The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan
Robert W. July
organization among people whose
survival
its
the same period of time. Land occupation and
utilization was the ultimate objective of political
depended upon control of a territory and
products. Nonetheless there were no such things
as national boundaries; even the kingdom had no
name, and visitors from the Arab and European
worlds typically misused the name and title of the
states that be
Sahel and
long been
sometimes
Possessing
were not a
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The great empires of the medieval Sudan have
sometimes been regarded as ephemeral political
entities without great intrinsic unity and lacking
even frontiers to delineate the extent of their
authority. In a purely temporal sense it seems
unreasonable to impute weakness to states that
lasted as long as Ghana's minimum four centuries,
Mali's effective existence from the advent of
Sundiata in 1230 A.D. until the capture of Jenne by
Sunni Ali over two hundred years later, the
unbroken thousand-year reign of the ruling mais
of Kanem-Bornu, or the long-lived stability of the
Mossi states. Furthermore, the test of political
vitality in these African kingdoms must be in
terms of Africa's own traditional social institutions
which made for an administration and political
structure rather different from modern concepts of
national entity.
por
“Ghana, the golden land,” remarks the Arab
astronomer, al-Fazari, saying little but suggesting
much in wealth, and by implication, in power.
This first external notice of the state of Ghana
dates from the late eighth century; what came
before the rise of Ghana can be reconstructed only
indirectly from archaeology, linguistic analysis,
and surviving bits of tradition.
It seems reasonable to suppose that African
peoples moving generally southward from the
encroaching desert lived simply in small groups-
herders whose social and political organization
centered family-owned cattle,
farmers
inhabiting village communities made up of
lineage groups related by blood to a common
ancestor. Supplementary ties, no doubt, emerged
to neutralize lineage competition, in some cases a
central structure of government culminating in a
ruler and his council drawn from heads of
lineages; in others, age groupings made of
successive generations, or hierarchies of titles, that
cut clearly across lineage loyalties. On occasion
quasi-religious secret societies imposed a further
check on the governance of a ruler who in any
case probably based his own authority on a
supernatural sanction as magician and priest.
Government was simple among these modest
populations of farmers and pastoralists, for they
were content to invent devices sufficient to their
needs and no more. What characterized them all,
however, was their firm basis, not so much in law
as in a web of personal relationships like the
feudal societies that emerged in Europe over much
Cor
uni
seti
ruler to identify his domain.
The large kingdoms of the savanna seem to
have developed naturally from these smaller,
simpler states, in effect a petty kingdom writ large.
In time
communities grew complex,
developing clans that divided along social or
economic lines. A vigorous head of a warrior or
royal clan, or perhaps the leader of an age set
might have succeeded in imposing his fiat on a
growing number of neighboring villages, partly
relying on interconnecting loyalties but also
utilizing military force. Such authority varied
inversely with distance, but communication was
relatively easy across the open savanna, and after
the introduction of North African horses, an
energetic conqueror like the Songhai ruler Sunni
Ali could and did maintain his hegemony, though
it necessitated an almost ceaseless regimen of
military conquest. Such activity eventually posed
problems of administration and of succession.
Remote districts, difficult to control, were often
left in the hands of tribute-paying local chieftains.
Alternatively, rulers assigned members of the
royal clan to positions as regional viceroys, a
dangerous device that invited revolt and led to the
alternative institution of non-royal provincial
governors, especially chosen because they had no
legitimate claim to princely succession.
After the rise of Islam, the arrival of Arab and
Berber merchants from North Africa introduced a
new element that greatly strengthened the large
savanna states. Along with their commerce the
literacy, both of which helped consolidate imperial
administration. Muslim scribes and advisors were
widely employed while the religion of the
Prophet
, slowly adopted by the savanna nobility,
introduced administrative standards for such
activities of scale as the policing of markets or the
levying and collecting of taxes.
