The Almoravid expansion and the downfall of Ghana

Islam - Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients

Volumn 73, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 313-351

  Lange, Dierk ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61949113520     PISSN: 00211818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1515/islm.1996.73.2.313     Document Type: Article

References (110)

1. Ibn Khaldūn, K. al-'ibar wa-dīwān al-mubtada' wa-'l-khabar fī ayyām al-'arab wa-'l-'ajam wa-'l-barbar (Cairo, s.d.), vol. VI, p. 413
2. transl. Mac Guckin de Slane, Histoire des Berbères (Paris, 1852), vol. II, p. 110
3. W. D.Cooley, Negroland of the Arabs (London, 1841), pp. 61-2
4. D. Conrad and H. Fisher, "The conquest that never was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. I. The external sources", in History in Africa, 9 (1982), pp. 38-9
5. J. Hopkins and N. Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (London, 1981), p. 333
6. D. Lange, "Das alte Mali und Ghana: Der Beitrag der Oraltraditionen zur Kritik einer historiographischen Fiktion", in Historische Zeitschrift, 255 (1992) p. 593
7. An example is the term hcombining dot belowimā' translated by R. Dozy as "pare, lieu planté d'arbres" (Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, [Leiden, 1881] vol. 1, p. 329)
8. In the Ghana passage Cooley and De Slane have it as "territory" (Negroland, p. 62
9. Histoire, vol. II, p. 110)
10. e siècle, [Paris, 1975], p. 343)
11. Hopkins and Levtzion omit it (Corpus, p. 333)
12. Conrad and Fisher have "sanctuary" ("Conquest, I", p. 39)
13. According to a parallel passage in K.al-'ibar, VI, p. 375
14. (tr. De Slane, Histoire, II, p. 70) the author probably had in mind a "pare of cattle", so that the opposition in the text between hcombining dot belowimā' and bilād may be understood to refer to pastoral and agricultural land (which was conquered)
15. trans. V.Monteil, Discours sur l'histoire universelle (Beirut, 1967-8), 3 vols
16. Lange, "Altes Ghana", pp. 593, 621-2
17. For instance the struggle between the Sayfūwa and the Dūguwa in Kānem-Borno and the struggle between the Lekawa and the Lailabawa in Kebbi (D. Lange, "Die Hausa-Traditionen in ihrer Abhängigkeit von Kanem-Borno und Nubien", in Anthropos, 88 [1993], pp. 67-70
18. id., "Das frühe Kebbi und Mali", in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 141 [1991], pp. 149-155)
19. L. Tautin, "Légende et tradition des Soninké relatives à l'empire de Ghanata", in Bulletin de géographie historique et descriptive, 10 (1895), pp. 472-480
20. M. Adam, "Légendes historiques du pays de Nioro (Sahel)", in Revue coloniale, 3 (1903-4), pp. 81-95
21. Lt. Lancrezac, "Au Soudan: la légende historique", in La revue indigène, 18 (1907), p. 383
22. R. Arnaud, "La singulière légende des Soninkés", Islam et la politique musulmane française en AOF (Paris, 1912), pp. 144-158
23. M. Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Paris, 1912), vol. 1, pp. 256-262
24. id., "Traditions historiques et légendaires du Soudan accidental", in Renseignements coloniaux, 8 (1913), pp. 292-7
25. Ch. Monteil, "La légende de Ouagadou et l'origine des Soninké", in Mélanges ethnologiques (Dakar, 1953), pp. 361-408
26. G. Dieterlen and D. Sylla, L'empire de Ghana: Le Wagadou et les traditions de Yéréré (Paris, 1992)
27. N. Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1973), pp. 16-8
28. Levtzion suggests that the killing of the snake represents the break with the ancestral religion and the adoption of Islam (Ancient Ghana, p. 47)
29. D. Conrad and H. Fisher stress the importance of the drought theme in the legend ("The conquest that never was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. II. The local oral sources", in History in Africa, 10 [1983], pp. 63-8)
30. The idea of a Scombining dot belowanhāja conquest of Ghana is categorically rejected by Conrad and Fisher ("Conquest, II", p. 68)
31. Delafosse did not try to make use of the snake-killing incident in his reconstruction of the Almoravid conquest (Haut-Sénégal, vol. II, pp. 53-5)
