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

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

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

As the historian Benedetta Rossi explains:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Olaudah Equiano, c.1789

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

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

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

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

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

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

A 17TH CENTURY AFRICAN ABOLITIONIST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PATREON

A brief history of palm oil before the 19th century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adapalm, Imo State, Nigeria.

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

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

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MATRIARCHS OF ANCIENT NORTH AFRICA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walls of Zaria, mid-20th century.

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

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

Monument to Dihya (Kahina), Baghai, Algeria.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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MATRIARCHS OF ANCIENT NORTH AFRICA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PATREON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He describes its political structure as such9:

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

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

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

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

Street scene in Agadez, mid-20th century.

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

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

Tuat, Awjila, and Ghadames in relation to Agadez.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Historic Monuments of Agadez.

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

Historic Centre of Agadez. Image by ICOMOS, UNESCO.

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

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

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

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

Sultan’s palace. Terri Gold World Imagery

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

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

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

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

Agadez mosque, image by Antonio Mesquita.

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

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Agadez in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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

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

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

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

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

Agadez, ca. 1935. Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Agadez in the 19th century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agadez, c. 1930. House of Mallam Yaro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Traditional salt caravan from Agadez to the oases Fachi and Bilma. Alamy Images

Sultan’s palace and mosque. Katsina, Nigeria. ca. 1918. Bristol Archives

Agadez remained a center of learning in the 19th century, and was visited by some of the scholars of Sokoto.36 At the time of Barth, there were an estimated 250-300 students of wealthy families in “five or six schools scattered over the town”, which was relatively large, compared to the town’s population of about 7,000.37

A short biography for 32 scholars from Agadez in the 19th and early 20th century contains one of the few descriptions of intellectual life during this period. Like other West African scholars, many travelled across the region for advanced learning, mostly to Kano; some served as viziers and secretaries at the court, but most remained independent.

They left behind several works on theology, law, poetry, and history (including the chronicles). Unfortunately, Most of the writings of Agadez were lost after the French suppression of the 1916-1917 revolt. All the scholars, intellectuals, and religious figures of Agadez were executed by French soldiers in the city’s Great Mosque, where they had taken refuge, and their manuscripts were burned.38

View of Agades. Image by Angus Buchanan, c.1920

Agadez, c. 1933. Quai Branly

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The town’s fortunes declined further in the late 19th century, such that by the time of the Foureau–Lamy colonial expedition in 1899-1900, the city’s ruined quarters are described as “a fleeting memory of a bygone era.”

The sultan was Mohamed-El-Baqeri, a grandson of the ruler met by Barth. He took the throne in 1891, but his authority barely extended beyond the walls of the town. He was isolated by all the fierce Kel-Ferouane nomads, and beholden to the few northern traders allied with the Senussi order. Foureau describes the bulk of Agadez’s residents as “black,” including the sultan and his officers.39

While Agadez formally acknowledged French authority in 1900, recurring Tuareg revolts and a rebellion by the Sultan meant that the city wasn’t formally brought under colonial government until 1917. Its population continued to decline during the colonial period, only recovering and surpassing its pre-colonial level after independence.40

Agadez is today the fifth largest city in the modern Republic of Niger and among the oldest continuously inhabited urban centers in West Africa. It’s regarded as a gateway city to the Sahara and transit hub for migrants to the Maghreb and Europe.

However, this new status reflects more recent economic and political processes during the last two decades, rather than representing a long-standing tradition, since the pre-colonial desert city was only a regional center whose reach was confined to the Central Sahara.

Agadez mosque, Getty Images.

Oumarou Ibrahim Oumarou, Sultan de l’Air et d’Agadès

My Latest Patreon Article is about the unique fractal geometry of the old city of Logone-Birni in Cameroon, where African masons created a unique building tradition, consisting of a series of seemingly infinite rectangular courtyards within rectangular courtyards.

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THE FRACTAL GEOMETRY OF LOGONE-BIRNI

Fractals occupy a prominent place in African geometry and architecture, but they represent only one of several forms of mathematical ordering reflected in African settlement patterns.

In his influential book ‘African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design’ (1999), the mathematician Ron Eglash argues that African fractal patterns, visible in its architecture and artistic traditions, are produced through conscious acts of abstraction.

They are derived from pre-existing systems of knowledge and aesthetics, including recursive loops, concepts of infinity, and self-organizing systems.

While the terms used to describe fractal patterns (which are recursive, scalable, self-similar, and contain an infinite length within a finite boundary) often lie in mathematics and semiotics from nature, the settlement patterns in Africa, which are a precursor to these terminologies, are drawn from cultural practices and societal norms.

In his ethnographic survey of Logone-Birni (in Northern Cameroon), Eglash observes that the old town comprises huge rectangular building complexes, the largest of which was the royal palace. Each complex is created by a process called “architecture by accretion,” whereby new rectangular enclosures are added to old rectangles, which thus grow larger as you move outward from the center.

The result of this scaling process is a series of “rectangles within rectangles within rectangles,” forming self-similar structures that are clearly visible in aerial photographs of the old town.

Eglash also identifies this rectangular fractal design in the artistic motifs and passages in the palace of the Miarre (chief/sultan).

The central motif of the guti shows a rectangle inside a rectangle inside a rectangle. Similarly, the passage leading to the throne room of the Miarre follows a rectangular spiral that requires visitors to observe increasingly formal behaviour as they proceed deeper into the palace.1

‘Vue aérienne de Logone-Birni’, c. 1936. Quai Branly.

Inside Logone Birni. images by R. Eglash.

The spiral path taken by visitors to the throne. drawing by Lebuff (1969). The guti, the royal insignia, painted on the palace walls. images by R. Eglash.

The fractal geometry of Logone’s architecture, with its pattern of “rectangles within rectangles within rectangles,” is comparable to the settlement layouts found in several other African societies, from the Ba-Ila of southern Zambia to the Songhai of Lahitanga in Mal

In the case of Ba-ila and Lahhetanga, the settlements are instead characterized by a dense “circular arrangement of circles” or “ring within rings”, from the large enclosing outer wall, to the curvilinear cluster of homesteads and kraals, to individual circular huts and granaries, down to the circular fireplace and pottery.

Additionally, the streets and paths of several African settlements, from Mlomp in Senegal to Cairo in Egypt, branch into progressively smaller networks that resemble the fractal venation patterns of a leaf.2

Fractal geometry of a Ba-Ila village in Southern Zambia. Images by R. Eglash.

Labbezanga in Mali. Images by R. Eglash. Note that the rectangular buildings were originally circular

Labbezanga, Mali.

Branching paths in Mlomp, Senegal, and Cairo, Egypt. Images by R. Eglash.

He observes that African fractals weren’t simply a product of social organization (Logone-Birni was a hierarchical society), nor were they exclusive to the continent, as comparable patterns can be found in various forms in southern India.

Additionally, he points out that fractals were largely absent in indigenous societies of pre-Colombian America, some of whose settlements display more symmetrical Euclidean layouts, including quadrilateral grids and concentric circles composed of finite linear layers radiating from a single centre.3

However, Eglash was aware of the tendency among many Western social scientists to essentialize African societies, as well as the structuralist nature of most anthropological research on African cultures and traditions.

He was also familiar with the philosophical critiques of African and European comparative sociology advanced by Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and Kwame Anthony Appiah.4

He therefore placed far less emphasis on the relationship between fractal architecture and pre-colonial African political systems than some popular misinterpretations of his work have suggested.

He, in fact, states early in his work that “not all architecture in Africa is fractal—fractal geometry is not the only mathematics used in Africa—but its repeated presence among such a wide variety of shapes is quite striking.”5

This caution is borne out by the fact that none of the settlements examined in his study were among the continent’s large historical cities, many of which display Euclidean layouts characterized by quadrangular and circular symmetries.

These include grid-like town plans, featuring long, straight streets, which are common in eastern Africa, the Sahel, as well as cities such as Benin and Loango, alongside concentric-ring layouts in which streets radiate outward from a central palace, a pattern most commonly associated with West African cities.

The bulk of Africa’s historical cities display hybridized urban plans, a pattern found throughout the world and shaped by processes of organic urban sprawl, fluctuating growth, and repeated redesign over centuries.6

Reconstruction of the city of Meroë, Sudan. Image by Rebecca J Bradley

Archaeological plan of the walled upper town of Hamadab (ca. 3rd century BC – 4th century AD) showing a planned layout with main road, temple, tower house, and living quarters [Photo from the Hamadab Project].

The walled towns of medieval Lower Nubia. Top left: Ikhmindi, bottom right: Sheikh Dawud, bottom left: Nagʿ esh-Scheima.7

The Swahili city of Gede, Kenya. Map by S. Pradines. At Gedi there is some evidence to suggest some kind of larger organizing principle operating in at least part of the city, that of a main central street which ran from north to south through the excavated core of the site. This street is the longest continuous route known at the site, running presumably from the North Gate, through the later inner wall, along the eastern side, and ending at the western court of the Great Mosque, where it runs into another main street running east- west. Two major streets led off at right angles from the main north-south street, one running between the north end of the house block and the Mosque of the Long Conduit, and the other running east-west along the qibla wall of the Great Mosque, possibly connecting this mosque to the Palace complex.’8

Benin City, Nigeria. c. 1897

‘View Of Coomassie, The Capital Of Ashanti.’ c. 1874. Ghana.

General View of Abomey, Capital of Dahomey. Benin. c. 1892. Le Journal Illustré.

The Yoruba city of Ilesha, Nigeria, the town and its quarters, Map by J.D.Y. Peel. The palace of the Oba (King) was the locus of the town’s layout from which the town’s roads and streets radiated outwards like spokes of a wheel and continued beyond the town gates to the frontiers of the kingdom.9

Plan of Ton Masala’s extant ruins, walls, and house foundations. Mali. Image by K. C. MacDonald10

Aerial view of Jenne, Mali.

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Arguably, Eglash's strongest evidence for fractal geometry in the pre-colonial period comes from the city of Longone-Birni.

While his work was mostly based on observations from his fieldwork in 1993, historical descriptions of the architecture of Logone-Birni nearly two centuries earlier support Englash’s observations.

In the 19th century, the walled city of 15,000 was visited by the explorers Dixon Denham(1823), Heinrich Barth (1852), and Gustav Nachtigal (1870), all of whom were impressed by “the superior and even grand style of its architecture.”

Their descriptions of Logone’s palatial and domestic architecture, which consisted of a series of rectangular-walled courtyards, covered apartments, antechambers, corridors arranged in rectangular spirals, and double-storied structures with watchtowers, indicate that the settlement patterns observed by Eglash were of considerable antiquity, a conclusion further supported by recent archaeological excavations in the neighbouring town of Holouf.

In particular, their descriptions of the palace of Logone-Birni and the passage leading to the throne hall suggest that the rectangular spiral documented by Eglash nearly two centuries later represented a long-established architectural layout that enhanced the “sacred and secluded kingship” of its ruler; a tradition found in some pre-colonial African states, including the empire of Bornu.

Ethno-architectural studies of settlements neighbouring Logone to the south also provide historical evidence for fractal design in the form of settlement enclosures composed of “rings within rings,” suggesting that the architecture of Logone retained its fractal geometry even after the adoption of rectilinear house forms.

Differences between the architecture of Bornu, the suzerain of Logone, and the defensive architecture of the Musgum, who are culturally related to the inhabitants of Logone, suggest that the application of fractal geometry was a conscious choice by the architects of Logone-Birni.

The Fractal geometry and the architectural history of Longone Birni from the 18th to 20th century is the subject of my latest Patreon article,

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

THE FRACTAL GEOMETRY OF LOGONE-BIRNI

As one of the earliest civilizations in human history, several exotic theories have been advanced for the origins of the ancient kingdom, which portrayed it as a foreign transplant that had appeared suddenly along the Nile.1

Recent archaeological evidence now paints a different picture. The origins of ancient Egypt should be sought within its North-East African context, where several complex societies emerged during the 5th-4th millennium BC, some of which competed with the predynastic rulers that united the early kingdom of Egypt.

These ancient societies were regional variants of broader traditions of the Nile Valley and Eastern Sahara, where a continuum of agro-pastoral communities initiated complex patterns of exchange, settlement, and social organisation within the Nile Valley and surrounding desert.

A growing body of archaeological research from this pre-dynastic period has enabled Egyptologists to trace the developments which led to the formation of the ancient Egyptian state, including the rise of kingship, the creation of the first hieroglyphs, as well as the iconographic art and pyramid architecture of Egypt.

This essay examines the history of ancient Egypt from the prehistoric to the early dynastic period, situating its development within the broader context of Northeast Africa.

Map showing the pre-Dynastic sites of Egypt and Lower Nubia (inset).

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The Neolithic period in North East Africa.

In Egypt, the earliest ‘Neolithic’ cultures (ie; Late Stone Age, food-producing communities) emerged in the Western Desert, based on the early occurrence of pottery and cattle herding.2

This era is divided into the Early (8800-6800 BC), Middle (6500-5100 BC), and Late Neolithic (5100-4700 BC). The earliest sites were at Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba (see map below), where there’s evidence for cattle herding as well as sheep and goats. Material culture includes lithics, pottery, ostrich eggshells, and grinding equipment for processing wild grasses and sorghum.

Permanent occupation begins in the Middle and Late Neolithic period, including slab-lined houses, wattle-and-daub constructions, and a massive megalithic complex, with human and cattle burials surmounted by stelae. In the late phases, Pottery transitions from the broader Saharo-Sudanese tradition to a localised style of burnished and smoothed wares.3

‘Map of early sites for cattle in Saharan Africa’4

Map of Egypt by D. Wengrow, showing prehistoric and early dynastic sites

Nabta Playa, Alamy Images.

After c. 4900 BC, the desert became less and less inhabitable because of the onset of the arid climate that continues up to the present day, forcing more populations into the Nile valley and surrounding oases.

In the Nile Delta region, one of the oldest preserved Neolithic sites was at Merimda Beni Salama, which was occupied before 5,000 BC with evidence for herding cattle and goats. From 4500 to 4000 BC, archaeological remains are related to the Saharo-Sudanese Neolithic cultures that are attested at the same time in the Western Desert. The last phase of occupation from 4000 to 3800 BC is closely related to the Faiyumian culture.5

The Faiyumian culture (5450-4400 BC) in Lower Egypt provides the earliest securely dated evidence for cultivation of six-row barley, emmer wheat, and flax. Indirect links with distant places have been inferred from seashells of both Mediterranean and Red Sea species, as well as cosmetic palettes of Nubian diorite and beads of green feldspar. Settlements consisted of large villages of mud dwellings, round huts, and work spaces.6

In Upper Egypt, the Badarian culture (4400-4000 BC) provides the earliest evidence for agriculture in this region. It’s mostly known from cemeteries that consisted of simple pit burials, which also display the earliest evidence for hierarchization in the form of unequal distribution of grave goods (mostly pottery).