It was, however, the trans-Saharan trade and
wa
an
po
on
tre
A
са
w
t
northern traders brought their religion and their
the wasteland it traversed that were the main
engines responsible for the emergence of the great
42
July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 43
Sahel and savanna, both north and south, had
states that bordered the desert. The peoples of the
long been in contact with the desert dwellers,
sometimes peacefully, sometimes in contention.
Possessing the camel, the nomads of the desert
were not always content to confine their raids to
one another's herds or to prey only upon passing
trans-Saharan caravans. Tuareg and Teda, for
example, recruited their domestic slaves through
protection, the trade moved elsewhere as their
strength atrophied; thus it was with the eventual
demise of Ghana or the desert march of the
Moroccans that later settled the fate of Songhai.
more
from peaceful seasonal migration to large-scale
symbiosis with the more settled areas, varying
warfare and conquest. During cycles when the
rains were normal and water holes remained
productive, the pastoralists abandoned the desert
only for the dry months, the Bedouins moving into
The Kingdom of Ghana
The earliest known kingdom of the Sudan was
regular forays upon savanna farming villages
;
Ghana, and its history well exemplified the
generally, the desert people maintained a
ancient conflict between the Sahara and the
savanna, involving both the religious asceticism of
the desert and the desire for gold that has infected
time it had
all peoples. Its origins have been lost, but by the
come to the notice of Arab
commentators in the eighth century, Ghana was
already a thriving state headed by black African
Soninke kings and renowned for its wealth in
gold. Traditions speak of various founding
dynasties, including nonblack northerners,
the southern nomads doubtless a reflection both of Ghana's close
contact with neighboring Berbers and of later
attempts by West African Muslims to associate
Sudanic states with Islamic and Arabic
armed invasion, antecedents. By the ninth century Ghana was
approaching the fullest extent of its power and
influence with territory extending to the south as
far as the upper reaches of the Niger and Senegal,
to the north into the desert and eastward to the
mountain
movements
to
were
savanna
or
the Atlas highlands to graze their flocks on the
pasture,
conducting a similar infiltration of the Niger River
valley. In difficult times, however, when the rains
failed and the wells ran dry, these pacific
converted
sometimes in the form of hit-and-run raids and
sometimes as more permanent conquest and
occupation.
Indeed, the desert nomads were bound up in a.
vast rhythm of history with the peoples who lived
to the north and to the south of them. At moments
of stress when conditions became severe and the
Mediterranean regions
weakened, the desert encroached on the settled
areas and the desert people predominated.
Conversely, when the savanna organized and
unified itself under a strong central regime, the
settled area extended farther into the desert, and it
was the nomadic peoples who were forced back
and obliged to pay allegiance to the more
powerful authority.
More important still was the impact of the
trans-Saharan trade. The great value of the West
African gold mines was easily recognized; more
generally, it
was apparent that those who
controlled the trade to the north commanded great
wealth, but control implied political organization
to insure the peaceful passage of caravans and the
orderly conduct of business in the marketplace.
Niger bend.
Control over the gold commerce assured the
prosperity of Ghana's kings, but Ghana suffered
from the competition of Awdaghost lying to the
west, which was held by Sanhaja Berbers and
which was pressing its own claim to become the
major terminus for the commerce across the
western Sahara. The vexation of the Awdaghost
competition was temporarily laid to rest in 990
A.D., however, when the Soninke of Ghana
captured the rival city during a period of internal
dissension among the Sanhaja. This was the peak
moment of glory. The market city of Kumbi Saleh
became the chief mercantile and intellectual center
in the Sudan and its king was renowned for his
wealth and the splendor of his court. When he
held audience, he appeared resplendent in
garments of fine cloth and ornaments of gold,
while his retainers and even the royal animals
were similarly bedecked. His tariffs filled the royal
treasury, his armies kept the peace across his vast
domain, and his fame spread far to the north
While the sovereigns of the savanna states failed
in their attempts to seize the mines of Wangara,
they did succeed in taxing the trade both through
the
appropriation of all gold nuggets and with
tariffs levied on caravans arriving at the major
savanna entrepôts. In return they provided their
where people spoke of “the king of Ghana ... the
richest monarch in the world.”.
