conclusion that the nations who spoke related languages must have proceeded from one parental stock. Since the Ethiopians, Nubians and other allied peoples were declared not to be Negro by European travellers, the Egyptians could not be said to be of African (Negro) race, as all of these peoples were colonists from Syria or Arabia Felix.

New interpretations of the meaning of Scriptures were offered. Egyptians, it was now remembered, were descendants of Mizraim, a son of Ham. Noah had only cursed Canaan-son-of-Ham, so that it was Canaan and his progeny alone who suffered the malediction. Ham, his other sons, and their children were not included in the curse.

So it came to pass that the Egyptians emerged as Hamites, Caucasoid, uncursed and capable of high civilization. This view became widely accepted and it is reflected in the theological literature of that era.”

These problematic and explicitly racist foundations of modern Egyptology continue to exercise profound influence on the discipline today.43 It’s for this reason that casual conversations about ancient Egyptian history at times devolve into debates about “race”, skin colour, skull sizes, and nose shapes.

Questions on the “race” of ancient Egyptians and their interaction with other African kingdoms were not derived from professional historiographical inquiry into Egyptian society, but are intended to defend Eurocentric racial hierarchies.44

The modern Hamitic theory cast a wide net to include a great variety of populations, from pale Scandinavians to black Ethiopians and the Maasai, conveniently counting every ancient civilization as the product of “the white race”. An example of this is the hype-diffusionist theory promoted by the American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted, in which an ancient “great white race” spread civilization from Egypt to the rest of the Mediterranean world.45

James Breasted’s map of racial categories.

Bonaparte Before the Sphinx. 1888 Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

German 1932 ethnographic map portraying Hamites (in German: “Hamiten”) as a subdivision of the Caucasian race (”Kaukasische Rasse”).

The Hamitic myth and the European invention of “Race” in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.

In the late 19th century, the ideologies of colonialism and “scientific” racism utilized and expanded the concept of the ‘Caucasoid Hamite’, completely erasing their earlier myths of the “Negro-Hamite”, who now simply became “Negro.”

Such theories were especially prevalent in accounts written by ‘explorers’ of central Africa, who found a variety of physical types in the region, and their ethnocentrism made them value those who looked more like themselves. They declared these groups to be “Hamitic” and endowed with the myth of superior achievements and considerable beneficial influence on their “Negro” brothers.

The Englishman John Hanning Speke was seminal to the Hamitic hypothesis, which we know today. When he arrived in the kingdom of Buganda (Uganda) in 1862, and found a centralised state with a complex political organization, he attributed its ‘barbaric civilization’ to a nomadic pastoralist race related to the Hamitic “Galla” (Oromo-speakers of Ethiopia), thus setting the tone for the interpreters to come.

Unlike the kingdoms of West Africa and Ethiopia, whose adoption of Islam and Christianity had given them a long familiarity with the Hamitic myth, the kingdoms of the Great Lakes had little direct contact with these Abrahamic traditions, and their origin myths contained nothing about the Middle East or any part of the continent beyond central Africa.

The Central African Great Lakes and neighbouring countries.

Explorers, therefore, had to invent Hamitic myths and extrapolate the pre-existing stories about foreign founder figures to give them an origin from Ethiopia. This would have disastrous consequences in Rwanda a century later, when genocidal militias threw their Tutsi victims in the river Kagera to send them up the Nile to their supposed “homeland”.

This mythmaking began with John Speke’s attempts to reconstruct the history of the Bunyoro kingdom, Buganda’s neighbour to the west. King Kamurasi (r. 1852-1869) of Bunyoro reportedly told Speke that he and King Mutesa of Buganda (r. 1856-1884) were ‘wawitu’, who came from the east in Kidi (ie; the east of Bunyoro)

Speke deliberately misinterpreted the name of King Kamurasi’s dynasty; wawitu (ie; baBito) with Omwita (ie, Mvita), the native name for the coastal city of Mombasa (Kenya), in order to extrapolate the eastern origins of these rulers to the coast, and then further north to Ethiopia. He confidently told the king that:

“I know all about your race for two thousand years or more. Omwita, you mean, was the last country you resided in before you came here, but originally you came from Abyssinia, the sultan of which, our great friend, is Sahela Selassie.”46

The “east” that the Bunyoro king was referring to versus the “east” that John Speke extrapolated for his Hamitic myth.