Badarian pottery consisted of handmade, black-topped red wares with a rippled surface. This type of pottery is considered a local development of a Saharan tradition, extending southwards to the Khartoum Neolithic of Sudan, eg at Kadruka, whose burial traditions and material culture are broadly similar. The Badarian culture was widespread, in the south at Armant, Elkab, and Hierakonpolis, where it was intertwined with the Naqada culture, into which it evolved.7

Map of the Naqada sites in Egypt.8

The Naqada culture of Upper Egypt in the 4th millennium BC.

The first Naqada phase (Amratian) lies between 4000 and 3500 BC, followed by the second phase (Gerzean), from 3500 to 3200 BC, and the final Pre-dynastic phase runs from 3200 to 3000 BC.

Naqada I sites are known from funerary remains that mostly consisted of simple pit graves furnished with a variety of grave goods. Larger burial places are also attested, e.g. at Hierakonpolis, provided with coffins of earth or wood. Some burials contained funerary statuettes, but weren’t rich in other grave goods, suggesting social diversity rather than increasing hierarchization at this time.9

The black-topped wares of the Badarian period gradually became less common, and surface decoration now included geometrical, animal, and vegetal motifs, as well as boat scenes and human figures of hunter-warriors and vanquished captives. Precursors of pharaonic iconography, such as the red crown and the bird above a sacred building, and the ruler smiting his enemies, first appear during the Naqada I period.10

The making of Egyptian faience and the techniques of stone working were developed during this period, including greywacke, granite, porphyry, diorite, breccia, limestone, and Egyptian alabaster, mostly used for funerary equipment. The production of bone and ivory objects, as well as copper artifacts, expanded.11

‘Frontispiece from Petrie’s Diospolis Parva: The Cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898-9 (1901b) illustrating his Predynastic pottery sequence (courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society)’ “Although modern pottery specialists would not organize their corpuses of material in this way, the terminology introduced by Petrie remains the common reference point for Predynastic studies to this day.”12

Black-topped bowls and beaker, Naqada I-II period, ca. 4000-3600 BC. Image by Emily Teeter et al.

Clay figure, Asyut, Naqada I period, c. 4000 BC, Egypt. National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.

The Naqada II phase was characterized primarily by expansion of its material culture northwards towards the Nile delta and southwards to the A-Group culture of Nubia.

Increasing hierarchization is evidenced by the emergence of larger graves for a few individuals, containing richer and more abundant offerings, eg Cemetery T at Naqada and Tomb 100 ( Painted Tomb) at Hierakonpolis, which depicts a procession of boats and images of rulers and vanquished foes. Funerary rituals became more complex, including evidence for the wrapping of mummified bodies in strips of linen.

There was an increase in decorated pottery and other media featuring boat scenes, further development in techniques of stone working (limestones, alabasters, marbles, serpentine, basalt, breccia, gneiss, diorite, and gabbro), copperworking intensified to substitute stone objects ( axes, blades, bracelets, and rings), and maceheads became a symbol of power.13

‘Painting in tomb T100, Hierakonpolis. Fragment in the Cairo Egyptian Museum, ca. 3500 BC.’ Wikimedia Commons. The illustration in the center of the image below is taken from the bottom left corner of the above painting.

‘Continuing iconography of power: (left) motif of smiting the defeated and often tied enemies represented on a Naqada IC jar from Abydos grave U-239, (center) Naqada IIC wall painting from Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis, and (right) late Naqada III Narmer Palette’ Image and Captions by Emily Teeter et al.

‘Group of Decorated vessels (D-ware). OIM E26240, E10782, E10762, E10759, E10581 (photo by Anna Ressman)’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

The entire Nile Valley was covered by a string of villages, with three large centers at Naqada, the ‘gold town’; Hierakonpolis, and Abydos.

At Hierakonpolis, a large ceremonial centre excavated on the low desert and dating back to the early Naqada II period has been interpreted as a temple. At the end of Naqada II, a circular stone revetment and an adjoining paved area represent the earliest temple, where the Dynastic 0 kings (‘Scorpion’ and Narmer) dedicated votive palettes and maceheads to honour the local god, Horus of Nekhen.14

The earliest evidence for elite architecture comes from Hierakonpolis in the Naqada I period, represented by an earthen rectangular house with an oven, all partially enclosed by a wall, measuring 4.00 x 3.50 m. By the Naqada II period, similar structures appear at Naqada itself, represented by a rectangular mud-brick structure in the ‘south town’ measuring 50 x 30 m that’s possibly a temple or palace, south of which are several rectangular houses and an enclosure wall.15

In the Nile delta, the Maadian cultural complex near modern Cairo was contemporaneous with the Naqada I and II period. It is distinguished by the presence of six subterranean stone-built structures, with both curvilinear and rectilinear layouts, and the earliest evidence for mudbrick architecture which later spread to Upper Egypt.

Maadian pottery was decorated with impressions reminiscent of ‘Saharo-Sudanese’ pottery. Links with Upper Egypt include imported black-topped sherds, greywacke cosmetic palettes and combs. Links with Early Bronze Age Palestine account for the presence of distinctive footed ceramics. Maadian stone objects were soon replaced with copper, but graves remained relatively simple. In later phases, there is an increase in Naqada pottery styles, while Maadian pottery progressively disappears.16

‘Stone built architecture at Maadi, N. Egypt’ Image by D. Wengrow.

‘Subterranean dwelling, photograph and sketch.’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

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The A-Group Culture in Lower Nubia.

In Lower Nubia, the A-Group culture (3800-3100 BC) is contemporaneous with the Naqada I-III periods. Knowledge of prehistoric Nubia is comparatively well documented as a result of the rescue excavations carried out in the 1960s, before most of the area was flooded under Lake Nasser.

Climatic deterioration in the 5th millennium BC forced changes in settlement patterns of pastoral communities from the neighbouring desert, who moved to the Nile Valley.17

Map of Lower Nubian A-Group sites by Jane Roy

In Lower Nubia, a dense settlement system was in place by the 4th millennium BC, displaying hierarchical differentiation, whose architectural remains include stone hut foundations, alongside post-holes of wattle-and-daub structures.

At the A-group site of Afyeh near Dakka, the remains of several large stone houses (16,146 sq ft) were excavated, the largest of which had 8 rectangular rooms in a space of 200 sqm. The walls were built with sandstone slabs bound with Nile mortar, and floors were paved with pebbles.18

The material culture of the A-Group sites displays a degree of hybridization with the Naqada sites that decreases southward. There are thus no sharp boundaries between the two cultures, making it difficult to distinguish which settlement belonged to which tradition.

Sites like Nag el-Qarmila, north of Aswan, contained predominantly Naqadan ceramics and lithic traditions, as well as objects typical of the Nubian tradition, such as black-topped rippled wares and lunates made of quartz or agate, as well as graves with both human and cattle burials surmounted with stone slabs. At Elephantine, 20% of pottery was imported from A-group Nubia, and in less significant amounts at Hierakonpolis and several other sites.19

In the late A-group period, settlements became more clustered, leading to the rise of regional centers like Dakka and Afyeh, whose stone buildings are dated to this period. Material included lithic, bone, and copper tools, grinding equipment, ceramic containers, personal adornments such as beads and rings, spindle-whorls (for textile manufacturing), and stone vessels.20

(left) Black-topped, ripple-burnished jar from Qustul. (center) Jar decorated with cross-hatched and diagonal-striped triangles between rows of diamonds in red, from Qustul. (right) Vessel painted with Bird and Triangle design, from Qustul. Oriental Institute of Chicago

‘The monumental-sized bowl from Cemetery L, tomb 23, has unique painted decoration of a shrine with a man before it, a tree, with plover in the branches, antelope and crocodile below, and a row of vultures attacking serpents followed by another plover to the left. Height ca. 38 cm. OIM E24119’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

‘Painted Bowl L.23 from Group X.X. Scale 16.1’ Illustration by B. Williams (Plate 84-85)

At Qustul, cemetery L was a monumental grave complex, with large rectangular shafts and a lateral niche containing remains of funerary beds. The tombs are equivalent in size to the largest predynastic royal tombs of Upper Egypt such as Tomb U-j in Abydos. The graves had numerous pottery vessels, mostly of local production with a few imports from Egypt and Palestine. A unique form of painted pottery developed at Qustul was distributed across Lower Nubia.

Other items included lip plugs, clay tokens, sculptures, seals, stone vessels, and incense burners; the last of which had no counterpart in Egypt or Lower Nubia, except in the pre-Kerma culture of Upper Nubia. Upto 4,700 items of personal adornment were found in one burial, including armlets and beads, some made with gold. At the A-Group site of Sayala, a cache of copper objects was found, along with sheet-gold casings of two mace-handles decorated with an embossed animal frieze.21

Qustul incense burner. c. 3200 BC. Oriental Institute of Chicago

‘Gold casing of mace-handle with embossed ornament, Sayala, Lower Nubia, Middle-Late A-Group’. Caption by D. Wengrow.

Incense burners were objects of high symbolic value in the new Nubian political narrative as attested by the unique scenes engraved on two of them found in Qustul.

These depict iconographic elements associated with the Naqada sites, such as the serekh (palace facade) and falcon, with Nubian symbols such as the burner itself and the line of burners with pointed flames, as well as the bows and the bovine figure. The burner also displays one of the two earliest depictions of the “white crown”, the other being an ivory handle of a flint knife from Upper Egypt.22

This points to the presence of “shared traditions and cultural practises, denoting power” between the A-group and Naqadan societies. Such shared traditions are also attested in the presence of potmarks on Lower Nubian pottery that may have constituted a form of proto-writing, as in the predynastic tomb U-j in Egypt.

One depicts a falcon perched on a rectangle, below which is kɜ sign. The mark resembles potmarks of tomb U-J at Abydos (discussed in the section below), which show a falcon perched on an r sign and read as Iry-Hor. The latter is a predynastic ruler who is sometimes cited as the earliest-living historical person known by name. The sign from Qustul has been read as the royal name of a Lower Nubian king, Pe-Hor, who was contemporaneous with King Iry-Hor.23

This suggests the presence of two kingdoms at Abydos (Egypt) and Qustul (Nubia) that were in contact by c. 3200 BC, exercising power in different regions and perhaps in competition with one another

(top) A-Group seals in lower Nubia (bottom) Archaic Horus Incense Burner incised with two river processions that end in serekh facades. Qustul, Cemetery L, tomb 11. Images by Emily Teeter et al.

Potmarks on A-group pottery. Images by Bruce B. Williams. (Plate 78, 79, 81)

(left) Serekh of Iry-Hor on clay jar. Petrie Museum. (centre) Vessel from Qustul with the name of Pe-Hor. Oriental Institute of Chicago. (right) ‘Pe-Hor, incised mark on L 2, Form Group X, J’. Illustration by B. Williams (Plate 76)

The archaeology of Upper Nubia is beyond the scope of this essay, but a relevant summary of its comparative development shows increasing complexification during the 4th millennium BC with the rise of the pre-Kerma culture (3500–2500 BC) which preceded the Kerma civilization (2500–1480 BC).

Pre-Kerma sites extend from the 4th to the 2nd cataract region, with material found as far north as Elephantine. Pottery, of which no imports are found in the south, consisted of black-topped red wares, some with rippled decoration; graves contained an ivory incense burner, quartz palettes, and a copper alloy awl. It had been suggested that A-Group and pre-Kerma formed a single cultural entity.

By 3,000 BC, a large proto-urban agglomeration was founded near the eastern cemetery of Kerma that displays increasing hierarchization, with numerous oval houses as well as two rectangular buildings, one with large uprights and an apse that resembles Kerma-era temples. North of this site was a massive rectangular fortress belonging to the pre-Kerma period that was constructed centuries later (2500-2400 BC). Both the elite temple structure and the fortress directly antecede the religious and defensive architecture of the later city of Kerma.24

Map showing the pre-Kerma sites in Upper Nubia.

Pre-Kerma settlement remains: “(Right) Storage pits during the course of excavation. In the foreground are two jars in a pit. (left) Reclangular building rebuilt three times. ln the background are three palisades. The round structures correspond to the Kerma period tombs” Images by Honegger Matthieu25

Naqada III and the rise of Ancient Egypt.

The Naqada III phase, 3200-3000 BC, is the last phase of the Pre-dynastic Period, and the emergence of the kingdom of ancient Egypt in what is called the Early Dynastic state.

In the predynastic cemetery at Abydos, graves evolved from undifferentiated burials in the Naqada I period, to an elite cemetery in late Naqada II, to the royal burial place of Dynasties 0 and 1. Tomb U-j, dating to 3150 BC, consisted of twelve rooms covering an overall area of 66.4 sq m. It contained many artefacts, including 150 small labels inscribed with the earliest known hieroglyphs, and an ivory sceptre. At the site of Naqada, the impoverishment of later graves suggests that the site had been eclipsed by its southern peers at Abydos and Hierakonpolis.26

Tomb U-j at Abydos, showing one of the chambers filled with wine jars before excavation.

(Top) Tags with numbers from Tomb U-j (bottom left) Tags with notations indicating origin from an agricultural estate (bottom right) Tags with notations indicating they originated in Bast (Bubastis). Image and Captions by Emily Teeter et al: “Tags were found mainly in the southwest chamber (11) of the tomb. They always have a small drill hole indicating that they were attached to containers or individual objects as labels. A great number of them have only numbers that probably indicate the sizes of fabrics and quantities of grain”27

At the elite cemetery HK6 in Hierakonpolis, ongoing excavations have uncovered very large tombs delimited and large, pillared buildings dated to the early Naqada II period, c.3700 BC. They also contain secondary cattle burials similar to those found at Qustul in Lower Nubia and other southern sites.

By the early Naqada III period, the dominant position of Hierakonpolis had disappeared, and Abydos had taken over. This change is thought to represent a shift in the political capital of the Early Dynastic state, since Hierakonpolis remained a major religious center.28

Hierakonpolis, elite cemetery HK6, map after the 2019 excavations. Courtesy of the Hierakonpolis Expedition, cartography by X. Droux.