Such prosperity was difficult to maintain.
During the eleventh century, the Sanhaja
experienced a profound religious revival led by a
particularly puritanical Muslim sect, the
Almoravids, and the white heat of religious fervor
converted into a jihad with
repercussions as far as Morocco and the states of
celebrated "pax savanna" which, at its best,
insured honest dealings in the markets and
enabled strangers and local people alike to travel
throughout the realm without fear of molestation.
soon
was
When the savanna states could no longer provide
44 Section Two: The Formation of Early African Societies
copper, and it
was
pro
prc
kingdom
dec
the
as an
Andalusia. In the Sahel, this holy war took the
shape of a campaign against Ghana. Authorities Taghaza
as well as Saharan
differ over the consequences. Some say Kumbi fell
to the Almoravid jihad as Ghana was forcibly
converted to Islam. Others contend that the
development within the new
conversion was voluntary. In either case the
Almoravids extended their control of the desert
entrepôt for desert caravans.
frade at Ghana's expense, and the Soninke
kingdom, though subsequently cooperating with
the Almoravids, gradually declined in power and
wealth. The ensuing power vacuum was soon
occupied by the Soso chieftaincy of Kaniaga, a
former vassal state which had already revolted
successfully, and now moved to capture Ghana
under the leadership of Sumaguru Kante. In 1203
Kumbi was sacked and the independent kingdom
of Ghana ceased to exist. The merchants of Kumbi,
no longer able to pursue their affairs at the old
site, moved north toward the desert to the rising
commercial center of Walata.
south, Mali reached out to control the salt trade of
during the period of Mali's growth during the
thirteenth century that Timbuktu began its
The precise extent of the empire under
Sundiata is not known, but after his death in 1255
by Sakura, a freed slave of the royal household
additional conquests were made by Mansa Uli and
who seized power during a period of weakness
first brought Songhai under Mali suzerainty and
within the ruling dynasty. Either Sundiata or Uli
Sakura was apparently responsible for campaigns
against Tekrur in the west as well as for the
capture of Gao in the east. Nevertheless, until
recently many of these conquests had been
of 1
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out
the
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wa
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of
to
but
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to
up
attributed to Mansa Musa (1312–1337), partly
because Musa's devotion to Islam attracted the
praise of Muslim historians and partly because of
the fame of his glittering pilgrimage to Mecca.
The progress of Musa's caravan has been
recorded and savored by historians—the five
hundred slaves bearing golden staffs, the hundred
camels each loaded with three hundred pounds of
gold, the spending spree in the bazaars of Cairo,
and the scattering of bounty with such a lavish
hand as to force a serious depreciation of gold on
the Cairo exchange. So too has his sponsorship of
as-Sahili, a poet and architect from Andalusia,
who returned from Mecca with Musa's entourage
to introduce an Arabian style to the religious and
secular architecture of the Sudan. These events,
along with the number of Muslim scholars he
brought back from the Middle East, emphasized
Musa's Islamic persuasion and doubtless pleased
Muslim historians who thereby may have tended
to underestimate the accomplishments of Musa's
royal predecessors. Moreover, they may have
The Rise and Fall of Mali
The exploits of Sumaguru seemed to be the
beginning of a new power centering on the Soso,
but in fact the heir to Ghana's authority lay in
another quarter. South of Kaniaga along the upper
reaches of the Niger, were Mandinka blacks
occupying fertile farm land near the source of
West Africa's gold supply, and these people were
subdued by Sumaguru after his victory over
Ghana. According to one tradition, Sumaguru put
all the sons of the Mandinka ruler to death save
one who was spared as an inconsequential cripple.
This sole survivor, Sundiata, overcame his
weakness, rallied local support, and fashioning a
guerrilla army, eventually defeated and killed.
