The patterns and meaning of a great lake in West Africa

Imago Mundi

Volumn 58, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 80-89

  Rizzo, Gerald J ^a,b  

^a Afriterra Foundation Library   (United States)

^b Afriterra Foundation   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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CARTOGRAPHY;

EID: 31544482782     PISSN: 03085694     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03085690500362439     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. There is a considerable literature on the idea of a lake (sometimes called the Sudan Sea) in the interior of western Africa and its association with the Niger River; examples include James Grey Jackson, An Account of the Empire of Marocco, and the Districts of Suse and Tafilelt, Compiled from Miscellaneous Observations made during a Long Residence in, and various Journies through these Countries (London, Bulmer, 1809)
2. idem, An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa, Territories in the Interior of Africa (London, Longman, 1820), 435-51
3. James Rennell, Geographical Illustrations of Mr Park's Journey, [Appendix to] Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed in the Years 1795, 1796 and 1797 (London, John Murray, 1816 edition), 365-458
4. Thomas J. Bassett and Philip W. Porter, 'From the Best Authorities': The Mountains of Kong in the cartography of West Africa', Journal of African History 32 (1991): 367-413
5. Francesc Relanõ, The Shaping of Africa: Cosmographic Discourse and Cartographic Science in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2002)
6. and Charles W. J. Withers 'Mapping the Niger, 1798-1832: Trust, testimony, and "ocular demonstration" in the late Enlightenment', Imago Mundi 56:2 (2004): 170-93.
7. We recorded twenty features from each of 400 continental maps of Africa, and constructed a spreadsheet that allowed queries documenting that an inland lake appears in 95 per cent of the maps in this random sample examined at Harvard Map Library, the Universities of Illinois and Florida, the New York Public library and the library at Afriterra. org
8. The archaeological history of the region has been brought to light only since 1977. Susan and Roderick McIntosh have identified three phases of human occupation between 250 BC and AD 1400 and have traced settlement distribution and trading activities for each phase. They also point to the way these former inhabitants used intensive specialization in order to adapt to the major environmental changes that have affected the region. Susan Keech McIntosh, Excavations at Jenné-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana, Inland Niger Delta, Mali, 1981 Season, University of California Publications in Anthropology 20 (Berkeley, 1995),
9. and Roderick James McIntosh, The Peoples of the Middle Niger (Oxford, Blackwell, 1988).
10. See also Samuel Sidibe, 'The Dia archaeological project: Rescuing cultural heritage in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali)', Antiquity 75 (2001): 837-48.
11. Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, ed. G. C. Macaulay (London, Macmillan, 1890, and New York, Barnes and Noble, 2004), Book II, v. 31-33.
12. Pliny, Natural History, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1938-1949), Book V, 10, 51-54.
13. See also Robin Hallett, The Penetration of Africa: European Exploration in North and West Africa to 1815 (New York, Praeger, 1965), 45-48.
14. Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geographia (Rome, 1478; Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum facsimile ed., 1969)
15. and Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, ed. Karl Müller (Paris, 1883-1901, Book IV, 6.
16. Paulus Orosius, Seven Books of History against the Pagans, transl. Roy J. Deferrari (Washington, Catholic University Press, 1964), Book I, 2, 29 (pp. 10-11).
17. For the suggested link between Tyconius, Isidore and Beatus, see John Williams, 'Isidore, Orosius and the Beatus Map', Imago Mundi 49 (1997): 17
18. and Relaño, Shaping of Africa (note 1). The maps are, respectively, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.V., fol. 56v;
19. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, MS 3897-3939, cat. 3095, fol. 53v;
20. Sawley Map, Honorius of Autun, Durham Cathedral Priory; and Hereford Cathedral; the Ebstorf map is no longer extant.
21. Among the Renaissance world maps that have a pair of lakes in the interior of West Africa are those by Francesco Rosselli (1492), Matteo Contarini (1506), Martin Waldseemüller (1507), Johann Ruysch (1508), Bernardo Sylvanus (1511), Peter Apian (1520), Oronce Fine (1534), and Sebastian Cabot (1544). Printed editions of Ptolemy's Geography also tended to exhibit the Ptolemaic form of a pair of linked lakes (the dumb-bell model) on both the old and new maps. Gastaldi's small-format edition of 1548 was the first to show a different model.
22. For Arabic sources for the cartography of Africa, see especially Nehemia Levtzion and J. E. P. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Princeton, Markus Wiener, 2000)
23. William Desborough Cooley, The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained (London, Arrowsmith, 1841).
