It is generally assumed that, historically, labour rather than land was scarce in Africa, making wages for free labourers prohibitively high compared with the costs of household labour and slave labour.1

As the historian Gareth Austin boldly asserted: free (ie; non-slave) labour was “vanishingly rare” in Africa, except in European enclaves at the coast, and “material rewards that might be given to groups of youths for casual help.”2

However, historical evidence suggests that wage labour was not uncommon in many African societies.

Markets and craft industries were found in many historical societies in Africa.

Specialist labourers included clothworkers (weavers, embroiderers, dyers), metalworkers (blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, gunsmiths), leatherworkers (tanners, curriers, saddlemakers, etc.), scribes and copyists, masons and carpenters, potters, carriers, miners, ferrymen, etc.3

Many earned a living by selling their wares or working for wealthy patrons. What remains debated, however, is whether they also offered their labour in exchange for wages.

THIS IS A TWO-PART ESSAY.

The first part is about how the real wages of workers in the 17th-century Gold Coast (Ghana) approached those paid in many parts of Europe at the time, and were considerably higher than those paid in many parts of Asia.

Subscribe to Patreon to read about it here and support this newsletter:

WAGE LABOUR ON THE GOLD COAST

Direct historical evidence of hired labour exists for several occupations in pre-colonial Africa, including scribal work, clothmaking, construction, mining, and transport.

Naturally, the scribes, who provide our earliest internal written accounts of Africa’s past, also included brief details about their remuneration.

Manuscript-copying, in particular, was a professionalized business, and compensation was paid by legal contract, as evidenced by the colophons at the end of the manuscripts from Timbuktu (Mali) from the late 16th century.

On one of the manuscripts, dated April 1574, the copyist received 1 mithqal of gold per volume, for a total of 28 volumes, and the ‘proof-reader’ received half that amount.4

Manuscripts degraded quickly and needed to be re-copied meticulously by trained scribes. The copying industry was thus driven by the preservation of previously acquired and valued books and the duplication of popular works for study and possibly trade.

There were major manuscript-copying centers across West Africa, especially in Bornu (Northern Nigeria), Timbuktu (Mali) and Tichitt (Mauritania), where these well-paid scribes produced the hundreds of thousands of historical manuscripts that are today preserved in dozens of private libraries.5

The Songhay emperor Askiya Dāwūd (d. 990–1/1583), who purchased an illuminated dictionary of al-Firūzābādī for 80 pieces of gold, is known to have encouraged the manuscript copying business in Timbuktu by hiring numerous scribes to produce works to gift to local scholars.6

Copy of the dictionary of al-Firūzābādī (d. 1415), 18th century, Aboubacar Ben Said Library. Images from HMML Reading Room with the permission of SAVAMA-DCI, Num. SAV ABS 03132.

In addition to working for wealthy patrons, skilled calligraphers and professional copyists likely worked independently, selling their manuscripts and contributing to a dynamic ‘book market’.

According to Hugh Clapperton in 1824, Qurʾāns written by scribes from Bornu (Nigeria) were exported for $40–$50 to the Tripoli market in North Africa (about $1,000- $1,500 today).7

A similar pattern prevailed in eastern Africa.

In Ethiopia, internal evidence attests to the existence of scriptoria (dedicated spaces where scribes meticulously copied texts) from at least the 17th century.

Scribes, calligraphers, and painters commanded a fee for their services; court scribes were paid both in kind and with grants, and are credited for their work. Most scribes, however, sought out different churches and patrons for whom they worked for wages on a semi-permanent basis.8

Arganonä Maryam (The Organ of Mary), 17th-century, Met Museum. Written by the scribe Baselyos, the text was illuminated by the ‘ground hornbill painter’ who included a portrait of its original author; Abba Giyorgis of Sägla.

This established market for manuscript copying helps explain why 19th-century explorers and book collectors could often readily hire scribes or teachers (malams) to work for wages.

In 1824, Hugh Clapperton commissioned a malam Mohamed of Massina to write an account of the Sokoto empire, for which he was paid 20,000 cowries (equivalent to 10 Spanish silver dollars, or £2 10s. ie; £350 today), over a few months.9

In 1894, Charles Robinson hired a Hausa malam named Abd el Kadr for 4,000 cowries a week, for about two months, for proofreading a dictionary he was compiling.10

At the close of the century, colonial manuscript collectors in both West and East Africa, as well as local elites who wanted to build private libraries, set up large workshops employing many copyists and editors, sending some of them on manuscript-searching and copying missions to different towns.11

These scribes also doubled as teachers, known as Malams in West Africa and Mwalimu in East Africa.

Ethnographic accounts from both sides of the continent during the 1890s, one by the Hausa Imam Imoru, and the other by the Swahili lecturer Mtoro Bakari, indicate that teachers received a fixed tuition from their students: about 30,000 cowries in West Africa and the equivalent of 10-15 rupees a month in East Africa.12

A school at Jenne, Mali. c. 1897, illustration by Félix Dubois

This income was well above subsistence level. In 1851, Heinrich Barth estimates that in the city of Kano, one could live “with ease, including every expense” on 50-60,000 cowries a year, equivalent to £4 to £5 (or between £700- £900 today).

Commenting on the textile industry of Kano, he observes that “this industry is not carried on here as in Europe, in immense establishments, degrading man to the meanest condition of life, but that it gives employment and support to families without compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits.”13

In addition to this income, both the teacher and the students also hired out their labour for other kinds of work for various reasons.

For example, during the 19th century, Kano’s cloth merchants began to buy unfinished cloth from the weavers and put it out for processing by dyers in return for wages. As the market grew, cloth merchants established many new dye pits and hired cheap migrant labourers, often the students mentioned above, to perform routine tasks.14

There were I5,000-20,000 dye pits in Kano Emirate alone by the end of the 19th century. In one outlying town, known as Kora, an estimated 2,000 of the 8,000 population were cloth dyers who were hired to work for wages.15

The exact earnings of these dyers were, however, not well documented. This is the one occupation whose workers weren’t hired by colonial authorities, but were in fact considered direct competitors of the latter.16

A street scene, Kano, Nigeria. c. 1925.

Besides scribes, teachers and cloth dyers, other forms of specialist labour included builders/masons, who erected the monumental structures found across the continent.

While most homes were built by the household, the construction of substantial monuments in large cities created a demand for more specialised groups of builders, plasterers and carpenters, many of whom were paid for their labour.

In Ethiopia, historical evidence highlights the role of Betä Ésraýel house-builders, who were considered “the best masons in the country.” From at least the 17th century, they provided much of the labour involved in constructing the Gondarine castles and other monuments.17

While their wages for constructing these elite structures aren’t specified in internal accounts, the Englishman William Coffin could easily find masons for hire to construct a simple house that he built for 80 Thalers in half a month, with about 30 thalers going to the labourers.

The builders worked for one thaler per six-day week, while a thatcher would complete a roof for a piece-rate of four thalers (about $110 today).18

Iyasu’s castle in Gondar, Ethiopia.

James Bruce, who visited Gondar in 1770, spoke of a lavish decoration of an audience chamber in one of the palaces in Gondar, whose roof “in gaiety and taste, corresponded perfectly with the magnificent finishing of the room. It was the work of the falasha (Betä Ésraýel), and consisted of a painted cane, split and disposed in mosaic figures, which produces a gayer effect than it is possible to conceive.”19

In West Africa, specialist guilds of masons, such as the famous masons of Djenne, renowned for the construction of several palaces and mosques in Sudano-Sahelian style, were hired as labourers by wealthy patrons.

In 1822, at a construction site for a “highly ornamented” mosque in Sokoto, Clapperton found one such team of masons headed by a “master-builder” who was a native of Zaria and had studied architecture from the manuscripts left by his father, who had been to Egypt.20

The master-builder mentioned above was commissioned by the Sultan for the construction project. But patrons need not be wealthy to hire such masons. In 1851, Barth could readily find and hire masons to construct a modest house at Gúmmel, in Bornu.21

While neither of these accounts mentions the amount paid to the masons, the ethnographer Charles Monteil recorded that by 1932, in the city of Djenne “a proficient master mason received a daily wage of 400 cowry shells; the mason who prepared the mortar was paid 200 cowries and the laborers each received 100.”22

This work often lasted several weeks during the 4-month building season from January to April, not counting the off-season time spent on brickmaking, repairs, re-plastering, and carpentry.

Conversion rates for this period are more difficult to estimate, since cowries proved more stable than francs in the 1920s and 30s, even though they were phased out not long after. But 800 cowries were worth 5 francs in the town of Mopti in 1928.23

It was these builders who were hired for the reconstruction of the Djenne mosque and other iconic monuments built during the 19th century and the colonial period.

Agibu’s palace at Bandiagara, Mali. Image by Edmond Fortier, ca. 1906.

Besides these builders, agricultural labourers were also hired for wages.

While most peasants supported themselves through their own labour, a significant proportion also hired themselves out to wealthy landowners in exchange for wages.

In Ethiopia, 19th-century accounts describe agricultural labourers (diggers, grass-cutters and wood-cutters) as fewer than the peasantry, and differing from the latter in that they worked not for themselves, but for landlords who paid them a daily wage, usually in salt bars.24

In West Africa, in 1827, Rene Caillie noticed at Tieme, in N.W Côte d’Ivoire, a cultivator who ‘had several free Bambaras at work for him. .. When they had done work, I observed that [he] paid his labourers in kind.’25

The townsmen of Djenné employed small numbers of seasonal agricultural labourers during the late 19th century, paying them in cowrie shells, as did farm-owners in parts of Hausaland.26

Wage labour was also common in mining, particularly in the extraction of salt in West Africa and copper in Central Africa. These workers were paid, according to custom, in the product they made, which was itself a type of currency.

In the famous copper belt of Katanga (southern D.R.Congo and Zambia), oral accounts transcribed in the early 20th century indicate that miners, both free and enslaved, were paid 3 copper crosses weighing 20kg per trading season.

According to these accounts, enslaved miners needed only three trading seasons to accumulate enough copper to purchase their freedom.

By the 1850s, the exploitation of these deposits had reached a veritable boom, attracting migrant labour from across the region, which soon outnumbered the original inhabitants. Individual mines like Lubushia and Kiembe could have as many as 900 and 500 miners, nearly half of whom were migrant workers.27

Copper production by wage labourers in Katanga greatly expanded during the colonial period, but was certainly not a creation of the latter.

In West Africa, the bulk of the salt-mining labor, especially in the oases of Kawar was supplied on a household basis, but was supplemented by both wage-laborers (often migrant workers) and slaves, who were both paid in salt.28

Using records from the late 19th to early 20th century, historian Paul Lovejoy notes that:

“many thousands of workers, perhaps around twenty-five thousand, were involved in the production of salt and natron in the many sites in Kawar, Fachi, Muniyo, Mangari, Kadzell, Lake Chad and its eastern shores.

Over half, and possibly two-thirds, of these workers were freemen

This constituted a considerable market for foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and other commodities. Consequently, the scale of operation required the participation of thousands of merchants, brokers, and transporters. When the total number of workers, merchants, farmers, and craftsmen who depended upon this trade are considered, then it becomes apparent that a significant portion of the Borno population was involved in the salt industry or its subsidiary sectors.”29

Saltpans of Bilma, Niger.

Lastly, the most common form of mass employment for wage labourers was in transportation, where professional carriers/porters (and boatmen such as the Somono) transported goods across the various ecological zones of Africa where draught animals couldn’t be used.

Across West, Central, Southern, and Eastern Africa, thousands of workers were hired by caravan merchants to carry trade goods in exchange for payment, often at a fixed rate. These workers were also known to organise ‘labour strikes’ when their rights were infringed upon.30

Some carriers, particularly in West Africa, worked seasonally.

In East Africa, however, they constituted a professional class of permanent workers, numbering between 20,000 and 100,000. They were paid an average of $5–$8 per month (equivalent to approximately $150–$250 today) or received 18–55 metres of cloth per month.31

Like the scribes, masons, and miners discussed above, carriers were also hired by colonial governments in exchange for wages. They remained indispensable to transportation in the early 20th century, before the expansion of railway and road networks.

Neither these historic occupations nor the labour markets that sustained them were creations of the colonial economy.

The historian Stephen Rockel, who wrote an excellent monograph on the Nyamwezi carriers of 19th-century Tanzania, argues that free, wage labour in pre-colonial Africa was not a creation of colonial capitalist economies, but a product of pre-existing economic and social institutions. 32

Coffee house in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, with African patrons. Early 1900s, German Federal Archives.

The idea that wage labour did not exist in Africa seems to have originated in the writings of a few early explorers such as Mungo Park33, as well as the twin discourses of Atlantic slavery and colonialism that greatly shaped our knowledge of Labour history in Africa.34

According to the historian Klas Rönnbäck, studies of African factor markets for labour were influenced by the analysis of economic development in Marxist literature on the presumed stages of production (from slavery to feudalism to capitalism).

In this literature, which was based on studies of European societies, free labourers were argued to exist only in a more “developed” capitalist stage, compared to a more “primitive” stage of a slave-based mode of production.35

For Marx and Engels, slavery was “the first form of exploitation, the form peculiar to the ancient world; it is succeeded by serfdom in the Middle Ages, and wage-labor in the more recent period. These are the three great forms of servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civilization”36

However, such theories were hardly applicable to the Western societies for which they were developed, and even less so to African societies onto which they were projected.37

Capitalism was not incompatible with slavery, nor was slavery and serfdom incompatible with free labour.

This deceptively simple progression from slavery to serfdom to wage-labour underpins Acemoglu’s flawed analysis of African economic history.

In his monograph on the labour market of the Gold Coast region (modern Ghana) from the 16th to the 18th century, Klas Rönnbäck demonstrates that free, hired labourers were relatively common in the region, despite the expansion of slavery.

Workers such as boatmen, brokers and interpreters, soldiers, masons, carpenters, and scribes were hired by European merchant firms to perform a variety of tasks in coastal settlements.

Written evidence from pay bills and correspondence between European company agents indicates that wage labour was readily available, including for permanent employment.

Importantly, as the overview above demonstrates, these occupations predated European contact and thus reflected pre-existing labour markets and employment practices.

More significantly, Rönnbäck found that the real wages of workers in the 17th-century Gold Coast approached those paid in many parts of Europe at the time, and were considerably higher than those paid in many parts of Asia.

Subsistence ratios for unskilled labour around the world, c. 1675-1725. Graph by Klas Rönnbäck

These findings challenge the long-held presumption that Africa was historically poor compared to the rest of the world.

Even enslaved workers on the Gold Coast received wages, albeit at slightly lower rates than their free counterparts, while working longer hours.

The seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of wage-earning slaves, also documented in the salt and copper mining occupations discussed above, further illustrates the complexity of slavery in African history.38

The History of Wage Labour on the Pre-colonial Gold Coast is the subject of my latest Patreon Article;

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

WAGE LABOUR ON THE GOLD COAST

Ogun, the god of iron and war, is a major West African deity whose history spans several centuries and whose worship extends across multiple continents.

Associated with both the creation of civilization and its destruction, Ogun originated in Yorubaland, in present-day S.W. Nigeria, before spreading to the kingdoms of Benin and Dahomey, where his swordsmen and devotees entered the historical record.