Sumaguru in 1235. The Soso were quickly
absorbed, whereupon Sundiata advanced
northward, sacked and annexed the remnants of
Ghana in 1240, at the same time taking control of
the gold trade routes and the port cities of the
Saharan commerce. This was the genesis of the
empire of Mali which, in a few short years, had
established itself, extending its hegemony to
include all of the former sphere of influence of
im
its
ang
we
the
thi
mc
see
Rix
on
pre
wa
asc
Ku
lik
att
fro
integrity of local chieftaincies was
scrupulously
overlooked the degree to which the king, for all
his devotion to Islamic religion and civilization,
continued to rely upon traditional institutions for
the administration of his realm. For example,
when the propagation of the true faith threatened
was quickly abandoned. Moreover, despite the
gold production in pagan Wangara, proselytizing
might and glory of Mali's great rulers, the
observed, and no attempt was made to eliminate
traditional ritual at the royal court. Describing
audiences of the mansa a few years after Musa's
death, Ibn Battuta approvingly commented on
evidence of Islamic practice, but he was also
obliged to observe the importance of customary
traditional articles symbolic of royal authority,
elaborate ceremony with its liberal reliance on
ritual magic, the rigid demands on time-honored
foy
int
op
Ghana.
Although the early Mandinka princes were
said to be Muslims, it seems likely that Sundiata
was a pagan, and it was on the traditional
relationships within clans and lineage groups that
he built his administration. Securing these
relationships by force and persuasion before
confronting the Soso, Sundiata established his
capital, possibly at his ancestral village of Niani,
from where he and his successors ruled their
extensive empire. Mali. was an agricultural
community, but this by no means meant a neglect
of the commercial possibilities of the trans-desert
traffic. In addition to the gold supplies in the
the
the
usage—the
mansa
seated amid the many
the
fro
en
its
WE
wi
July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 45
protocol tendering homage to the ruler through
prostration and dusting, and the royal Mandinka
the form of trousers of exceptional width.
decorations for distinguished service which took
of Musa continued for several decades, but by the
late years of the fourteenth century the problem of
into the government. Palace quarrels encouraged
dynastic succession had intruded a fatal weakness
outside attack. As the fifteenth century opened,
earlier sacked Timbuktu. This luckless entrepôt
was occupied by Tuareg in 1433–1434, and in 1468
Sunni Ali of the growing power of Songhai
captured the city with great loss of life, five years
the Mossi were
raiding the middle Niger having
bend.
Songhai astride the east-west route of the Niger
a strategic position that offered the
possibility of a thrust westward toward Timbuktu
and beyond. It was Gao, moreover, that moved the
Songhai into close
contact with Islamic
civilization, bringing at least a
measure of
conversion to the royal house if not to the general
population
In the days of Mansa Musa, Songhai had been
subject to Mali; now during the fifteenth century
an independent Songhai began to acquire territory
at the expense of its former master, at first pushing
westward into Mema and adjacent Sahelian
provinces beyond the Niger bend. The main
imperial expansion came, however, with the long
reign of Sunni Ali which began in 1464. With
furious energy he overran the whole Niger
country, capturing Jenne after his occupation of
Timbuktu, pushing back the Tuareg to the north
and punishing the Mossi states on his south after
upper Niger.
later reducing the supposedly impregnable town
of Jenne. The rise of Songhai put an effective end
to Mali's hegemony in the eastern Niger region,
but its power lingered on fitfully in the west.
Gradually deteriorating, however, it was finally
century with the appearance of the Bambara states
Snuffed out in the middle of the seventeenth they had sacked Timbuktu and besieged Walata.
of Kaarta and Segu. Thus, after four hundred
During twenty-eight years of almost incessant
years, the great Mali empire had finally returned
campaigning, Ali created, then protected, an
to the original status of a small chieftaincy on the
empire along the Niger that dominated the trade
routes and the great grain-producing region of the
Niger's inland delta.