24. An Arab rectangular map of the inhabited world (a 13th-century copy of a work originating in the late 11th century), also shows a prominent inland-lake in West Africa: See Jeremy Johns and Emilie Savage-Smith, 'The Book of Curiosities: A newly discovered series of Islamic maps', Imago Mundi 55 (2003): 7-24, plate 1.
25. I. Hrbek, 'The Almoravids', and J. Devisse 'Trade and trade routes in West Africa', Unesco General History of Africa III: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, ed. M. El Fasi (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, and Oxford, Heinemann, 1995), 336-66 and 367-435.
26. Al-Idrisi's Book of Roger is translated in part and quoted in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources (see note 10), 104-11.
27. For a re-creation of the map, see Konrad Miller, Charta Rogeriana Weltkarte de Idrisi (Stuttgart, 1928).
28. See also S. Maqbul Ahmad, 'Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrisi', in The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book 1, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992), 156-74.
29. Al-Idrisi's text was unavailable in Christian Europe until 1592, when an edition in Arabic was printed in Rome: De geographia universali (Rome, Typographia Medicea, 1592).
30. Ramon Llull, Libre de Blaquerna (c.1272),
31. and idem, Libre de Contemplacio (c.1272); the anonymous Franciscan friar's work is Libro del Conoscimiento (c.1350-1360).
32. For the quotations from Llull and the anonymous friar, see Pekka Masonen, The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages (Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2000), 74-111,
33. and Relaño, Shaping of Africa (see note 1), 103-14.
34. The earliest European maps to show an al-Idrisistyle braided-island pattern were not portolan charts, but maps of the world that incorporated information taken from the charts, such as the map Pietro Vesconte created for Marino Sanudo's Liber Secretorum (c.1320), and Paolino Veneto's copy of Vesconte's map in his Chronologia magna (c.1325). By the late 14th century, the lake is shown on portolan charts, such as those by Francesco and Marco Pizigano (1367), Abraham and Jafuda Cresques (1375), Pirrus de Noha (c.1414), Màcia de Viladesters (1413) and Gabriel de Vallseca (1439). The al-Idrisi braided river is also found on the so-called Borgia map (c.1450), the Este world map (c.1450), Giovanni Leardo's world map (1452), and the map of Hectomano Freducci of Ancona (1497).
35. On these maps, see David Woodward, 'Medieval mappaemundi',
36. and Tony Campbell, 'Portolan charts from the late thirteenth century to 1500', both in The History of Cartography, Vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. David Woodward and J. B. Harley (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286-370 and 371-463 respectively, and plates 9, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27
37. Relaño, The Shaping of Africa (see note 1), 103-15, plate 9
38. and John Kirtland Wright, The Leardo Map of the World 1452 (New York, American Geographical Society, 1928), 5, 16 and facsimile plate.
39. About the same time a great lake appeared in a compressed form west of the Nile on Chinese maps by Chu Ssu-Pen (1320) and Kangnido (1402): See Kuei-sheng Chang, 'Africa and the Indian Ocean in Chinese maps', Imago Mundi 24 (1970): 21-30;
40. and Gari Ledyard, 'Cartography in Korea', in The History of Cartography. Vol. 2, Book 2, Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994), 235-344, esp. 244-45, 248, 266, 289, Figs. 10.3 and 10.4, and dust-jacket figure.
41. For Andrea Bianco's chart of 1448, see A. E. Nordenskiöld and Francis A. Bather, Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing Directions (Stockholm, 1897), 19.
42. Cited in G. R. Crone, The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century (London, Hakluyt Society, 1937), 22-23
43. Masonen, Negroland Revisited (see note 15), 129-36.
44. Crone, Voyages of Cadamosto (see note 18), xxv, 4, 94.
45. Robert Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps (Chicago, Speculum Orbis Press for the Newberry Library, 1993), 223.
46. Leo Africanus's Arab name was al-Hassan ibn-Mohammed al-Wezaz al-Fasi. He was born in Grenada, at the time of the Moors, but he later lived in Rome under Pope Leo X's patronage, where in 1526 he published an account of his earlier travels to fifteen kingdoms in western Africa. Leo's text was published in Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Primo volume delle navigationi et viaggi ne lqual si contiene la descrittione dell'Africa et del paese del Prete Ianni, con varii viaggi del mar Rosso a Calicut, et insino all'isole Molucche, dove nascono le spetiere et la navigatione attorno il mondo (Venice, Tommaso Giunti, 1550; 2nd ed., 1554). The map has the title Primo Tavola;
47. see also Masonen, Negroland Revisited (note 15), 165-234.
48. Nordenskiöld and Bather, Periplus (see note 17), 165
49. and Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century (see note 20), 216-49.
50. Gastaldi's Guarda model appears on 99 per cent of the maps published between 1564 and 1720 that we examined in our study.
51. Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa and the Notable Things Therein Contained, transl. John Pory, ed. Robert Brown (London, Hakluyt Society, 1896), 1: Xxxviii;