‘The Two Dog Palette (left: grinding side, right: non-grinding side), from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis, Naqada III.’ Ashmolean Museum. The significance of this and similar objects is discussed by D. Wengrow.29

In the early Naqada III period, the local material culture of Lower Egypt had been replaced by material culture from the Naqada culture of Upper Egypt. This archaeological evidence has sometimes been interpreted as an indication of the political unification of Egypt by this time, but the material evidence does not necessarily imply (unified) political organization, and a number of alternative socio-economic factors might be proposed to explain this change.30

The use of mud-brick in constructing subterranean chambers, first practised at a handful of sites in the Naqada II era, was adopted for most elite burials by Naqada III. By the 1st Dynasty, brick-built tombs are documented at numerous cemeteries from Minshat Abu Omar in the north to Hierakonpolis in the south.31 At Tell el-Farkha in the eastern Delta, a massive tomb dated to Dynasty 0 is the oldest known Egyptian mastaba, a type of funerary architecture that eventually birthed the monumental pyramids.32

The final unification of Upper and Lower Egypt may have been achieved through military conquest, although evidence for this is limited to depictions of battle scenes on ceremonial palettes and maceheads belonging to King Scorpion and Narmer. The scenes depict vanquished captives, suggesting that warfare played a role at some point in the forging of the early state in Egypt. However, literal interpretations of the scenes as representing historical events are now generally regarded as old-fashioned.33

‘The oldest Egyptian mastaba (fot. R. Słaboński)’ Image by Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw

By 3100 BC, the Early Dynastic state had emerged in Egypt, controlling a territory of 1,000 km along the Nile Valley from the Delta to the first cataract at Aswan. With the 1st Dynasty, the center of the kingdom shifted to the north at Memphis.

The power of the elites was expressed through their ability to control scarce resources and Long-distance trade in high-status goods. However, it should be emphasized that a ‘multiplicity of causes’ explain the emergence of the early state in Egypt, of which trade was only one among several factors34

As demand for imports grew, so did the intensity of foreign trade through middlemen such as the inhabitants of Minshat Abu Omar in the north, where pottery from Palestine was found in pre-dynastic contexts. The presence of the predynastic Egyptians in southern Palestine was limited to trading settlements. Imported wares from Palestine were concentrated at the emerging political capitals of Abydos in Egypt and Qustul in Lower Nubia, the latter of whose rulers derived their wealth from supplying African goods such as ebony, ivory, and other exotica in exchange.35

In Lower Nubia, the source of A-Group wealth was the trade in exotic goods coming from southern regions through Upper Nubia. With the unification of predynastic Egypt into a large territorial state, the rulers most likely wanted to control this trade more directly, which resulted in military incursions into Lower Nubia.

At least two predynastic rock engravings from the 2nd cataract region indicate a military campaign by the 1st Dynasty kings into Lower Nubia. A fortress was built at Buhen in the 2nd cataract region by the late 1st Dynasty or early 2nd Dynasty, possibly to mark the frontier with the emerging states in Upper Nubia.36

Rock inscription at Gebel Sheikh Suleiman, 2nd cataract region. Illustration by B. Williams.

The end of the A-Group polity forced changes in settlement patterns and political organisation of Lower Nubia.

The elites appear to have moved north to Upper Egypt, where A-group-type cemeteries were found at Armant near Luxor, and at Wadi Kashab and El-Arib in the Eastern Desert, containing pottery of Lower Nubian and pre-Kerma style, as well as graves surmounted with stone stelae with human and cattle burials. In Lower Nubia itself, temporary sites in the 3rd millennium BC suggest that populations became more mobile, and sections of Lower Nubia became part of the pre-Kerma culture.37

The early rulers of this period also extended their political influence into southern Palestine, during the Naqada II-III period, as indicated by the imported wine vessels at tomb U-j at Abydos of Dynasties 0 and 1, and the presence of Upper Egyptian material culture and possibly colonies in the southern Levant. The 1st (and 2nd) Dynasty kings also carried out campaigns in West Asia, although Egyptian presence diminished thereafter, with trade concentrated at the city of Byblos.38

‘Objects from the southern Levant associated with Egyptian administration’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

‘Imported wine jars in situ. Tomb U-j, chamber 10’ Approximately 173 Canaanite import vessels with wine stacked in four layers. Image by Emily Teeter et al.

Direct evidence for external contacts of the Predynastic polity is thus restricted to Lower Nubia and Palestine. Earlier theories positing a Mesopotamian origin of the pre-dynastic rulers of Egypt have been discredited by most archaeologists, “not least because not a single Mesopotamian sherd has yet been found at any Predynastic site.”39

As the Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson explains:

“The recognition of the indigenous roots of classic Egyptian civilisation emphasised the continuities between Predynastic and Early Dynastic culture. The achievements of the First Dynasty, it was realised, were the result of a long period of cultural and political development, rather than a radically new order imposed from outside. This change of perception undoubtedly influenced the course of Early Dynastic scholarship, and has now totally replaced the discredited ‘dynastic race’ theory.”40

Statecraft in Egypt before the Old Kingdom.

The process of state formation in Egypt was by no means monolithic, but very complex. Given that most of the archaeological evidence for the 1st Dynasty is mortuary, inferences about socio-political and economic organization are mostly drawn from these data.

Royal funerary complexes symbolised both political power and communal leadership; they ‘advertised and embodied the objectives of the…state’. The funerary enclosures at Abydos and Hierakonpolis were impressive constructions that consciously resembled the royal palace and court.41

After centuries of increasing social complexification, Hierakonpolis and Abydos became dominant centers of an early state in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. The kingdom that emerged at Abydos by the late 4th millennium BC would eventually become the nucleus of the unified Egyptian polity; that is arguably the first territorial state in World History.42

What is clearly evident in the Abydos royal cemetery is the ideology of kingship, as symbolized in the mortuary cult. The development of monumental architecture symbolized a political order on a new scale, with a state religion headed by a god-king to legitimize the new political order.

In the area to the north-east of the royal cemetery, called Cemetery B, are tombs of the last three kings of Dynasty 0: Iri-Hor, Ka, and Narmer, as well as the tomb complex of the first king of Dynasty 1; Aha. Also at Abydos were seven tomb complexes of the 1st Dynasty kings: Djer, Djet, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet, and Qa’a, as well as Queen Merneith.

They also contained subsidiary burials of other persons, who are thought to have been the king’s retainers who were sacrificed to serve their king in the afterlife. The practice was discontinued after the 1st Dynasty, to be replaced by small servant statues and shabtis (funerary figurines).43

‘Plan of the Abydos North Cemetery showing all known funerary enclosures.’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

‘Meret-Neiths tomb, looking from the north-eastern corner (Photo: E.C. Köhler)’

The earliest codification of written signs occurred in Naqada III/ Dynasty 0 period.

The discovery of early writing in tomb U-j at Abydos stimulated the study of evidence for early writing in Egypt. Like Egyptian writing in the Dynastic Period, these early hieroglyphs consist of elements of ideographic and phonetic signs. It’s suggested that these symbols were executed by those who participated in the funerary rite, as a way to represent group identity.44

By Dynasty 1 (ca. 3100–2800 BC), writing was being used for economic and administrative purposes and in royal art. Hieroglyphs appear on royal seal impressions, labels, and potmarks, as well as on seals of officials of the state, and on royal serekhs, which contain the king’s name in hieroglyphs. Later, a more complex message of identification developed that may represent a system for recording regnal years.45

‘Inscribed tags from tomb U-j, Abydos, c.3300 BC.’ Image by D. Wengrow.

‘Ivory, pigment. Dynasty 1, reign of Djet, ca. 2950 bc Abydos, Umm el-Qaab, tomb of Djet. ’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

‘Wooden label from Abydos with the serekh of King Den.’ Image by Emily Teeter et al.

There’s evidence for the existence of administrative offices with titled figures, e.g., the ‘vizier,’ the ‘mayor’ of Upper Egypt, and the ‘desert administrator,’ among numerous other titles. Besides these, lower officials include the 1st dynasty official Meriiti, whose burial is among the over 10,000 graves at Helwan. Another early official is the scribe named Wus, whose funerary stele at Abydos described him as ‘sealer of the bjtj-king, friend and scribe.’

Associated with this bureaucracy was the division of the territory into administrative units (nomes), the establishment of Royal estates and foundations associated with the court; and the centralisation of taxation and craft manufacturing. An Egyptian pantheon was gradually developed, including deities such as Ptah, Anubis, Bastet, Hathor, Seth, and Horus, the last of whom was especially associated with kingship and the site of Hierakonpolis.46

The iconography of power is clearly seen within the context of such royal art and includes the use of several important conventions, including ‘attributes of otherness.’ A hierarchy of social classes is also evident, from the large-sized king and his officials, who are shown in the special dress of their offices, who is followed by his smaller sandal-bearer, to his even smaller officials, to the smallest figures of conquered enemies, farmers, and servants.47

The Scorpion Mace-head, from Hierakonpolis. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Palette of Narmer, ca. 31-30th century BC. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.48

The Palermo Stone (c. 2450 BC), which includes the Early Dynastic kings alongside the rulers of the Old Kingdom (dynasty 3-5), shows a line of kings wearing the “double crown” that combines the “red crown” from Naqada with the white crown from Hierakonpolis. This, along with the adoption of the god Horus of Nekhen (ie; Hierakonpolis), has been interpreted to represent the political unification of Upper Egypt that preceded the unification with Lower Egypt by the rulers based at Abydos.49

Excavations on Elephantine Island revealed the remains of a shrine dating to the Early Dynastic period, a fortress built during the 1st Dynasty. The early shrine is a relatively simple mud-brick structure less than 8 m wide, nestled into natural granite boulders. Hundreds of small votive artefacts, mostly from the Old Kingdom but with some from the Early Dynastic period, suggest a craft workshop associated with this temple where worshippers and/or petitioners could obtain such artefacts to leave during their visits.50

Excavations at multiple sites that were major religious centers during the Old Kingdom uncovered evidence, albeit fragmentary, for pre-dynastic and Early Dynastic shrines and temples, eg at Gebelein, Armant, Coptos, Badari, Heliopolis, Buto, and Abydos.

Early Urban settlements were identified at Elephantine, which contained a Dynasty 0 mudbrick structure, a 1st Dynasty fort and a 2nd Dynasty city wall; at Hierakonpolis, which contained a walled settlement with a large palace and monumental gateway, and Buto, which contains a 1st Dynasty mudbrick structure. Other early towns include Abydos, Elkab, Naqada, and Memphis, most of which contain settlement debris and the remains of both round and rectilinear structures as well as town walls.51

Historical data for the kings of the 2nd Dynasty (c.2890–2686 BC) is less abundant than for their predecessors.

Hotepsekhemwy, the first king of the 2nd Dynasty, opened the royal cemetery at Saqqara, to the south of the 3rd Dynasty King Djoser’s Step Pyramid near Memphis, where some elite tombs (Tomb 3357 and 3038) had been built during the 1st Dynasty. This royal cemetery was likely continued by his successors, some of whose tombs have not been identified and may have only ruled over Lower Egypt, ie; Nebra, Ninetjer, Sened, and Nubnefer.52

‘East facade of tomb 3357 at Saqqara with Step Pyramid of Djoser in background; idealised reconstruction of a First Dynasty mastaba tomb.’ Image by D. Wengrow

High officials of the state were also buried at North Saqqara in the 2nd Dynasty. Near the pyramid of the 5th Dynasty ruler Unas, excavations uncovered five large subterranean gallery tombs carved into the limestone bedrock, which are thought to represent houses for the afterlife. The largest of the five, Tomb 2302, consisted of twenty-seven rooms beneath a mud-brick superstructure, covering an area of 58.0 x 32.6 m.53

A late 2nd dynasty king named Peribsen shifted the royal burial ground back to Abydos, even though his mortuary cult was attested at Saqqara. He also chose to replace the Horus-falcon surmounting the serekh with the Seth-animal. His successor, Khasekhemwy, retained Abydos as the royal burial but placed both the Horus-falcon and the Seth-animal atop his serekh.54

Peribsen ‘s tomb is fairly small, measuring 16.1 x 12.8 m, while Khasekhemwy's tomb is much larger, comprising one long gallery, 68 m long and 39.4 m, divided into fifty-eight rooms with a central burial chamber made of quarried limestone. The constructed burial chamber, measuring about 8.6 x 3 m. and preserved to a height of 1.8 m, is the earliest known large-scale construction in stone.55

Khasekhemwy’s tomb

Seated statue of King Khasekhemwy. Ashmolean Museum

Fragmentary sources point to conflicts and competing claims of power during Dynasty 2 that may explain the shift in royal burial grounds.

An inscription on the statue of Khasekhemwy refers to the subduing of ‘47,209 papyrus-people’, which, combined with inscriptions referring to the ‘year of fighting the northern enemy ’, suggests a new unification of the kingdom after what may have been a north–south divide under Peribsen. He also undertook significant temple-building activity at Gebelein, Elkab and Hierakonpolis.

Some monuments of Khasekhemwy appear to refer to wars against Lower Nubia and ‘Asia’. In addition to the creation of the title ‘overseer of foreign lands’ associated with the north-eastern borderlands during his reign, evokes the idea of active foreign politics. After his reign, the kings of the 3rd Dynasty shifted the royal burial back to Saqqara, where the famous pyramids would be built, beginning with King Djoser’s Step Pyramid that was constructed by his vizier, Imhotep.56

Shunet el-Zebib, the “Fort” at Hierakonpolis, built by King Khasekhemwy, 2nd Dynasty. Considered the oldest freestanding mudbrick structure in the world.

Saqqara Mastaba, Tomb 3038, 1st Dynasty. Image by Walter Bryan Emery, 1949.57

Step Pyramid of Djoser, 3rd Dynasty.

Epilogue.

The reign of Khasekhemwy marks a turning point in ancient Egyptian history, linking the early development of the Early Dynastic state with the start of the ‘Old Kingdom’ which begins with the 3rd Dynasty. His mortuary constructions foreshadow the pyramid age, and his political achievements re-established the internal stability and prosperity needed for the great cultural achievements of his successors.

Given what is known about the early Old Kingdom in the 3rd Dynasty, the 2nd Dynasty must have been a time when the economic and political foundations were put in place for the strongly centralized state, which developed with truly vast resources.

The flowering of early civilization in Egypt was thus the result of major transformations in the pre-dynastic period. Increasing social stratification, the development and expression of an ideology of rule, the spread of Upper Egyptian cultural innovations, the concentration of power, the intensification of foreign trade, the invention of writing, and the emergence of a state bureaucracy —none of which were sudden developments.

The success of these transformations in the Early Dynastic Period was remarkable. While neighboring societies in Lower Nubia and West Asia also witnessed the rise of complex polities, their political authority was generally confined to smaller territories. What distinguished the Egyptian polity was its unprecedented integration of rule across an extensive stretch of the Nile Valley, creating the world’s earliest territorial kingdom and laying the foundations for a political tradition that would endure for millennia.