As states expanded, armies clashed, and craftsmen migrated, this African deity became the ‘Vulcan of Black people,’ with shrines found in virtually every forge, and numerous adherents in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.

Ogun is best known through the massive, jagged iron swords that serve as his emblem, as well as a famous life-size iron sculpture of the deity that was looted by French colonial forces from present-day Benin.

This article examines the history of Ogun and his significance in the development of pre-colonial statecraft, religious systems, and warfare in West Africa.

Map showing some of the kingdoms mentioned in this essay.

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

PATREON

Slaying the serpent of Ouidah

In March 1727, the armies of the kingdom of Dahomey conquered the coastal kingdom of Ouidah, attacked the European forts, and took their occupants prisoner to the interior.1

Captain William Snelgrave, who recorded these events about a month later, reports that Ouidah’s capital was protected by a river “but instead of guarding it, these cowardly luxurious People, thinking the fame of their numbers sufficient to deter the Dahomes from attempting it, kept no set Guard.”

The only precaution the Ouidans took was to enlist supernatural protection.

They left the river crossing under the spiritual protection of their “principal God”, whose earthly manifestation was a type of serpent. This deity, known as Dangbe, was regarded as “a superior and excellent Divinity” according to the Reverend Father Labat in 1730.

But the power of the snake-god proved ineffective against the Dahomean soldiers, who simply crossed the river, defeated the army of Ouidah, slew the sacred serpents with their swords, and burned down the temple of Dangbe.2

'Festa in onore del dio serpente' (Festival in honor of the Snake God), Ouidah. 19th-century engraving by Giovanni Antonio

According to Dahomean mythical beliefs, first transcribed in the late 19th century, humanity existed in hardship after the Sky god, Mawú, partitioned the universe. Mawú sent Gú (the god of metal and stone) and, in some accounts, Lísa (the Sun) to provide humans with tools to improve their environment.3

Gú, the god of metal, thus introduced organized social life to the kingdom and enabled its expansion and military prowess. Importantly, however, this god wasn’t native to Dahomey but instead came from the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, which conquered Dahomey shortly after the latter’s conquest of Ouidah.

So powerful was Oyo’s military might that, with troops of horsemen armed with swords, it defeated Dahomey in the 1720 and 40s, despite the latter’s use of muskets taken from Ouidah, and forced it to pay annual tribute for nearly a century thereafter.

King Agadja of Dahomey (r. 1718-1740), who conquered Ouidah but later became tributary to Oyo, was married to a foreign queen, Hawnjile, who is credited with introducing the kingdom’s main gods: Mawu, Lisa and Gu.4

The royal control over the acquisition of the supernatural greatly bolstered the power of the monarchy.

Map showing the expansion of the kingdom of Dahomey.

Map showing the settlements and military conquests of Oyo between the 17th and 18th centuries

Subscribe now

The History of Ogun: “The Vulcan of Black People”

Historical evidence for the emergence of Ogun in Yorubaland is circumstantial, relying on symbolic and ritual evidence that today is appropriate only to him.

Traditional accounts suggest the deity arose in the eastern Yoruba-speaking kingdoms by the end of the Middle Ages, as the supply of iron increased and warfare expanded.

In the late-medieval kingdom of Ife (c. 1200-1500), a colossal drop-shaped iron sculpture weighing more than 50kg was found in the Ife palace’s Ogun Ladin shrine. Artisans created this massive sculpture over many years by layering red-hot iron bits, one on top of the other, to shape the whole.5

From this old kingdom, the deity soon after spread to the Edo kingdom of Benin.

This hypothesis is pictorially reinforced by a 16th-century brass plaque depicting a Benin warrior wearing miniature iron tools, which are considered the universal signature of Ogun. From Dahomey, a 19th-century life-size iron statue of Gu, discussed below, also carried miniature iron tools (a raised sword, pincers, hoe, arrow tip, knives, and hook)6

Royal brass plaque from the palace at Benin City, Nigeria. 16th century. British Museum number Af1898,0115.48. Warrior at far left wears miniature iron implements around his waist.

A drop-shaped lump of wrought iron weighing more than 50kg. Ife, Nigeria. c. 1910. British Museum number Af,A167.27

In 1603, a German surgeon aboard a Dutch merchant ship described a prewar sacrificial ceremony that, among other animals, included canines, which are exclusively associated with Ogun. This took place near the port town of Lagos, which was under the Kingdom of Benin, but linked to the inland kingdom of Oyo via overland trade routes.7

Ritual reenactments of battle between kings and town leaders have long figured in large civic pageants dedicated to Ogun in the kingdoms of Benin, Oyo, and Dahomey. In the kingdom of Benin, isiokhuo is the palace ceremony honoring Ogun in which warriors in military attire march in procession through the capital.8

Among the 16th-century Benin plaques, one depicts a warrior chief participating in Isiokhuo, wearing military garb, and raising an eben sword. His costume is distinguished by the basketry cap with a feather inserted on one side and the elaboration of his leopard-face tunic. He carries another sword beneath his left arm.9

Royal Brass Plaque, Benin City, Nigeria. 16th century. Penn Museum Number AF2066.

‘Plaque with seven figures depicts a high-ranking general and his soilders and attendants at a festival dedicated to the god of war, Ogun. Two high-ranking soldiers flank central figure as he raises his eben, two musicians hold gongs and trumpet and two pages hold fan and implement.’

Plaque: Warrior Chief. Nigeria, Edo; Court of Benin, 16th–17th century. Brass (h. 16½ in. / 41.9 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1991 (1991.17.11).

Beginning in 1845, more detailed accounts about Ogun in Yorubaland are found in the journals of CMS (Church Missionary Society) agents. Among the 778 references to the Orisa (deities) found across the region, Ogun was the third most popular orisa after Ifa and Esu.10

According to the historian J. D. Y. Peel:

“Ogun appears as god of iron in a more direct and unmediated sense than as god of war, since he is not merely of iron, in the sense of being the force or principle behind iron technology, but virtually iron itself, worshipped as a personal force.”11

Eg at Leke, a group of six men in an enclosure next to a house was worshipping Ogun as “twelve guns arranged horizontally in a row, an animal having been sacrificed to worship them.”

At Abeokuta in 1865-7, a German missionary encountered a family group gathered in a blacksmith’s shop for an oracular consultation: “Seven country hammers, the blacksmith’s tools, are set up erect, and he addresses each in turn, breaking kola as he does so. As the pieces fall, the answers are lucky or not. The sacrificial fowl is held up in front of the hammers.”12

J.A. Skertchly, who visited Dahomey’s capital of Abomey in 1871-2, and was the first to record the religious system of Dahomey with sufficient detail, provides a list of deities worshipped in the kingdom, albeit mostly concerned with the deities of the coastal province of Ouidah.13

The deities are ranked seemingly based on their popularity, rather than their importance to the royal court and army.14

The main deities were: Dangbe, Atin-bodun, Hu and Khevyosoh. To which are added Bo, Legba, Akwashi, Hoho, Gbwejeh, Ajaruma, Zo, Sapatan, Demen, Aizan, Agasun, Leh, Dohen, Nesu, Lisa, Agaman, Mau, Kpate, Kpase, Dan (Aido Hwedo?), Agbwetoh, Nate, Avreketeh, Tokpodun, Takpwonun, Kpo, Gu, and Afa (Ifa).15

Sketchly understood Gu to be the deity of blacksmiths: “The craft has a tutelary deity, the Guh, which is stuck up in a conspicuous place under the shed, and has offerings of water and a hasty pudding of maize-flour made to it every morning. The deity is often decorated with small hoes, knives, fetiche-irons.”16

However, Édouard Foà, who lived in the region from 1886-1889, ranked the god of iron much higher.

He refers to the deity by the Yoruba name Ogun and calls him “The Vulcan of Black people”:

“Ogoun, the god of war and hunting, is the one who governs the fate of armies. Sacrifices are offered to him before marching against the enemy or to give thanks after victory. He is not forgotten in defeat; one addresses him to make it more favorable in the future. He is the god of blacksmiths and of all those who work with iron professionally. He is the Vulcan of the Black people. His symbol is an axe in Dahomey and a sword or a piece of iron in Yoruba.”17

Procession of old women in whom the spirits of deceased kings are temporarily incarnated. Image by A. Le Herissé, 1911

Procession of the King’s wealth, Abomey, 185. Illustration by Frederick Forbes

Section of Gezo’s Simbodji Palace. Illustration by Frederick Forbes

Theology and Philosophy of Ogun in West African cosmologies.

The unities that exist in the diverse body of Ogun representations found in many societies, both in West Africa and the Americas, are achieved not with the help of a supporting bureaucratic, codified apparatus, but through the power of custom.

Religious systems associated with Ogun are transmitted orally among priests, priestesses, and adherents, through the repeated telling of traditions, the performance of rituals, and the production and reproduction of emblems and icons.18

Focusing on pre-colonial West Africa, itinerancy was common among the coastal kingdoms, which established settler colonies in frontier districts, and moved conquered peoples to their capitals.

Intermarriage was a prime factor in the interaction of peoples of different kingdoms, the majority of whom claimed different origins and were very heterogeneous. The high level of mobility in the region no doubt facilitated the sharing of belief systems, and the ideology of Ogun was no exception.

Blacksmiths, who were given special treatment throughout West Africa, even between warring states, were highly mobile. They acquired significant ritual status and often revered the same deity as the military, whose soldiers were of equally diverse origins.19

Two-story furnace. Olokun Grove, Ife, Nigeria. Drawing by Carl Arriens. Frobenius 1913.

Iron smelting at Oumalokho near the border of Mali & Cote d’ivoire, illustration by Louis Binger, ca. 1892.

Importantly, however, in these polytheistic societies, the spread of the worship of a deity such as Ogun does not take place at the expense of other faiths or other supernatural forces. All of the societies where Ogun flourishes are culturally and religiously plural societies wherein religious faiths parallel one another.20

For example, the snake-god Dangbe, who was the principal deity of Ouidah that was conquered by Dahomey, eventually became popular in the latter’s capital.

As Skertchly reports: “Though so powerful, its aid was insufficient to protect the Whydahs from the conquering Agajah; but the old worshippers still held faith in their deity, and were highly pleased when it was introduced at Abomey.”21

In West African cosmologies where Ogun is a central figure, destruction and creation are two aspects of a unity that cannot be broken into opposing parts:

‘Ogun is repeatedly linked to positive and negative deeds. He taught humans to use fire, make iron, build cities, centralize government, conquer neighbors, and create empires.

As a revolutionary warrior, he eliminates an old order so that a new one can be established. As a blacksmith, Ogun creates the tools and weapons that, when put to use by some occupational groups, increase productivity, but that also, when put to use by others, destroy the innocent.’22

Benin, Nigeria. Royal brass stool. 18th century. Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin, IIIc20295.

“Through their intimate connection with hunting, agriculture, crafts, and even warfare, iron objects served as metaphors for civilization itself. This is vividly portrayed in the patterning of an eighteenth-century Benin royal brass stool.

The seat of the stool is divided into three zones. At the top is the cosmos, represented by the sun, the moon, and the cross—a Benin symbol of creation. At the bottom are depictions of the untamed wilderness: monkeys with snakes issuing from their nostrils, and the trunks of elephants grasping leaves. In the middle zone are symbols of civilization, which are products of the smith, including an anvil, hammer, knife, pincer, tongs, bellows, and blade.” 23

In Dahomey, the Azali quarter in the capital city of Abomey includes some of the quarter’s most prominent smiths, who appear to have promoted the fortunes of the Yoruba god of iron, Ogun, renamed Gu in Dahomey.

Gu was associated with the growing militarism of Dahomey after it had thrown off the suzerainty of Oyo during the reign of King Ghezo (1818–1858) and was honored through his commemoration in a famous iron sculpture of a god in human form.

The statue of Gu, which was taken by the French in the 1890s and ultimately made its way to the collection of Paris’s Musée de l’Homme is said to have been crafted by the founder of a prominent Yoruba-speaking lineage, a smith named Akati. An Akati ultimately became a member of the monarchy of Ghezo, serving as gau, minister of war, before he died in the 1851 assault on the walls of Abeokuta.24

Domestic smelting of iron ore, which is well attested in the archaeological record of the Abomey plateau before the 17th century, seems to have been replaced by imported iron in the latter period. However, as late as the 1880s, Iron ore deposits were still exploited in the northern regions, where the volume of imports was relatively low.25

Iron-working itself continued to flourish across the kingdom, and was centralised by the kings at Abomey, through the use of the priests of Gu, the god of iron.

There were twelve major forges; each watched over by an official called the felikpɔtɔ. Each had a device registered at the palace and stamped on its products. The iron workers in turn received much of their iron bars from the palace.26

Production figures of the smithies which did not make hoes were gathered through the priests of Gû, the god of iron. The King set a date on which Gû should be “given food to eat” (sacrifices) at all his shrines, and for this ceremony many roosters were placed at the disposal of the chief-priests of Gû.

At the same time, all Gû priests were notified that those who failed to participate in this rite by calling for their share of these fowls would be punished by the deity. As each priest arrived, he was asked how many smiths worked at the forge which he represented. In this way the ekpodeci, whose task it was to count the smiths, obtained the requisite information concerning the total number of forges in the kingdom.27

According to Edouard Foà ‘s 1895 account, in Dahomey, the blacksmith is also a jeweler; for the jewelry of the nobles is made of iron: “Warriors should only adorn themselves with iron,” the Dahomey nobles undoubtedly say. And the finest European jewelry leaves them cold.”28

While this claim is certainly exaggerated, since silver was also a common item of jewelry, it nevertheless demonstrates the significance of iron in the kingdom, and especially in the ideology of power.

Foa and other visitors note that the Dahomean blacksmiths make: agricultural tools as well as nails, hammers, bells, pliers, chisels, knife blades, chains, hairpins, gongs, umbrellas, padlocks, Dahomian sabers of all shapes, large cutlasses, daggers of all sizes, arrowheads of various shapes, and iron rifle bullets the size of buckshot.29

‘Sabre with an openwork blade; the careful work around the edge of the blade, decorated with circle and triangle motifs as well as a cross, makes this sabre a ceremonial weapon that was displayed during official ceremonies.’ 19th century, Ouidah, Benin. Quai Branly Museum, Inventory number: 71.1893.8.38.

Sabre and its scabbard. It was offered by King Guézo (1818-1858) to Zoma-Donou, the primary deity of the royal family descended from the panther ancestor Agassou. 19th century, Benin. Quai Branly Museum Inventory number: 71.1936.21.35.1-2.

Sabre: Curved blade, zoomorphic ornaments. 19th century, Abomey, Benin. Quai Branly Museum Inventory number: 71.1931.49.7

Sabre decorated with a fishing scene: two fish and an open fish trap. Abomey, Benin. c. 1962. Quai Branly Museum, Inventory number: 71.1962.59.48.

Share

The Swords of Ogun

The iron sword of Ogun (ada Ogun) was perhaps his most meaningful symbol, for it condensed the twin meanings of aggression and civilization.

Symbols of Ogun, especially ceremonial swords and the dramatization of warfare, were important features of kingship paraphernalia and ritual throughout the region.