King Kamurasi reading the Bible of Speke and Grant, ca. 1862.

Contrary to Kamrasi’s insistence that he belonged to the baBito, Speke categorizes the ruling class of Bunyoro as ‘Wahuma’ (baHima/bahema, a collective ethnonym for a variety of herders in the region), about whom he writes:

“It appears impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahuma, that they can be of any other race than the semi-Shem-Hamitic of Ethiopia.”

He then invents an elaborate story about their migration from Ethiopia, mixing facts and fiction about the Oromo migrations of the 16th/17th century, placing them at the coast in Mombasa, before they apparently crossed 1,000km west to found Bunyoro and Buganda. To explain why these central Africans knew nothing about Ethiopia, Speke claims that the Abyssinians “lost their religion, forgot their language, extracted their lower incisors like the natives, changed their national name to Wahuma, and no longer remembered the names of Hubshi or Galla.”47

Considering the Speke was writing barely 250 years after the end of the Oromo migrations, the explanation for how they supposedly lost their language and history so fast was dubious even for the time, not to mention the fact that such centralized kingdoms were hardly known in the Oromo heartland during the 16th/17th century48.

We don’t know what the Bunyoro king thought of Speke’s bold invention of his people’s history, but it’s clear that he had already rejected it by the time Samuel Baker visited his court in 1864. The English explorer admitted to having failed to convince the king of Bunyoro that his ancestors were Oromo:

“It was in vain that I attempted to trace his descent from the Gallas; both upon this and other occasions he and his people denied all knowledge of their ancient history.”49

Apparently, Baker expected the African ruler to blindly accept the fiction that had been invented just two years earlier, over his own historical traditions!

The Bunyoro king probably had a low opinion of his European guests; he had received rumours that John Speke was a cannibal:

“At the time the white men were living in [B]Uganda, many of the people who had seen them there came and described them as such monsters, they were not satisfied until they got a dish of the ‘ tender parts’ of human beings three times a day. Now I [Kamurasi] was extremely anxious to see men of such wonderful natures. I could have stood their mountain-eating and N’yanza-drinking capacities, but on no consideration would I submit to sacrifice my subjects to their appetites.”50

It’s not difficult to imagine why his response to Speke’s Hamitic myth was to give an equally ludicrous story about how his people were formerly ‘black on one half of the face and white on the other half, with frizzly hair on one side and straight hair on the other.’

John Speke’s mythmaking had a profound influence on the accounts of later explorers, who maintained the basic outline of the story about the baHima’s supposed migration from Ethiopia, as explained by Samuel Baker’s account described above.

15 years after Speke, Emin Pasha, the Anglo-Egyptian governor of Equatoria (South-Sudan), visited Bunyoro in 1879, in his account of the kingdom’s history, he included a claim that “people with a white skin came from the far north-east and crossed the river. The intruders called themselves “wawitu,” people of witu, a name still given to the ruling families; but the people called them “wahuma.”

On the same page, he explains the source of these claims: “I give the foregoing narrative exactly as i have heard it in conversation here, and at the same time I am constrained to do full justice to the account given by my predecessor, Speke, whose work is beyond all praise.”51

Evidently, the ethnocentrism of European explorers was not shared by their African guests, who placed little value on the supposed “Caucasoid” features of the ‘Hamites’.

According to H.M. Stanley’s description of the wives of King Mutesa of Buganda in 187552:

“Mtesa apparently differs widely from Europeans in his tastes. There were not more than twenty out of all the five hundred [wives] worthy of a glance of admiration from a white man with any eye for style and beauty, and certainly not more than three deserving of many glances. These three, the most comely among the twenty beauties of Mtesa’s court, were of the Wahuma race, no doubt from Ankori (Ankole, S.W Uganda).

They had the complexion of quadroons, were straightnosed and thin-lipped, with large lustrous eyes. The only drawback was their hair—the short crisp hair of the negro race—but in all other points they might be exhibited as the perfection of beauty which Central Africa can produce.

Mtesa, however, does not believe them to be superior, or even equal, to his well-fleshed, unctuous-bodied, flat-nosed wives: indeed, when I pointed them out to him one day at a private audience, he even regarded them with a sneer.