Limestone Head of a King. Pre-Dynastic or Early Dynastic, c. 3100 B.C. “Bought by Petrie in Cairo; thought by Petrie to depict King Narmer.” Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. UC 15989. Image taken from cover photo of Toby A.H. Wilkinson’s ‘Early Dynastic Egypt’

My latest Patreon article examines the hybrid character of Medieval Nubian Architecture, whose massive city walls, domed cathedrals, and double-storied complexes with sophisticated sewerage systems are a legacy of its participation in the interconnected worlds of Africa and the Mediterranean.

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MEDIEVAL NUBIAN ARCHITECTURE

The monumental architecture of ancient African societies constitutes one of the most visible legacies of Africa’s participation in global history.

The built environment of ancient societies in the eastern half of the continent, in particular, includes well-preserved ruins of temples, palaces, churches, mosques, and fortresses that reflect the region’s long engagement with the interconnected worlds of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

During the 1st millennium BC in the northern Horn of Africa (the pre-Aksumite period), several archaeological sites associated with the polity of “Dʿmt” were characterized by monumental architecture, inscriptions, and religious traditions resembling those found in the South Arabian kingdom of Saba.

The Pre-Aksumite sites in western and central Tigray, such as Yeha, which is home to a well-preserved sandstone temple, had been known to archaeologists since the early 20th century, who interpreted these foreign influences as the primary catalyst for the development of urbanism in the northern Horn of Africa.

Subsequent excavations at contemporaneous Ona sites in Eritrea and eastern Tigray, however, revealed the limitations of this interpretation, since no inscriptions, monumental architecture, or iconography were found that derive from the Ethio-Sabaean tradition.2

These Ona sites demonstrate that by 800 BC, local communities were living in fairly large and complex settlements composed of multi-room stone buildings, while exhibiting relatively limited evidence of social stratification.

Additionally, the site density of the Ona culture was higher than the western pre-Aksumite sites, with the largest settlements of Sembel and Mai Hutsa measuring over 9-15 ha, making them larger than the site of Yeha.3

A map showing the distribution of pre-Aksumite sites in Ethiopia & Eritrea. Map by Anfray & Anne Benoist et al. Labels by author.

Interior of the Temple at Yeha. Tigray, Ethiopia.

Pre-Aksumite structure at Alakile Daga. Wakarida, Tigray, Ethiopia. Image by Anne Benoist et al.

The Ona sites challenge the assumption that religious monuments represent the totality of pre-Aksumite architecture, and simultaneously reveal the predominantly African foundations of the region’s architectural development.

The archaeological evidence suggests that ancient communities in the Northern Horn of Africa were active participants in a wider network of exchange, selectively incorporating external elements into local traditions, while contributing to the development of a shared Red Sea ecumene.

As the archaeologist Matthew Curtis explains4:

Focusing on epigraphy, monumental architecture, and religious paraphernalia to the exclusion of other data creates a truncated perspective of interaction.

This truncation results in a narrowing and channelling of critical examination so that the products of cultural exchange, such as influence and innovation and the resultant transformations they generate, are portrayed as emanating and proceeding from a single source and direction across the Red Sea.

Global archaeology has shown that temples and other religious physical structures are parts of religious systems that are often interregional in scale, products of larger inter-ethnic and macro-scale world-views.

The non-elite, non-monumental architecture of the domestic setting may be less conditioned by an interregional world-view and more the product of adaptations and responses to localised, endogenous factors of settlement.

Similar patterns of external exchange and indigenous innovations contributed to the development of several unique architectural styles of the northern Horn of Africa in the later history of the region.

From the elite architecture of the Aksumite and Zagwe period during antiquity and the Middle Ages, to the Castles of the Gondarine period, and the dry-stone constructions of the medieval Muslim kingdoms of the Horn.

In Ethiopia, the monumental architecture of the Gondarine period became increasingly localised after the founding of Gondar in 1636, a development most clearly expressed in the city’s distinctive masonry style characterized by roughly dressed stone set in lime mortar.

‘View from the south of the later Gondärine wall (top) and the Jesuit residence room A. Note the different systems of masonry layout, with irregular and flat stones.’ In Gondärine buildings, the stones vary in size and are laid in a slightly irregular way, in contrast to the tendency for flat stones to be laid horizontally in Jesuit buildings.’5

Fasiladas’ palace at Gondar, Ethiopia.

Fasilädäs’s 17th-century reconstruction of the Māryām Şĕyon church at Aksum.

Along the East African coast, the architectural monuments of the Swahili combined cultural influences from across the Indian Ocean world with those of their continental African roots.

Initially, all constructions were built with wattle-and-daub during the late 1st millennium CE. From around the 11th century the use of Porites coral was adopted on a limited scale, likely transmitted through connections with the Red Sea region or the Maldives. This was later replaced by coral rag after the 13th century as a result of local developments tied to increased demand for elite construction.

Most medieval Swahili ‘stone-towns’ typically contained only a handful of coral-stone structures (mosques and tombs), while the majority of domestic buildings remained rectangular wattle-and-daub houses with thatched roofs. It was only during the 14th century that houses of prominent elites began to be built with coral.6

This gradual emergence of a distinctive local architectural tradition is evident in the reconstruction of the Great Mosque of Kilwa during the early 15th century, where local masons used more suitable materials and techniques for constructing the pillars that supported its arches and domes.7

The Great Mosque of Kilwa; the domed extension. Discarded monolithic pillars visible on the eastern side of the structure. Image by E. Ichumbaki.

‘The picture that emerges of early fourteenth-century Kilwa as a real place is hardly complete or balanced, but it is nonetheless unparalleled in ‘medieval’ sub-Saharan Africa. Particularly interesting is the story of the collapse of the Great Mosque (notably its extension), during al-Hasan bin Sulaiman’s own reign (if the Chronicle is correct), and its eventual rebuilding using more suitable masonry materials and techniques for constructing the pillars that supported the arches and domes. From that one can deduce that the recruitment of the original architect from overseas had not married well with the traditional methods of quarrying and handling the coral stone with which the local masons and workforces were familiar.’8

The 14th-century palace of Husuni Kubwa. ‘ In Peter Garlake’s judgement, Husuni Kubwa was the ‘fountainhead’ from which subsequent Swahili stone architecture derived. So, if the building of what was intended as a grandiose palace proved to be a wildly ambitious project, one resulting in a huge and pretentious monument condemned to decay so soon after it was opened, this brief but remarkable episode left a cultural legacy and a mark in the memory of Kilwa’s greatness.’9

Dome and Mihrab at Kilwa, and Ceiling at Songo Mnara, Tanzania, with inserted ceramic bowls.10

Fourteenth century mihrab of Kua and bowl inlays

‘ The fashion of buildings covered in ceramics must have come from Seljuq Anatolia (1219–1237), as we see in the town of Konya. Later, under the Timurids in the fifteenth century, covering tiles in ceramic reached their apogee. Certain Swahili cities, such as Mogadishu, were strongly influenced by Seljuq architecture. The use of inlay ceramics in the mosques of the East African coast was a part of this fashion and of a cultural movement peculiar to the Turco-Arab and Mediterranean world’11

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These monuments reveal the overlooked contribution of African masons and architects to Global history, particularly to the religious and civic architectural traditions of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean worlds.

A similar dynamic is evident in the architectural history of medieval Nubia, whose monumental constructions, including Cathedrals, Palaces, Monasteries, and Fortresses, dominated the medieval landscape of present-day Sudan.

As the archaeologist Artur Obłuski observes:

“The hybrid character of Nubia, and its suspension between two worlds, has caused it to be frequently neglected by researchers of the Mediterranean World as well as Africa, although it should be fully integrated into both macro-regional contexts.”

After the fall of ancient Kush, three Nubian Kingdoms emerged along the middle Nile Valley, whose populations adopted Christianity by the 6th century and became an integral part of the Byzantine ecumene.

Nubian monarchs, envoys, and ordinary pilgrims traveled across the Mediterranean world, participating in global political processes until the late Middle Ages.

Medieval Nubian masons, drawing upon architectural traditions inherited from the Kushite period and influences from the Eastern Mediterreanean world, constructed massive city walls, domed cathedrals, and double-storied complexes featuring vaulted architecture, richly painted interiors, and sophisticated sewerage systems.

Medieval Nubian structures such as the Cathedral of Faras and the citadel of Old Dongola are some of Africa’s largest historical monuments, and their architectural development provides important insight into the continent’s participation in global historical processes.

The history of medieval Nubian architecture within the interconnected worlds of Africa and the Mediterranean is the subject of my latest Patreon article;

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

MEDIEVAL NUBIAN ARCHITECTURE

Africans’ preference for hoe cultivation over plow agriculture, and for bloomery furnaces over blast furnaces, despite knowledge of both technologies, puzzled early European observers, many of whom nevertheless acknowledged the productivity of these systems.

This perspective was not shared by colonial agronomists and metallurgists, who regarded African techniques as outdated and inefficient. Yet their determined efforts to introduce plow agriculture and blast-furnace technology failed to demonstrate the superiority of these presumably more advanced methods.

Even when African technologies proved reliably competitive under colonial contexts, assumptions about their inefficiency persisted in both scholarly and popular literature, where modern technological disparities were projected into the past.

Such facile assumptions have generated numerous misconceptions about the relationship between technology and broader social processes in pre-colonial African societies, which are often contradicted by the historical evidence.

This article adopts a comparative approach to African agriculture and ironworking, explaining the efficiency of pre-colonial technologies through the failures of colonial plow-farming and blast-furnace projects.

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PATREON

Jack Goody and the origins of popular misconceptions on African technologies.

The comparative history of technology in Africa and the rest of the Old World is a subject so vast that in dealing with it one would be expected to hesitate to commit oneself to statements of general application lest particular instances be found to controvert them.

Yet this caution has not always characterized comparative sociology. Few scholars have been more influential in shaping general assessments of pre-colonial African economic and political history than the celebrated anthropologist Jack Goody.

In his book “Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa” (1971), Goody articulated a number of arguments about African history that have since been popularised by more influential writers like Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in ‘Why Nations Fail’ (2012) and Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ (1997).1

Goody argues that the plow increases productivity by expanding the size of land under cultivation, and observes that it did not spread south of the Sahara except in Ethiopia. He claims that this created a technological gap in productivity between African agriculture based on the hoe with “scarce” iron, and an “advanced” agriculture in Eurasia based upon the plow.

He argues that this gap resulted in different patterns of landholding, social organization, and specialization in feudal Eurasia (and Ethiopia) than those found in Africa. He further claims that iron smelting diffused into Africa from the Mediterranean but wasn’t advanced because African blacksmiths couldn't manufacture firearms, thus enabling the Portuguese in the 15th century to dominate them in battle.2

Goody’s arguments were a product of their time, when limited empirical information about African agriculture, metallurgy, and military history made such sweeping generalizations more plausible than today. Nevertheless, these claims have proven remarkably durable among some social sciences.

In particular, his limited engagement with African land-holding systems outside Ethiopia and his claims about the relationship between “feudalism” and slavery, and the transformative effects of the plow, were uncritically reproduced by Acemoglu and Robinson.

[see my essay on Acemoglu in Kongo ]

Archaeological evidence for the independent origin of African metallurgy has been known since the 1970s. More recent research has since discovered older iron-age sites in Cameroon and Central Africa dating to the late 3rd millennium BC, which significantly predate their presumed points of diffusion in North Africa, and are indeed some of the oldest confirmed dates for iron metallurgy anywhere in the world.

Natural draft furnaces in the Seno plain below Segue, Burkina Faso, 1957, Quai Branly. Earthen smelting furnaces in Ouahigouya, near the capital of Yatenga kingdom, Burkina Faso, 1911, Quai Branly.

Iron smelting at Oumalokho near the border of Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, illustration by Louis Binger, ca. 1892.

The Plow vs the Hoe in pre-colonial African agriculture.

Historians who support Goody’s claims about the low productivity of African agriculture and metallurgy, but are critical of his “technological determinism,” therefore preface their arguments by acknowledging African expertise in ironworking.

Austen and Headrick (1983), for example, note that the development of agriculture and ironworking was an autonomous and revolutionary process. And that African furnaces, which produced high-carbon blooms, attained “a level of sophistication which rivaled contemporary European and Middle Eastern metallurgy in at least its smelting processes.” They suggest, however, that locally produced iron eventually became less competitive than European imports derived from blast furnaces, which were capable of producing iron in far greater quantities.3

They also argue that the reluctance of African cultivators to take up plowing is largely explained by ecological reasons, most notably, the nature of the soils and the costs of integrating horses and cattle into farming. And that there was little incentive to adopt new technologies to increase agricultural productivity (in the form of yields per unit of land), since productivity per unit of relatively scarce labor could be maximized by extensive methods of long fallow cultivation using hoes.4

Historians who are against using the hoe as a proxy measure for agricultural productivity, such as Anthony Hopkins, argue that the plow wouldn’t have produced significant increases in agricultural yields.

Others, such as John Thornton, take this argument further, pointing to the abundance of historical accounts describing the high productivity of pre-colonial African agriculture, metallurgy and cloth making, despite the relatively “simple” technologies that were employed.

In his magnum opus ‘An Economic History of West Africa’, (1973), Hopkins argued that the plough cannot be used to determine the degree of progressiveness of African agriculture, and that its greater cost did not justify its meager improvement in yields, which in some cases were even lower than from hoe farming.

His observations on the limitations of the plow in West African agriculture deserve to be quoted in full5

“Historians and economists are inclined to rank agricultural systems in linear progression from ‘backward’ to ‘advanced’. However, the idea of an agricultural league table can be very misleading. Different systems of cultivation, including those commonly regarded as advanced, co-existed in pre-colonial West Africa, as they did in pre-industrial Europe.

None was anachronistic, for each was subtly adapted to particular circumstances. Furthermore, to equate permanent agriculture with market activity, and shifting cultivation with subsistence farming, is tempting, but mistaken. The methods varied, but the economic goals of both systems were often the same.

To cite the plough as an example of the technological disparity between Europe and Africa is to draw attention to an important, if undisputed, fact. To imply that the presence of the plough would have transformed the development potential of West Africa is to advance a very different case, and one that is open to question.

It is suggested here that the plough was not used in West Africa because it was unsuitable, or too costly, or both. The plough is of greatest use in areas where soils are heavy and land cannot be cleared by fire. These conditions are more typical of Europe than of Africa. Moreover, draught animals are needed to work a plough effectively. Draught animals could not survive in the forest, where, in any case, the plough was ill-suited to the dominant pattern of irregular, tree-studded plots. Ploughing in the savanna could easily lead to soil erosion, as experiments undertaken in French West Africa during the 1920s amply demonstrated.

All the same, the plough could have been used in some parts of West Africa, where the soils were not likely to erode easily, where draught animals were available and where cereal cultivation favoured the creation of a field-type landscape. The plough was not adopted in these areas because its greater cost did not guarantee a more than proportionate increase in returns. The plough can prepare more land in a shorter time than can manual labour, but this achievement often involves a fall in output per man hour, and, in some cases, in output per acre as well.