For example, the culmination of the coronation ceremony of the Alaafin of Oyo occurred when the Great Sword, the Sword of Justice, was placed in the king’s hands.

In many eastern Yoruba kingdoms, such as Ife, Ila, and Ire Ekiti, the annual Ogun ceremony was presided over by the king, who, holding a sword, joined in a mock battle.

In Benin, the annual Isiokuo ceremony was held in honor of Ogun. After performing rites, the Oba (King) and other participants, outfitted with war costumes, iron jewelry, and war weapons, then staged a series of mock battles.30

Several iron and brass objects from south-western Nigeria, mostly consisting of ceremonial swords with perforations and elaborately carved hilts, as well as royal staffs, were dedicated to the deity.

Brass was used for prestige objects because it’s the precious metal of the traditional Yoruba blacksmiths, denoting the extraordinary pomp and prerogative of the ruler and the chief.31

Yorubaland: Iron and Ogun, map by J. D. Y. Peel

Ceremonial sword of Ogun: iron blade, with six openings ornamented round the edges, and handle of brass and ivory. 1874-8. Lagos, Nigeria. British Museum Af,+.887

Brass sword of Ogun made of brass, cast and hammered with punched ornament; a cross pierced through the blade; the pommel with two birds. c. 1886, Nigeria. British Museum number Af1887,0808.1

Ogun ceremonial brass sword or cutlass: handle cast in the form of a seated male figure, chased and perforated ornament on the blade. c. 1954, Yorubaland, Nigeria. British Museum number Af1954,23.218. (similar sword at Fowler Museum at UCLA; OBJECT ID X65.3613)

‘Iwana Ogun’ (Ogun’s rake): Ogun staff or baton, iron and brass, curved at one end, and with a bronze figure cast at the top. Obo, Yorubaland, Nigeria. British Museum number Af1971,18.1

In Yorubaland, Ogun doesn’t appear to have been portrayed in carved human form, despite the very personalized way in which he appears in myth, apparently because such a representation could only be inferior to iron itself.32

A similar tradition prevailed in Dahomey; Skertchy observed that “the Dahomans deny the corporeal existence of the deity …The deity must either be worshipped through the medium of an intervenor, who has a tangible form, or the religion must be reduced to anthropomorphism.”33

As Melville Jean Herskovits argues, “Gu is not a god in the sense of other gods, since he has no human or animal attributes, but that he is rather a “force.”34

At metallurgical sites dating to the 18th century, such as the Hoja site southwest of Abomey, fragments of metal, slag, and ore can be found on altars dedicated to Gu, which also suggests that the god was rarely portrayed in carved human form.

As for the anthropomorphic life-size sculpture of Gu, it appears to have been an exceptional phenomenon associated with the reign of King Ghezo (1818–1858), who is credited with further centralising the activities of craftsmen, especially blacksmiths, in the capital. Its carving is attributed to the above-mentioned Yoruba smith, Akati.35

Sculpture dedicated to Gou. c. 1858. Abomey, Benin. Dimensions: 178,5 x 53 x 60 cm. Entre 100 et 150 kg 174 x 56 x 54,5 cm. Quai Branly Museum, Inventory number: 71.1894.32.1.

Caption on the mounting board of the Musée de l’Homme photo library: “Statue of the god Gou, god of war and weapons, in the courtyard of the Abomey Museum. This statue was created by Simon Akati, blacksmith, at the request of the curator of the Abomey Museum, Mr. d’Oliveira, in 1970, based on an original photograph from the Abomey History Museum.”

In the 19th century, the Fon of Dahomey developed an extensive tradition of metal sculpture in iron and brass, known as Asen, which are portable metal altars designed to receive libations during ceremonies dedicated to the spirits of ancestors or divinities.

However, these asen, which often feature human figures including known persons, were dedicated to deified kings, Ifa, the ‘god of wisdom’, as well as Asen made for royal houses and small personal Asen.36

Asen staff from Ouidah, mid-19th cent., Musée Barbier-Mueller, Hunter and Dog with man spearing a leopard, ca. 1934, Abomey museum. Brass sculpture of a royal procession, ca 1931, Fowler museum

‘Incomplete Ase dedicated to the kingdom’ Various objects or animals are depicted on the sides; on the upper platform, decorated with round pendants, is a representation of a sword. c. 1952-1954. Benin. Quai Branly Museum. This rare asen may have been dedicated to Gu.

It’s thus evident that in Dahomey, as in Yorubaland, Ogun/Gu was most commonly attested in the form of weapons, specifically, ceremonial swords and sabers (despite the widespread use of firearms). These weapons were intended to attract the attention of the divinity and to receive offerings.

For Fon, the sword embodied their beginnings. Gu himself was perceived as a sword; he was a “‘force”’ with no head, only a great tool jutting out of a trunk of stone.

The Gubasa, a ceremonial sword, was his emblem. According to myth, when the creator came to earth, he held Gu in his hand in the form of a gubasa, and with it he cleared the forest and taught people to build houses and till the soil. The Gubasa is especially linked with King Glele, who adopted it for his coat of arms.37

Gubasa: A ceremonial sword, possibly belonging to the god Gou; added to his statue. c. 1850 and 1870. Quai Branly.

Left caption: Pieces 1 and 2 are sabers named Goubasa, that is to say, a form of saber specific to Gou. All persons whose Fa (divination system) corresponds to a sign dependent on Gou must have a personal Goubasa… The different cut-out geometric shapes found on the blade reportedly represent, symbolically, other vodoun linked to Gou who accompany him in the Fa.

Right caption: No. 1: This large knife … bears symbols on its blade, at the top a small Asen of divination by the Fa and underneath a small Gubasa saber. On each side of the base of the blade, one notices a war knife blade (or a spearhead). This knife, unsuitable for any functional use, was certainly an altar object linked to the cult of Gou.38

The sword of Gou (Ogoun of the Fon). c. 1948-1950. Abomey, Benin. Quai Branly Museum, Inventory number: 73.1999.6.91.

Epilogue: Ogun in modern Africa and the Americas.

Despite the Atlantic trade and the colonisation of West Africa, Ogun, the god of iron (and war), did not lose his efficacy among the coastal societies who continued to revere the ancient deity.

More than many other precolonial African gods, he has adapted to contemporary life and become increasingly visible to the public, especially in Nigeria, Benin, and across the Atlantic world.

According to the anthropologist Sandra T. Barnes:

‘One of the unanticipated processes in Africa and the Western Hemisphere is, as indicated, that African-derived religious beliefs prosper rather than decline. In Brazil alone, religious groupings that include Ogun have more than 30 million adherents, and they are spreading rapidly to Uruguay and Argentina, where there are scarcely any African descendants.

Ogun also moves along with Haitian and Cuban populations to New York, Florida, California, and Texas. Caribbean and West African religious practices are spreading to a growing body of English-speaking North Americans, and these new devotees hold ceremonies and have produced, after instruction by Cuban adherents, a theological treatise on African deities.’39

The popularity of Ogun continues in modern times and in changed conditions. There is no warfare, and if a god is out of work, he soon loses his claim to men’s attention.

But Ogun has ‘beaten his swords into plowshares’. He has become the deity of many lorry drivers and cyclists, who hang his favours on their vehicles and hope that the ancient god of metal will still protect them from accidents.

The ancient god of blacksmiths, hunters, and warriors is today the modern patron of cars, laptops, and phones, demonstrating the remarkable adaptability of African religious traditions.40

Statue of Ogun.

From 1858 to 1874, the Americo-Liberian explorers led expeditions into the interior of West Africa, encountering walled cities, mountains of iron ore, and well-travelled African scholars who ran networks of schools across the region.

Their accounts helped dispel many negative myths about inland African societies:

“We saw industry, cleanliness, economy, and mechanical genius, far surpassing any I had ever seen among the natives of the coast, or many of the immigrants from the United States.”

My latest Patreon article examines the historical significance of the 19th-century travel accounts of the Liberian explorers of West Africa.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

LIBERIAN EXPLORERS OF WEST AFRICA

In 1852, the explorer Heinrich Barth met Africans in Baghirmi (Chad) who had visited Basra (Iraq), read the works of Aristotle and Plato, and were as inquisitive about Europe as he was about Africa.

One of them was a traveler of Bambara origin from Tuwat (Algeria) who had been involved in the gold trade in Timbuktu (Mali), and later fought at Acre (Syria) during the Egyptian-Ottoman War in 1832, before travelling to Basra and Baghdad (Iraq).

The other was a Pullo (Fulbe) traveler and scholar, whose possession of Arabic translations of Plato’s works astonished Barth:

“I could scarcely have expected to find in this out-of-the-way place a man not only versed in all the branches of Arabic literature, but who had even read (nay, possessed a manuscript of ) those portions of Aristotle and Plato which had been translated into Arabic…

He was as anxious to obtain information from me with regard to the countries of the Christians [Europe], and those parts of the world with which he was less acquainted, as I was to be instructed by him.”1

Más-eñá, Return of the Sultan from the Expedition, 4 July 1852. Engraving based on an illustration by H. Barth in the kingdom of Baghirmi, Chad.

Map showing the kingdoms of Bornu, Sokoto, and Asante.

Barth was an agent of the British Government tasked with establishing commercial contacts with kingdoms in the African interior, including Bornu and Sokoto in present-day Chad and Nigeria. His predecessor in this role, some thirty years earlier, was Hugh Clapperton.

During Clapperton’s first journey in 1824, the ruler of Bornu had written to the ruler of Sokoto, advising the latter to execute the explorer for espionage, warning that:

“if the English should meet with too great encouragement, they would come into Soudan [West Africa], one after another, until they got strong enough to seize on the country, and dispossess him, as they had done with regard to India…

The English had taken possession of all India by first going there by ones and twos, until we got strong enough to seize upon the whole country.”2

Clapperton’s life was spared. However, another British agent, Thomas Bowdich, encountered a similar accusation when he visited the West African kingdom of Asante (Ghana) in 1817.

After Bowdich had explained the commercial motives of his mission to the Asante king, the latter pointedly asked:

“Now, how do you wish to persuade me that it is only for so flimsy a motive that you have left this fine and happy England … to put yourself prisoners in my hands with the risk of losing the head?”

The next day at a public assembly one of the King’s ministers asked Bowdich why, if Britain were so selfless, had it behaved so differently in India?. Bowdich was astonished that the Asante had heard anything about India and was at a loss for words.3

Yet African knowledge of European expansion extended back considerably further.

Two centuries earlier, Kongo’s King Garcia II Nkanga a Lukeni, who allied with the Dutch to expel the Portuguese from Luanda (Angola), proposed that the remaining Portuguese should be deported to Bengal (India), because “they are by nature an unruly people and prone to spreading discord.”

In a letter dated February 23, 1643, addressed to the Dutch council in Brazil, the Kongo King announced that he was sending an embassy to Brazil to present his case for removing the Portuguese. This embassy, led by the Kongo nobleman Dom Miguel de Castro, eventually arrived in the Netherlands in June 1643.4

Portrait of Dom Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo, by Jeronimus Becx, 1643.

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

These four separate accounts above provide a glimpse into the extent of Africa’s knowledge of the wider world, but are far from exhaustive.

In some of these cases, Africans obtained first-hand information about international politics from their own travelers and explorers, some of whom left written accounts of their journeys.

For example, the 1891 account of the Swahili traveler Amur al-Omeri provides some of the earliest Swahili words for European states, peoples, and rulers, such as WaReno [Portuguese], WaHolandi [ie; Amsterdam, Holland], WaNgereza [British], WaDachi [Dutch], mfalume wa Italia [King of Italy], etc

In other cases, Africans gathered information about the rest of the world from foreign envoys and travelers who visited their court.

When the British invaded the Asante capital of Kumasi in 1874, they found a collection of treasures and “curiosities” in the king’s stone palace that included prints from illustrated newspapers, as well as copies of the London Times and Bristol Courier.5

The Asante Ewer, a medieval English bronze jug bearing the royal arms of England as used in the period 1340 to 1405. Found at Kumasi, Ghana. British Museum 1896,0727.1. The jug likely came to Asante through trade or as a diplomatic gift, but was later looted from the royal palace in Kumasi after the Anglo-Asante War of 1895–96.

Arabic manuscripts from Kumasi, Ghana. 19th century. Musée d’ethnographie, Genève

Besides these were numerous Arabic manuscripts, written by the Muslim courtiers of the Asante King, who served as secretaries and Arabic translators in diplomatic correspondence with both the Muslim kingdoms of the interior and the European stations at the coast.

Among the King’s Muslim courtiers at Kumasi was a Hausa native of Katsina (Nigeria) “who had been at Tunis, and at Mecca; had seen many White men and ships; and described the method of travelling over the great desert [Sahara].”6

It was through such well-travelled Africans that the Asante king received information about the British colonisation of India.

In other societies along the West African coast, the literate class that kept local rulers abreast of international affairs was drawn from the small but influential communities of returnees (i.e., formerly enslaved Africans who had returned to West Africa).

Many returnees initially came from Brazil, but following the founding of Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1792, and the Americo-Liberian colony at Monrovia in 1822, thousands of English-speaking returnees became integrated into the political and social fabric of West Africa.

[see: my previous essay on Contributions of Liberated Africans to the economic and cultural growth of 19th-century West Africa ]

The Shitta-Bey Mosque in Lagos, Nigeria. Built in 1891 by Mohammed Shitta Bey (ca. 1824-1895), a son of a freed-slave from Freetown, Sierra Leone, who originally came from Brazil.

The Americo-Liberians, in particular, later produced some of the most detailed written accounts of the inland kingdoms of West Africa. Their expeditions did not, however, initiate contact with these societies.

Some of the inland Africans encountered by the Liberian explorers had themselves previously visited the Liberian capital, Monrovia, making these expeditions in part an extension of existing African networks of travel and exchange, rather than a first encounter.

The travel accounts of Liberian explorers such as George Seymour in 1858 and Benjamin Anderson in 1868-74 describe large walled cities in the interior of present-day Guinea, whose population dwarfed the entire settler population of Liberia.

The explorers encountered numerous African merchants from the interior who had previously visited Monrovia and served as their travel guides during their expeditions. They met local Muslim scholars who operated networks of schools in the interior and in the Liberian colony itself, and who served as secretaries to African monarchs.

They passed through richly populated and cultivated lands that were later depopulated and turned into forest reserves during the colonial period.

The explorers also provided the first written account of the famous Simandou mine of Guinea, which they described as a “mountain of iron ore… so pure that the road leading through it was a polished metal pathway.”

Considered the world’s largest known high-grade, untapped iron ore deposit, the mine is associated with the multinational company Rio Tinto.

Contrary to modern lore, however, the iron deposits of Simandou were already known to West African blacksmiths, who smelted its ore in furnaces reportedly reaching six feet in height.

The Liberian explorers’ descriptions of the interior helped dispel many negative myths about inland African societies, which had not only pioneered contact with the American settlers on the coast but were also organized into large and complex polities:

“We saw industry, cleanliness, economy, and mechanical genius, far surpassing any I had ever seen among the natives of the coast, or many of the immigrants from the United States.”