At the time of Speke’s visit in 1864, the kingdoms of the Great Lakes knew nothing about Mombasa or Ethiopia. The earliest caravan from the east African coast had arrived in Buganda in 1844, but it came from Zanzibar, not Mombasa, and it was led by Arabs and Swahili, not Ethiopians.

Despite the adoption of Islam and Christianity in Buganda in the succeeding decades, the Biblical myths didn’t displace local traditions transcribed by both European and Ganda Historians like Sir Apolo Kaggwa (1901). These maintained that their putative founder was Kintu, who is thought to have descended from the sky.53

Curiously, there had been attempts to link Kintu with the biblical Ham during Mutesa’s reign; the king’s conversations with H.M.Stanely in 1875 and G.S. Smith in 1877, suggest that he thought Kintu and Ham were the same. By the 1890s, missionaries were reporting claims that Kintu was a “white” man, and children’s books in 1893 were claiming that Kintu was a personification of Oromo immigrants.

However, the biggest challenge this mythmaking faced was that it didn’t correspond to the “racial” image of the people of Buganda, nor even to King Mutesa. Missionaries tried to resolve this contradiction by explaining that Mutesa had lost his “pure Mhuma features” “through the admixture of Negro blood”. For these and several other reasons, by the time Ganda historians were putting their oral traditions in writing, the Hamitic myth didn’t become as popular as it would be in other regions.54

King Mutesa and his chiefs. ca. 1875.

The caucasiod Kintu and his wife Nambi as they appear in A.J. Mounteney Jephson, Stories Told in an African Forest, 1893

Similarly, in Bunyoro, traditions collected by both European and Nyoro historians like Petero Bikunya (1927) identify the kingdom’s founder as Rukidi, who came from east of Bunyoro in Bukedi (North of Lake Kyoga in Uganda). This founder is thought to have established the semi-legendary Kitara ‘empire’ whose ruling dynasty, the baChwezi, were succeeded by the baBito.55

A few decades later, accounts by Bunyoro’s historians like John Nyakatura (1947) had done away with both the Hamitic myth and the ‘Wahuma’ from the kingdom’s dynastic history.

While acknowledging their presence as herders who “may have come from Egypt or Ethiopia [ Abyssinia ]”, Nyakatura argues that the baHima were a different “race” from the baChwezi and baBito, identifying both ruling dynasties as belonging to the baIru, the agriculturalist group that forms the Hima/Iru dichotomy, similar to the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy of Rwanda.56

In contrast to this, in the southern kingdom of Rwanda/Nyiginya, which was visited relatively late by European explorers, the Hamitic myth arrived fully developed and gained widespread acceptance at the court and by Rwandan historians.

In his 1868 account, the explorer John Speke, who never visited Rwanda, briefly mentioned the supposed “racial” similarities between ‘Wahuma’ herders he encountered in Uganda, with the ‘Wahinda’ princes of Karagwe (N.W Tanzania), and the ‘Watusi’ client herders in Unyamwezi (Central Tanzania).

He deliberately overlooked many of the contradictions he had observed in these three different groups, including the fact that they spoke different languages, in order to emphasize their “racial” unity.57

Speke’s ideas directly influenced the writings of Gustav Adolf von Götzen, the first European to visit Rwanda in 189458.

“Rwanda’s history is obscure and shrouded in legend. We learn of great migrations of Hamitic peoples from Abyssinia and the Galla lands, who moved southwest with countless herds of large-horned cattle and subjugated the lands between the Great Lakes.

A powerful empire, Kitara, which Speke has already described, certainly existed. Its center was roughly in present-day Unyoro. The ruling dynasty there called itself the Wakintu, from whom the kings of Uganda also trace their lineage. And when we hear from the ancient legends of the Waganda that the first Kintu came from the north, that he was a superhuman figure in all his mass.

Furthermore, we hear of three rulers from the Ruhinda dynasty, the first of whom possessed the lands of Karagwe and Mpororo, the second Ihangiro, and the third Ussuwi. Urundi, which borders Ussuwi to the west, fell to the Mwesi dynasty.

All these states, however, more or less disintegrated over time, whether through the extinction of the ruling families, violent internal upheavals, or external attacks. Only Rwanda, under the rule of the Wahinginia dynasty, not only retained its power but continues to increase it year by year.

