Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire

“Timbuktu is a town inhabited by people of various races, but the greater part is made up of Whites, such as Arabs; they are subject to the king of Gao. This town is the entrepot for all goods in transit from the kingdom of Morocco to the kingdom of Gao. The king Mulay Ahmad has a fortress in the province of Lektaoua where everything was exchanged against gold dust that came from these kingdoms. From Timbuktu a Moorish qa id, a renegade, and an Andalusian were sent to Marrakesh with news of what happened during the expedition.”

“They arrived on 1 June of the present year 1591. Great celebrations were held to mark this happy success. But the king, although proud to be the first king of Morocco to have carried his victorious arms as far as Guinea, felt much resentment at Jawdar’s having withdrawn from Gao without having first constructed a fortress, as he had orders to do; or rather that, having withdraw, he had done so without having previously taken some good hostages from the black king as surety for his carrying out his promises. But in fact, it is within his power to do so or not to do so.”

“It is said that two months journey from Gao, in the interior lands, there is another kingdom of the Blacks that is called Bornu, whose king is very powerful. The Turks, having marched by way of Egypt to conquer this kingdom suffered so much from thirst while crossing the sandy deserts, that when attacked by the king of Bornu in this exigency, they could not defend themselves because of their thirst, and were beaten. Some who survived received such good treatment from the king that they remained in his service.”

“Through the industry of these individuals, and with the arms they took off the others, he has armed about five hundred musketeers, who, together with the numerous troops of his kingdom, make him very formidable in these regions of Guinea. It has been learned that this kingdom borders on some kingdoms of black Christians, who have been recently converted by the Portuguese during the discoveries they have made in Guinea. The judgment made about this expedition by natives of the kingdom of Morocco who have experience of these regions is as follows.”

“There are various opinions about this expedition. Some think it is very advantageous for the king of Morocco, because besides the glory he gets from carrying his victorious arms into Guinea–something none of his predecessors dared do because of the difficulty of the route, the length of the journey and lack of water they think he will get a lot of gold from this conquest, by means of which he will enhance his greatness.”

Source: Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Saʻdī’s Taʼrīkh Al-Sūdān Down to 1613 By ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al- Saʿdī…

A branch of the Zagawa Berbers called Beni Sefi created Kanem-Bornu

“Kanem-Borno, a former Muslim kingdom located northeast of Lake Chad, was created by a branch of the Zagawa people called Beni Sefi, with the likely collaboration of the Tubu, around the year 800. While Kanem is part of Chad today, Bornu located in Kanem’s southernmost part and west of Lake Chad, is part of Nigeria, a result of the imperial territorial divisions that occurred between the French and the British during the 1880s and 1890s.”

“The first Beni Sefi dynasty seems to have taken power around 1075, under the Sefuaw dynasty, which was headed by Mai (King) Hummay (1075-1180). A mythical man named Idris Sayf Ibn Dhi Yezan is said to have converted to Islam during the second half of the eleventh century and exerted pressure on the rest of the kingdom to embrace Islam as the state’s religion. During the thirteenth century, the Sefuwa were able to designate a specific capital for the Kingdom, Njimi.”

 

“As the mais solidified their power, Kanem expanded considerably during the thirteenth century, controlling the Bornu principality and virtually all that constitutes northwest Chad today, particularly during the reign of Mai Dunama Dabbalemi (1221-1259). Under this rule, the sultanate encompassed Wadai and the Adamawa Plateau in northern Cameroon. Parts of Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan were also incorporated into the sultanate.”

“The greatness of Kanem was predicated upon two major factors. First was Kanem’s ability to control the trans-Saharan trade route, resulting from its location at an important trade crossroads. During the first zenith of its power during the thirteenth century, Kanem’s market exchanged, sold, and bought such items as salt, horses, ostrich, feathers, camels, hides, cotton, cloth, perfumes, copper objects, kola nuts, ivory, jewelry, and, evidently, slaves.” 

“The year 1804 presaged the decline and eventual demise of Kanem-Bornu as a Kingdom. Islamic warrior and leader ‘Uthman dan Fodio sacked the captial with his Hausa-Fulani crusaders, and in 1814, Shehu Mohammed el-Amin el Kanermi, a scholar warrior, virtually replaced until 1853, but could not maintain the kingdom as a choesice whole.”