Farmers’ incomes need to rise some way above the level needed for subsistence before they can afford to adopt new techniques, such as the plough. Even so, a more advanced technology will be used only if it is more profitable than existing methods of production, or if it is essential to ensure survival. Neither of these conditions appears to have applied to pre-colonial West Africa, which, like India, developed a relatively simple technology, but one that was well suited to its requirements.

If ploughs had been available in West Africa in the pre-colonial era, they would have been treated as conversation pieces rather than as agricultural implements. Indeed, that is just what many of them became during the colonial era, when officials tried to convert Africans to the use of technically superior, but economically unrewarding, farm implements.

It is as well to remember that virtually the whole of the massive expansion of domestic foodstuffs and export crops which occurred during the twentieth century was produced with the aid of traditional tools.

To suppose that the failure to adopt a more complex agricultural technology was a cause of underdevelopment in Africa is to put plough before ox, and invention before need.”

Agricultural Terraces in the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. Shutterstock image.

Terraces of Inyanga, Zimbabwe. Images by Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi

While Hopkins suggests it was the productivity of labour rather than land in Africa that was low compared to colonial America. Thornton argues that the productivity of both Land and Labour were relatively high, especially compared to Europe during the 17th century.

According to Thornton, while the absence of the plow is today held to be evidence of low agricultural productivity, the direct evidence from pre-19th century European descriptions of African agriculture does not describe a deficient level of productivity.

He cites a number of examples, including Giovanni Francesco da Roma (1645) in Kongo, Alvise da Mosto (1455) in Senegal, and Pieter de Marees (1668) on the Gold Coast, all of whom observed that fairly light work in farming produced high yields. At least one of the sources, the missionary Wilhelm Johann Muller, who visited the state of Fetu (Ghana) in 1668, mentions crop yields per seed of up to 1:100.6

He argues that modern agronomists are discontented with the performance of contemporary African agriculture because they judge it by the standards of the U.S. Great Plains in the 19th century, but that such observations cannot be extrapolated backwards to the 17th century, when visiting Europeans compared African production favorably with that of European farmers back home.

He notes that even in the 19th century, data collected by the agronomist E. R. Botelho from Caconda in Angola in 1887 revealed maize yields of upto 1,600 kg per ha from traditional hoe farming that were about half of those obtained in the US Great Plains, but relatively high when compared to Portuguese farmers.7

Thornton’s critics, most notably Austen and Hogendorn, argue that it was the productivity of labour (output per unit of labour), rather than the productivity of land (yield per hectare) or crop yield per unit of seed, that was in question.8

Thornton responded that his references also applied to labour productivity, since the sources he cites explicitly note the limited intensity of agricultural labour. Importantly, he points out that his critics don’t provide documentary evidence for African farmers’ low productivity before the 19th century.9

Supporters of Goody’s claims about the low productivity of African agriculture below the Sahara tend to identify Ethiopia as an exception to this general pattern, drawing on the work of specialists such as Donald Crummey and James McCann.10

However, neither of these scholars offers sufficient quantitative evidence to support such definitive claims.

McCann cites estimates of yield per unit of seed in the Ankober District of Ethiopia in 1880, provided by the physician Leopoldo Traversi, which ranged from 1:5 to 1:50.11 But these figures are no more impressive in quantitative terms, nor less impressionistic in their basis than those cited above in 17th-century Ghana.

Crummey's excellent overview of plow agriculture in 19th-century Ethiopia is equally less useful for comparative analysis, since the sources he provides from at least five different European visitors (mostly missionaries and soldiers) measure productivity in terms of yields per unit of seed, ranging from as low as 1:7 to as high as 1:400.

As Crummey explains: “Unfortunately, observers couched their reports of yields in terms of the amount of cereal produced in relation to that sown. As a result modern comparisons are rendered difficult. The sources give widely fluctuating figures, some hardly within the realm of sobriety.”12

The collection of pre-19th century documentary sources on Ethiopian agriculture by Richard Pankhurst reveals no significant differences in European perspectives of the productivity of local farmers from those provided by Thornton in West and Central Africa.

He cited Almeida (1624), who observes that the land produced two to three yields a year, even though “the effort the farmers put into cultivating is not great.” Similar observations were made by Alvares (1520-7), and other visitors, who “provide a chorus of praise for Ethiopian agriculture which continued throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”13

Pankhurst, however, notes that later European travellers, most notably James Bruce who visited the country in 1770, were less impressed with Ethiopian agricultural yields, citing estimates (presumably of yields per unit of seed) in the range of 1:9 and 1:20.

“By the end of our period agricultural progress in England and other parts of Western Europe had caused foreign visitors to take a less enthusiastic view of Ethiopian agriculture, which had failed to change with the times. [James] Bruce, who was himself a country squire, therefore paints a more critical picture of Ethiopian agriculture than any of his predecessors.

He suggests that Ethiopian crop yields were by now considerably inferior to those of Europe — indeed he contrasts them unfavourably even with those of Egypt, declaring that sometimes the Ethiopian farmer hardly reaped the seed he sowed. In Tigre, he states, it is a good harvest that produces nine after one, it scarcely ever is known to produce ten.’ He writes of an average harvest elsewhere of ‘twenty after one”

Any cross-country analysis of agricultural productivity is of course limited by multiple variables, including the differences in cultivated crops, their suitability to local soil and climate conditions, the potential alternatives for land and labor use, as well as the size, composition, and the changing needs of the population.

Yet despite these limitations, there’s little historical data to support the often repeated assertions that productivity from plow agriculture in Ethiopia (and arguably North Africa) was higher than that of hoe-based farming elsewhere on the continent before the 19th century, beyond the mere presence of the plow.

‘The Abyssinian Expedition: a native ploughing in the province of Tigre’. From “Illustrated London News”, 1868.

Oil painting depicting agricultural scenes in Ethiopia, early 20th century. British Museum

On the Failure of European plow agriculture in colonial Senegal.

A recent study by Rönnbäck and Theodoridis on productivity of European-owned plantations in early 19th-century Senegal suggests relatively low levels of agricultural yields and labour productivity compared to the American South.

However, this data is evidence for the failure of European agricultural experimentation in Senegal, rather than for low productivity of the latter, as the authors claim. As the authors acknowledge, the possibility that European settler farmers were unable to achieve high productivity may have been due to ignorance of local growing conditions and their refusal to learn from local farmers.14

The failure of European agricultural experimentation in Senegal is particularly relevant to questions concerning the efficiency of the plow in increasing productivity, since the advantages of plow cultivation were explicitly tested by French agronomists in late 19th-century colonial Senegal.

During this period, European demand for peanut oil skyrocketed for soap production and machine lubrication. French merchants heavily commercialized the crop in Senegal, but local farmers remained its chief suppliers.

French colonial administrators and agronomists, who generally despised African agricultural methods, ran a series of experiments to prove the superiority of plows over hoes. However, their results were inconclusive, and the real-world applications instead confirmed the continued effectiveness of indigenous farming practices using traditional tools.

Experiments carried out from 1897-1899 by the agronomists Enfantin, Brennemann, and Perruchot, at the agricultural stations of Cayor, M’Bambey and Kaolack, using different sets of plows (American-made Oliver plow, French Fondeur, Algerian light-plow) that were compared with farms worked by local hoes, provided widely different results that “couldn’t irrefutably demonstrate that plow tilling can under all circumstances be a certain cause of increased peanut yields.”

Enfantin’s yields of 3,000-7,000 kgs per ha were dismissed as exceptional. Perruchot yields were much lower, at 2,100- 2,500 kg per ha on land prepared by plow vs 1,700-1866 kg per ha on land prepared by hoe. Brennemann yields were even lower at 1,300-2,020 kgs per ha on land prepared by plow versus 1,110-1,860 kg per ha on land prepared by hoe.

The researchers noted that these experiments did not specify the conditions under which these trials were carried out and the manner in which they were conducted. They note that Enfantin’s high yields could not be replicated, preferring Brennemann and Perruchot’s results instead. They recommended that any future improvements must take into account local soil conditions, which wouldn’t be suitable for deep plowing, which destroys the soil.15

M’Bambey experimental station. Senegal. ca. 1930-1939. Quai Branly.

Bambey peanut station. Animal traction. ca. 1958, Senegal ANOM.

Moreover, experiments in other parts of Africa suggest that yields could be twice as high using traditional hoe-farming than when plows were applied!.

Results obtained by agronomists working at the Belgian colonial stations at Congo da Lemba and Zambi in the Republic of Congo during the early 20th century indicate that production of peanuts was higher where the land was prepared by a hoe (Congo da Lemba station: 2,700 kg per hectare), than in land that was turned over with a plow (Zambi station: 1,400 kg per hectare).16

The experimenters note that this result tends to confirm the opinion expressed in the abovementioned studies in Senegal, which observed that:

‘We wanted to introduce the use of the plow to Senegal. The result did not meet expectations; the plowing being more perfect and deeper, the plants grew more vigorously, but fruit formation was lower and ripening occurred slowly and irregularly. It seems that for the terrain and climatic conditions of Senegal, entirely superficial work is preferable, unless a significant amount of manure can be applied.’17

Data from North African settler farms points to much lower yields than Senegal, although this is blamed on the different soil and climatic conditions.

An agricultural manual for European settler farmers in Algeria from 1891 noted that yields from peanuts in Algeria were less than half those obtained in Senegal: “The yield of one hectare is 600 to 700 kilos. It is important to point out that in Senegal this yield is twice as high, and this enormous difference can only be attributed to the lack of water in Algerian cultivation.”18

Ultimately, as noted earlier by Hopkins, it was the African farmer using his hoe, rather than the European settler with the plow, that supplied the bulk of the peanut exports during the colonial era.

Some colonial administrators likewise acknowledged that agricultural productivity in Senegal could not be assessed solely based on plow use, but rather had to be evaluated in terms of actual output.

In 1900, for example, Henri Courtet noted that it was the native Senegalese farmer who supplied 2/3rds of the estimated 180,918,728 francs worth of peanuts exported from 1888 to 1899. He explains that the local farmers knew how to space crops depending on soil fertility, to rotate the different crops, and to burn husks for fertilizer.

He cites the agronomist Brennemann, who observes that “As for the plow, it is highly probable that the native farmer will not use it. A plough does not work without oxen, and it has not been demonstrated that the surplus yield that would be obtained would cover the maintenance costs of the equipment and the oxen. A priori, in native cultivation, the improvement in yields is therefore not at all in the use of the plough, but rather in the choice of seeds, in their selection, and in their specialized adaptation to the cultivation of different soils.”19

More recent studies have shown that a combination of state intervention in farming practices, as well as the provision of improved seed varieties, ultimately explain Senegal’s “Green Revolution” during the first half of the 20th century, when the country became the world’s 2nd largest exporter of peanuts.20

While Goody (1971) continued to insist on the superiority of the plow and its hypothetical improvement of agricultural productivity in Africa long after its failure had been demonstrated in the colonial era21, his contemporaries such as the anthropologist Henri Raulin (1968) were highly critical of this technological determinism:

“Generally speaking, the Western expert, trained in European techniques, sees real and rapid progress only through the widespread adoption of agricultural machinery. However, in Africa, staple food crops (millet, sorghum, maize) and even cash crops (peanuts, cotton) have always been, and still are, grown without prior plowing, except for flooded rice paddies.”22

He observes that the plow still hadn’t been widely adopted in post-colonial Senegal, despite increased agricultural production, and lists several “resounding failures” of colonial-era “industrial farming experiments using mechanical means” such as the peanut experiment in Tanganyika by the Overseas Food Corporation, the Casamance experiment by the Compagnie Générale des Oléagineux Tropicales, and the Office du Niger experiment in Mali.

Importantly, he provides a useful comparison of African farmers in early 20th-century Senegal with their European peers in the Upper Giffre Valley of France during the 19th century, where the transition from extensive to intensive agriculture was achieved, ironically, by abandoning the plow for the hoe and spade.23

The repeated failure of the plow to compete with the hoe, even when used by European agronomists in colonial contexts, suggests that the development of agriculture in African history cannot be reduced to mere farm equipment.

Peanut cultivation at the M’Bambey experimental station. ca. 1930-1939. Senegal. Quai Branly.

Peanuts at the Station. Rufisque, Senegal. ca. 1906

Guns and Furnaces: Comparing African ironworking with Colonial Metallurgy

Regarding the skill of African ironworkers, Goody’s argument mostly rests on the observation that Africans did not manufacture firearms on the scale of their non-European peers, such as the Japanese and Indians, who were making matchlocks and cannons by the 16th to 17th centuries.

He suggests that this put them at a disadvantage against invading colonial armies both in the late 15th and late 19th centuries. Yet he qualifies this claim in his footnotes, pointing out the Africans could purchase firearms from Europeans, were skilled enough to repair guns and make gunpowder, and that Samori Ture’s blacksmiths managed to manufacture firearms in the late 19th century.24

Readers familiar with popular literature on Africa’s colonisation, such as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, will recognise some of the more familiar tropes and misconceptions on African military history. The most glaring of these is the conflation of the early colonial invasions of Africa from the 15th to 17th centuries with the actual scramble in the late 19th century.

In my critique of Diamond’s analysis of African history, I outlined the long history of Portuguese military campaigns against various African kingdoms, which were in many cases defeated by African armies, most notably at the battles of Mbanda Kasi (1622) and Kitombo (1670) against the armies of Kongo (Angola), and in 1644-8 against Queen Nzinga, which halted further expansion into the interior of Angola until the late 19th century.

Other battles, such as the battle of Maungwe (1684) against the Rozvi’s Changamire in present-day Zimbabwe, and the fall of Fort Jesus (1698) in Mombasa, Kenya, resulted in the complete loss of previously conquered territory (the kingdom of Mutapa and the East African coast).

Along the West African coast, the defeat of Portuguese invasions in 1446-7 and 1456 by the navies of African coastal polities armed with only poisoned arrows meant that the establishment of large colonial settlements was out of the question, and forced the Portuguese to resort to diplomacy. An Englishman who decided to test this détente in 1568 in Sierra Leone paid a steep price, losing many of his men to poisoned arrows.25

Evidently, whatever advantages Portuguese firearms had in these African battles were outweighed by the effectiveness of available weapons, whether arrows in Zimbabwe and Senegal, or imported firearms and local swords in Angola.

More importantly, the history of European colonialism in India suggests that indigenous manufacture of firearms could not, by itself, guarantee local autonomy.