32. P. Farias thinks that the incident reflects myth, not history ("Great states revisited", Journal of African History, 15 [1974], pp. 484-5)
33. D. Lange, "The Almoravids and the Islamization of the great states of West Africa", Itinéraires d'Orient: Hommages à Claude Cahen, in Res Orientalia, 6 (1994), p. 68
34. F. Mounkaïla, Mythe et histoire dans la geste de Zabarkane (Niamey, 1989)
35. Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal, vol. 1, pp. 266-7, 271-6
36. G. Boyer, Un peuple de l'ouest soudanais: les Diawara (Dakar, 1953), pp. 21-30
37. D. Lange, "La chute de la dynastie des Sisse: considérations sur la dislocation de l'empire du Ghana à partir de l'histoire de Gao", in History in Africa, 23 (1996) (in press)
38. Lange, "Almoravids", p. 68
39. Monteil, "Légende", pp. 372-5
40. D. Lange, "From Mande to Songhay: towards a political and ethnic history of medieval Gao", in Journal of African History, 35 (1994), pp. 285-8, 293-9
41. Al-Sa'dī, Ta'rīkh al-Sūdān, ed. and transl. O. Houdas (Paris, 1898-1900), pp. 72, 82/tr. 119, 136 (quoted as TS)
42. Ibn al-Mukhtār, Tārīkh al-Fattāsh, ed. and transl. O. Houdas and M. Delafosse (Paris, 1913), pp. 40/tr. 74 (quoted as TF)
43. Depuis-Yacouba, Essai de méthode pratique pour l'étude de la langue songoï (Paris, 1917), pp. 71-104
44. J. Rouch, La religion et la magie songhay (Paris, 1960), pp. 63-9
45. D. Lange, "Der Ursprung des westafrikanischen Wettergottes Schango", in Saeculum, 45 (1994), pp. 213-238
46. Lange, "Chute", chapt. 4 (in press)
47. J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, Concepts et conceptions songhay-zarma (Paris, 1982), pp. 287-8
48. D. Laya, Traditions historiques zarma-songhais (Niamey, 1977), p. 33
49. In TF, pp. 41/tr. 75
50. M. Delafosse, La langue mandingue et ses dialectes (Paris, 1955), vol. II pp. 15, 493
51. Similarly we have the Manding forms manga-ra (of the lord) and man-nsa-re (of royal descent) (Delafosse, Langue, vol. II, pp. 482, 493)
52. J. O. Hunwick, C. Meillassoux and J.-L. Triaud, "La géographie du Soudan d'après al-Bakrī", Mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny (Paris, 1981), pp. 401-428
53. Lange, "Altes Ghana", pp. 615-7
54. L. Desplagnes, "Étude sur les tumuli du Killi dans la région de Goundam", in L'Anthropologie, 14 (1903), pp. 151-172
55. R. Mauny, Tableau géographique de l'ouest africain au Moyen Age (Dakar, 1961), pp. 92-111
56. M. Raimbault and K. Sanogo (eds.), Recherches archéologiques au Mali (Paris, 1991), pp. 217-516
57. Levtzion thinks that al-Idrīsī systematically places all towns of the Western Sūdān on a river called Nile (Corpus, p. 390 n. 8)
58. This argument ignores the fact that the geographer is reluctant to locate Gao on the Nile/Niger, although this would have been correct, and that he situates Malal on a river flowing into the Nile (Corpus, pp. 108, 113)
59. Monteil, "Empires", p. 298
60. TF, p. 76
61. Levtzion suggests that Tunka-Manīn was appointed in order to protect the kingdom from the pressure of the nomads ("Was royal succession in ancient Ghana matrilineal?", in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 5 [1972], pp. 92-3)
62. J. Sauvaget, "Les épitaphes royales de Gao", in Bulletin de l'IFAN, XII (1950), pp. 418-440
63. Earlier I thought that the kings of Gao-Sané were local Berbers who did not belong to a single family ("Les rois de Gao-Sané et les Almoravides", in Journal of African History, 32 [1991], p. 263, but see my "Chute", chapt. 2)
64. Sauvaget, "Épitaphes", p. 421
65. id., "From Mande", p. 281
66. Adam, "Légendes", pp. 92-3
67. Lancrezac in: Dieterlen and Sylla, Empire, pp. 205, 207
68. Delafosse, "Légendes", p. 297
69. M. Delafosse, "Le Gâna et le Mali et l'emplacement de leurs capitales", in Bulletin du Comité d'Études Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF 7 (1924), p. 487
70. Y. Urvoy, Histoire de Populations du Soudan Central (Paris, 1936), pp. 57-8
71. Mounkaïla, Mythe, pp. 166-7