“Meanwhile, the displaced mai was forced to move the captial to Kukwa, in Bornu. To the Sefuwa dynasty’s chagrin, Rabih ibn Fadl Allah, a former slave from Sudan, turned into a formidable potential conqueror of all of Central Africa, and dislodged the mais from Kukawa, a city he sacked in 1893. Kanem-Bornu was finally conquered by the French and the British who had appeared in the area during the 1880s and 1890s and divided the imperial spoils one Rabih had been killed at Kuseri (present Cameroon) in 1900.”

“The Tubu assited by the Turkish or Ottoman Empire and the Senoussyia Muslim order, resited the French for a time but, by 1920, the latter had prevailed and Kanem became part of the military colony of Chad. Today, it is one of Chad’s 14 prefectures, and with support from Niger, Kanem has at times been a source of several rebel movements against the central government. Bornu is an emirate in northeastern Nigeria.”

Source: Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set edited by Kevin Shillington

Zaghawa and Sadrata Berbers ruled Kanem in 900 A.D.

These regions have since the eighth century A.D. been a stronghold of Moslem unorthodoxy–a remote area where the Zenatian Berber tribes, who embraced the doctrines of the Kharijites or “seceders” from the Khalif Ali at the battle of Siffin, have been able to maintain even to present day a distinctive social organization.

It would appear, for instance, from the geographer Yacubi, A.D. 891, that the “fathers” of the medieval slave trade between Chad region and the Mediterranean were merchants from Basra and Kufa and Khorasan–Wahabites–who settled in Southern Fezzan.

Hence, no doubt, the reason why the Tomagheri Teda are commonly called by Bornu writers, “Beni Wahba,” and why in Bornu itself the leading hierarchs were called, as among the M’zab, “Tolba.”

From Edrisi we learn that the Zaghawa Berbers (who towards A.D.900 ruled Kanem) were fused and influenced by other Berbers called “Sadrata.” From Dr. Mercier’s work it seems fairly clear that the word “Sadrata,” hitherto unexplained and the reading even doubted, were Kharijite Berbers of the Wargla region, who, owing to one or other of the constant schisms, had gone south and settled among the Zaghawa of Kanem.

Source: Journal of the African Society, Volume 22 By African Society

 

 

Islam in the African-American Experience

“Mervyn Hiskett describes the Islamic lands of West Africa as the area commonly referred to as “the west and central Sudan”…extending from the desert scrub in the “north” to the southern edge of savanna in the south. From west to east it extends across this scrub and savanna belt, from the Atlantic coast to the eastern shore of Lake Chad.”

“Arab and Berber Muslims from Egypt and North Africa first established contact with this area in the eighth century through the caravan trade across the Sahara, which was inhabited by Berber nomads and black town dwellers. The merchants initially involved in this trade were interested mostly in gold, ivory, and slaves, not in proselytizing.”

“By 990, however, the Arabic geographer al Muhallabi reported that the West African city of Gao had a mosque and a Muslim ruler. In the tenth century, the desert trading city of Tadmakatt was also an important source of Islamic ideas for West Africa. During the same period, the empire of Ghana, which was the center of the gold trade, already had a separate Muslim district and employed Muslims in governmental affairs, even though its ruler was a Soninke polytheist.”

“A-Bakri’s account of Ghana in the eleventh century indicates that the racial and cultural separatism characteristic of West African Islam was already evident in the capital city of this empire: The city of Ghana consists of two towns in a plain. One of these towns is inhabited by Muslims.”

“It is large with a dozen mosques in one of which they assemble for the Friday prayer. There are salaried imams and muezzins, as well as jurist and scholars… In the eleventh century, Islam first became a major factor in West African history when the orthodox “Muslim militants”-the Almoravids, led by Abu Bakr, organized the Sanhaja Berbers in a holy war against the non-Muslims in western Sudan.”

“The motivation for this jihad was economic as well as religious, for the Almoravids wanted to control the northern end of the desert caravan routes. Eventually, they succeeded in making Islam the official religion of the empire of Ghana and Islamicized some of the black kingdoms and towns in Sudan. Although historians dispute whether the Almoravids came to power in Ghana by military force or peaceful means, it is certain that they quickly lost their military and political advantages over the Soninke people and eventually became wandering scholars and preachers of Islam in Sudan.”