Historians such as Kaushik Roy and Moumita Chowdhury argue that military organisation played a bigger role than military technology in explaining the success of the East India Company over Indian armies during the 18th century, even as the latter made improvements in gun technology, especially in the manufacture of artillery.26

It should be noted that the West African kingdoms of Benin (Nigeria)27 in the 16th century and Zinder (Niger) in the 19th century did manufacture artillery (ie; cannons, cannon balls, and gun carriages).28 However, the performance of these new technologies against rival African armies and invading colonial armies in the late 19th century was far from satisfactory, compared to pre-existing weapons.

Firearms from Benin City, ca. 16-19th century. Benin City National Museum, British Museum.

Returning to the example of pre-colonial Zimbabwe, the Portuguese myth of the invincibility of their firearms was destroyed at the pitched battle of Maungwe in 1684 by the Rozvi archers of Changamire. His subsequent attacks on the Portuguese settlements in 1693 and 1695 even netted some Portuguese captives, putting an end to Portuguese ambitions in the interior for nearly two centuries.29

It’s important to note that arrows were not the only weapon (nor even the primary weapon) used in pre-19th century African warfare. Other weapons were available, including lances, javelins, clubs, battle-axes, and swords; the last of which can be further subdivided into a whole range of slashing weapons, from broadswords to throwing knives to daggers, all of which were manufactured by African blacksmiths.30

Besides these were, of course, the guns purchased from the Europeans themselves, which became more decisive in battle from around the late 18th century onwards.

Weapons and knives of Central Africa (D.R.Congo), Jean Dybowski Collection. ca. 1893

Firearms used in Matebeleland (Zimbabwe), illustration from Frank W Sykes, 1897.

‘Increase of weapon lethality and dispersion over history.’ Graph by Trevor N. Dupuy (1979).31 Note that the theoretical killing capacity of firearms rises significantly during the 19th century.

Just like the plow, firearms didn’t confer significant advantages to African armies before the 19th century. And like the plow, the greater cost of manufacturing firearms locally (as opposed to simply purchasing them) couldn’t guarantee a more than proportional increase in their efficiency as missile weapons.

Robert Edgerton’s research on the Anglo-Asante wars traces the emergence of the technological gap between the Asante (in Ghana) and invading British armies to the mid-19th century, when the former’s flintlock guns proved less effective against the more modern rifles of the latter. But he stresses that this gap didn’t exist when the two armies first clashed in 1824, and was heightened by restrictions on Asante’s ability to buy modern rifles from the Dutch.32

Similar constraints forced Samory to manufacture his guns locally. An estimated 300-400 smiths made 200-300 rounds of ammunition a day and 12 rifles a week using local ores. One of Samori’s blacksmiths is known to have visited the French arsenal at St. Louis, Senegal, but nothing is mentioned about the introduction of more “advanced” methods of smelting like the blast furnace, which Goody thinks is necessary for the manufacture of firearms.33

It is important to note that as late as the 1970s, Mande blacksmiths in Mali continued to manufacture firearms (hunting rifles and pistols) entirely from scratch using relatively “simple” techniques, such as hammer forging and lost-wax casting. This lengthy process of local gun manufacture, which is thought to predate the 19th century, is described in this footnote.34

‘Plate 28. Gun made by Cekoro Traore, who specialized in their making and repairing, mostly for hunters, 1973’ Image and Caption by P. R. McNaughton

‘Plate 30. Detail of the gun depicted in III. 29. Note that the barrel is held in place inside the stock with wide hide straps’ Image and Caption by P. R. McNaughton

Traditional furnaces could still be found in rural Mali at the time, which would have resembled those found among the Fulbe of Futa Jallon (in Guinea) by the French officer Arsène Lambert in 1860, who, despite the typical prejudices of the time, praised these “miniature blast furnaces.” Incidentally, he also mentioned the high agricultural output of local farmers, despite the absence of the plow:

“It was also in this canton [of Kakriman] that I first saw the small clay factories used for smelting iron ore. They are veritable blast furnaces in miniature: chimney, drawpipe, crucible, pit for receiving the molten iron—nothing is missing. Alternating layers of coal and ore are piled up, as in our own, but neither quartz nor limestone is used to facilitate smelting, either because the Fulani are unaware of the melting properties of these materials, or because their rich ore does not require them.

They possess no other tilling tool than a small, rather convenient hoe and use no fertilizer other than the ashes of dried sod and stubble after the harvest, which they carefully burn before sowing. These primitive methods suffice for them, without crop rotation or fallow periods, to obtain abundant harvests from a soil that seems inexhaustible.”35

Iron ore smelting in Fouta-Djalon. — Drawing by Hadamard after M. Lambert

Blacksmith at work in Fouta-Djalon. — Drawing by Hadamard after M. Lambert

Furnaces in Mali: ‘Variations of dome-type smelting furnaces recorded by several authors’ Image and Caption by P. R. McNaughton

These repeated references to Africa’s “simple” technologies, which were surprisingly productive, whether in farming or in metallurgy, suggest that European explorers, like modern Western scholars, evaluated technological systems in terms of perceived complexity rather than actual efficiency.

It also explains why, when the Portuguese colonial government in Angola decided to construct a European-style foundry in Novas Oerias in 1765, complete with a blast furnace powered by water wheels and worked by European labourers, the project quickly became a “white elephant.” They ended up using the scheme as a way of concentrating skilled African blacksmiths and utilising their traditional technologies.36

View of the iron factory in Oerias, 1855

Interior of the machine room, hydraulic forge and storeroom. Image by Crislayne Alfagali

Iron smelting in Nova Oeiras, 1797. “A = The smelting furnace, to make iron bars, the ironstone is placed below the coal to be smelted. B = The furnace wall, built with pieces of tiles. C = The smoke that comes out from the holes in the wall. D = The clay pipe through which the bellows blow air. F = The bellows’ leather. G = Sticks with which they operate the bellows.” Image and captions by Crislayne Alfagali. Note the similarities with the above image of a blacksmith in Fouta-Djalon.

As Crislayne Alfagali’s excellent monograph on the Nova Oeiras factory explains, the actual iron production was undertaken at a separate (and segregated!) site next to the European-style foundry, where a “smaller factory was built for the Negroes to work in” according to a contemporary Portuguese report.

“The smaller factory was the only success of this grandiose undertaking, because the only successful iron smelting techniques —the Ambundu techniques— were employed here, a fact overlooked by the historiography that examined the “big factory” and its failures.

In the small foundry, furnaces dug in the earth, bellows covered with goat hair, and stones were the tools employed by the Ambundu blacksmiths and smelters, who exported approximately 60 tons of iron and steel from 1765 to 1800.”37

If the large quantities of (lesser quality) iron bars produced in European blast furnaces are what gave them the advantage over African smelters along the West African coast, as Austen and Headrick suggest, then the reverse happened in Angola, where Iron production by local blacksmiths at Nova Oeiras continued into the 19th century.

Ironically, it was these high-quality iron bars of African manufacture that were exported to the Portuguese Royal Treasury.

Like the French agriculturalists in colonial Senegal, the Portuguese metallurgists in colonial Angola discovered that their “complex” forms of technology couldn’t reliably compete with the “simple” technologies of African ironworking.

As for the colonial scramble during the late 19th century, It’s instructive that Ethiopia’s King Menelik II managed to defeat the invading colonial armies not by manufacturing firearms, but by accumulating massive stockpiles of modern rifles through skilful diplomacy.

By contrast, the Ethiopian emperor who famously manufactured firearms locally, i.e., Tewodros II, is also the only Ethiopian ruler of the 19th century to be defeated by a foreign power when the British sacked Magdala in 1868, ostensibly to free the European technicians whom Tewodros was using to make his firearms.

There’s substantial historical evidence that African envoys and travelers, who had been visiting Western Europe since the 1600s and were familiar with all the relevant innovations of European industry, immediately became aware of the technological gap once it became decisive during the 19th century.

They recognized the need to modernize their economies and military, either by employing European technicians or by attempting to implement these innovations independently. This process of technological transfer was ultimately cut short by the colonial invaders, whose attempts to impose new technologies also produced uneven results.

Replica of Emperor Tewodros’ cannon: “Sevastopol”. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Conclusion: the triumph of pre-colonial technologies

The above outline of Africa’s agricultural and metallurgical history demonstrates that mechanization cannot be used as a proxy for productivity.

The presence or absence of the plow, in particular, cannot in itself serve as a measure of Africa’s agricultural and labour productivity. Its limited adoption cannot be explained by the prevalence of “extractive institutions”, as Acemoglu and Robinson suggest, but is better understood in terms of its relative inefficiency in relation to cost and output.

The efficiency of the continent’s relatively “simple” technologies meant that local crafts industries remained fairly competitive, even during the colonial period, when “intermediate” technologies, such as plows and blast furnaces, proved to be poor substitutes.

While Africa’s traditional technologies were ultimately displaced by modern industrial technologies in local manufacturing, as occurred in the rest of the developing world, this later obsolescence should not be retroactively projected onto earlier historical periods

As Thornton explains, on the persistence of African hand looms:

“Historians of technology often admire early machines because they prefigure later ones, or because they represent the discovery of principles that will later be of great value. But this does not mean that an early version of a machine does a particularly good job.

Of course, with hindsight, it is easy to see that a decision to continue efficient hand production and eschew machines was mistaken, but that issue was scarcely clear to decision makers of the time.”38

Such anachronistic approaches tend to obscure the ingenuity and efficiency of historical technologies, and misguide contemporary efforts to address perceived technological gaps.

Like their colonial predecessors, modern “technological solutionists” who simply transplant technologies that have succeeded elsewhere while disregarding local conditions risk misdiagnosing economic challenges by putting the plow before the ox.

My latest Patreon article is about the History of Oromo Literature and the Oromo script in 19th-20th century Ethiopia.

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OROMO LITERATURE AND WRITING SYSTEMS

Near the end of the classical period in the 4th century CE, the four major ancient African writing traditions of; Demotic (in Egypt), Meroitic (Sudan), Libyco-Berber (Maghreb), and Ge’ez (Ethiopia and Eritrea), were all being used to write the African languages for which they had originally been invented.

Yet by the 14th century, most of the continent had adopted the Arabic writing system and language, which was the lingua franca of the Islamic golden age.

From Morocco to Mozambique and from Senegal to Sudan, African scholars produced a vast corpus of Arabic manuscripts that today constitutes one of the most important sources for reconstructing the continent’s history.

However, the acquisition of literacy in classical Arabic (fusḥā), in which most of these manuscripts were composed, was confined to the professional ʿulamāʾ (scholars), whose knowledge and writings were only accessible and comprehensible among their own class.

While their writings circulated widely across networks of competing centres of learning, membership in this class, which was considered the sole custodian and interpreter of the Muslim intellectual tradition, depended on the literate command of Arabic.1

In this largely Arabic scribal world, only a handful of African written languages remained.

These included Coptic among the Christian minority of Egypt (which retained its traditional script alongside bilingual Arabic translations), Old Nubian, whose literary tradition disappeared with the collapse of the medieval Nubian kingdoms; and the more restricted graphic traditions of Tifinagh/Tifinaɣ and Nsibidi, which survived primarily in the form of brief inscriptions.

Although writing in Ge’ez continued to flourish in the Christian kingdom(s) of Ethiopia, the language itself had no living speakers since the fall of Aksum. It was reduced to a liturgical language just like Latin in medieval Europe. For many centuries, literature in the successor languages of Ge’ez, ie; Ahmaric and Tigrinya, remained marginal as the bulk of manuscripts were written almost exclusively in Ge’ez.2

Copy of a Psalter written in multiple scripts and languages, 12th-14th century, monastery of Saint Macarius, Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt.3 Beginning with Ethiopic/Ge’ez on the extreme left column, followed by Syriac, Coptic in the center, Arabic on the right, and ending with Armenian.

Arabic inscriptions (including one dated 1041 CE), and Tifinaɣ /Tifinagh inscriptions, side by side in the south-east Essouk cliffs, Mali.4

Quranic manuscript with glosses in Old Kanembu, ca. 1669 CE. Nigeria. ‘Imam Ibrahim Quran’ (manuscript 3ImI). Images by Dmitry Bondarev.5

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PATREON

Initially, written texts in African languages across the Muslim societies of the continent were confined to the margins of the Arabic manuscripts written by African scholars, and in brief inscriptions that contained non-Arabic names, titles, and phrases.6

However, by the 16th/17th century, African scholars began producing written compositions exclusively in their languages.

Most of the earliest known ajami manuscripts from the post-medieval period have been uncovered over the last 30 years, in the city of Harar (Harari language), in the Sous valley of Morocco (Tashelhiyt-Berber), in West Africa (Fulfulde and Hausa), in Madagascar (Atemoro-Malagasy), and along the East African coast (Swahili).

For the Tashelhiyt-Berber language, the earliest ajami manuscript is the Lεqayd n ddin of Ibrahim Aẓnag (d. 1597), described as ‘the oldest known manuscript text in Berber.’7 For Harari, the oldest ajami manuscript is the Kitāb alfarāyiḍ of Abdarrahman al-Araši and Tayyib al-Wanagi, which is variously dated to between 1595 and 1669.8

Copy of the Kitāb al-farāʼiḍ, ca. 18th century, Harar. Ethiopia. Sherif Harar City Museum. Images from HMML Reading Room.

For Atemoro-Malagasy, the earliest securely dated ajami manuscripts are a collection of Sorabe manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, dated to 1590-1620, along with a local chronicle of the French invasion of Madagascar from 1659 to 1663. [See my essay on ‘The Sorabé script of Madagascar’ ]

Sorabe manuscript MP 23. Antemoro, Madagascar. 17th century, BNF, Paris.

For Fulfulde, evidence comes from the theologian Muhammad al-Wali (fl. 1688), whose al-Manhaj al-farid is an Arabic translation of a popular Fulfulde commentary on the Sughra of al-Sanusi.9 [see: ‘The philosophical theology of Muḥammad al-Wālī (fl. 1688)’]

For the Hausa language, there are references to ajami texts by the scholars, ɗan Masani (d. 1667) and Abdullahi Suka (fl. mid-17th century), who are thought to have composed the texts; Wakar Yakin Badar and Riwayar Annabi Musa. But the earliest extant manuscripts date to the late 18th/early 19th century.10

(left) Manuscript in the Zarma-Songhay language, written by Halim Marafa. (right) Hausa manuscript titled ‘Ajrumiya’. 18th-20th century. Institut de Recherches en Sciences Humaines, Niger.

For Swahili, the earliest known complete ajami manuscript is the Utendi wa Tambuka, dated 1728, but it represents a long-standing tradition, beginning with the “Siri al-asari” (The secret of the secrets) composed in 1663 by Mwana Mwarabu bint Shekhe.11 [See: ‘Poetry, Philosophy and History in Swahili literature’]

Copy of ‘Utendi wa Herekali’ by Muhamadi Kijuma. SOAS, London.