My latest Patreon article examines the historical significance of the 19th-century travel accounts of the Liberian explorers of West Africa.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

LIBERIAN EXPLORERS OF WEST AFRICA

In the region of southern Nigeria, sophisticated textile industries showing signs of proto-industry emerged during the early modern period, creating an “artisan class” of specialists in spinning, weaving, dyeing, and embroidery.

The textile trade among the kingdoms of southern Nigeria was exceptionally complex, as the region was one of several in Africa that exported its own cloth to European traders while also importing European textiles, at times within the same transactions.

People, ideas, and items of regalia all circulated among the kingdoms in the region, as did craftsworkers and their skills. Cloth dyeing, embroidery, and fashion styles were highly developed and varied, producing some of Africa’s best-known textile traditions.

Since the 16th century, visitors frequently remarked on the scale of local textile industries, the complexity of the cloth trade, and the quality of West African cotton cloths, which ‘far excel the prints and homespuns of Manchester’ and survived the onslaught of cheap industrial imports.

This article examines the history of the textile industry in pre-colonial southern Nigeria from the end of the Middle Ages to the early colonial period.

Southern Nigeria in the 18th century. Map by Paul E. Lovejoy

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

PATREON

The cloth Trade in pre-colonial Southern Nigeria.

Trade in cotton textiles appears in the earliest historical accounts of the kingdoms of southern Nigeria.

The Portuguese captain Pacheco Pereira, who made four visits to the Edo city of Benin in the 1490s, noted a market center on the Forcados River, where goods included cotton cloths.1 These were exchanged for copper manillas, which were used to make the famous brass plaques.

By 1505, the factor at the newly established Portuguese trading post at Ughoton, north of the Forcados and about thirty miles inland, was purchasing local textiles regularly, some of which were exchanged for gold at Elmina on the Gold Coast (Ghana) and re-exported inland. In that year alone, he bought 1,816 locally woven cotton cloths.2

The Yoruba kingdom of Ijebu-Ode was another of the earliest textile-producing and hulking (distribution) centers noted specifically by European traders along the Bight of Benin.

A Portuguese document of 1519 records the dispatch of cloth to the Gold Coast, which was levied as tax on traders operating between São Tomé and Benin on the mainland, some of which are described as being “of Jabu.”3

Along the coast of southern Nigeria up to the Gold Coast (Ghana), there was a regional system of exchange that was handled by African mariners who plied the river systems, lagoons, and sea routes between Lagos and Accra.

[See my previous essay on ‘Seafaring, trade and travel in the African Atlantic.’]

What was new was the intercontinental scale of these commercial operations. Portuguese caravels built for ocean winds and currents expanded this pre-existing trade and were able to connect regional West African markets with the Indian Ocean and Atlantic systems.

“Cloth made of cotton wooll very curiously woven” from Benin was included in the goods bought in the city by the English trader James Welsh in 1591, as well as pepper, ivory and palm oil. Another trader remarked on the attractive, multicolored and patterned cloths sold in Lagos in 1603, probably the product of inland Yoruba looms.4

In 1659, a German merchant was gifted two dyed cotton robes by the king of Allada, one of them belonging to his own collection, and the other one customarily presented by the king to a nobleman or knight.

However, the visual and technical features of these robes make it very difficult to link them firmly to any specific well-known textile traditions. Some scholars suggest they were made in Allada itself, with influences from the interior, while others argue that they were made further inland before being traded at the coast.5

Indigo resist tunic from the Togo and Republic of Benin border zone, before 1659, cotton, Height: c. 142 cm, back upper part: c. 162 cm, bottom width: c. 87 cm, Ulmer Museum—Weickmann Collection. Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany6

In the early 17th century, cotton textile exports from Benin and surrounding areas were regularly being bulked and shipped to other ports on the West African coast. Wrappers were classified according to the number of individual woven breadths that were included per entire cloth.

Dapper’s report mentions two major products of Benin looms, each a wrapper of different size: one made up of three breadths of cloth, the other made up of four breadths of cotton dyed indigo blue or patterned with blue-and-white stripes. The latter, called mouponoqua (ukpon nokhua, or big cloth), was approximately 5 to 6 feet long by 4 1/2 feet wide.7

Textile exports from Benin and Yorubaland competed very well against foreign cloth in the coastal trade in both cost and quality, and were more profitable for many European traders than their own textile trade.

Whereas European textiles sold on the Guinea Coast for just under twice their cost, merchants sold native cloths from Benin and the Cape Verde Islands for up to three or four times what they had paid for them.8

A few of the written sources describe the specific regional market preferences that structured this trade: striped cloths were exchanged for gold dust on the Gold Coast, while indigo-blue cloths were most desired in Gabon and Angola.9

Barbot’s account mentions that the Portuguese brought blue cotton from Benin to Luanda (Angola), which were known to the Edo as Mouponoqua, and to the Portuguese as Panos de regatto de Berre “they are five cloths together, and a yard and a half, or two yards broad.”10

Textiles from Benin and Yorubaland were hulked and sorted to be shipped to ready markets along the West African coast and as far away as the West Indies and Brazil. Some Ijebu cloth was carried by Portuguese vessels to Brazil.

Benin cotton cloth was of such high quality that the Dutch tried (ca. 1717) to sell it in Europe, but it was not broad or long enough for European tastes. Later in the 18th century, merchants from the French port city of La Rochelle successfully marketed Benin cloth in France and the New World, where it was used for summer petticoats.11

(left) Sleeveless tunic, formed from about 26 strips of handwoven cloth, using handspun white and indigo-dyed cotton, and imported magenta alaari silk. 1874-8, Yoruba, Lagos, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af,+.2070. (right). Cotton Tunic Made of sewn panels of blue, red, and white stripes. Late 19th century, Yoruba or Fon artist. Abomey, Dahomey, Benin. Quai Branly 71.1936.21.103

Wrapper; title cloth (aso olona); composed of three panels hand-sewn together. Natural handspun cotton warp and weft with grey cotton warp stripe. Supplementary weft float patterns in imported red-, yellow- and dark indigo-dyed cotton with densely worked patterns of snakes, frogs and crocodiles. Each panel ends with band of weft stripes in red-, indigo- and yellow-dyed cotton. Fringed red cotton border woven in along one side. Worn as title cloths for members of the Oshogbo society. c. 1820-1880, Yoruba, Ijebu Ode, Nigeria. British Museum 2018,2036.106.

Chief’s Garment. Yoruba, Nigeria. Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

One set of market prices from the Gold Coast illustrates how several types of Benin cloth fared in competition with exports from Allada and the Ivory Coast:

Both Allada cloth and Quaqua cloth from Ivory Coast were worth 5 brass manillas, while three varieties of Benin cloth were available at different price ranges: 3-bread cloth was worth 3 brass manillas; blue-dyed 5-breadth cloth was worth 7 brass manillas; and Benin calde cloth was worth 12 brass manillas.12

Available figures for the volume of textile exports during the 17th and 18th centuries give only fleeting glimpses, but they are impressive.

In 1633–34 the Dutch alone imported about 12,641 pieces of Benin cloth into the Gold Coast; another 16,000 pieces in 1644–46. According to Ryder, the English traders exported from Benin to the Gold Coast “at least as many” cotton cloths as the Dutch did during the same period.13

Like their Indian and European counterparts, demand for Benin cloth in the Gold Coast markets fluctuated greatly, according to data from Dutch exports. It fell to a few hundred cloths in the late 17th century, before briefly recovering in the early 18th century, although to relatively modest levels compared to the mid-17th century.14

Cloth became a form of currency in Benin’s international trade since the 16th century. The Oba (King) insisted on valuing imported goods and taxes paid by visiting European merchants in terms of Benin cloth, long after demand on the Gold Coast had fallen due to competition from local cloths and civil war in Benin.15

The Dutch factory at Arbo was able to attract cloth from areas outside the Benin kingdom: Ijebu in particular supplied large quantities. According to Dapper, some cloths came from a place named Koffo (possibly the Nupe market of Kulfo) which he understood to lie one day’s journey east of Benin City.

This would accord with Father Monteleone’s information around 1689 that some of the cloths sold by Benin traders came from “other kingdoms three hundred or more miles inland.” Such market expansion may have had a significant impact on the textile workshops in Benin, Ijebu-Ode, and their environs.16

Kulfo (or Koolfu) was later mentioned by Hugh Clapperton in 1826 as “the principal town for trade in Nyfe [Nupe]” with a large market into which cloth from the west, ie Yorubaland, was imported. The most expensive cloth, called Azane was worth 3,000 cowries and measured 6x2 yards, while the slightly less expensive “Jabbo cloth” from Ijebu was about the breadth of European sailcloths.17

In 1603, the German trader Josua Ulsheimer mentions that the Dutch visited the town of “Lago” (i.e. Lagos) in 1603, and noted the availability there of “beautiful cotton cloths” brought from inland.

In ca. 1618, a Portuguese naval officer complaining of Dutch activities on the West African coast mentions Benin and Jabu (Ijebu) as one of the places from where cloth and cotton were bought.18

In 1620, a separate Portuguese account mentions the kingdom of ‘Xabu’ from which they bought “many cotton cloths of very curious patterns, which are worn by the people of the island of Sao Thome, and go from there to other places.”

Olfert Dapper’s report, published in 1668 but based on information from the 1640s or 1650s, stated that the Dutch purchased cloth at the village of “Kuramo” (i.e. Lagos) on the “Rio Lagos,” for resale on the Gold Coast.19

In 1682, an English factor visiting Apa, a coastal town in the east of the Allada kingdom, noted that cloth was brought there along the lagoon from “Boneen” (i.e. Benin), and in 1723 English traders at Whydah reported that the cloth sold there came from “Lucamee” (i.e., Olukumi, or Yorubaland).

“Jaboe cloths” from Ijebu are included among the wealth left by governor Richard Brew of Anamabu, who died in 1776, indicating that the textile trade from the region to the Gold Coast continued well into the late 18th century.20

Fort of Elmina on the Gold Coast, c. 1850.

View of the city of Benin. Published in Olfert Dapper, “Description of Africa”, 1686.

Share

The volume and complexity of the trade induced innovations in its organization.

Besides intensifying long-distance trade within the Benin region, the great demand for cloth also helped to develop the system of “trust”, or credit-trading, as a characteristic feature of European commerce in Benin.

Initially, the Oba of Benin extended credit to Portuguese traders who did not have the necessary goods to exchange for the cotton cloths. With the expansion of trade in the 17th century and the takeover by Dutch and English traders, the extension of credit moved in the opposite direction.

Father Monteleone (c. 1689) explained that “the cloths are not found ready made, but they (i.e. the traders) take goods on credit, and with these goods they have the cloth made in five or, at the most, six months.”21

At the Gold Coast, 17th-century reports observed that high officials wore “King’s garments” which were elaborately brocaded and cut-pile ceremonial shoulder cloths of the ljebuOde or their Benin counterparts.

Van Nyendael praised the textiles woven in Benin, singling out especially the ones worn by elite women. He described their locally made wrappers as “very fine” and “very beautifully chequered with several colours.” Included in his comments on dress was a reference to “a great painted cloath woven here, which they wear like a cloak.”22

The market for textiles was thus already well developed when international commerce opened up on the Bight of Benin during the 16th century, and European merchants had to adapt to this existing market.23

The reason that the very areas that produced large quantities of cloth were the same as the regions that imported it is that the market for cloth in those areas was well developed by the extensive local production.

Consumers here were already familiar with an impressive array of cloth types-plain and patterned, small and large-made of different kinds of threads, structures, and fibers. They had specific tastes and were careful to inspect merchandise thoroughly before striking a deal.24

Merchants’ records are replete with complaints and admonitions about changes in supply and demand for this or that item. Requests made by European factors for specified textile products known to sell well at a certain time reflected trends and tastes in consumer demand that differed from one port to another and among different classes of people.

As one 17th-century account noted about the consumer on the Gold Coast: “at one moment they like this new fashion, at another moment that; and whatever appeals to them at a particular time they must have .... This is why so many goods remain unsold and are sent back to Europe at great loss.”25

(left) Fourri, Roi d’Akra, (Fourri, King of Accra), Ghana, ca. 1780. (right) Portrait of William Ansah Sessarakoo, son of Eno Baisie Kurentsi (John Currantee) of Anomabu, Ghana (fl. 1736-1749).

Some of the imports closely resembled local cloth in color and pattern.

Imported linens were often the natural beige color of the fiber, while cottons from overseas were usually plain (muslins, undyed calicos, or salempors), dyed (haft or kannekins), or loom-patterned stripes and checks (such as ginghams and nicanees), as were the standard varieties of locally woven country cloth.26

Guinea cloth became a generic term for the cotton cloths woven in India and preferred by many consumers on the Guinea Coast. Painted and printed cottons (chintz) made in northwestern and south-eastern India and exported from Surat were highly prized, as were batiks (cloths patterned by wax resist), and handhani/bandanna tie-dyed silk fabrics from across South East Asia.27

Imported textiles were for the most part preselected to conform to established tastes and cultural values. European merchants quickly learned that adherence to such matters of taste was crucial if there was to be any successful trading.

For example, attempts by England’s Royal African Company to have English weavers copy certain types of these Indian-made Guinea cloths met with failure, since consumers in West Africa could easily spot the difference and consistently refused to buy the European imitations.28

Scarlet wool cloth imported from Europe was unraveled by Yoruba cloth makers; the bright red thread was then rewoven into ceremonial cloths-some for display at funerals, others to be worn as masquerade costumes representing ancestors.

In Benin, imported red wool was quickly absorbed into Edo culture, where the court closely monitored its use. A report from 1668 described the uniforms of the kingdom’s military officers as made of imported scarlet cloth.

Members of Benin’s royal weavers’ guild recounted that in the past it was their prerogative to weave a cloth reserved exclusively for the king-a complex fabric woven with bast threads, spun from the processed bark of the ighwian tree, and embellished with brocaded imagery in multicolored wool.29

John Adams's account from 1823 noted that cloth from the kingdom of Ijebu (Jaboo), whose subjects are described as an “agricultural and manufacturing people”, was purchased by traders from Lagos and for sale along the coast, and by the Portuguese for export to Brazil.

He also mentions that “The cloth manufactured in Hio [Oyo] is superior, both for variety of pattern, colour, and dimensions, to any made in the neighbouring states..” And noted that the coastal polity of Ardrah (Porto-Novo), which paid tribute to Oyo in cloth, also manufactured its own cotton cloth “into which they frequently weave threads taken from the red India silk taffity.”30

Cloth composed of 10 hand plain woven cotton and silk narrow strips hand sewn together. Decorated with blocks of supplementary weft decoration forming stripes and geometric shapes and animal figures. c. 1880-1913. Yoruba, Nigeria. British Museum, no. Af1934,0307.140

Changes in regional political landscape and international trade in the 19th century resulted in the emergence of new centers of cloth production such as the town of Akwete in Igboland.

The weavers of Akwete capitalized on their location and longstanding trading relations with wealthy oil traders in the Niger Delta towns of Bonny and Old Calabar, whose Ijaw and Efik residents developed a taste for both local and imported luxury cloths.31

Oral traditions in Akwete attribute its 19th-century textile industry to a woman trader named Dada Nwakata, who invented new weaving designs using both local and imported threads.

