Islamic Scholarship and Understanding History in West Africa

Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:02 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 10 Islamic Scholarship and Understanding History in West Africa before 1800 Paul E. Lovejoy The historical scholarship indigenous to West Africa was closely associated with the Islamic sciences, including history and geography, which flourished in such places as Timbuktu for centuries before 1800.1 The importance of history was displayed in such writings as ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Saʿdi’s Tarikh al-Sudan [History of the Sudan] (c.1655) and Taʾrı̄kh al-fattāsh fı̄ akhbār al-buldān wa ʾl-juyūsh waakābir al-nās [The Chronicle of the Researcher into the History of the Countries, the Armies, and the Principal Personalities], attributed to Mahmud Kaʿti (d. AH 1 Muh: arram 1002; 27 September 1593) and continued after his death, with the surviving version ending in AH 1074 (AD 1654–5). The legal tradition was also historical in orientation because of the practice of citing previous fatwa in issuing opinions on contemporary legal questions. The intellectual tradition of quoting the Qurʾan and the Hadith privileged historically documented chains of authority in the construction of arguments and establishing legitimacy. Among Muslims, there was the scholarly tradition of isnād, which traced an individual’s intellectual and religious pedigree with reference to one’s teachers and, in turn, their teachers. The identification with a chain of authority that was historical established specialization and knowledge of a specific curriculum. The Ibadi scholarship in the Mzab, various Saharan oases, and other Berber enclaves sustained a learned tradition that was autonomous from Sunni orthodoxy but nonetheless committed to an equally intellectual discipline. In addition, the consolidation of the Qadiriyya sufi brotherhood in Morocco and then elsewhere spread a system of education that enhanced this appreciation of history. 1 This chapter was originally presented as the inaugural William A. Brown Memorial Lecture on Islam in West Africa at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on 12 March 2009. William Brown inspired my interest in Islamic West Africa. His advice on my Ph.D. research was fundamental. His insistence on the erudition of scholarship in the Muslim centres of West Africa presaged many of the discoveries of recent years. I wish to thank Jan Vansina and Thomas Spear for inviting me to present the inaugural lecture in his honour, and the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History for its support. I also wish to thank Feisal Farrah and Yacine Daddi Addoun for their assistance. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:02 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy PORTUGAL 213 SPAIN Cordoba Granada Tunis T T Marrakech Mediterranean Sea O Tripoli Sidjilmassa M Benghazi A P M N R. ile Zawilah Ghat S Wadan A H A E Aswan R T Medina Aidhab Dongola Agadès Suakin Bilma FUNJ KANEM L. Chad YATENGA WAGADUGU GURMA WADAI BORNO Massawa Zaghawa TIGRE DARFUR ETHIOPIA BAGIRMI MAMPRUSSI GOJJAM NUPE lta Vo R. IFE AKAN AMH R. B enue SHOA HAIYA KWARARAFA Mocha Aden Zaila AR A DAGOMBA Mecca ea MALI S dS Jenne r ge Ni R. E Re l D A Gao Takedda Timbuktu Niamey ne ga R EMPIRE SONGHAY EMPIRE Walata Se E Taghaza Idjil R. Cairo N M O R O C C AN R.Gam bia R Fez E Algiers O I Cadiz Ceuta Rabat Berbera ADAL KAFFA Benin GALLA Elmina I L Bight of Benin Bight of Biafra A M O S Mogadishu Kisimayu São Tomé ng o Lake Victoria Lake Tanganyika Luanda Lindi Lake Nyasa OZ AM Benguela MWANAMUTAPA COEA BAROE Portuguese/Spanish forts Portuguese territory Pemba I. Zanzibar I. Mafia I. Kilwa Kisiwani I. MATEMBA Major Kingdoms and Empires BAROE Bagamoyo LUBA LUNDA Moroccan Empire, c.1600 Malindi Mombasa AZANIA o KONGO BIQ UE R. C Atlantic Ocean Comoro Is. Mozambique M Sofala Other state/Kingdom Movements of peoples ROZWI SAN Fulani Luo I ON NG KH Galla O IK HO Indian Ocean I Maravi Shuwa Arabs Map 4. Ottoman Empire, late seventeenth century 500 miles 500 km Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 214 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 In summary, the tradition of scholarship in the western and central regions of what was known as Bilad al-Sudan, ‘the land of the blacks’, paralleled the traditions of the Maghreb and Middle East, connected by literacy, pilgrimage, trade, and migration. Dahiru Yahya makes the useful reminder of the complexities of intellectual and political currents within the Islamic world, despite the fundamental opposition between Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean world.2 Within this setting, the strong influence of Andalusia on sub-Saharan Africa should be noted; the influences across the Mediterranean and Sahara went both ways, reflecting the vitality of linkages rather than isolation because of the vast desert. Moreover, in the sixteenth century, the consolidation of Ottoman control as far west as Algeria extended new influences across the Sahara, especially to Borno. The autonomy of the Ibadi enclaves, along with the influence of Andalusia, and the Ottoman penetration, provided the context for a dynamic local tradition of historical writing and scholarship, not only in Timbuktu but ultimately in scores of towns in the sahel and savanna, in which Muslims were to be found in great numbers. The many libraries that have survived in Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa reflect these linkages. In examining how Africans perceived history in the period before around 1800, this chapter draws on an extensive scholarship. Africa was once considered to be a classic example of a region ‘without history’. In the oft quoted remark of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Africa had no history prior to European ‘exploration’ and ‘colonization’. According to Trevor-Roper, ‘there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness . . . ’; he later refers to Africa as ‘unhistoric’.3 In fact, local scholars in West Africa, Ethiopia, and elsewhere were writing histories and documenting history well before the rise of Europe to global prominence after the sixteenth century. There are extensive written sources from the fifteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century, before European ‘exploration’ or imperial conquest. This is not only in Muslim areas where writing in Arabic was common, and Islamic scholarship flourished, but conceptions of history were also well developed elsewhere, as with the literate Amharic culture in Ethiopia and at various enclaves where Christians were to be found. Literacy and, consequently, the survival of written records, are part of African history. From these surviving documents it is possible to gain some understanding of how people tried to interpret history, well before the Portuguese and, later, other Europeans circumnavigated Africa. Indeed Islamic scholarship flourished during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, during the period when the trans-Atlantic slave trade grew to enormous proportions. 