Whether it once formed part of the Kitara Empire, or existed independently alongside it, and whether the ancestors of Kigeri were related to the Ruhinda and Wakintu, must remain an open question.”

Gustav’s account simply grafted John Speke’s Hamitic myth onto the local traditions that the German had heard during his brief stay at the court of Kigeli IV Rwabugiri (d. 1895).

In the years following his arrival, the Germans would establish a colonial presence in Rwanda, subsuming the kingdom of **Nyinginya while expanding its territorial claims over neighbouring polities mentioned in Gustav’s account.

[**The central kingdom in Rwanda was ruled by the Nyiginya (abaNyinginya) dynasty, and is thus accurately known as the Nyiginya kingdom, but there were other kingdoms in the modern country, and the name ‘Rwanda’, whose semantic derivation is “a large space” isnt derived from the kingdom59]

German and Belgian missionaries and colonial officers greatly expanded and elaborated upon the Hamitic myth in Rwanda, and embedded it in colonial institutions that favored “Tutsi” over the “Hutu” and “Twa”. These three groups, which speak the same language, share the same culture and live side by side, were imagined to have separate origins and histories.

mixed agro-pastoral land use on the hills of Rwanda. ca. 1950, Collection Pierre Gallez. Contrary to modern simplifications of the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy as pastoralists vs agriculturalists, many of those considered Hutu in the 20th century had cattle, and many of those considered Tutsi farmed the land. In 1955, 45% of the bovines in Rwanda were kept by the Hutu, while 50% were held by the Tutsi.60

The “racialization” of Rwanda through its colonial education system has been sufficiently explored in greater detail in numerous anthropological works that analyze this most absurd iteration of the Hamitic myth.61

To quote some of the more absurd claims, the missionary Etienne Brosse suggested that the Tutsi came from the Garden of Eden, the Belgian administrator speculated that they were the last survivors of Atlantis, and as late as 1970, a former French ambassador to Rwanda rambled about the Tutsi ‘Magi’ who had come from Tibet, with a minor branch making it to Iceland!62

While Rwanda had a rich collection of oral traditions and founding myths63, their transcription by professional historians was, from the onset, tainted by the Hamitic myth.

Such can be found in the title of the first book on Rwanda’s history, ‘Un royaume hamite au centre de l’Afrique’ (A Hamitic kingdom in the Center of Africa) by Albert Pagès (1933), and the contents of the first book written by a Rwandan Historian, “Inganji Kalinga” (Kalinga’s Reign) by Alexis Kagame (1943).

The latter account was written in Kinyarwanda, and unlike most books, which were written in French, it was widely read by many Rwandans at the time, and reflected elite beliefs about their own history, which had been manipulated by decades of colonial propaganda.

Alexis Kagame was a favorite of both the Catholic missionaries and the king. He became an ideologue and court historian (*omwiiru64) for the Tutsi monarchy in the 1950s, a professor at the University of Rwanda (even, paradoxically, under the Hutu republic), and a member of UNESCO’s International Committee on African History. He imposed a long-lasting Hamitic interpretation on Rwanda’s ancient history.65

According to Alexis Kagame:

“The origin of the abaNyiginya is Abyssinia, like other Tutsi. If we were people who could travel anywhere … and went to Abyssinia, we would undoubtedly find many things there that are similar to ours, which would truly convince us that the Tutsi came from there … We know that they came from Abyssinia, perhaps they also passed through Nubia, or they first settled in Nubia, because that is also possible.”66

In his later writings, such as ‘La notion de génération’ (1959), which was unfortunately completed in the same year as the first Rwandan genocide, Kagame revised his position on the Hamitic myth, writing that:

While the Oromo and the Tutsi “share the criteria of Hamitic race and pastoral civilization,” the “written history itself and cultural evidence sufficiently demonstrate that there is no trace of a Galla presence in interlacustrine Africa.”67

This work, which was written in French, was more grounded in modern historiographical methods, but it’s unlikely to have been as popular as the first publication.

By the time of its publication, it was already too late. The political reforms of the 1950s that aimed to increase the share of the Hutu in government in preparation for independence were considered ineffective. Hutu intellectuals were opposed to the transfer of power to what would be a Tutsi-led government. The “foreignness” of the Tutsi was at the heart of the debate.