Under Ali, the administration of the Songhai
The Empire of Songhai
state seems to have been delegated largely to
By the time of Mali's final demise, Songhai, its military commanders backed by Ali's own
imperial successor in the Sudan, had experienced mobility and martial energy. He maintained a fleet
its own brief moment of ascendancy-a century
on the river, controlled the overland route through
and a half that saw a rapid expansion across the
the Hombori Mountains south of the Niger bend,
western Savanna, a short period of stability, and
established several “capitals” the better to control
then an equally rapid decline into extinction. All
his domains, and placed distant provinces in the
this came as a climax to a long era of much more
hands of local rulers responsible to him for
modest development
maintaining order and collecting taxes. His armies
The point of origin for the Songhai people apparently consisted of a core unit of troops under
seems to have been those reaches of the Niger
his personal command along with special levees
River downstream from the great bend, centering
raised for particular campaigns.ee
on the town of Kukiya. Here the Za dynasty
Much of the information concerning Sunni Ali
and his activities comes from Muslim accounts
presided over an agricultural community, giving
which have pictured him
ruthless,
way to the Sunni line at a time when Mali was still
bloodthirsty conqueror, as well as an unbeliever, a
ascendant throughout the Niger country. North of
reaction to his savage persecution of Timbuktu
Kukiya lay Gao, a market town on the Sahel edge,
Muslims, particularly those associated with the
like Timbuktu under Malian control,
and
Sankore mosque. Ali argued that his persecution
of the Sankore adherents was purely political,
occasioned by their support for his Tuareg foes.
After his occupation of Timbuktu, Ali did not
molest other Muslims in the town and in general
maintained good relations with the Islamic
community throughout his lands. It is true that Ali
bore his Islamic faith lightly, and local tradition
emphasizes his position as a great magician who
followed many indigenous practices, for example,
worshipping idols and consulting diviners and
sorcerers. It would seem that Sunni Ali's actions
were indeed largely political and economic. The
as
a
attracting traders from south and west, as well as
from North African points. Toward the end of the
fourteenth century, as Mali began to suffer
internal decay, the Sunnis of Kukiya sensed their
opportunity to share in the lucrative trade of the
,probably occupying the river port about
Gao area,
the time Timbuktu fell to the Tuareg.
It was a step that initiated the trans-formation
from insignificant principality to major Sudanic
empire. First, Songhai began to enjoy the riches of
its improved trading position, an expanding
widening authority. Next, control of Gao placed
wealth that meant growing influence and
that
sons.
Songhai state was created through conquest and
sustained primarily through force, but there was
necessarily an element of persuasion. At least
nominally Muslim, Ali could command the loyalty
of most true believers, while concurrently he
remained an African priest-king sensitive to the
spiritual interest of his pagan people,
Sunni Ali died in a drowning accident in 1492,
and the following year the throne was usurped by
Muhammad Toure, governor of the Hombori
region and founder of the succeeding Askia
dynasty. Sunni Ali had established the basis for
the Songhai empire. Under Askia Muhammad it
was greatly expanded and institutionalized.
coups that
ective administration
orderly succession. After a long reign the Askia
eluded Askia Muhammad was the matter of
had declined in health and energy when in 1528
This was the first of a series of
ensued over a sixty-year period, undermining the
state, almost invariably bringing disunity and
weakness, and leading to its final disintegration
which came abruptly at the end of the sixteenth
century. Over this period no less than eight askias
reigned in Songhai. One of these, Daud (1549-
1582), was an able and successful ruler, but his
success only underscored the shortcomings of the
During the second half of the sixteenth
century, Songhai came under increasing pressure
Else
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As with Sunni Ali, Askia Muhammad's
objectives were strategic and economic
, although
his tactics were far different, at once more
comprehensive and more subtle. Concerned that
Ali's war making had disrupted the Saharan gold
trade, Muhammad moved to stabilize the western
empire, campaigning against the Mossi in 1498–
1499, and soon thereafter probing westward to
Diara in ancient Ghana. His conquest of Air in
1501-1502 secured the trade routes to Tripoli and
Egypt while his absorption of the Taghaza mines
brought control of the salt and gold trade of the
western Sudan.
