Voices of Africa's past: a brief note on the autobiographies of itinerant scholars.
an african description of turn-of-the-century Europe.
Among the most significant works of African literature produced during the pre-colonial era were the autobiographies of itinerant scholars which included descriptions of important social institutions and recorded key events in the continent’s history.
The autobiography of the Hausa ethnographer Umaru al-Kanawi contains one of the most detailed first-hand accounts of the education system of Islamic West Africa during the 19th century. al-Kanawi’s detailed account includes the amount of tuition paid to teachers, the length of time spent at each level of learning, as well as the core curriculum and textbooks used by students across the region.
"al-Sarha al-wariqa fi'ilm al-wathiqa" (The thornless leafy tree concerning the knowledge of letter writing), by Umaru al-Kanawi. ca. 1877, Kaduna National Archives, Nigeria.
The autobiography of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zara Yacob provides a first-hand account of the social upheaval in the kingdom brought about by the presence of Portuguese priests and their Catholic converts at the capital. Zara Yacob describes the ideological conflicts between the various political and religious factions, which influenced his radical philosophy that rejected received wisdom in favor of rational proofs.
The autobiography of the 18th-century Katsina Mathematician Muhammad al-Kashnāwī includes important information on the scholars who taught him in West Africa before his career as a teacher at the Egyptian College of al-Azhar. The Mathematician lists at least five of his West African teachers whose level of scholarship and intellectual influence contradicts the colonial myth of sub-Saharan Africa.
Folios from a copy of Muhammad al-Kashnāwī's mathematical treatise, titled 'Bahjat al- āfāq', completed on 29th, January 1733. Bibliothèque nationale de France .
The careers of many African scholars often involved traveling between different cities and regions in their capacity as teachers, merchants, or diplomatic liaisons.
Umaru al-Kanawi's account documents the conduct of trade along the complex commercial networks that linked the Asante kingdom (in modern Ghana) to the Sokoto empire (in northern Nigeria). Zara Yacob’s description of his flight from Aksum through various localities until the town of Emfraz is a precious first-hand account of asceticism in Gondarine Ethiopia. The travelogue of Muhammad al-Kashnāwī provides one of the earliest internal accounts documenting the journey of West African pilgrims to the cities of the Hejaz.
The autobiographies of Africa's itinerant scholars therefore constitute important sources of Africa's past.
In the second half of the 19th century, the emergence of scholarly communities in the East African kingdom of Buganda led to the production of some of the most remarkable accounts documenting the voices of Africa's past.
In the late 19th century, one of the kingdom's most prolific scholars, Ham Mukasa, wrote an autobiography that documents many key events in the kingdom's history. He also wrote a lengthy travelogue of his journey to England in 1902, describing the various societies and peoples he met along the way in meticulous detail: from the Somali boatmen of Yemen, to the mistreatment of Jewish traders, to the "shameful" dances of the Europeans, to the coronation of king Edward, to medieval torture devices. He met with the Ethiopian envoy Ras Mokonnen, the Chinese prince Chun Zaifeng, the Lozi king Lewanika from Zambia, and Prince Ali of Zanzibar.
The autobiography of Ham Mukasa and his travelogue describing turn-of-the-century Europe are the subject of my latest Patreon article.
please subscribe to read about it here:
Timbuktu, Mali, ca. 1895, Archives nationales d'outre-mer.