Examples of the much wider, more heavily patterned Akwete cloths began appearing in European museum collections in the late 19th century, having been acquired by British merchants during the 1880s and 1890s, indicating that the new textile form was established around midcentury or perhaps earlier.32

The innovation of these new products was aided by the incorporation of imported, machine-made yarn, and represented the final stage of development for this ancient industry.

By the late 19th/early 20th century, Akwete cloths were made entirely of yarn imported from Europe, which substantially increased industrial productivity while offering a broader range of colors.

Cloth (woman’s weave), a single width, hand-woven from European machine-spun cotton in yellow, red and black. c. 1880-1913. Igbo. Akwete, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af1934,0307.113.

Cloth (woman’s weave), a single width hand-woven from European machine-spun cotton. The warp is of terracotta colour, interspersed with yellow threads. 1880-1913. Igbo, Akwete, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af1934,0307.109

Cloth: single width. The cloth is composed of dyed indigo warps and wefts. The cloth is decorated with a series of geometric shapes, predominantly zig-zags and triangles forming warp bands, in dyed pink, yellow, blue and bleached white cotton. c. 1880-1913, Igbo, Akwete, Nigeria. British Museum Af1934,0307.114

Subscribe now

Manufacturing and Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics.

The beginning of cloth making in southern Nigeria is mostly known from archaeological studies, despite the limited evidence. Buried textiles tend to decompose rather quickly in tropical soils unless some sort of special condition ensures their survival.

At the 9th-century site of Igbo Ukwu, contact with copper alloys preserved some very early textiles made of bast fiber.

The types of fibers used indicate indigenous manufacture, and the heaviness of some of the yarns, along with the openwork structures of some of the cloths, point to the vertical loom as the probable tool that was used to weave them.33

A medieval mass grave in Benin City, which is now attributed to the second plague pandemic of the mid-14th century, preserved the remains of cloth fragments which survived due to the damp anaerobic condition of the deposit.34

The threads were made of both cotton and raffia, and were used singly or plied together, with heavier threads consisting of as many as seven elements plied together. The woven structures of the fabrics included plain weave, network and openwork, and supplementary wefts that were applied to show patterning on one side of the cloth.

All were probably early products of the vertical loom; and the intricacies of design and pattern-making techniques are convincing evidence that their makers had achieved a high degree of skilled craftsmanship.35

While cotton was the most common plant fibre used to make country cloths, it did not completely displace raffia cloth, which consumers continued to use for special ceremonial occasions.

Raffia cloths were among the textiles exported from the Benin kingdom and resold by Europeans elsewhere on the Guinea Coast by 1591. Around 1778, raffia wrappers made in Benin were described by a French trader at that time as woven almost as finely as silk, and 8 or 9ft in length.36

Woman’s cloth (waist) made of raffia and cotton thread. 1841. Made by the Kakanda at Egga, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af1843,0710.21

Domestic cotton production in the interior seems to have been of significant antiquity, as indicated by the making of cotton cloths since the late 15th century.

Dapper’s 17th-century account indicates that the cotton tree was extensively grown in Benin and was “of the finest sort; the wool whereof they dress, spin and weave into several sorts of cloths.”37

In his 1858 description of the kingdom of Igbomina, a Yoruba-speaking group, William Clarke reported that local cotton cultivation and trade supplied much of Yorubaland:

“The cultivation of this staple production is so extensive or so exclusive and the manufacturing department on such a large scale—comparatively speaking—the traders from Ijesa, Ilorin, Yoruba and Abeokuta flock to Ila for the purchasing of cheap cloths.

While passing through the market this morning, my attention was attracted to fifteen or twenty loads of cotton, the aggregate of which could have been scarcely less than one thousand pounds. The market for this article is said to be here every third day when, according to native testimony, two thousand loads from the farms of surrounding country are brought into town.

A native told me that the result of a single man’s farm was eighty of these loads; so that, allowing much for exaggeration, there can be no doubt that cotton is grown here very extensively and so much more so than I expected to find and that cloths purchased from lla may be sold in surrounding towns at an advance of seventy-five and a hundred per cent.”38

Clarke’s account mentions at least two types of looms were in Yorubaland: a vertical/upright loom that produced a narrow strip, and a horizontal one that produced a wider piece.

“The looms are of two varieties with all fixtures of an ordinary loom harness, sleight, treadle, shuttle, etc.” There was an apparent gendered division in use of the two looms, and a preference for unique designs. He noted that “for durability, [Yoruba textiles] far excel the prints and homespuns of Manchester. Hence the native cloths are by far the more costly.”39

The vertical loom, or the continuous warp loom, was used early on in settlements of the tropical rainforest belt along the Bights of Benin and Biafra and their hinterlands.

Weaver in Ilorin (Yorubaland). One of the earliest photographs of the woman’s vertical loom. Frobenius, 1912

Akwete Weaver, Nigeria, 1960’s

‘Native Industry, Looms, Egba.’ Yoruba, Nigeria, early 20th century.

A French merchant who made several extended visits to Benin between 1769 and 1783 observed weaving and indigo dyeing firsthand. He stated that women did both, and that the loom used was a vertical one.

Cloths were of either cotton or raffia, the former made with three breadths, the latter four breadths. Both types of wrapper were described as being 8ft long, though that figure may well have been an exaggeration. He also remarked on the volume of textile manufacture and that looms could be found in most houses.40

Cultivation of cotton for the purpose of producing textiles, noted in an 18th-century account, suggests that workshops of women weavers were well established also in the northern Yoruba kingdom of Oyo.

In 1826, while passing through Oyo, Clapperton “observed several looms going here: in one house we saw eight or ten —in fact a regular manufactory. Their cloth is in good texture, and some very fine”41

Where there were exceptions to this gendered labor pattern, it was in workshops producing special types of ceremonial cloth for political leaders and titleholders. Both men and women were observed at different times weaving in Benin’s royal palace, and cloths for titleholders in Ijebu-Ode, as well as Bunu funeral cloths, were reportedly woven by men and women.42

In 1841, Allan and Thompson visited the town of Egga, which is described as a considerable trading town. It contained “not less than two hundred looms” weaving cloth that was “white and blue, striped with grey and red.”

They were impressed with the textile industry of Egga, noting that “The manufacturing of country cloths deserves the first notice: with nothing, of African industry I ever saw, was I more pleased”43

Giving evidence before the 1842 committee on the West Coast of Africa, Macgregor Laird said that “the natives of the interior would not look at our cottons, preferring their own stronger goods”

At Egga, he noted that “The cloths made in the Nufie [sic] country, as well as the tobes, are of superior manufacture to any I have met with on the river. A good cloth may be purchased at 600 to 2,000 cowries, and a fine one may be had, dyed or plain, for about five to six thousand”

According to Lander’s journal, Egga had an immense number of bulky canoes filled with trading commodities. “Benin” and “Portuguese” cloths were worn by many. In the late 1850s, Crowther wrote about the Nupe cloth manufacturing and trading that were undertaken by both men and women.44

Gown (tobe, boubou, riga) composed of narrow strips of a uniform warp-faced pattern using trans-Saharan alaari handspun magenta silk, interspersed with narrow stripes of white and indigo handspun cotton. c. 1863-1866, Nupe or Hausa artisan. Nigeria. British Museum. Af1920,0211.1. ‘The acquisition register records that these were the ‘Robe and cap of the King of Dahomey given to Vice-Admiral Eardley Wilmot by the King of Dahomey between 1863 and 1866’. The cloth is likely to be Nupe, and the embroidery Hausa.’

Share

Pre-colonial south-western Nigeria independently developed one of the most important indigo dyeing traditions in West Africa, using potash baked in a special kiln to prepare indigo dye vats or pots.

Threads or whole cloths were dipped into the dye vats, allowed to air, and dipped again and again, depending on the desired depth of color. The patterns were made by resist dyeing (adire), in which selected areas of the cloth are tied (tie-dyeing) or painted with a dye-resistant substance (batik) to produce different motifs and patterns.45

Backstreet section in Ilorin, showing a Yoruba man dyeing cotton in indigo surrounded by a large number of large pottery containers, and single-storey thatched-roof buildings in the background. ca. 1946. British Museum

Dapper’s report in the 17th century noted that Benin cloth was dyed with multiple colours, besides indigo blue:

“Indigo grows there abundantly, and they have the art of making very good blue from it, with which they dye their cloth. They also know very well how to make ſeveral sorts of green, black, red and yellow dyes, extracted by friction and decoction, from certain trees best known to themselves: and being better skill’d in making ſoap, than any other people of Guinea, their cloths are generally very clean. Most people in Benin are clothed with it, besides what is yearly exported by themselves and foreigners, to many other parts of Guinea.”46

In 1702. van Nyendael itemized a range of dyes used on cotton cloths produced in Benin, which were patterned with checkerboards. He seemed particularly impressed by the mastery of the dyers, who were able to produce green, black, red, and yellow colors.47

In the 18th century, Landolphe commented that he saw Benin dyers pounding indigo with their feet rather than with a mortar and pestle, which might indicate volume production of dyestuff for the textile export trade.

Adams praised the industrious peoples of Allada, who manufactured cotton cloths with patterns, using dyed threads. He gave his general opinion that indigo dyeing was done exceptionally well in Allada, Oyo, and Ijebu.48

In 1826, Clapperton passed through the Yoruba town of Ijanna, staying on long enough to visit several weaving and dyeing workshops to observe how the various manufacturing processes were carried out.

Boys wove cotton strips, about four inches wide, while women were the dyers. For each dye workshop, he counted at least 20 vats. He considered the indigo dyestuff produced in these workshops to be highly durable and of excellent quality.49

cloth (ndop), made of narrow strips of handspun and hand-woven cotton, hand sewn together along the selvedges. Resist-dyed using raffia stitching to produce a regular geometric pattern in dark indigo with the design in white/light indigo lines. 1822-1824. Wukari, Northern Nigeria, British Museum, No. Af,WA.11

Indigo resist-dyed adire woman’s wrapper (adire eleko), on two panels of factory-made cotton machine-sewn together. Each square is filled by a hand-drawn pattern in starch resist which was then indigo dyed. There are three patterns, birds, tortoises and a comb. c. 1930-1940, Yoruba, Abeokuta, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af1980,38.12

Adire, women’s cloth: composed of two even lengths of machine plain woven European cotton, machine-sewn together. The textile is decorated using the starch resist method with a combination of freehand painted and stencilled designs. c. 1970, Yoruba, Nigeria. British Museum No. Af1971,35.24

Consumption and Fashion.

A mainstay of dress for men and women throughout the history of pre-colonial S.W. Nigeria has been the rectangular cloth called the wrapper, several lengths of which are worn draped around the body and secured under the arm, over the shoulder, or at the waist.

Figural sculpture portraying rulers and elites from the kingdom of Ife, dated to the 13th-15th centuries, and the kingdom of Benin, dated to the 16th-19th centuries, indicates that royal and ceremonial dress included certain types of prestige textiles that were locally woven.

(left) Copper alloy figure from the Ita Yemoo site, 14th century, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. National Museum, Lagos. (right) Copper alloy figure of a court official, 18th century, Benin City, Nigeria. British Museum.

A Benin horseman in full battle gear. 16th-17th century, Benin City, Nigeria. Welt Museum. Court official in typical garb. 16th-17th century, Benin City, Nigeria. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

According to Dapper’s 17th-century account of Benin:

“Their habit is neat and ornamental, almost to magnificence, especially among the richest sort of people, who wear first a white calico or cotton cloth, about a yard long, and half as broad, which is in the form of drawers; and over it a finer white cotton, commonly about eighteen or twenty yards long, plaited very ingeniously in the middle; and upon that again a scarf, about a yard long, and two spans broad, the end of it adorn’d with fringe or lace.

Women of the highest rank, wear fine cloths of their country make, ingeniously chequer’d of several colours. The upper part of the body is covered with a beautiful cloth, a yard long or more. The meaner sort of women differ from the richer, only in the goodness of their clothes: some wear a sort of blue calico-frock or jacket, which hangs down almost to their knees, with a small narrow cloth over their breasts.”50

In his 1858 description of Yorubaland, William Clarke observed the following about local fashion:

“The dress of the natives certainly bespeaks for them a higher position than that generally assigned to people of this benighted continent. All classes, rich and poor, male and female, are generally well clad and have a sufficiency for a warm tropical climate. There is a variety of dress that is found in other countries and about with as much pride in the selection of style, colours, etc., even among the boasted civilized.

A full-made dress consists of a large shawl or wrapper or toga flowing robe, pants and cap. The shawl is a large oblong piece of cloth six by four feet and is thrown gracefully over the shoulders so as to fall to the knees and below and leave one arm exposed.

The toga or gown is a very large garment covering nearly the entire body with folds to be thrown over the shoulders so as to allow free circulation of air around the body, and the pants are either short, reaching to the knee, or half length, or full and lengthy, resembling precisely the Turkish trousers. The latter garment is guided by a string around the loins. The cap is round or peaked at the top with long ears and is made of native cloth or velvet and silk.”51

Tunic composed of repeating narrow strips (aso oke) sewn together. Warp stripes in dark indigo-dyed and white cotton and alaari (magenta silk), with alaari weft stripe. Embroidered with repeating knot designs in white cotton on front and back. c.1890-1910. Yoruba, Nigeria. British Museum, No. 2018,2036.162

Trousers, formed from 22 hand-woven strips about 4 inches wide of handspun cotton, hand-sewn together along the selvedges. c. 1900-1930, Yoruba, Nigeria. British Museum Af1966,01.10.b

Woman’s wrapper (aṣọ-òkè), 20th century. Cotton, rayon, dye. Yorùbá, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. Brooklyn Museum No. 1990.132.2.

For the majority of the population, conventions of dress were revised, not revolutionized, by the international trade in textiles, as evidenced by the continued production of distinctive styles of embellishment.

One distinctive type of ceremonial cloth from Ijebu-Ode, known as aso olona, or “cloth with patterns,” was heavily embellished with brocaded patterns and worn either draped on the shoulder of chiefs and titleholders in the Oshugbo society, or as a large wrapper of several breadths sewn together and again as a prerogative of chiefs, titleholders, priests, and other members of the ruling elite.

The most important motifs woven into these cloths were schematic representations of water-dwelling creatures-crocodiles, frogs, fish, snakes-that symbolized deities and forces of the spiritual domain.52

Cloth (Oshogbo society aso olona title wrapper) formed of four panels, hand-woven (woman’s weave) and then hand-sewn together. The white thread is locally hand-spun, while the green, pink, yellow and blue threads are of imported European manufacture. c. 1890-1910, Yoruba, Ijebu Ode, Nigeria. British Museum Af1966,01.26

Local competition and European imports

In markets affected by increased competition from both local and imported cloth during the 19th century, one strategy was to aim at the higher-priced sector of the market by producing cloth with complex patterning as either openwork or brocaded stripes and motifs.

Some women also ensured higher prices for their textile products by working with finer-quality yarns and weaving denser fabric, features that could easily be recognized by discerning consumers.