In Ethiopia, the earliest complete Amharic texts in the Ge’ez script also appear by the 17th century, mostly consisting of praise-poems and theological compositions that are based on an older literary tradition from the 14th/15th century. Significant writing in Amharic began in the 19th century, when it replaced Ge’ez as the main scribal language, including in theological writing.12

Amharic document MS MKL-008, ca. 1650-60, Läq̌ay Kidanä Mǝḥrät, Ethiopia. Image by M. Bulakh and D. Nosnitsin

Amharic manuscript on medicine with a list of diseases and treatments, 19th century, library of Ras Wassan Sagad of Shoa (r. 1808-1813), British Library.

These collections of Manuscripts written in African Languages challenge the persistent misconception that African languages were exclusively oral.

By the 19th century, Ajami written traditions had proliferated across the continent. Their expansion was closely associated with the broadening of the intellectual sphere beyond established scholarly elites, a process linked to the rise of political and religious movements that sought wider audiences, such as the Qadiriyya, Tijaniyya, and Sanussiyya brotherhoods.

At least 79 languages across the continent are known to have utilised the ajami script by the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Languages that use the Arabic and Ajami scripts. Map by Meikal Mumin

In 19th-century Hausaland, for example, scholars undertook extensive projects to translate existing Arabic works into Hausa and Fulfulde while also producing original compositions in those languages. Among the most notable of these authors was the Hausa scholar and ethnographer al-Hajj Umaru, whose writings provide a rare indigenous perspective on the society and culture of his time13

The bulk of these were written so that non-elite audiences could understand Islamic theological and legal concepts, but they also include ‘secular’ works on medicine, history, and genealogy.14

Fiqh manual in Fulfulde by Abd Allāh ibn Muḥammad. 18th-20th century. Mamma Haidara Library. Images from HMML Reading Room.

African languages, which were already used in administration, religion, commerce, and law, now developed a rich written tradition.

From early writings in the Afrikaans language (which was initially used by enslaved Muslims of South Africa before it was adopted by the Boers)15, to the Kabyle-Berber ajami manuscripts in Algeria16, and numerous societies in between, such as the Bamanakan, Mandinka, Yoruba, and Wolof.

Not coincidentally, several previously non-literate societies also invented their own writing systems during this period, which were exclusively used to transcribe their own languages.

The oldest of these are the Vai script of Liberia (ca. 1833) and Njoya’s script (ca. 1897) of the Bamum kingdom in Cameroon, which were followed by numerous scripts that appeared in the first half of the 20th century.17

Among these communities, language and script became closely intertwined as markers of cultural identity. Quite explicitly, the King of the Vai in Liberia recognised that his script “would soon raise his people” to the level of the literate Americo-Liberians and Mandinka scribes.

Chronicle of the Bamum kingdom, ca. 1900 CE, Archives du Palais des Rois Bamum, Fumban, Cameroon. EAP.

This dramatic expansion of African ‘vernacular’ literature continued into the colonial period, when many African languages were written in the Latin script, creating what the scholar Ali Mazrui describes as Africa’s ‘triple heritage’: the Indigenous, the Islamic, and the Western tradition.

The development of African vernacular literature, therefore, significantly predates the widespread adoption of Latin orthography, which represented the final stage of Africa’s literary efflorescence.

This dynamic history of writing in African languages is best illustrated by the emergence of Oromo literature in present-day Ethiopia during the 19th century.

Ethiopia has a long tradition of multiple writing traditions, which were, however, the exclusive domain of learned clerics associated with the Christian and Muslim courts of the dominant kingdoms.

The Oromo, who were ascendant during the 18th and early 19th centuries, soon adopted the Arabic, Ge’ez, and Latin scripts to compose some of the earliest works published in Africa by African authors.

The development of Oromo literature was, however, profoundly shaped by the changing political landscape of the region, particularly by the Oromo’s relationship with the reconstituted Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.

Between 1855 and 1974, the literary production of Oromo intellectuals evolved in response to these political tensions. As the Oromo language faced increasing marginalisation within state institutions, dissident scholars invented their own writing system, known as the Bakri-Sapalo script.

The complex history of Oromo literacy illustrates the significance of vernacular writing in African history as a powerful symbol of cultural identity.

The History of Oromo Literature and the Oromo script in 19th-20th century Ethiopia is the subject of my latest Patreon article.

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OROMO LITERATURE AND WRITING SYSTEMS

These resilient pack animals played a decisive role in revolutionizing trade and travel across the desert. Beyond their use as pack animals, camels also served as draught animals that powered a wide range of technologies, including water-wheels, irrigation systems, and oil mills.

The advent of camels in the Sahara marked a watershed in the demographic and political history of the desert.

What had once been perceived as a forbidding, empty expanse was gradually transformed into a habitable and more controllable environment capable of sustaining extensive networks of trade, communication, and human settlement.

The ‘camel revolution’ can be paralleled in its social and economic consequences with the introduction of motor vehicles during the first half of the 20th century, which similarly reshaped mobility and patterns of interaction across vast distances.

This article examines the history of the camel in Africa and explores its diverse uses among the nomadic and semi-nomadic societies of the continent.

Migration map of the historical camelid family and the current distribution of Dromedaries (red) and Bactrian camels (green).1

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The Dromedary in Africa: From the classical era to the late Roman period.

The interaction between Humans and Camels stretched back millennia before domestication.

Wild varieties of the Camel were present across northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula since the Paleolithic period. Camels appear in ancient rock art across the Near East, North Africa, and the Sahara during the prehistoric era, but these representations likely depicted wild species that were hunted.2

The domestication of dromedaries likely occurred in the late 2nd millennium BC.3 Depictions of saddled camels from various regions in Mesopotamia and Arabia dating to the early 1st millennium BC indicate that the single-humped dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) was domesticated shortly before this period. It was later introduced to Egypt by the mid-1st millennium BC during the Assyrian conquest.4

The earliest identified camel skeletal material in the Maghreb has been excavated from Carthage in Tunisia and is dated to the 5th to 3rd centuries BC. Camel remains have also been identified at the Garamantian capital of Jarma, Libya, in the 2nd century CE.5

The earliest renderings of camels in Egypt, and those found on Assyrian wall reliefs of military camps depicting their invasions of Egypt, do not distinguish between riding mounts and pack animals. By the 3rd century BC, under Ptolemaic rule, camels had come into general use for transport on the desert route between Coptos and the Red Sea that would remain in use during the Roman period.6

Terracotta figurine of a camel carrying transport amphorae. Roman, Egyptian. late 2nd–early 3rd century CE. Met Museum.

Painted vessel fragment depicting a woman atop a camel. Egyptian-Byzantine (Coptic) Period, 7th century A.D. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Romans encountered dromedaries in North Africa as early as 46 BC when Caesar defeated King Juba of Numidia and captured twenty-two camels as booty. Classical sources indicate that both Dromedary and Bactrian camels were used in civilian transport and later in military contexts, with distinctions between the camelus, which was a slow animal used for freight services, and the dromas, which was relatively fast.7

The use of Camels spread across much of the Roman world, not just in the semi-arid regions of the south and East, but also across Western Europe, where camel remains have been found in a variety of archaeological sites from the 3rd to 5th century.8

Distribution of finds of camel remains in Europe. Map by C. R. Green

In Roman Africa, sculptured scenes of agricultural life in the Tripolitanian hinterland that include depictions of Camels as plough animals point to the animals’ expanded use by the 3rd century CE. Short-distance routes between settlements previously dictated by horse and chariot could be extended into long-distance routes into the desert undertaken on camelback.9

A variety of autochthonous African groups within and along the frontier of Roman North Africa extensively bred camels, initially using them in trade and later for raids into the weakening empire. Key among these were the tribal confederations of the Numidians, the Austuriani, and the Garamantes.10

A text referring to the Austuriani raid of the city of Lepcis (Libya) in 364 indicates the latter’s inhabitants possessed a significant number of camels, with the Romans intending to requisition as many as 4,000 camels from the urbanites to defend the city.11

A camel from the ‘Mosaic of Silenus’ of Thysdrus. El Djem, Tunisia, 3rd c. CE, Wikimedia Commons

Henscir el-Ausaf, Tigi, Western Gefara: Ploughing Scene. ca. 3rd century CE.12

Farmer and Camel Plowing Field, Algeria, Africa, by Marshall M. Kirman, 1895.

According to the historian Richard W. Bulliet, during the late Roman period, the Camel and the mounted horseman largely replaced wheeled carriages across the Roman world, in both long-distance trade and warfare across much of North Africa, Western Asia, and Europe.13

Estimates on transport costs according to the Edict of the Maximum Diocletian (c. 301 CE) suggest that transport by Camels and donkeys was about 20% less expensive than overland transport by wheeled carts, although both means were more expensive than maritime transport. These estimates demonstrate the relative efficiency and low cost of pack animals over purchasing and maintaining wheeled carts.14

According to Stéphanie Guédon and Roger Bagnall, in the late Roman period, camel transport for long distances complemented preexisting forms of short-distance transport such as donkeys, horses, and wheeled carts on roads, the last of which remained in use at least until the Arab conquest in the 8th century.15

However, in the more southerly regions, the fact that rock-art depicting horse-drawn chariots from the Central and Western Sahara is almost never associated with images of Camels and Camel-riders is strongly suggestive of Bulliet’s hypothesis.16

Map showing the distribution of chariot and horse rock art from the Sahara.17

Rock Painting of Camel and Hunter, In Itinen, Tassili N’ajjer, S.E Algeria.

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The Camel in Nubia, the Horn and West Africa.

Beyond North Africa and the Sahara, Camels appear in Upper Nubia (Sudan) during the Meroitic period after the 3rd century BC, where they have been found in a number of archeological sites, and extensively depicted in Nubian Art.18

They were also adopted by the nomadic groups of the eastern desert region by the start of the Roman period, and appear in some of the early medieval Nubian records from the 5th century, associated with the Noubadian king Silko.19

Painted vessel decorated with an image of a camel. Meroitic period (270BC-360CE), Sudan. Smithsonian museum

Colour lithograph depicting Nubians on camelback as they travel through Egypt, circa 1850. Getty Images.

In the northern Horn of Africa, camels appear in the ancient rock art, alongside the relatively more numerous depictions of other domesticates such as long-horned, humpless cattle, human figures, sheep, goats, and dogs.20

The dromedary appears in Aksumite inscriptions from the 6th century CE, relating to the low-lying regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is also found in faunal assemblages from the site of Ceel Gerdi in Somaliland, dated to the 1st millennium CE.21

In the central Sahara, the dromedary appears at the end of the 1st millennium BC, during the era aptly named the “Camel Period”.

The earliest depictions show dromedaries mounted or used as pack animals. In later engravings which date from the early 1st millennium CE, era camels carry armed men, with some battle scenes mixing horse-riders and camel-riders together in both parties.22 In some regions, the images of camels are associated with the spread of the Libyco-Berber inscriptions (see rock painting above)

Engraved rock art depicting two riders on camels. Kozen Pass, Tibesti, Chad. British Museum.

The Camel appears in West African archeological sites between 250-400 CE at the site of Siouré along the Middle Senegal Valley, and at Tegdaoust (Mauritania) from the 8th to 13th century during the Islamic period.23

Dromedaries cannot thrive south of the Sahel zone because of their vulnerability to diseases spread by the tse-tse fly, but certain regional varieties used in trade were marginally more successful. Sculptural depictions of Camels in the Lake Chad region from the site of Houlouf (c.AD 1400–1600), corroborate written accounts on the presence of Camels in Bornu and parts of the Hausaland.24

Al-Yaˁqubi, writing in (c. 890), mentions camel nomads, the Anbiya, living south of Sijilmāsa in Morocco. After this date, there are numerous references to Saharan and West African camels by Arab writers, mentioning both its use as a pack animal in medieval Ghana by al Muhallabi (d. 990) and Al-Bakri (c. 1068), for carrying goods, as well as for meat and milk among the Zaghawa of Kanem (Chad) and the polity of Malal (Mali), according to Al-Idrīsī (c. 1154).25

During his journey through medieval Mali in 1353, the globe-trotter Ibn Battuta found camels across the region that were used as pack animals by traders, sold in markets, and at times consumed. His account suggests that they were bred locally, noting that they were cheaper than horses; with one horse costing 100 mithqals, compared to a camel at just 37.5 mithqals.26

Camel caravan approaching Timbuktu, Mali. ca. 1853. Image by Johann Martin Bernatz, based on explorer H. Barth’s sketches.

Más-eñá, (kingdom of Bagirmi, Chad) Return of the Sultan from the Expedition, 4th July 1852. By H. Barth.

Along the east African coast, camel bones were found at the medieval Swahili city of Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago of Kenya, around 1050 CE, even though the archipelago now lies beyond their range. The historian Mark Horton suggests that these camels were introduced by inland groups such as the Segeju, who were in contact with coastal and inland societies in northern Kenya and southern Somalia.27

By the 14th century, camels were extensively herded across Somalia's coastal and inland regions.

When Ibn Battuta visited the city of Zeila along the northern coast in 1331, he noted that “Their cattle are camels,” and many of these were slaughtered in the market, giving the city a disagreeable smell. Sailing down to Mogadishu, he mentions that “Its inhabitants are merchants possessed of vast resources; they own large numbers of camels, of which they slaughter hundreds every day [for food].”28

While Ibn Battuta doesn’t mention the presence of Camels along the southern (Swahili) coast, an eyewitness of the 1505 Portuguese attack on Mombasa mentions that the invaders captured “countless camels and a large number of cattle.” Unfortunately, this isolated account doesn’t indicate whether these were used in economic or military contexts.29

Camel at oil-mill work. Mombasa, Kenya. ca. 1910

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The military Camel in African history.

The Camel was employed in military contexts since late antiquity. When the Vandals invaded Africa at the end of the 5th century CE, the nomadic Berber groups of the Atlas mountains were already in possession of numerous camel herds.

They became undisputed masters of the Magreb, using camels to transport supplies and families, for both defensive and offensive military operations, but not as a military mount. According to Procopius, who described their 5th-century battles with the Vandals, the Berbers arranged their camels in concentric rings, protectively surrounding women and children in the center.

In battle, these pack animals were used to form a defensive wall. At the time of the subsequent Byzantine invasion of North Africa, the camel was described as carrying the fortune of the nomad on its back, the household furniture, and the women with supplies perched on its summit.30

The Almoravids, who built a vast empire extending from Mauritania to Spain in the 11th century, came from a section of Sanhaja Berbers who were camel drivers. They invaded Morocco with an army of 30,000 warriors mounted on camels. On the outskirts of Sijilmasa, they captured a herd of 50,000 camels belonging to the Bani Maghrawa, which were later used for trade with West Africa.31

A nomadic people of Algeria, the Bassari (les Bassours), traveling through the Sahara Desert on camels, enroute to a new home. c. 1900. Getty Images.