As Mahmood Mamdani explains: “The more assertive the Hutu counter elite grew, the more it provoked a shrill reaction from those Tutsi who had swallowed wholesale the venom that was the Hamitic hypothesis and who were bent on defending colonial privilege as a time-tested tradition.”68

The political polarization of the 1950s in Rwanda culminated in the first genocide of Tutsis in 1959-62, and the violent abolition of the monarchy. The contrasts between the historic trajectory of such social/”racial” divisions in Rwanda and Uganda between the Tutsi/Hima and the Hutu/Iru are explored in greater detail in my previous essay: state and ethnicity in Rwanda and Nkore.

King and Queen of Rwanda at a ceremony in 1950.

The Hamitic myth as a product of transcribing oral traditions

The divergent response to the Hamitic myth in Rwanda and Uganda demonstrates the complexities of transcribing African oral traditions, as explained by the historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien69:

In the debate over how much history and how much myth is in African traditional narratives, it is often forgotten that mythologies are frequently forged when the oral encounters the written.

Marcel Detienne has convincingly shown that in ancient Greece “mythology” was forged through “the logographer’s pen [conveying tradition) with subtle tattoos of verisimilitude ... intertwining the mythos and the logos, the writing and the telling.”

This is a matter more of graphics than orality. “Before being thought over, before being discussed, the Greek myth is written down.” This conclusion can be applied to the oral traditions in the Great Lakes kingdoms with one significant caveat: that the logographer’s pen emerged under the shadow of foreign colonization.

A similar problem was encountered by early Yoruba scholars of S.W Nigeria, whose traditional histories were first transcribed in the late 19th century, by which time they were already interwoven with the Hamitic myth.

In Samuel Johnson’s ‘History of the Yorubas’ (1899), the legendary Yoruba founder Ododuwa is presented as the son of one “Lamurudu,” a king of Mecca who renounced Islam, clashed with a pious Muslim called “Braima,” and was killed in a Muslim uprising.

“Lamurudu” and “Braima” in this story evidently represent Nimrud and Ibrahim (i.e., Abraham), and the story is based on an Islamic saga of the confrontation between these two figures. Johnson derived this tradition from the writings of Muhammad Bello’s Infaq al-Maisur (1812), claiming that the Yoruba (more specifically, Oyo) were descendants of Nimrud.70

While Bello was writing in the context of Sokoto’s rivalry with Oyo before the latter was invaded in 1835-6, Johnson evidently glossed over this association of the kingdom with the Hamitic enemies of the Torodbe rulers of Sokoto. Bello didn’t refer to the Yoruba of Oyo as the “Benoo-Hami” (“children of Ham”) like his peers had done for the non-Muslims of Adamawa, but he did refer to them as ‘Banu Kanan’ (sons of Canaan).

The Infaq al-Maisur was written about a decade before Bello reversed his opinion on the origins of the Torodbe-Fulani, when he claimed that they were from the sūdān (‘blacks’ west Africans), as mentioned earlier.

Samuel Johnson rejects the theory that the Yoruba were Arabs, but maintains that “the Yorubas came originally from the East,” linking them instead with “Upper Egypt or Nubia” based on the apparent similarity between Egyptian artwork and the naturalistic sculptures of Ife and the Obelisks found in Yorubaland.71 He also posits an ancient connection with the Egyptian Coptic Church, in part to situate his own Christian identity within the broader trajectory of Yoruba history.72

It’s clear that despite the apparent negative connotations of the Hamitic myth, Johnson and other African intellectuals of his time were utilizing the more positive aspects of the myth, most notably, the belief in the common origins of humanity from a single family and a shared universal history.73

Crowned head. Ife, Nigeria. 12th–15th century. National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria

The death of the Hamitic myth

In the early years of academic study of African history, pre-existing Hamitic traditions claiming origin from the Middle East were often interpreted literally by colonial scholars, as recording real historical migrations.

This was partly because interpretations of some aspects of African traditions seemed to align with the pseudo-scientific versions of the Hamitic myth, which attributed every trace of civilization in Africa to foreign immigrants.