Examples collected by the 1841 expedition to the market town of Egga indicate that Nupe weavers produced the most expensive ones: narrow striped headdcloths made of fine silk and cotton that would have been exported northward to Kano.53

Dyed gown or tobe: a tunic with wide flared sleeves made up of 110 hand-woven narrow strips of hand-hand cotton, sewn together along the selvedges. c. 1841, Eggan, Nigeria. British Museum, No. Af1843,0311.53

Curator’s comments: “Here we have the famous “elephant shirt”, the kore nyffe, which was, with the “guinea- fowl” shirt, the most famous of the Nupe exports to the north, where these shirts were valued sometimes as highly as the “guinea-fowl” shirts. … This tobe, made in Egga, cost 7,000 cowries; it was probably of better quality than the 23 Kore Nyffi that Barth bought in Katsina in 1853 for an average of 6,5000 cowries.”

Man’s trousers, composed of narrow strips (aso oke) sewn together. Woven in indigo-dyed and white cotton with alaari (magenta silk) warp stripes. Hand-embroidered in white and green cotton thread. c. 1880-1900. Nupe, Nigeria. British Museum, No. 2018,2036.154

Hooded red cloak (burnous) made of silk, cotton and wool. ‘Although the red cloth is European, the tailoring and embroidery is Nigerian, and it was probably sewn by Nupe craftsmen in Bida.’ c. 1900. Nigeria. British Museum. No. Af1902,1116.5

Increasing imports of plain, lightweight cotton during the colonial period facilitated the rapid popularisation of starch resist-dyeing (adire eleko), which required very fine, thin fabric with an even, smooth surface.

Major centers of adire eleko manufacture developed in the southern cities of Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan, and Oshogbo. Imports grew substantially, numbering 40 million square yards yearly between 1896 and 1906, and increasing to 100 million square yards per year by 1912.54

Among the best-known types of resist-dyed cloths from this region are the so-called Olokun cloths. Although the names for this cloth and its designs serve to localize and naturalize the imagery in Yoruba textile traditions, visual evidence suggests the cloth belongs to a much larger family of West African textile traditions, such as the adinkra cloths of the Gold Coast, both of which feature elaborate geometric patterns, grids, and animal motifs.55

Cloth with Olokun, Goddess of the Sea Motif (adire eleko). Imported cotton cloth, indigo dye with starch resist. c. 1973, Yoruba, Nigeria. Harn Museum No. 2007.30.1

Yarn imports into West Africa by Katharine Frederick

The impact of cheaper imports (both cotton thread and cotton cloths) was complex and varied considerably across the different markets, as demonstrated by the following example:

One of the leading African merchants in Lagos, Chief D. C. Taiwo, was still exporting “country cloths” from Egga in the interior to Lagos at the coast in 1881. In return, he was importing European cloth for interior markets, which consisted of silk alayan, dyed Manchester cloth, Madras headcloths, embossed velvet and spotted prints.56

Cloth from Lagos, ultimately obtained in the interior, was still exported in the thousands right up to the end of the 19th century, mainly for the Gold Coast market, but some was sent to Brazil as it had been nearly three centuries earlier.57

In 1891 the colonial agents Joseph Thomson and Alvan Millson made calculations of the quantities used in Yoruba clothing, looking wistfully at the possibilities of replacing this by exports from England.

Millson calculated that the Yorubas consumed ‘not less than 31,000,000 yards of cotton, silk, grass and mixture cloth’; over 95% was of local manufacture, made of home-grown cotton, dyed with native dyes, woven of yarn spun by hand. Nearly 25% of the population was engaged in producing cloth or dyes for the local market.

At 3d. a yard, the value of the annual output was some £375,000. Weavers earned 2d. a day on average (more accurate estimates put this figure much higher at 1s. 4d.) . In the previous year, Lagos imports of cotton piece goods had been some £200,000, and English cottons were selling at about 3d. a yard.58

The expansion of imported cloth, as well as colonial labor exploitation and coercive taxation policies, resulted in the decline of the local textile industry during the 20th century.

However, the decline of Nigeria’s ancient textile industry was a much more gradual process than the “deindustrialization of the periphery” thesis would suggest.59

According to the historian Marion Johnson, even though rising imports naturally led to a declining overall market share for domestic textiles, this by no means implied that local manufacturing was fading. Rather, in the context of increasing demand, the “absolute output” of local industries in West Africa may have “even been expanding” well into the second half of the 20th century.60

Moreover, rather than signaling deindustrialization, foreign competition often stimulated local innovation.

For example, besides the distinctive Akwete cloth, Igbo weavers sometimes reproduced popular imported patterns that had fallen out of production in European factories, flipping on its head a European strategy of mimicking African cloth.61

Textile production continued in much of Nigeria well into the post-colonial era. Imports from Asia would ultimately claim a large relative share of the expanding Nigerian textile market, but locally made cloth retained a strong foothold.

When the Federation of British Industry surveyed the Nigerian textile industry in the mid-1960s, it was estimated that 50,000,000 square yards of cloth, comprising 13% of all cloth consumed in the country, were annually woven on the traditional hand-looms.62

The ancient textile industry of Nigeria was thus one of the few clothmaking centers in Africa to thrive long after textile production declined across much of the continent during the colonial period, persisting into the post-colonial era.

Illustration of a ‘Palaver’ (public meeting) not far from Badagry (Nigeria), by William Allen, ca. 1841

The naturalistic Rock paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer in southeastern Algeria were once described as “the greatest museum of prehistoric art in the whole world,” containing “the most ancient data that we have concerning Negro art.”

My latest Patreon article examines the debates regarding the identity of the ancient painters of Tassili.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

THE ANCIENT PAINTERS OF THE SAHARA

Its stone monuments and rock paintings provide important repositories of prehistoric evidence for ancient migrations and the spread of technologies across Africa.

Around 1600 BC, the Hyksos introduced the horse-drawn chariot to Egypt, from where it spread southward to the kingdom of Kerma (Kush in Sudan) and westward among the nomadic pastoralists of the Sahara, reaching as far as modern Mauritania.1

In Saharan rock paintings, many of the depictions of vehicles show two-wheeled chariots pulled by two galloping horses and carrying a single charioteer. Instead of an enclosed chariot box, the charioteer stands on a flat floor, while in some depictions he stands directly on the axle, precariously balanced as the vehicle moves.

The depictions nevertheless display considerable variation, and much of the artwork is highly schematic. A smaller number of examples show chariots at rest, being harnessed, or even drawn by bovines. Some are depicted without horses, while a few vehicles have four wheels and were presumably carts rather than chariots.2

Distribution map for African rock art.

Distribution of chariot and horse rock art from the Sahara. Map by D.J. Mattingly et. al

Chariot painting from Tassili n’ Ajjer, Algeria. Image by TARA.3

Ala-n-Edoument: War Chariot: Period of the ‘Flying Gallop’ Chariots. Image by Henri Lhote.

Chariots with horses in a “flying gallop”. Rock engraving from Oued Djerat, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. Wikimedia Commons.

“Titeras n Elias. Four-wheeled chariot. Horse Period.” Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. Quai Branly

“TADJELAMINE . The detail of the chariot reproduced on the left [bottom] has been shown by itself to indicate the position of the driver, standing on the pole and apparently balancing precariously. As we have already pointed out, it is difficult to imagine a chariot of this sort on a long journey. The vehicle reproduced at the top is unusual in that it is mounted on four wheels.” Images and caption by Jean-Dominique Lajoux.

There has been much discussion of the distribution of the various representations of wheeled vehicles. They have been found along two corridors extending southward across the desert to the bend of the Niger River, originating respectively in Libya and Morocco.

These so-called ‘chariot tracks’ have been interpreted as evidence for trans-Saharan trade some 2,500 years ago. However, this interpretation has been strongly criticized, and there is no other archaeological evidence to substantiate the existence of such long-distance trade networks during this period.4

The archaeologists Sonja and Carlos Magnavita, whose survey of Neolithic sites along the southern margins of the Sahara found no evidence of northern imports dating to the 1st millennium BC, have characterized repeated references to ancient trans-Saharan trade as a ‘factoid,’ i.e., “a speculation or guess that has been repeated so often it is eventually taken for hard fact.”5

Herodotus (4.183), writing in the 5th century BC, provides the earliest and apparently sole ancient reference to the use of “four-horse chariots” by the Garamantes of southwestern Libya against the Troglodyte aithiopians during this period.

A much later reference by Strabo (17.3.7), dating to around 22 CE during the Roman period, mentions the use of “scythe-bearing chariots” by Libyan peoples known as the ‘Pharusians’ and ‘Nigritae.’

Subsequently, a substantial body of literature has been built upon these fragmentary references to argue for a role for the chariot in the expansion of the Afro-Asiatic language family across the ancient Sahara, especially the Imazighen (Berber) languages.6

Distribution of chariot engravings. Map by Alain Gallay. In grey: the area in which chariots are mentioned in historical sources. Dashed lines: possible gradient of the distribution of chariots from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea

Spread of the Tazina style of rock art and the early spread of the Berber languages. Map by Alain Gallay.7

Such ancient interactions and migrations were often simplified, particularly in colonial literature and early scholarship on the spread of domesticates and technologies, which frequently attributed them to distinct contemporary ethnicities and/or “races.”

The historian Richard Smith, drawing on a range of classical sources concerning the ancient ‘Libyan’ peoples of the Sahara, cautions against assigning fixed ethnic or racial identities to groups described in historical texts.

He points to the existence of enigmatic groups such as the Leukaethiopes (“white Aithiopians”), the Melanogaetulians (“black Gaetulians”), and the Nigritae (“blacks”), who were found alongside other Aithiopians in the northern Sahara..8

The geographers Pomponius Mela (c.43 CE) and Pliny (c.77 CE), who were Strabo’s near-contemporaries, considered the Pharusii and Nigritae, who used “scythe-bearing chariots,” to be aithiopians.9

Interestingly, many images of chariots come from areas of the Central Sahara (such as Tassili n’Ajjer and Akakus) whose rugged terrain was unsuitable for chariots, while comparatively few representations have come from the Garamantian heartlands.10

As the archaeologist David Mattingly observes;

“The idea that the Garamantes travelled long distances across the Sahara in their chariots is clearly nonsensical, as anyone who knows the terrain will attest. But, between the sand and hard rock areas, there are stretches of gravel plain which would have been an ideal surface for chariots and the great advantage of the chariot was that it could easily be disassembled for onward transport and then reassembled for use.”11

“A typical Tassilian landscape.” S.E. Algeria. Image and caption by Jean-Dominique Lajoux.

According to Léone Allard-Huard, the majority of ancient Saharan chariots were used for ‘individual sport’ and hunting rather than in warfare.12

Among the images of chariots from Tassili n’Ajjer in South-Eastern Algeria reproduced by Léone Allard-Huard, only one depicts a charioteer with a shield; the majority of the riders simply hold whips or reins of the horses.13

Weapons of war such as bows, arrows, and clubs are almost exclusively carried by figures on foot, while the few charioteers shown with javelins likely used them for hunting rather than combat. This pattern contrasts with depictions of chariots from the Nile Valley, which often carry bowmen who are shown engaged in combat.14

Antelope hunt using a chariot.

Images of chariots from Tassili n’Ajjer by Léone Allard-Huard

Chariot drawn by galloping horses, with human figures and dogs. Tin Aboteka, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. Quai Branly Museum.

Rock painting depicting archers. Jabbaren, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria.

Painting showing a battle scene. Sefar, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria.

Despite the wide distribution of chariot depictions in ancient Saharan rock paintings, the introduction of the wheel appears to have had little impact on Saharan societies compared to those of the Nile Valley.

This is especially evident in the kingdom of Kush, where there was extensive use of the wheel in both military and civilian transportation, pottery making, and irrigation.

Moreover, no chariot teams have so far been uncovered in Garamantian graves, in contrast to the four-horse burials associated with the 25th Dynasty kings of Kush, which were found beneath the pyramids of Nuri in Sudan.15

Rock engraving depicting a chariot figure and groups of captives. Found at Nag Kolorodna in lower Nubia. Interpreted as a victory scene for the ruler of Kerma in the 17th century BC based on stylistic similarities with both Kushite and Egyptian art.16

Nubians bringing tribute, Tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Kush under Tutankhamen (ca 1341- 1323 BC)

Colorised image from Temple M250, Meroe, Sudan, depicting a battle scene showing marching figures and a chariot (or wagon?) pulled by a horse. University of Liverpool, ca. 1911.

The intended meanings of the majority of these ancient paintings of Saharan chariots remain elusive, and aren’t immediately decipherable by a present-day observer.

Modern studies of rock paintings often evoke extremely far-fetched speculations: ethnographic art is notorious for revealing as much about its observers as about its makers.17

According to the archaeologist Gabriel Camps, there are no scenes that unequivocally depict the chariots being used in warfare.18

This observation is supported by the fact that the majority of the rock-art images depict bigae (chariots pulled by two horses), rather than quadrigae (drawn by four horses), the latter of which were more commonly used in combat:

“The light Saharan bigae could not have been war chariots, to which, as we have said, no painted or engraved scene actually refers. The presence of a single person on the platform also does not correspond to a warlike use of these machines. Near Eastern war chariots have at least two passengers, the driver and the archer or spearman.

The Ramesside bas-reliefs of Abu Simbel, representing the Battle of Kadesh, show heavy Hittite and Egyptian chariots occupied by three people: the driver, the spearman, and the shield-bearer. It is a royal license that allows the Egyptian artist to so often represent the pharaoh alone on his chariot”

He suggests that the chariots were ‘prestige’ symbols used in ceremonial contexts by the aristocracy of the ancient Saharan communities.19

Warrior figure standing next to a flattened-out chariot with two horses, turned to the side, lying back to back. Iwellene, Niger. British Museum.

Scholars have suggested that these images of chariots were created not by the owners of such vehicles themselves, but by groups who came into contact with oasis-based agricultural communities that had adopted horses and chariots.

The images may therefore have served a practical purpose, transmitting knowledge of a potential threat, or simply recording something unfamiliar that had captured the imagination of pastoral communities.20

Whatever their precise purpose, the age of the wheel in the Sahara was abruptly ended by the introduction of the more efficient Camel about 2,000 years ago as increasing aridity transformed the region and the desert expanded.

Yet nearly 5,000 years earlier, the Sahara had been a lush, tropical environment that supported a much greater diversity of domesticated animals and the human societies that kept them.

The highland regions, or massifs, of the Sahara are dotted with thousands of paintings and engravings depicting scenes from a much wetter climate.

The most famous of these sites is Tassili n’Ajjer in southeastern Algeria, once described as “the greatest museum of prehistoric art in the whole world” and now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many of the paintings at Tassili are remarkably informative about the lives of the ancient communities that produced them.

They include scenes of hunting, herding, and warfare, alongside more enigmatic depictions of masked dancers and anthropomorphic figures with “Round Heads,” which were rather confusingly nicknamed “Martians.”

Some of these paintings are very detailed and well preserved, displaying a variety of physical profiles that colonial explorers and anthropologists attempted to associate with specific “races” thought to have inhabited the Sahara before its transformation into a barren desert.

Such attributions of particular rock-art styles to different “racial” types have persisted among some professional scholars who study Tassilian art, long after the decline of “race science” in mainstream academia.