Military action, however, was balanced with
diplomacy. Only three years after taking power,
Muhammad undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca, the
was also
purpose certainly involving religious piety, but it
move to çement relations with
important Muslim commercial circles. in both
North and South Africa. Again, Askia Muhammad
placated the Muslims of Timbuktu and cultivated
Seg
pol
me
traf
vig
civ
the
from the Sadian kingdom of Morocco, intent
gaining access to the rich trans-Saharan trafic
particularly through control over the salt mines of
Taghaza. The move may have been occasioned by
the new sea routes around Africa that diverted
European
away
Mediterranean; in any event Morocco saw
opportunity to the south. Taghaza and other
desert oases were periodically attacked and plans
were made for an advance on Songhai in the
hopes of gaining control of its gold supply.
Although these Moroccan threats were well
known in Songhai, its rulers felt secure in the
protection of the desert; indeed, for all its
belligerency, Morocco
had not been able to hold
Taghaza, let alone march the Niger
Nevertheless, in 1591 a column of four thousand
soldiers led by an Andalusian, Judar Pasha
,
succeeded in crossing the desert and appeared at
Tondibi on the Niger above Gao. It was a much
smaller force than the Songhai army but it
contained a large pro
addition to superior discipline,
grc
end
wa
up
Suc
a
on
tion of European Muslim
ecc
hac
wit
He
and
sol
sar
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ari
were decisive
tra
Su
the celebrated North African cleric, al-Maghili,
achieving the double objective of gaining Muslim
support, at the same time obtaining al-Maghili's
verdict that Sunni Ali had been a pagan and
therefore an appropriate objective for legitimate
military takeover.
Muhammad also effected basic admini-
strative reforms. He created a professional army of
slave soldiers, ruling over his domains, partly
through tribute-paying local chieftains. partly
through hereditary royal title holders, and partly
with the help of Muslim advisers and officials,
relying often on Islamic sanctions regarding such
matters as taxation and trade. Nonetheless these
changes were less than fundamental. Askia
Muhammad conducted no jihads against infidel
neighbors, retained numerous traditional customs
court, and acknowledged indigenous
authorities at the village level. Staunch Muslim
though he was, he realized like Sunni Ali that
much of his authority stemmed from Songhai.
tradition from which he could stray too far only at
against the invaders.
gained small
political
collapse.
Morocco
converts equipped with muskets, which, in
against the bows and spears of the ill-organized
enemy. Songhai, already weakened by civil war,
was easily defeated, its army put into full retreat,
and the Niger country rendered defenseless
Military defeat was quickly followed by
recompense from its adventure, for it found little
of the wealth it sought and was unable to occupy
and exploit Songhai. Nevertheless the invasion
spelled the end of the Songhai empire. Gao and
Timbuktu were occupied, the latter permanently,
the Niger bend ruling the region first as a
for the Moroccan soldiers eventually settled along
absorbed into the local population, establishing an
protectorate, and then as they gradually became
independent, albeit politically feeble, state.
stir
cor
Fir
inf
we
alle
ext
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the
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lar
the
July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 47
Elsewhere Songhai split into its components. The
Songhai themselves retreated down river to the
Dendi home whence they had originally come and
where they succeeded in eluding the Moroccans.