52. Masonen, Negroland Revisited (see note 15), 165-234.
53. Leo Africanus, History and Description of Africa (see note 24), 1: 17-18, 124-25, 196, quotation from 3: 822, 828
54. Masonen, Negroland Revisited (see note 15), 295-301.
55. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, ed. George H. T. Kimble (London, Hakluyt Society, 1937), 80-81
56. Masonen, Negroland Revisited (see note 15), 88-95, 145, 292-328
57. Edward William Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (Princeton, Markus Wiener, 1995), 153-54.
58. At its apogee at the end of the fifteenth century, Jenné occupied more than 200 hectares, on which were housed some 40,000 inhabitants in 69 satellite settlements as well as in the walled centre. It was the focus of an indigenous trading network that extended for a radius of some 350 kilometres: See Susan Keech McIntosh, Excavations at Jenne'-Jeno (note 3),
59. and Roderick James McIntosh, Peoples of the Middle Niger (note 3), 199-203
60. D. T. Niane, 'Mali and the second Mandingo expansion', in Unesco General History of Africa 12-16th Century, ed. D. T. Niane (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984), 117-18, 156, 203-6
61. Masonen, Negroland Revisited (note 15), 88-89, 295-302.
62. The centre of the gold trade, recorded by al'Idrisi but unknown to Gastaldi, was Wangara, which, according to its description as an island, must also have been in the Inland Delta region and not, as some later maps had it, in the hills to the west or the dry regions to the east. See Susan Keech McIntosh, 'A reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, island of gold', Journal of African History 22:2 (1981): 145-58.
63. Crone, The Voyages of Cadamosto (see note 18), 2: 80, 93-94.
64. Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, Afrique publiee sous les auspices de Monseigneur le Duc d'Orleans Premier Prince du Sang (Paris, 1749) (double-sheet map)
65. and also his essay 'Mémoire concernant les rivières de l'interieur de l'Afrique, sur les notions tirées des Anciens & des Modernes', Meémoires de Littérature de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 26 (Paris, 1759), xxvi.
66. André Delcourt, La France et les établissements français au Senegal 1713-1763: La compagnie des Indes et le Sénégal, Memoires de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire 17 (Dakar 1952)
67. Hallett, Penetration of Africa (see note 5), 85-96.
68. Jean Baptiste Labat, Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale (Paris, 1728)
69. idem, Voyage du Chevalier des marchais en Guinée, isles voisines, et à Cayénne, fait en 1725, 1726, et 1727 (Paris, 1730), 4: 32-68
70. Thomas Astley, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, Consisting of the Most Esteemed Relations, Which Have Been Hitherto Published in Any Language: Comprehending Every Thing Remarkable in Its Kind, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (London, 1745), 2: 52-168.
71. Astley, A New General Collection of Voyages (see note 32), 2: 52-53, contains the discussion of Lake Maberia and the unnamed Niger lake.
72. Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior districts of Africa... 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London, W. Bulmer, 1799), 190, 208-12.
73. Jackson, Account of Timbuctoo (see note 1), 450 and 523, explains that the epithet 'Region of Riches' described the area from which the Moroccan prince Mulay Hamed Dehebby obtained his gold.
74. Mungo Park, The Journal of a Mission into the Interior of Africa, in the year 1805 (London, John Murray, 1815), 2: 165.
75. René Caillié, Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and Across the Great Desert to Morocco, performed in the years 1824-1828 (London, Colburn and Bentley, 1830), 2: 20-22.
76. Nehemia Levtzion, Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968), 63, traces the derivation of Dabo to a Mande patronymic group from the Volta basin.
77. Adrian Room, African Placenames (Jefferson, NC, McFarland Co, 1994), suggested the translation 'flat-mat', whereas Bovill, Golden Trade of the Moors (see note 26), 81, gives the derivation as 'royal drum'.
78. See also Basil Davidson, Lost Cities of Africa (Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1970), 85.
79. Barth also confirmed that neither Lake Debo nor the Niger River had any connection with Lake Chad: Heinrich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being A Journal of an Expedition Undertaken under the Auspices of H.B.M.'s Government in the Years 1849-1855 (London, Longmans, 1857).
80. The GIS application at afriterra.org was performed with standardized geo-referencing using projection, coordinates and common control points to rectify each map to the current basis map. The geographical landmarks are taken from the handbook by K. Mason, French West Africa (London, Naval Intelligence Office, 1945), 1: 13-56, 2: 168-229.
81. Susan Keech McIntosh, Excavations at Jenné-Jeno (see note 3)
82. Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2002), 228-32
83. Graham Connah, African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), 108-43, 177
84. Jackson, An Account of Timbuctoo (see note 1), 448, 450, 465, 506.