“Indeed, black Muslims in West Africa were not seriously affected by the military power of the Muslims world again until the Moroccan invasion of Songhay in the sixteenth century. The Arab and Berber advance in West African societies often occurred in subtle stages over a long period of time.”

“First, Muslims established contact with Sudan as visiting merchants and craftspeople to obtain slaves and precious minerals. Eventually, some of these merchants would settle in a permanent trading outpost in West African towns and villas as African leaders began to  perceive the advantages of economic ties with North Africa and the Middle East. These immigrant merchants and craftspeople were the first representatives of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“Although the impression of these different Muslims influenced the West African black ruling elite and merchants to convert to Islam, they had little impact on the traditional religous praxis of West African peoples in rural areas before modernity. The racial seperatism of West African Islam resulted from the signfiication of black Muslim identiies by rich and poowerful black rulers who attempted to reconcile their new religion with African traditional religous cultural praxis.

“Thus, as we shall see, North African and Middle Eastern Muslims and blacks were deliberarely segregated from each other in seperate residential areas in West African cities and towns, to ensure that Islam would be used to the economic, political and cultural advantage of black ruling elites. In the Muslim state of Takur (inhabited by the Tukolor people), the Jolof empire of the Wolof, the Senegambian villages and towns established by Mande traders, Mali, Songhay, the issues of signification and seperatism were played out in the context of West African Islam.”

“In these locations West African Muslims attempted to defined their identities both as Muslims and as ethnic people in light of the competition between their allegienace to the religions and cultures of their ethnic groups and the beliefs and practices of orthodox Islam from North Africa and the Middle East.”

Forty years later, Mansa Musa’s fame had spread to Europe as map-makers put Mali on the Catalan map of West Africa and referred to its ruler as “Lord of the Negroes of Guinea.” They described his country’s gold as “so abundant…that he is the richest and most noble king in all the land. Mansa Musa had inherited the mantale of leadership from a long line of black Muslim kings from the Kieta clan of the Mandinka cheifdoms. This line included Sundita (c.1230-1255), a Mandinka Muslim convert who had bult the vast empire of Mali on the ruins of Ghana, thus unifiying the Mandinka people; Mans Uli, the son of Sundiata, wo was the first in his Askiya Benkan was abruptly replaced by Askiya Ismail in 1537.”

“Political stability returned to Songhay from 1539 to 1591 under the ruler of Askiya Iskaq I and Askiya Daud. Some of the political tensions in sixteenth-century Songhay resulted from different rulers efforts to reconcile Islam, the relgion of the urban ruling elite, with the African cultural particularism of the traditional religions which were also practiced by the rulers and the peasants.”

“This tension between orthodox Islam and African cultural particularism was at the heart of what made West African Islam a vibrant and distincitive religous tradition in the world of Islam. Although West African Muslims had signifiedi themselves as the people they wanted to be through their embrace of Islam and seperarated themselves from the judgments of non-black Muslims from North Africa, they could not united politiclaly and militarily to sustain their powerful Isslamic empires in the modern era. On the even of modernity, Islam in Wet Africa was destined for radical changes, although its themes of radical cultural particularism, singification, and jihad were destined to live on as a paradigm endemic to global Islam, and would later be utilized by black Muslims in America.” 

“In 1591, the Songhay empire fell when it supposed ally, Morocco, invaded the country to seize its salt mines. Although Songhay had carefull developed diplomatic and cultural ties with North Africa, the Moroccan sultan wanted complete control over the salt mines, gold, and slaves of the Sudan, which legally belonged, in part, to Songhay. This was a watershed event in West African history for several reasons.”

“First, it signaled the end of the mighty economic and political power of the empires that had sustained West African Islam.”

“Second, Timbuktu, the great West African city, declined as black Muslim intellectual center.”

“Third, the focus of West African Islam changed radically as Islam centered a period of decline which lasted until the nineteenth century.”