In Masina and Dirma, the Fulani raided the local
farming people, the Jenne region was attacked by
the Bambara, while Tuareg visited their usual
followed by
famine, and famine by plague. When some
semblance of stability finally returned, political
cohesion had been reduced to a much more
modest scale than that which had characterized
an
the east belonged to the quite different Saharan
branch of the Nilo-Saharan grouping, while south
of the lake were Benue-Congo speakers of the
Niger-Congo family. These migrations very likely
involved a variety of folk filtering into an
devastation all along the Niger bend.
indigenous population, a process that gave rise
Political disintegration was
during the first millennium after Christ to a
heterogeneous mixture of herders, farmers, and
fisherfolk. Traders visiting the region introduced
their own names and these eventually became
permanent-Zagawa to identify the people and
the apogee of the great Sudanic kingdoms.
bordering the lake.
Kanem for the loose collection of local states
Raiding by nomadic and
warrior
groups
Kanuri tradition credits an Arab leader, Saif
combined with internecine struggles to keep states
ibn Dhi Yazan, with unifying these diverse
small, weakened, and defensive; hence, larger
peoples and establishing the ruling Saifawa
units did not reappear until the emergence in the
dynasty of the Kanuri mais or kings, a probable
eighteenth century of the Bambara kingdoms of
.myth designed to gain legitimacy for the Kanem
Segu and Kaarta. Trade, too, suffered from the
rulers by linking them with the name of a great
political fragmentation, although in general
Arab hero. In any event, the Saifawa dynasty,
merchants managed to keep the trans-Saharan
probably founded in the ninth century, was to
survive for a thousand years, unusual
traffic moving at its former levels despite the
vigorous interference of desert raiders. As for the
longevity during which the state of Kanem
emerged and endured, developing other qualities
civilization that Islam had introduced by way of that added an idiomatic flavor to its basic vitality.
the northern trade routes, these were not years of To begin with, the mai was regarded as divine,
growth, and the indifference that the true faith and as a god remained aloof from the profane
encountered both at court and in the countryside gaze of his people, speaking from behind a screen
was to build frustrations leading to the religious and always taking his meals in solitude. The
upheavals that engulfed the western and central institution of a divine, ritually secluded monarch,
Sudan during the early nineteenth century.
widely practiced among traditional African
societies, was joined by characteristics more
Kanem-Bornu and the Hausa States typically Kanuric-an elaborate, highly
The pattern of population movements, centralized palace hierarchy, royal descent in the
economic growth, and political centralization that male line combined with important and powerful
had characterized the western Sudan was repeated positions for the queen mother or Magire and
with variations in Kanem-Bornu and Hausaland. other female members of the mai's household, and
Here, too, the drying out of the Sahara forced a minutely regulated provincial administration
and military organization based upon feudal
ancient negroid hunting and fishing societies
south_into the more congenial latitudes of the
rights and obligations.
There is repeated evidence of the continuing
savanna, where they turned gradually to a
influence on state affairs by the women of the
sedentary farming life, leaving the increasingly
royal household, influence apparently
arid desert to nomadic herders. In its time, the
originating in pre-Islamic times—that is, before
trans-Saharan commerce arose to bind the central
royal conversion in the eleventh century—but
Sudan to the markets of North Africa, and to
nevertheless continuing in spite of Islamic
stimulate the appearance of Sudanic states
injunctions concerning the position of women.
One chronicle reports a Magira as actual ruler;
another testifies to the imprisonment of a ruling
mai by his mother because of an alleged
mismanagement of royal justice. Still another
eulogizes a queen mother as the holder o
extensive fiefs as well as "owner of a thousand
thrones and five hundred gunmen.'
It was trade that stimulated the centralizin
efforts of the Saifawas, responding to the growir
number of merchants from North Africa wh
sought to organize and control the Sahara
an
the market cities.
11
concerned in part to protect that commerce.
Finally, Islamic theology and culture spread its
influence in the central Sudan, as it had in the
west, coming across the desert to gain the
allegiance of royalty, but failing by and large to
extend its sway beyond the limited populations of
Judging from the present-day linguistic
configuration, those migrants who descended into
the regions directly west of Lake Chad spoke
languages comprising the Chadic subdivision of
the Afro-Asiatic linguistic classification, those to
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