View toward the ancient city walls of Rabat, past a camel caravan. Morocco. ca. 1950s

In his description of West Africa, Al-Bakri (c. 1068) reported, with some exaggeration, that “The ruler of Awdaghust could put 100,000 camelry in the field.” Al-Idrīsī (c. 1154) mentions that the army of the ruler of the city of Gao (in Mali) included a unit that rode on camels and horses.32

The Egyptian chronicler Al-Umari suggests that the army of medieval Mali consisted of mounted horsemen and infantry, mentioning that “they have camels but do not know how to ride them with saddles.”33

This appears to be corroborated by the West African chronicler al-Sa’di (c. 1655), who mentions that when Sunni Ali of Songhai invaded Timbuktu in 1468, the city’s governor assembled 1,000 camels for its scholars. The latter, however, struggled to climb onto the beasts because their fathers never allowed them outside as children to learn how to ride them. They later vowed to teach their children how to ride camels.34

The Songhai empire, which succeeded Mali, employed camels more extensively. According to Leo Africanus’ description from 1520:

“The royal court is very well organized and magnificent. When the king goes from one town to another with his courtiers, he rides a camel, and the horses are led by grooms. If it is necessary to fight, the grooms hobble the camels, and the soldiers all mount the horses.”35

The armies of Songhai included camel units of about 2,000 mounted men, which were, in one instance, sent as far as Morocco in 1540 to conduct a raid in response to threats from the Moroccan sultan to seize the salt mine of Taghaza. When Songhai fell to the Moroccans in 1591, the latter’s army included a unit of 1,000 camel drivers for carrying military equipment and provisions. Many camels were also used to transport the estimated 4 tonnes of gold dust seized from the royal treasury.36

The Bornu chronicler Ahmad Ibn Furtu (c. 1576) suggests that camels were rarely used in Bornu’s military systems before the reign of his patron, Mai Idris Alooma, who “ordered his amirs and captains and chiefs and all, who were able, to buy camels, to make easy travelling in his reign.” However, most of the fighting was done on horseback or on foot, with the camels serving to transport troops.37

In the East, around 748 CE, the Nubian king of Makuria Cyriacus (Kyriakos) invaded Egypt with an army of ‘a hundred thousand horses and a hundred thousand camels.’ While these numbers are exaggerated, camel troops in the army of Makuria are mentioned by the 13th century writer el-Andalusi.38

Camels approaching Dongola, Sudan. sketch by Mr. Bakewell, 1883

During the 16th century Adal conquest of Ethiopia, Camels were used to transport troops and military equipment (cannons), but couldn’t travel through the narrow highland passes. The furthest inland settlement visited by camel caravans in the late Middle Ages appears to have been the town of Gendebelu or Gendabelo, in eastern Shewa, where the cannon of Adal were kept.39

Camels continued to be used in warfare in the post-medieval period, and were central to the tribute systems of kingdoms such as Sinnar and Darfur (Sudan), where they were used alongside horses in both military and commercial contexts.40

Horses remained the prerogative of military leaders and royalty, but the success of their campaigns depended on the pack camel. In the sphere of trade, however, the camel’s importance was virtually unrivalled, both in the Sahara and across the semi-arid regions of the Horn of Africa.

Northern Nigerian Emirs pictured riding camels to a meeting, circa 1960. Getty Images.

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The Historical Role of the Camel in African Trade and Industry.

The introduction of the Camel is associated with the rise of trade across the Sahara, especially between North Africa and West Africa, during the late 1st millennium CE.

Although claims for the existence of significant pre-Islamic trade across the Sahara have frequently been advanced, archaeological evidence from West African sites dating to before the Common Era has thus far yielded little indication of imported goods or sustained external commercial exchange. While a few items have been recovered from a handful of sites dating to the mid-1st millennium CE, the bulk of imported trade goods only appear in sufficient quantities after the 8th century CE.41

The archaeologists Sonja and Carlos Magnavita have dismissed such claims of ancient Trans-Saharan trade as ‘factoids,’ i.e., “a speculation or guess that has been repeated so often it is eventually taken for hard fact.”42

[This debate is examined in greater detail in my previous essay on ‘The Garamantian kingdom of the Central Sahara (300BC-500CE)’ ]

Material and textual evidence for trade across the Sahara only appears in the Middle Ages, when Camel carravans formed the basis for exchanges between Saharan communities. It was onto this regional trade system within the Sahara that long-distance trade across the Sahara was grafted, but the former remained more important than the latter.

Summarizing research by several historians, Judith Scheele observes that43:

“No camel ever crossed the Sahara in a straight line, as the distance travelled by one set of pack animals was in most cases limited to around 500 km. Camels are well adapted to the Saharan climate, but they are fragile and need specialist care, and much rest after each continuous effort.

Figures for historic Trans-Saharan and Saharan trade are sporadic and unreliable, but there seems to be no doubt that trade in locally produced and consumed goods regularly exceeded that of Trans-Saharan goods.

Salt is a case in point. Paul Lovejoy estimates that the regional salt trade on the southern edge of the Central Sahara by far exceeded Trans-Saharan trade in value – being worth up to four times as much – and even more so in bulk: in the nineteenth century, while the number of camels involved in Trans-Saharan trade through Tripoli fluctuated between 2,000 and 3,000, salt caravans focused on the mines of Bilma alone drained 20,000 to 30,000 camels a year.

Studying the registers of the Bayruk, a leading commercial family in southern Morocco, Ann McDougall describes the close integration of local, regional and Trans-Saharan affairs, again largely but not exclusively centred on salt. A similar conclusion can be drawn from Ghislaine Lydon’s research on southern Morocco, and from Ulrich Haarmann’s collection and translation of commercial letters produced by traders in Ghadamis in what is now south-western Libya.

Trans-Saharan axes explored at different periods between the 9th and the 17th century. A.D. Map by Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias.

The itineraries followed by caravan networks changed over time in response to shifting ecological conditions and the rise or decline of major economic centres.

In the central Sahara, regional trade between the Tuaregs of Air, the Teda/Tubu of Tibesti, the Kanuri of the Kawar oases (at Bilma and Djado), and the Hausa of Damergu and Zinder was heavily dependent on camels. Estimates for the caravan sizes in the 19th century vary dramatically, from 1,500 camels to over 70,000. A caravan of 3,000 camels had about 30 guides (madugu), and could extend over 25 kilometers.

Besides the trade goods, the caravan also carried camel feeds (bales of grass), some of which were at times left in the desert for the return journey. The main product exchanged was salt from Kawar, of which one basin could produce 4-5 tonnes a year, equivalent to 40-50 camel loads, which were exchanged for grain from the south. Elaborate systems of investment and risk-sharing were fundamental to this economy, and part of the surpluses were reinvested in purchasing camels.44

Estimated size of Salt caravans in the central Sahara, by Knut S. Vikør

Transport of peanuts in Senegal. ca. 1906. Edmond Fortier.

From North-West Africa to the Horn of Africa, Camels were central to the organization of long-distance trade and the interactions between nomadic and sedentary societies. Across many regions, different nomadic communities specialised in herding camels and hiring them out to traders along known caravan routes.

In Sudan, the Bishariyyin, Ja’ali, and Ababda hired out their camels to the Jallaba (traders), who dominated the routes linking the kingdoms of Sennar, Darfur, Ethiopia, and Egypt. The cost of hiring out the camels and equipping the caravan made heavy demands upon the capital and profit of the jallaba. Camels were bought with imported silver dollars in the Shendi region, while the commodities were obtained on credit and through loans and various forms of partnership arrangements.45

In a number of these societies, Camels were also used to drive water-wheels, an ancient water-lifting device with a compartmented body or rim. These devices first appeared in rural Egypt during the 3rd century BC, from which they spread across the Mediterranean world during the Roman Period.46

Water-wheels (sāqiya) spread to Nubia during the Meroitic period and remain in use to the present day. Like in Egypt, the Nubian sāqiya are mostly powered by oxen.47 It’s only those found across the Maghreb, especially in Morocco, that are powered by Camels.48 In the central Sahara, the 11th-century account of al-Bakri refers to agricultural irrigation by Camels in the town of Zawila in Libya.49

The Dromedary was also harnessed for agricultural labour across parts of Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and most of North Africa, especially Morocco and Tunisia, since the early 1st millennium CE. Modern studies on draught camels in Ethiopia and Sudan suggest that they are more efficient than oxen, but their labour requirement is generally higher.50

Camels at the local market in Massawa, Eritrea. ca. 1930

Plowing, Tesseney, Eritrea, ca. 1930. Getty Images.

Plough with camel team in Algeria, wood engraving, late 19th century

Camel-powered water wheel in Morocco. ca. 1930.

Illustration depicting water lifting from a well in Metlili, Algeria. By Couverchel, ca., 1863

A Nubian sakia wheel powered by bullocks. ca. 1847. Wikimedia Commons.

In East Africa, camels from Somalia were the basis of caravan trade to the interior region of the Horn, and were exported along the coast, where they were used to power sesame-oil mills in the cities of Mogadishu, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Lamu.51

Historically, for the nomadic societies of Somalia’s mainland, there are considerable advantages to keeping large camel herds in the arid areas of East Africa. Camels give more milk than cattle, for a longer period, do not need frequent watering, travel quickly, and can take advantage of the saline browse of desert regions.52

According to the historian Lee Cassanelli53:

Historically, certain clans were regarded as outstanding breeders of camels, others of cattle, though one could find all types of livestock in virtually all parts of the country. The Garre, who were renowned as breeders of burden camels, supplied the Somali and Oromo caravaneers of the Jubba Basin in the eighteenth century. Coastal townsmen also possessed camels that were grazed in distant pastures by agnates or affines.

Estimates from the early 20th century suggest that an average nomadic family required 10-20 camels, 50-60 sheep and goats, or 15-20 head of cattle to subsist in the normally harsh environment of the Horn. Many family herds, however, were three or four times this size.

Given the low level of commercialization, the accumulation of livestock recorded by many observers of the Somali scene can best be explained as a form of social capital used in bride wealth payments, in collective diya compensation, and in attracting allies or clients, or as a hedge against hard times.”

According to the account of Charles Guillian, who visited the region between 1847-8, trade and transport between the coastal towns of the Benadir (Mogadishu, Merca, and Barawe) and the interior regions of Luqq, was almost entirely conducted on camelback.54

The coastal towns purchased their camels from the “indigenes of the neighboring Soumal tribes, the Abgal, the Odjourane, the Guel-Djaal, the Gogoun’dobé, and by those of the territories of Ganarié and Lébine.” He notes that the best camels came from the territory of Geledi, where they cost 4 to 6 piastres (silver dollars), the cheapest sold for 2 piastres, while the most expensive sold for 10 to 12 piastres.55

In Zanzibar, camels (mostly imported from Somalia) cost 8 piastres for a young animal and 25 or 50 piastres for a good working animal. The latter are employed to run the sesame oil mills all along the coast. The sesame oil obtained from camel-powered mills in Mogadishu and Barawe alone, which was estimated at 23 to 39 tonnes annually, was exported to Zanzibar, Yemen, Oman, and India, while the rest was bought by visiting English and American ships.56

Illustration in Guillain’s Atlas depicting a camel operating a sesame seed press in Mogadishu. ca. 1847-8. Somalia.57

Camels outside Barawa, Somalia. Illustration by G. Revoil, ca. 1888.

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Transport and Building technologies of Africa’s Camel keepers.

Many Saharan communities used camels to transport their temporary shelters, such as tents, palanquins, and house frames, which are disassembled, transported, and reassembled with each move. These structures were also modified during social events such as weddings, coronations, and religious ceremonies.

According to Labelle Prussin, the system of building is inseparable from the system of transportation. The components that make up the transport system, i.e., the “saddles,” the litters, and the palanquins, are the same as those that comprise the building system

Among sections of the Somali communities, marriage rituals include repeated processions of the groom and his party to the bride’s community (guro), accompanied by a pack camel loaded with house parts to house the groom’s wedding party at the bride’s community.58

A medjourtine gurgi at Kismayo, Somalia. Image by G. Revoil, 1888.

When camels are used as draft animals, their hump presents no problem, but when used as pack or riding animals, then saddle design becomes a challenge because a heavy load can be carried only if it is distributed so that the skeletal structure bears the brunt of the burden.

The simplest pack saddle is one composed of two forked poles, which in more complex formations, are crossed with other poles and joined with bentwood arches depending on the weight of the load and the type of structure. All subsequent litters and palanquins that carry women, as well as goods, consist of a superstructure of one kind or another fastened above this basic design.59

‘Rock painting. Ayou, Tibesti, Chad. The woman on the left is clearly riding in a litter.’ image and caption by L. Prussin

Saddles and Palanquins used by various nomadic groups. Images by L. Prussin

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

In Somalia, cameleers typically walked beside their dromedaries and only occasionally rode them using simple saddles. Women usually rode them only in the context of a marriage ceremony, when the bentwood members of the armature tent became the framework for a litter. In other nomadic communities such as the Teda, the Tuareg, and the Hassaniya of the Sahara, the palanquin structure is never dismantled.60

The use of palaquin structures on camels was most commonly observed among the Berber-speaking groups of the Maghreb and Western Sahara, as well as a variety of nomadic groups in Egypt and Sudan, such as the Beja and Kababish.

In most of their cultural traditions, each tribe had its palanquin, which served as a banner around which warriors rallied to battle.

In some traditions, the palanquin was occupied by a princess (daughter of the ruler of the tribe) who was adorned as a bride. Capture of the palanquin by the enemy symbolized defeat. But because the palanquin housed a daughter, embedded in the symbolism was a matrilineal heritage and the material accoutrements of the marriage ritual.61

According to Prussin62:

“In defeat, her palanquin, a singular political symbol of Berber unity, would have been confiscated or exchanged as part of the spoils of war. But her palanquin was also a metaphor for marriage, a symbol of matriliny, since she had gone out in it as a bride.

The exodus that followed her defeat may have looked very much like the early sixteenth-century exodus from the Tuareg city of Agades following its Songhay conquest by Askia Muhammed in 1515 which Barth recorded (1857, 5:461-62):

“It is explicitly stated that he drove out five tribes . . . and that a considerable number of Berbers, with five hundred jakhfa (cages mounted on camels, such as only wealthy people can afford to keep for carrying their wives), left the town.”

Some of the less elaborate jakhfa, which had been built as marriage palanquins, would have looked like those he subsequently recorded. In my mind’s eye, the more elegant ones could very well have looked like the noble Tuareg bride’s palanquin recorded in the early nineteenth century at a wedding south of Murzuq, Libya.”

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