“Fourth, the fall of Songhay signaled the beginning of modernity, during which cataclysmic changes in the instittion of slavery wre destined to change the fortunes of African peoples in the world. By the beginnnig of the sixteenth century, it became clear to informed observers that Arab Muslims had a seperate and radical agenda for black Muslims in West Africa.”

“They were enslaving them in record numbers under the banner of jihad and taking control of the rich mineral resourcs of their lands. This was clearly against the laws of Islam. The issue of the enslavement of West African Muslims by their Arab co-religionist had still not been resolved in 1614 when Ahmad Baba, a Muslim scholar from Timbuktu, wrote a legal interpreation of the issue: Whoever is captured in a condition of non belief, it is legal to own him, whosoever he maby be, but not he was converted to Islam voluntarily from the start, to any nation he belongs, whether it is Bornu, Kano, Songhai, Katsinsa, Gobir, Mali and some of Zakzak. These are free Muslims, whose enslavement is not allowed in nay way.” 

 

Source: Islam in the African-American Experience By Richard Brent Turner

American Colonization Society: The Bornu People were of Berber Origin

“At this period his territory did not extend to the northern bend of the Niger, which was occupied by Berbers. Jenne, the town which M. Dubois describes in his interesting book on “Timbuctoo the Mysterious” as still at the present day constituting a bit of Egypt in the heart of the desert, is said by the Arabs to have been founded by pagans in the year 800 (the year in which Egbert ascended the English throne), and was specially famed as the resort of the learned. Timbuctoo was founded by Berbers in the year 1087, about twenty-five years later than the town Morocco, and was never sullied by pagan worship. As the march of ancient Egyptian civilization can be traced through Negroland, moving gradually from east to west, so the march of this relatively modern Arab civilization can be traced steadily from west to east.”

“Thus we have come gradually eastward to our own territory of Nigeria, where the Hausa States, probably of mixed Berber and Coptic origin, were founded at a period of which the narrative takes us back to mythical history.  The Berber state of Audaghost, lying northwest in the desert, paid tribute to Ghana up to the middle of the eleventh century. The Bornu people were also of Berber origin, illustrating, like the Hausas and the mixed people of Ghana and the Berbers of Timbuctoo, that pressure of the northern races upon the fertile belt of which I have spoken.”

“Dugu appears to have been the name of the first sultan of any modern dynasty of which we have continuous records. He resigned about 850, and toward the end of the eleventh century, Bornu would seem to have been in some way the suzerain of the Hausa States. The earliest of Arab writers speak of the kingdom as spreading between the Niger and Lake Chad. It also included Kanem, on Lake Chad, at that time pagan, though at a later period it accepted Islam and produced distinguished men.”

“A black poet from Kanem is spoken of as enjoying considerable success at the Spanish court of one of the Almoravide sultans. Bornu appears as early as 1489 on Portuguese maps. In the early part of the sixteenth century, their kings maintained regular diplomatic relations with Tripoli and the outer world.”

“I have kept you already too long in speaking of these five divisions of Negroland-Ghana, Melle, Songhay, Hausa, and Bornu–in the northern portion of the Negro belt. There were many others of secondary importance, but these were the kingdoms which in turn were most directly exposed to Berber influence and rose to the most decided preeminence during what may be called our own historic times.”

“The mystery of the decadence of peoples is among the great operations of nature for which we have no explanation. The civilization of Negroland was inspired in the first instance by Egypt. It disappeared as the power of Egypt declined. It rose again with the rise of the western Arabs; it fell with their fall. The power of the Moors was destroyed in Spain, and the onward pressure of the at that time very partially civilized Christian nations had nothing to substitute for the highly cultivated standard of Arabian life. Gradually the African Arabs were driven out of Europe, and there began a reflex action of Europe upon Africa. The end of the fifteenth century saw the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. The navigation of the Atlantic became general, and a wholly new chapter of foreign influence in West Africa was initiated.”

“The European coast colonies came into existence, but they were founded for the most part in the midst of the very lowest class of pagan natives. It is impossible for me to speak of them tonight. At the same time, the higher civilizations of the northern edge of Negroland was destroyed by the decadent Moors, who feeling the pressure of Europe upon their shores, overran the center of North Africa about the year 1592, and established by force of arms a purely brutal military domination.”

Source: Liberia, Issues 19-27