As the historian Robin Law writes:

“It seems clear, at least, that one of the major reasons why Europeans attributed Middle Eastern origins to West African peoples/cultures was, straightforwardly, because this is what they were told by their African informants.”74

The popularization of the Hamitic myth was made easier when it was accompanied by photographs of allegedly typical persons from the “Hamites,” which were contrasted against the other African groups that were deemed “natives.” Colonial photography, as with all facets of colonialism, is imbued with deeply problematic visual narratives meant to furnish “proofs” for pseudo-scientific racial theories.

Colonial postcard titled “Group of Watuzi” taken in Rwanda. ca. 1914-1918.

For the colonialists, the denial of historical achievement to Black Africans functioned to legitimate European colonial rule as the last of the “Hamitic” civilizers of Africa.

This argument is implicit, for example, in a work of the British imperialist proconsul Sir Harry Johnston, published in 1899, in which the catalog of foreign invaders/immigrants in sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with the Phoenicians and culminating in the contemporary European partition of Africa, is prefaced by supposed prehistoric immigrations of “Hamitic civilisers,” mainly from the Nile valley.75

The decline of scientific racism after World War II and the decolonization of Africa brought an end to the Hamitic hypothesis, which, in any case, was never free of contradictions, even when adopted by African intellectuals.76

Although the overt racism of the “Hamitic hypothesis” was repudiated by the academic historiography of Africa, which developed from the 1950s, the model of state formation through invasion or diffusionism continued to influence the work of pioneering Africanists.

It’s only fairly recently that archaeological discoveries about ancient African metallurgy, architecture, and state formation have discredited the last vestiges of the Hamitic myth in academic literature.

Unfortunately, popular literature and online discussions continue to espouse aspects of the Hamitic ideology that they find politically and culturally expedient, keeping the myth alive and transforming it into a pseudo-legitimate historical tradition.

Statues of Ramses II at the main entrance to the Great Temple at Abu Simbel near Aswān, Egypt

Beginning in the 3rd century BC, vase painters in the Kingdom of Kush produced a richly decorated collection of numerous wheel-made jars and amphorae, using motifs derived from the Nubian landscape and the Hellenistic world

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THE VASE PAINTINGS OF ANCIENT KUSH

While travelling through West Africa between 1908 and 1910, the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius visited the city of Ife (in S.W Nigeria), where he had heard accounts of a remarkable statue of the sea deity Olokun. During his brief stay, he quickly accumulated an impressive collection of figurative artworks, the most spectacular of which was a bronze head representing Olokun:

“Before us stood a head of marvellous beauty, wonderfully cast in antique bronze, true to life, encrusted with a patina of ­glorious dark green… very finely chased, indeed like the finest Roman examples.

It cannot be said to be “negro” in countenance, although it is covered with quite fine tattooed lines, which at once contradicts any suggestion of its having been brought from abroad’’1

Copper-alloy head. 14th-15th century. Ife, Nigeria. British Museum.

Eager to draw attention to his discoveries, Leo Frobenius interpreted the artworks as evidence of an outpost of classical antiquity connected to the mythical “empire” of Atlantis. This interpretation was widely publicised: in January 1911, the New York Times reported that Frobenius “has discovered indisputable proof of the existence of Plato’s legendary continent of Atlantis.”2

Frobenius’s own account of the artworks combines idiosyncratic theories proposing diffusionist origins for the city’s impluvium courtyard architecture from Roman North Africa, sensationalist claims describing Yoruba culture as a “crystallization of Western civilization in its Euro-African form,” and, at the same time, an acknowledgment that the artworks of Ife constituted “a form of local art.”3

Twelve heads from Ife’s Wúnmọníjẹ̀ Compound on display at an exhibition held at the British Museum in 1947–48. Image by T. L. Evans

In the century since Frobenius’s writings, subsequent archaeological research has discarded much of the exoticism once associated with the art of Ife. Discoveries of more copper-alloy castings and other material evidence have made it possible to reconstruct the city’s historical development with greater accuracy.

Thanks to its vast corpus of figurative art, the medieval city of Ife, which scarcely appears in contemporary written sources, is revealed to have been the political and cultural capital of a vast kingdom.

Its regional influence in the construction of potsherd pavements, impluvium courtyard houses, and the (independent) invention of glass has overturned diffusionist theories concerning the emergence of social complexity in pre-colonial Africa.4

Terracotta head. Ife, Nigeria. 12th–15th century. private collection, Met Museum

Crowned head. Ife, Nigeria. 12th–15th century. National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria

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PATREON

About 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural legacy is kept in Western museums and private collections outside of the continent.