More recent approaches have instead drawn on anthropological data from modern nomadic groups, proposing cultural affinities between ancient Saharan imagery and the pastoral ceremonies of the Fulani, the mythological traditions of the Tuareg, and the masked dances of the Dogon.

The rock paintings of Tassili, and the identity of their ancient artists, are the subject of my latest Patreon article.

Please subscribe to read about it here:

THE ANCIENT PAINTERS OF THE SAHARA

The religion was subsequently adopted by wider sections of the population, in large part through the institution of monasticism, which first emerged among the desert monks of Egypt.

The Egyptian monastic movement exerted a decisive influence throughout the Roman Empire, with figures such as the 4th-century monks Anthony and Pachomius being venerated across the early Christian world, from Western Europe to Ethiopia.

In North-East Africa, the rise of monasticism in Aksum and Nubia established Christianity as a popular religion beyond the royal capitals, while contributing to the production of some of the oldest written records from the continent.

These developments were sustained by networks of African monks and pilgrims living in monasteries across Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, creating a dynamic and interconnected Christian world that continued to thrive for centuries after the Arab conquest and the widespread adoption of Islam.

The ancient monks of north-east Africa reveal an overlooked chapter in the history of religion in Africa, challenging the enduring misconception that Africa was isolated from the wider currents of global history.

This essay provides a brief overview of the history of African monasticism during the early Christian period, focusing in particular on the relationship between Egyptian monks and their southern neighbours in Aksum and Nubia during antiquity

Map of Egypt showing some of the monasteries.1

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

PATREON

A brief background on early Christianity in Egypt before the 5th century.

Christianity is attested in Egypt from the late 1st century CE. The country occupies a privileged position in biblical tradition as the place of refuge for the Holy Family during the reign of King Herod, the Roman client king of Judea.2

Roman Egypt (30 BC-642 CE) had inherited the Pharaonic religion, onto which a classical gloss had been superimposed, mostly during the preceding Ptolemaic period (332–30 BCE).

The main deities included the ancient gods: Ra, Ptah, Horus, Isis, Bes, and others to whom were dedicated numerous temples and cultic centers. In the Ptolemaic period, Horus was equated with Apollo, Thoth with Hermes, Amun with Zeus, Hathor with Aphrodite, etc., while a few new deities were added to the pantheon, such as Serapis.3

Christianity first appeared in Alexandria, then spread to urban centers along the Nile, and, by the middle of the 3rd century, to the rural towns and villages of the Delta and Nile Valley.

Coptic traditions, first recorded in the 4th century by Eusebius, suggest that St. Mark the evangelist founded the see of Alexandria in 68 CE and ordained Anianus as the city’s first bishop.4

The prominence of early Christian theologians such as Clement of Alexandria (147-215 CE) and his teacher Pantaenus (d. 200) indicates that the religion was well established in the city by the 2nd century.5

St. Mark the Evangelist, left side of East wall in the monastery of St. Anthony, Egypt. 13th century. Image and Caption from UCLA Library Digital Collections.

It was during this period that Coptic, which is the late stage of the Egyptian language written in Greek and Demotic characters, was increasingly employed by Christians for both documentary and literary purposes.

Christians in late antique Egypt wrote extensively in Greek and Coptic, and both languages are heavily attested in manuscripts and documentary papyri as well as ostraca. Translations of the Septuagint and New Testament appear by 300 CE, along with one of the world’s first codices (a forerunner to the modern book).6

Christianity remained diverse through Late Antiquity, in ritual practice, theology, and institutional structure. A variety of groups/sects flourished and competed for adherents and imperial support.

In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean region, “orthodox” groups (not to be confused with modern Orthodoxy) appear only in the 3rd and 4th centuries, while groups eventually labeled as “heretical” are attested already in the 2nd century.7

It’s important to note that members of all dogmatic groups labelled themselves as “orthodox” in contrast to all other Christians who, in their mind, were the “heretics.”

Onomastic material provided by documentary sources suggests that Egypt was 9% Christian in 276–285; 48% in 336–345; and 76.3% in 436–445. Claimants to orthodoxy vied for imperial support, as manifested in buildings, endowments, and various institutional and political privileges and responsibilities. Melitians, Arians, Nicenes, and other groups also sought and sometimes received this support.8

The Crosby–Schøyen Codex MS 193 from Alexandria, Egypt. 3rd century CE. Image from Christie’s, London. It’s considered one of the earliest extant MSS in codex form; the earliest Christian liturgical book in existence; and the oldest book in private ownership.

Share

Christian and non-Christian sources suggest that the 3rd century was a period of religious conflict between the different sects and persecution by the state, beginning in the reign of Decius (249-251) and accelerating during the reign of Valerian (253-260) and the “Great Persecution” of Diocletian in 303-313.9

In Egypt, evidence for these persecutions during the time of Decius and Valerian seems to have been most concerned with the Church leaders and wasn’t targeted against Christians specifically, but affected “pagans” as well.10

Under Diocletian, a series of edicts made it illegal for Christians to gather, ordered the destruction of churches, confiscated Christian texts, arrested the clergy, and apparently ordered universal sacrifice.11

During Diocletian’s Great Persecution, Egypt was particularly hard hit and suffered the death of its bishop, Peter I of Alexandria, in 311. The Church in Egypt became the “Church of the Martyrs,” beginning its calendar with the year of Diocletian’s accession: AM 1, anno martyrorum, “the year of the martyrs.”12

The Great Persecution ended when Emperor Constantine ushered in the “Peace of the Church” in 313. In the succeeding period, both the Christian clergy and Imperial forces now turned against the “Pagans.”

Many Christian literary works refer to the ‘destruction’ of temples in Late Antiquity. However, the historians David Brakke and Jitse Dijkstra have shown that many of these writings conflate the re-occupation of abandoned and disused temples with descriptions of real but relatively few cases of temple destruction in later periods.13

A variety of evidence, including temple inscriptions, papyri, and archaeological remains, indicates that the economic foundation of the temples had been severely weakened by the early 4th century due to internal causes that began in the early Roman period when Imperial administration undermined their financial independence.14

The priestly staff, regular sacrifices, and festal calendar of temples gradually disappeared, to be replaced by more individualized strategies of communication through oracles and diviners outside the temples, as well as domestic cults in private houses where wall niches contained images and icons of gods, just as later niches in monastic cells feature Christian iconography.15

Isis and Harpocrates, wall painting from southern wall of House B50E at Karanis. The Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan.

For example, cultic activity at the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari at Thebes ended by the mid-2nd century CE, and by the 4th century at the temples at Kellis in the Dakhla Oasis the 4th century. In 301 CE, the abandoned Temple of Amun at Thebes (Luxor) was reused as a military camp during the reign of Diocletian.16

Active temple cults seem to have been mostly maintained in the south, especially in Lower Nubia at the Isis temple in Philae.17

Two 7th-century Coptic texts mention a certain Macedonius belonging to the orthodox claimants, who is thought to have been the first Christian bishop of Philae (330-50 CE), and reportedly ended the ‘pagan’ practice of falcon worship on the island by killing the sacred bird. However, the historicity of this account is doubtful.18

A bit more certain is the career of the monk Shenoute, who became the abbot of the ‘White Monastery’ in 385. Shenoute, the most significant Coptic writer, led the struggle against adherents of the old religions and destroyed their temples, especially at Akhmim. When the Blemmye raiders attacked Upper Egypt, his monastery reportedly took in thousands of refugees.19

The last “pagan” inscription at Philae by the priest of the Isis temple is dated to 456.

While the 7th-century Coptic text mentions three Bishops that succeeded Macedonius during the 4th century, the oldest Christian inscriptions from the island are dated to 449 or 460 and mention a Bishop Daniel. It wasn’t until the 6th century that the abandoned Isis temple was transformed into a Church by Bishop Theodore (525-577).20

Temple of Isis at Philae

The Invention of Monasticism in Egypt.

Christians had experimented with ascetic practices since the 1st century, but the full flowering of dramatic renunciations and spiritual exercises was particularly marked in late antique Egypt.

The first ascetic known as a monachos (monk) appears in a papyrus dated to 324 CE, which mentions a monk named Isaac, who, along with a deacon named Antoninus, settled a village dispute.

Isaac likely represented the early apotactic (renunciant) movement that was centered not in the desert but in the cities and villages, involving those who lived lives of personal renunciation in service to the Church.

This movement preceded both the anchoritic (solitary) and cenobitic (communal) forms of monasticism, such as those represented by the famous monastic founders Anthony, the “Father of Monasticism,” and Pachomius.21

Anthony (251-356 CE), a rich man who rejected his inheritance and departed for the desert around 270. First learning from older ascetics/hermits, later battling demonic temptation in the solitude of a tomb, and at the foot of Mt. Colzim (Qulzum) near the Red Sea, the site of the present-day Monastery of St. Anthony, where he attracted his own disciples by 305.

Anthony’s career is recounted in the Greek Life of Anthony, a pioneering work of Christian hagiography attributed to bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (328-373), who portrays Anthony as a “holy man” with broad influence, teaching disciples, debating philosophers, and exchanging letters with Emperor Constantine.22

Anthony, and the monastery that still bears his name, are part of 4th-century Egyptian monasticism. Around 320, Pachomius founded the first community of his koinonia at Tabennisi in Upper Egypt. Around 330, when Anthony was living on the inner mountain, St. Macarius of Egypt founded a monastic community in Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun).23

Aerial shot of the Monastery of St. Anthony the Great. UCLA

St. Antony and St. Paul (left); an anonymous bishop, and St. Isaac the priest (right). East wall of Eastern Nave Monastery of St. Anthony. 13th century. UCLA

According to biographies written in the 4th or 5th century, Pachomius (ca. 292–348 CE) first apprenticed to a local hermit, gaining enough experience to live on his own near Tabennisi, a village in Upper Egypt north of Thebes. Pachomius gathered followers and organized them into several “houses.”

He founded a number of monasteries, delegating authority across an extensive hierarchy, and establishing a set of rules to govern his developing federation, the Koinonia. Pachomius’s Koinonia attracted a broad array of professions and status levels, and included female communities, the first of which was governed by his sister, Mary.

Pachomius and other cenobitic leaders claimed to provide both physical and spiritual necessities to monks: on the one hand, room, board, health care, and burial; on the other, offering them the path to salvation. In turn, they demanded complete obedience from their disciples through following the extensive institutional schedule of work and prayer.24

Over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries, Egyptian cenobitic practices founded by Pachomius spread across the Mediterranean world up to Western Europe, and southwards to Ethiopia and Nubia (see sections below).

Many early monks, who are not included in this essay for the sake of brevity, also contributed significantly to the development of monasticism in the Christian world.

The ‘White monastery’ of Shenoute in Upper Egypt. Named after the limestone used to construct its massive exterior walls

While the monastic institution appeared separate from the clergy, the two were often complementary, since the clergy regarded the authority of the great monks as considerably important. For example, monasteries such as St. Macarius in Scetis supplied some of the monks who ascended to the patriarchal throne in Alexandria.25

Between the 4th and 5th centuries, monasteries rapidly became numerous throughout Egypt. Thousands flocked to the Egyptian deserts to serve an apprenticeship in the art of monasticism.

Palladius of Galatia (d.430 CE) reported 5,000 monks in Nitria and 600 in Kellia around 390. At the beginning of the 5th century, St. Jerome stated that 50,000 Pachomian monks attended the annual meeting. Sources speak of 2,200 monks and 1,800 nuns under Shenute (d. 464 CE) at Atripe, and of 3,500 monks in Scetis ca. 570.26

While some of these figures were exaggerated and were used as a measure of a monastery’s importance rather than an actual headcount of the number of monks at each monastery, they suggest a significant expansion of monastic communities in late antique Egypt.27

Women constituted a significant population of ascetics. At the time when monasticism first appeared in Egypt in the late 3rd to early 4th century, the position of female ascetics had been firmly rooted in the long-established and respected tradition of the Church. Like their male peers, a number of them were involved in the theological debates of the time, especially the Arian controversy.28

Pachomius founded two monasteries for women, and a third was established by his successor Theodorus. Palladius affirms that there were twelve monasteries for women in the single town of Antinoopolis in the Fayyum. Later, 1,800 lived under the authority of Shenute.29

A significant proportion of Egypt’s monastic population came from neighbouring Christian societies, most notably the Syrian monks who had their own ‘Monastery of the Syrians’ (Dayr al-Surian), as well as Armenian monks, Ethiopian monks and Nubian monks who held various monasteries, especially in Scetis/Wadi el-Natrun.30

The Nubian and Ethiopian monks are examined in later sections below.

Interior view of the sanctuary. The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān. Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt.

Crisis and Expansion: The spread of Monasticism to Aksum and Nubia.

In the 5th century, two major developments reshaped Egyptian monasticism, strengthening the institution’s resilience while also facilitating its subsequent expansion southward into Nubia and Aksum.

The first of these was the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the insecurities along its borders as raiders such as the Mazices-Berbers devastated prominent monasteries in Scetis (Wadi al Natrun) in 407-8, 410, 444, and 507 CE. They sacked the monasteries of St. Macarius, St. John the Little, and St. Bishoi. 31

The most devastating of these raids occurred in 570 CE and left Scetis virtually abandoned for the next several decades. In all of these sacks, many, if not all, of the monastic buildings were wrecked, the churches plundered, and the monks either slain or carried off as captives.32

Hagiographical records typically identify these types of brigands within tribal categories including those of the Mazices to the north-west, Blemmeyes in the south, and Saracens in the east.

These upheavals are reflected in the career of one of Scetis’ most famous monks: St. Moses the Ethiopian (also called Moses the black).

According to Palladius, Moses was originally a bandit who decided to become a monk. He met St. Isidore and St. Macarius and lived a highly ascetic life, and was later ordained to the priesthood. Knowing beforehand of a possible raid by the Mazices, he warned his disciples and advised those who could escape. He remained with seven other monks at al-Baramus to be martyred by the raiders.33

St. Pisentius and St. Moses the Black, West wall of Eastern Nave, Monastery of St. Anthony, Egypt. 13th century. UCLA.

St. Moses the Ethiopian and St. Kallinikos painting in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Annunciation, Jerusalem.

Moses and seven companions were slain; St. John the Little and St. Bishoi, the founders of two monasteries in Scetis, fled and died soon in exile. Destruction and rebuilding became a motif of the monasteries through their later history.

The second and arguably more consequential development was the controversy over the Council of Chalcedon, which deepened the division between the Egyptian Church and the Byzantine imperial church and contributed to the wider schism between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christianity.

In 451, the Council of Chalcedon accepted the Tome of Leo, Bishop of Rome, which affirmed that Christ existed in two natures, divine and human. In its aftermath, competing Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian (Miaphysite) hierarchies claimed authority over the Egyptian Church. The non-Chalcedonian Church ultimately became dominant in Egypt, although the process unfolded over several decades and was facilitated by the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641–642.34

The divided nature of the Church in Egypt was reflected also in the monasteries.