72. Boube Gado thinks that Mali-Kaman-Dugusa is identical with MaliBero (Le Zarmatarey: Contribution à l'histoire de populations d'entre Niger et Dallol-Mawri [Niamey, 1980], pp. 14, 323)
73. Lange, "Altes Mali", pp. 611-2
74. Boyer, Peuple, p. 25
75. J. O. Hunwick, Sharī'a in Songhay: The Replies of al-Maghīlī to the Questions of Askia al-Hcombining dot belowājj Muhcombining dot belowammad (Oxford, 1985), p. 10
76. Perhaps this is in fact the grave of a descendant of Kema-Magha. Similarly the grave of Mai Idrīs b. 'Alī of Borno (1677-1696) in Fezzan is known as the grave of Mai 'Ali (D. Lange, Le dīwān des sultans du [Kānem-], Bornū [Wiesbaden, 1977], pp. 81 n. 59, 1)
77. Levtzion, "Royal succession", pp. 92-3
78. The form of the name could have been influenced by the fact that Abū Bakr was succeeded by the descendants of his elder brother Yahcombining dot belowyā (H. T. Norris, "Scombining dot belowanhāja scholars of Timbuctoo", in Bulletin of the SOAS, 30, 3 [1967], pp. 634-5). The date however must refer to the rise of Kema-Magha in the days of Abū Bakr, because Abū Bakr b. 'Umar died only in 1087
79. Lancrezac in Dieterlen and Sylla, Empire, p. 207 n. 1 (killing of the snake)
80. Adam, "Lēgendes", p. 93 (killing of the snake)
81. C. Meillassoux, L. Doucouré and D. Simagha, Légende de la dispersion des Kusa (épopée Soninké) (Dakar, 1967), p. 188
82. V. Paques, "L'estrade royale des Niaré", in Bulletin de l'IFAN, XV (1953), pp. 1644-5. The text bas Fatamaha (as opposed to Manamagha). I suppose that this is a printing mistake for Fatamagha
83. Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal, vol. II, pp. 154-5
84. Earlier Daman-Gille has been dated either to the middle of the thirteenth century (Delafosse, Haut Sénégal, vol. 1, p. 271
85. or to the fifteenth century (M. Diawara, La graine de la parole [Stuttgart, 1990], p. 23)
86. Simiri is situated on the road from Niamey to Ouallam (Gado, Zarmatarey, p. 7)
87. Adam isolates this wife from the three hundred captives of the gift ("Légendes", p. 242), while Delafosse and Boyer single her out only on account of her beauty (Haut-Sénégal, II, 150
88. Peuple, 27)
89. Arnaud, "Islam", p. 157
90. s. a. Conrad and Fisher, "Conquest, II", p. 62
91. S. Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa (London, 1962), pp. 29-30
92. J. Cuoq, Histoire de l'islamisation de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (Paris, 1984), p. 41
93. Lancrezac, "Légende", in Dieterlen and Sylla, Empire, pp. 205, 207
94. id., "Traditions", p. 297
95. S. a. Arnaud, "Singulière légende", in Dieterlen and Sylla, Empire, p. 212
96. P. Amilhat, "Petite chronique des Id ou Aich: héritiers guerriers des Almoravides sahariens", Revue des études islamiques, 1 (1937), pp. 46, 50, 107
97. H. Norris, Saharan Myth and Saga (Oxford, 1972), pp. 114-5
98. Norris, "Scombining dot belowanhāja scholars", pp. 634-5
99. other versions have only the name Mamadi for the Ture (Adam, "Legendes", p. 85
100. Y. Person, "Les ancêtres des Samori", in Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 13 (1903), p. 141
101. Cooley, Negroland, p. 66
102. J. Marquart, Die Benin-Sammlung des Reichs museums für Völkerkunde in Leiden (Leiden, 1913), p. 184
103. Trimingham, History, p. 56, n. 1
104. TS, pp. 22-4/tr. 38-42
105. J. Rouch, Les Songhay (Paris, 1954), p. 4
106. R. C. Abraham, Dictionary of the Hausa Language (London, 1962), p. 90
107. N. Levtzion, "Ancient Ghana: a reassessment of some Arabic sources", in Mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny (Paris, 1981), vol. 1, p. 430
108. Sumanguru does not figure among the sons of Dinga's last wife. One version of the Wagadu legend claims that he was the descendant of Dinga's female cook (Monteil, Légende, p. 370 n. 5). These and other elements suggest that he did not belong to the royal Sisse. From his name - Soso Sumanguru Kante - it may be deduced that he was a Soninke from Soso/Ghana
109. Trimingham, History, p. 30
110. Levtzion, Ancient Ghana, p. 186