A substantial portion of this material consists of collections of figurative artworks from societies such as the Sapi and the Loango, for which they constitute the principal historical sources, given the scarcity of textual accounts.

In recent years, the proliferation of archeological discoveries and studies of African manuscripts has significantly expanded our understanding of the continent’s history. However, comparatively less attention has been devoted to the rich archive of African artworks, which could complement and deepen our knowledge of historical African societies.

The Flight into Egypt. Bamileke artist. Fumban, Cameroon. Quai Branly

The Sapi, whose communities were distributed along the Atlantic coast of present-day Sierra Leone and Guinea during the 15th and 16th centuries, occupied a unique cultural and geographic position between the Muslim interior of the Mande-speaking kingdoms, the Atlantic world of the Christian Portuguese, and the indigenous societies of the coast.

This “triple heritage” and the complex ways in which the Sapi negotiated these influences are well represented in the figurative art produced by their highly skilled artisans. Their artworks combine motifs derived from local cosmologies with representations of Sapi figures in hybrid attire, often holding objects associated with the Muslim societies of the interior, alongside foreign elements drawn from the Iberian Christian world.

(left) Ivory salt-cellar with lid, decorated with snakes, dogs, and 4 human figures. Sapi artist. Sierra Leone. 15th-16th century. Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (right) Ivory salt-cellar with lid decorated with a seated female figure, featuring depictions of snakes and dogs. Sapi artist. Sierra Leone. 15th-16th century. Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.

‘The kiss of Judas’ ivory pyx by Sapi artist, Sierra Leone, ca. 1490-1530. Walters Art Gallery. (see previous essay on Early Christianity in West Africa (ca. 1500-1820) )

In Loango, the devolution of centralized authority to titled officials (mafuks) along the coast of present-day Congo Rep. during the commodities boom of the late 19th century led to a marked expansion in the production of figurative artwork in ivory.

Among the best sculptures from this region are intricately carved ivory tusks depicting scenes of daily life and the social transformations of the period. Narrative themes are arranged in a spiral format, “like the decoration of the column of Trajan,” depicting African and European figures, as well as a range of real and mythical animals, some of whose symbolic meanings have since been lost.

Scenes of daily life carved in ivory. Loango, Gabon. late 19th century. British Museum

The significance of figurative art as a complement to textual and archaeological research on African history is especially well illustrated by the celebrated corpus of painted vessels from the Kingdom of Kush during the Meroitic period (270 BC-360 CE).

From the 3rd century BC onward, numerous high-quality, wheel-made jars and amphorae were decorated with brightly coloured paintings and motifs whose visual vocabulary was derived from the Nubian landscape and the Hellenistic world.

Meroitic painters in centralized workshops at the capital developed distinctive “art schools” and “drawing styles” for the decoration of thin-walled fine wares that circulated to other cities and temple towns across the kingdom.

The visual symbolism of this unique figurative tradition has enabled historians to reconstruct aspects of Kushite social life that are only marginally represented in internal accounts and external sources.

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THE VASE PAINTINGS OF ANCIENT KUSH

In contrast to the majority of prehistoric megalithic traditions that survive only as archaeological remains, the construction of stelae in Ethiopia isn’t a relic of the forgotten past, as the country is one of the few places in the world where the erection of stone monuments has continued into the historical and modern eras.

The megalithic culture in Ethiopia encompasses a wide range of forms, including standing stones (stelae), dolmens, and tumuli. These monuments are widely distributed across the landscape, with hundreds of sites documented in northern, central, and southern regions of the country.

Among the most renowned examples are the famous obelisks of Aksum, the prehistoric dolmens of Harar, and the enigmatic stelae of Tiya, whose carved surfaces are profusely decorated with symbolic and figurative motifs.

This article outlines the history of the Ethiopian megaliths from the prehistoric period to the modern era.

The megalithic sites of Ethiopia. Map by Jean-Paul Cros.

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PATREON

Megaliths of the northern region

Megalithic stelae in Ethiopia display considerable variation in typology, scale, and chronology, and were erected within diverse social and economic contexts. Current archaeological evidence indicates that at least four largely independent traditions of stelae construction developed in the northern, eastern, central, and southern regions of the country.