The Pachomian monastery of Metanoia at Canopus in Lower Egypt had Melkite leanings, while the Pachomian monasteries in Upper Egypt remained anti-Chalcedonian until the time of Justinian (d.565). The monastery of Kellia, west of the Nile Delta, which was originally one church, became two, each with its own baptistry, possibly for baptizing converts from the other side.35

In Alexandria, the fierce competition meant the throne of the Patriachate often changed hands, but there were also instances when the city had two sitting patriarchs, including some pretenders.36

The Aksumite empire and the Nubian kingdoms were drawn into the orbit of the Alexandrian Patriarch.

Frumentius, the first bishop of Aksum, was appointed by the Patriarch Athanasius (328–373) during the reign of King Ezana. The greater antiquity of Christianity in Aksum (c. 340 CE) meant that its church was pre-Chalcedonian and only chose to retain its non-Chalcedonian status after the Council of 451.37

In Nubia, both confessions initially existed side by side, the kingdom of Makuria being Chalcedonian and Noubadia non-Chalcedonian. After their unification following the Arab invasion of Nubia c. 651 CE, the combined church in Makuria came under the authority of Alexandria as a non-Chalcedonian Church.38

In spite of its ecclesiastical allegiance to the Patriarchate of Alexandria, Christian Nubia was politically independent of Egypt, which was, until the Arab conquest, a province of the Byzantine Empire.

Early evidence for the presence of monks in Nubia appears in the 5th-century Coptic letters found in Qasr Ibrim. One of the letters was sent from a monk named Moses to Tantani, an official. On the one hand, the letter documents contacts of monks with Nubia; on the other hand, it seems clear that Tantani was a Christian in the administration.39

Monasticism in the kingdoms of Noubadia and Makuria appeared in an already developed institutional form by the 6th-7th century.

Monasteries built during this period include Qasr al-Wizz (Apa Dios) near Faras in lower Nubia, Kom H at Old Dongola, Ghazali in the Bayuda Desert, the former temple of Taharqa at Qasr Ibrim, and the monastery at al-Rahmal. All were expanded in later centuries; the largest at Ghazali could house about 70 monks.40

Monastic sites of Nubia. Map by S. Maślak, reproduced by A. Obluski.

Ruins of Qasr el Wizz, c. 1910. Geoffrey S. Mileham.

Apa Dios (Qasr el-Wizz), church. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

Monasticism in Nubia is largely known from archaeological evidence. It was mostly coenobitic, with monks living in institutionally organised monasteries enclosed by a physical barrier in the form of a wall.

According to the archaeologist Artur Obluski, the El-Ghazali monastery “can be called a textbook example of a coenobitic monastery, as its spatial organisation was conceived and planned with proper know-how, or good knowledge of what coenobitism really represents.”41

Its spatial organization was made up of three zones: one dedicated to spiritual and religious activity represented by the church (es); a second zone devoted to economic and household activity, and included bakeries, storerooms, kitchens and mills; and a third zone for catering to basic human needs, with dormitories, refectories and toilets.42

The monastery of el-Gahazali.

The lavatory complex (toilets) at el-Ghazali, Sudan. Image by Miron Bogacki.

Besides the widespread use of Coptic writing (alongside the Greek and Old Nubian scripts), a connection to Egyptian monasticism in Nubia is found in the monastery of Kom H at Dongola, which was probably dedicated to St. Anthony, as suggested by the funerary stela of the Abba Georgios (d. 1113), who was an archimandrite of this monastery.43

Additionally, the sayings of St. Pachomius (apa Pachom) in an anchorite grotto in the Faras cathedral dated c. 780 CE, along with the sayings of Apa Evagrius, Apa Ezaias, Apa Arsenios, and Apa Makarios. The 5th-century collection known as the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers’ was thus known in Nubia.44

However, while Egypt was the cradle of monasticism from which the institution spread to Nubia, it soon developed into a distinctively Nubian form.

Obluski observes;

“In sixth-century Nubia, coenobitic monasticism may have appeared already in a form that was spatially well planned, well suited to the needs of the community…

It would be difficult to find direct parallels between early Egyptian, for example Pachomian monasticism, and the Nubian one due to the considerable variety in architectural forms of the former, resulting from its polycentric and highly individualized development.”45

Dongola, Kom H, drone photo of the monastery. Image by Roman Łopaciuk

Kom H monastery at Old Dongola, Sudan.

In the Aksumite kingdom, monasticism is linked to the arrival of the non-Chalcedonian “nine saints” from Byzantine Syria, rather than Egypt.

Traditions from a number of extant churches and monasteries in present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea attribute their foundation to the 5th-7th century period, often linked with the ‘nine saints’ and the Sadqan from Anatolia and Syria.46

As essentially individuals rather than a formal collective, the form of monasticism introduced by these first monks would have been anchoritic rather than the coenobitic, communal version found in Egypt.47

However, Pachomian coenobitic monastic rules are among the earliest translated literary works in the Christian Kingdom of Aksum. Pachomian tradition is considered to be the basis for Ethiopian monasticism, and the rules were adopted by the monastic orders in later days.

Pachomius (ጳኩሚስ Pakumis) is one of the highly venerated monastic figures mentioned next to Anthony and Macarius in the listing of Ethiopian monastic genealogy. The Ge’ez translation of Pachomian Rules; “The Rules of the [Monastic] Community” ( Śər atä mahbär), depends on a Greek Vorlage (ie; during the Aksumite period). Ethiopian tradition attributes its translation to the “Nine Saints.”48

Additionally, some of the works of Saint Anthony were likely translated during the Aksumite period, such as the Vita Antonii (Zenāhu la-ʾabuna qəddus ʾƎnṭonyos, ‘The story of our holy father Anthony’). The famous monk is usually placed at the top of genealogical lists of monks, followed by Macarius, Pachomius, etc., and ends with the names of Ethiopian monks to show the pedigree of the latter and his monastic house.49

Antony and archangel Raphael; wall painting, Church of Maryam QorQor, 14th/15th century. Ethiopia. Image by Ewa Balicka-Witakowska

Among the early monasteries, evidence for Aksumite monasticism independent of later historical tradition can be found for at least two monasteries founded by the ‘nine saints.’

The first is the Monastery of St. Abba Garima (named after one of the ‘nine saints’), in which two illuminated gospel manuscripts were recently discovered, dated to between 330–650 and 530–660 CE.50

The second is the mountain-top monastery of Debra Damo, where the larger of the two churches is dedicated to St. Za-Mika’el Aregawi, who was active in the reign of the 6th-century Aksumite king Gabra Masqal. This date is supported by the similarities between its basic plan and architecture and the churches forming the superstructure of the 6th century Tombs of Kaleb and Gabra Masqal at Aksum.51

Debre Damo, main church and tower. Image by David W. Phillipson.

Besides the Life of Anthony, other texts translated into Gəʿəz from Greek at an early stage of Ethiopian literary history during the Aksumite period include: the 4th century Life of Paul the first hermit and the 5th century Life of St. Alexis. However, the more popular 5th-century collection, ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers,’ may have been translated after the 13th century.52

Despite its institutional roots in both Egypt and Syria, monasticism in medieval Ethiopia, like that of Nubia, soon developed into a distinctively Ethiopian tradition.

The expansion of the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia after the 14th century coincided with the decline of Christian institutions in Egypt and Nubia under Mamluk rule. By the end of the Middle Ages, Ethiopia had emerged as the principal centre of a thriving and expanding monastic tradition in Africa, while the older monastic landscapes of Egypt and Nubia entered a prolonged period of decline.53

Queen Eleni’s monastery of Marṭula Māryām, Ethiopia.

Decline of monasticism

In Egypt, the real decline of Coptic monasticism began in 705 when the poll tax was imposed for the first time on the monks.

Between the 9th and the 12th centuries, a large number of monasteries were abandoned, partly due to continued attacks by nomadic raiders as well as the decline of the Christian population in Egypt, which no longer made up the majority.54

The Coptic historian Mauhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrig states that there were only 712 monks at Wadi Habib (ie Scetis/Wadi el-Natrun) in 1088. They were divided among seven monasteries, the largest three of which were 400 monks in the Monastery of St. Macarius, 156 in the Monastery of John the Little, and 60 in the Monastery of the Syrians.55

The Fatimids (969-1171) expressed a more sympathetic attitude towards the Copts, except al-Hakim (996-1021), who persecuted them and destroyed churches, except the monasteries of Scetis.56 It was during this period that the Coptic patriarchate was moved from Alexandria to Cairo.

In the Ayyubid period (1171-1250), a brief Christian Arabic renaissance flared in the fields of theology, apologetics, ecclesiastical history, and canon law. Yet its impact on the church was hardly noticeable, and Christianity in Egypt rapidly declined under the new rulers, the Mamluks, who took power in 1250.57

Deserted Coptic Monastery at Aswan, Egypt. Engraving by Bernhard Fiedler, 1885

Nevertheless, the decline of monasticism in Egypt was temporarily stemmed by continued contacts with the independent Christian kingdoms of Nubia and Aksum/Ethiopia, whose rulers presented themselves as protectors of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt.

The Makurian army under King Kyriakos invaded Egypt twice, ostensibly to force the Arab governor of Egypt to restore the persecuted Alexandrian patriarch Michael (r. 743–67).58 Later Makurian incursions into Upper Egypt and subsequent occupation of Edfu in the 9th century suggest a political motive behind these northern campaigns.59

After the fall of Makuria to the Mamluks in the 14th century, Ethiopian monarchs assumed a similar protective role toward the Coptic community in Egypt, at times leveraging their influence over Muslim vassals and repeated threats to block the Nile.

Both Al-Maqrizi and Ethiopian sources indicate that in 1381, the armies of the emperor Dawit I (r. 1382-1413) raided the region of Aswan, ostensibly because of the persecutions of the Alexandrian Patriarch and the Copts due to Mamluk fears of an alliance with the Crusaders. Some Copts fled to Ethiopia during this period.60

The existence of powerful Christian states allied with the Copts, together with the continued influx of monks and pilgrims from Ethiopia and Nubia61 into late medieval Egypt, arguably helped sustain monasticism and Christianity itself during this tumultuous period.

The apparent strength of the Copts’ southern Christian neighbours was noted by a number of contemporary European witnesses, some of whom viewed these powerful Christian states as potential allies against the Muslim rulers of Egypt.62

In 1335, while in Jerusalem, the Italian pilgrim Jacopo da Verona observed that “They are black Ethiopians from among the people of Prester John, who is one of the greatest princes in the world. They always carry, as I have said, a cross in their hand, even in the presence of the [Mamluk] Sultan and in the presence of the Saracens, and they pay no tribute through the entire land of the Sultan.

Also, however often the sepulcher of Christ is opened, they enter without [paying] money or tribute; and the reason for this is that Prester John, the Lord of Nubia and Ethiopia, has the potential within his own realm to divert the Nile river. If that land did not receive this river, it would be wholly uninhabitable, as evidently [is the case for] all of Egypt; and, similarly, Prester John is more powerful than the Sultan.” 63

A number of Makurian kings, such as King Solomon (1080) and King Giorgios IV (d. 1158), are known to have renounced their thrones in favor of their sons or nephews in order to become monks in Egypt. A marble tray was found at the Syrian monastery (Dayr al-Suryan) in Wadi al-Natrun, with Greek and Old Nubian inscriptions for King Giorgios IV.64

Marble tray with the inscription of King Giorgios IV from the monastery of the Syrians in Wadi al-Natrun. Image by Bishop Martyros.

Interior of a Coptic Church, by Bernhard Fiedler, 1885

A certain Macarius the Nubian was an important figure in the monastic community of st John Kame in a text concerning the episcopate of Christodoulos of Alexandria (1046–1077).65 Abyssinian/Ethiopian monks were present at the monasteries of St. John Kame and Anba Bishoi in a text by Bishop Athanasius of Qus dated 1317.66

According to Abū al-Makārim, writing c. 1200, Nubians (Nūbah) even shared a sacred space with other groups – Greeks (Rūm), Franks (Faranj), and Ethiopians (Ḥabasha) – whose envoys would be received at the court in Cairo, where they would customarily worship alongside each other at the fountain at al-Maṭariyya.67

At the monastery of St. Anthony near the Red Sea, and the White Monastery in Upper Egypt, Coptic monks lived together with Syrians, Ethiopians, Franciscans, and Armenians. Apparently, there were large Ethiopian communities at both sites as late as the Ottoman period in the mid-16th century.68

Copy of a Psalter written in multiple scripts and languages, 12th-14th century, monastery of Saint Macarius, Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt.69 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.

In the late Mamluk period, waves of persecution and the confiscation of monastic property led to the gradual abandonment of the majority of Coptic monasteries. Recorded Coptic history came to an end by the 14th century, leaving only external sources as our main sources for the succeeding period.70

In the 14th century, the amirs ordered that all churches built after the Arab conquest were to be destroyed. The Black Death wiped out a large number of monks, although some monasteries were soon repopulated. By the time of Maqrizi c. 1441, the Desert of Scetis had declined. He notes that previously one hundred monasteries stood in the Wadi Habib, of which only seven survived.71

By 1799 the total number of monks in the Wadi el-Natrun complex stood at just 59.72 Many of the monasteries had long been abandoned, their floors covered with sand and strewn with loose leaves of old manuscripts guarded by a few solitary monks.

From the 16th to early 20th centuries, European collectors acquired a large collection of books from these ancient monastic libraries, some of which contained precious historical information on North-East Africa and Christian theology in antiquity.

Monasticism left a profound mark on the ancient Christian world in its piety, ethics, and institutions.

Egyptian monasticism, through the immense influence it exerted across the Mediterranean world and North-East Africa, remains one of Egypt’s most significant legacies to Christianity and to the religious history of Africa.

Ruins of a Coptic monastery near Philae, Egypt. Engraving by Bernhard Fiedler, 1855.

Ancient state structures in Africa included Empires, which carried with them all the complexity, inequalities, and political baggage inherent in such systems.

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

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

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

ANCIENT BIOGRAPHIES FROM NUBIA

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

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

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

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

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

Empires of medieval West Africa. Map by A. LaGamma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruined mosque at the capital of Ifat, Ethiopia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share

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

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

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

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

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

Please subscribe to read more about it here:

ANCIENT BIOGRAPHIES FROM NUBIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

PATREON

The Gold statues and Gold tribute of Aksum and medieval Ethiopia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketch showing the maximum extent of the Aksumite empire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share

Gold currency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe now

Gold Mining and Trade

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stone basin at Aksum.

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

The rock-cut tanks at Addi Tshafi, Aksum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Market in Gondar, Ethiopia ca. 1936-41

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measurements

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

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

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

According to Alvares’ report in 1520:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold smithing

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

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

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

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

Ruins of the Cathedral of Adulis, Eritrea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detail of the crown.

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

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

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

Share

Gold use

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold was used in architectural ornamentation and in embellishing manuscripts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fasiladas’ castle at Gondar, Ethiopia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold wealth and property.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethiopian artefacts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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

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

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

Please subscribe to read more about it here

FOREIGN HERETICS IN MEDIEVAL EAST AFRICA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruins of a medieval mosque at Dahlak.

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

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

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

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

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

[ see: The serpent deities of the African Atlantic ]

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

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

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

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

Location of Sijilmasa, Tahret, Essouk and Gao.