Historical antecedents for megalithic construction of northern Ethiopia can be found in the archaeological sites of Mahal Teglinos (Kassala, Sudan) and Beta Giyorgis (Tigray, Ethiopia).

The former site, which belongs to the Neolithic ‘Gash group’ (c. 3000–1500/1400 BC), contains an elite cemetery with funerary stelae comprised of flat slabs, pointed monoliths, and small pillars, ranging from 0.5 to 1.1 m in height. At the proto-Aksumite site of Beta Giyorgis (400 BC- 50 CE), all funerary stelae were monoliths, around 4–5 m high, with a vertical notch at the top, suggesting one dominant lineage. They stood ontop of a tomb platform containing elaborately decorated pit-graves, around 5 m deep, and rich grave goods.1

(left) Mahal Teglinos (Kassala), Stele Field, Gash Group (right) Beta Giyorgis (Aksum), proto-Aksumite stele field. Images by Rodolfo Fattovich

In the late 1st century CE, the city of Aksum was established as the capital of the kingdom, and a new royal cemetery was opened, ontop of which stood several monumental stelae.

In the Early Aksumite phase, the shaft tombs in the northern half of the Stelae Park were covered by stone platforms and were associated with carved stelae, up to 10 m high. In the late 3rd century CE, a ‘royal’ cemetery with elaborate, rock-cut multi-chamber shaft tombs, massive stone platforms, and stelae was established in the main Stelae park. Another elite cemetery with monoliths was located to the west of the town, known as the Gudit stelae field. In the 4th century, monumental hypogeal tombs, such as the so-called ‘Mausoleum,’ and staircase tombs were associated with monumental hewn stelae in the ‘royal’ cemetery of the stelae park.2

The Obelisk at Axum. Drawing by Henry Salt, ca. 1809.

Axum: in the foreground, stele 1 lies broken on the ground, and on the right are the cover stone and pillars of the monument of Nefas Mawcha. In the background are two other giant stelae. WikimediaCommons.

carved details on Stela 3

Mausoleum of Aksum

Gudit Stelae Field

The largest of the stelae in the royal cemetery weighs over 520 tonnes, while two others weigh 160–170 tonnes each. They were elaborately carved in imitation of multi-storeyed Aksumite buildings, complete with window-frames and apertures, false doors, horizontal wooden beams, and the projecting ends (monkey-heads) depicted in low-relief carving. They were carved in a granite-like rock known as nepheline syenite that was obtained from quarries about 4 km to the west of the city, such as Gobedra, where there is a relief carving of a lioness.

Abandoned quarry near Aksum. WikimediaCommons.

The Lioness of Gobedra. Aksum, Ethiopia

Stela 3, which is thought to belong to King Aphilas or Wzb, is the only one of the three in its original position; standing at 20.6m high, and weighing 160 tonnes. Excavations on the site of the next largest stela, no. 2, thought to belong to King Ousanas, demonstrated that it had been intentionally undermined to make it collapse, many centuries ago, likely in the late 1st millennium CE. Stela 1, which is thought to belong to King Ezana, is the largest of the Aksumite stelae and arguably the largest single block of stone that people anywhere have ever attempted to set on end. 33m long and 520 tonnes in weight, it appears that it fell and broke during the attempt to erect it.3

Archaeologists have reconstructed the process of erecting the stela, based on the fallen remains of Stela 4, at the eastern end of the main Stelae Park and the features of the other monuments. The stela was placed on a ramp that often took advantage of a natural slope. A socket was excavated adjacent to the foot of the ramp, its base and sides being lined with slabs of stone. The stela was then raised and tipped into the socket, stones being quickly packed around its base to secure it. Finally, horizontal baseplates were added to hold everything in place.4

Reconstruction of how the Aksum stelae were probably erected. Illustrations by D. Phillipson

The unsuccessful attempt to erect Stela 1 coincided with major changes in royal burial practice and the formal adoption of Christianity that subsumed/replaced pre-existing funerary belief systems. The next monumental tomb, known as the ‘Tomb of the False Door’, was never marked by a stela; instead, its superstructure was a solid block of masonry 12 m square and 3 m high, incorporating a large stone slab carved to represent a false door virtually identical to those on Stelae 3-1.5