2 Dahiru Yahya, Morocco in the Sixteenth Century: Problems and Patterns in African Foreign Policy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1981). 3 Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Past and Present: History and Sociology’, Past and Present, 42 (1969), 6; and Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe (New York, 1965), 9. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 215 Any attempt to assess the history of ‘understanding history’ in Africa cannot be a synthesis or overview of the whole continent: there is too much research currently being undertaken to attempt such an approach here, which would inevitably be filled with significant gaps in coverage. Rather, this chapter has approached the problem of historical perspective through examples of how contemporaries in the period under review viewed their ethnography and history. Although there were large parts of Africa where there were no indigenous written records and often only vague (if any) references in external sources, the focus here is on western and central Sudan (i.e. the savanna, sahel, and Sahara Desert of West Africa). In these extensive areas there was a literate class of Muslim scholars, some of whom wrote about their history, that extends back to the period AD 1000–1300 and the Muslim state of Ghana and the Almoravid conquests of the Maghreb and Andalusia. By concentrating on western and central Sudan, this chapter analyzes perceptions of history of the Muslim intelligentsia in the period from the fourteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Moreover, the forms of oral tradition that have survived also enable a reconstruction of how history was conceptualized in a mythological form that was indigenous and that can be documented to have been important alongside the literary tradition. In addition to the literate tradition, there were professional sages, known as griots, who staged performances that were historical in both content and intent, and that were closely tied to the political leadership of the Muslim states, especially Mali. Several themes that focus on changes and developments in the various areas of Africa dominate the historiography of the continent from 1400 to 1800. These themes are divided both geographically and in terms of the relative importance of external influences on change. The regions in which Islam was an important factor had already been consolidated in the sahel and Sahara by the fourteenth century, from the Red Sea and along the east coast of Africa westward across the Nile valley, the Lake Chad basin, the inner Niger River to the Senegal River in the west. Many areas had been introduced to Islam as early as the eleventh century, and hence it is erroneous to think of Islam as a ‘foreign’ or alien religion and culture, much as it would be to suggest that Christianity was a new introduction to north-west Europe in this period. The interpretation of the history of Islamic areas of Africa is likely to be an ongoing process for years to come. This prediction is based solely on the materials that have been identified in John Hunwick’s massive compendium of Arabic and ajami script texts in the different regions of Black Africa. The Hunwick inventories are informative of the vastness of these sources, which are clearly more extensive than is often thought.4 The Timbuktu repository at the 4 John Hunwick et al. (eds.), Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 2: The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa (Leiden, 1995); and vol. 4: The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa (Leiden, 2003). See also Hunwick, ‘Toward a History of the Islamic Intellectual Tradition in West African down to the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 17 (1997), 9. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 216 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 Ahmad Baba Centre alone includes more than 15,000 manuscripts dating to the period before the seventeenth century. Similar collections that pertain to subSaharan Africa are to be found in Morocco, the Mzab, and other parts of Algeria, Libya, Egypt, the Nilotic Sudan, and the Hijaz. There are similarly important private and public archives in other places, such as Sokoto, Agadez, and the major Saharan oases. The context of this scholarship in western and central Sudan was fundamentally religious, with a keen appreciation of the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad. The focus of various Islamic sciences was essentially historical. The range of scholarship can be appreciated with respect to the holdings of libraries in West Africa and the Maghreb. A survey of libraries demonstrates both the basis of a core curriculum that was taught widely, and the extent of knowledge that was based on books and manuscripts brought from different parts of the Islamic world, whether from Andalusia and the Maghreb, the Ottoman domains, or the Hijaz and the pilgrimage trails. Moreover, there was the Ibadi tradition that influenced much of the Sahara wherever Berber populations were to be found. Ibadi traced their origins to ʿAbd Allah bin Ibad al-Murri ʾl-Tamimi, while the Qadiriyya sufi brotherhood traced its origins to Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir al Jilani (AH 470–561; AD 1077–1166). The range of subjects that were studied in West Africa over several hundred years before 1900 included Qurʾanic studies (recitation, exegesis), Arabic language (lexicons, lexicology, morphology, syntax, rhetoric, and prosody), and studies of the Prophet Muhammad, including biography, devotional poetry, the Hadiths, and, by extension, history. Other areas of concentration included theology (tawh: id ), mysticism (tasawwuf ), and law (sources, schools, didactic texts, legal precepts, and legal cases˙ and opinions). While the concern here is with historical reconstruction and historical perspective, the focus of Islamic scholarship on the life and times of the Prophet, on language, and on religious themes, establishes a context for understanding the purpose of history, which essentially was to inform the political, scholarly, and spiritual elite. The legal tradition following the Maliki school of jurisprudence placed West Africa in the dominant legal tradition within Islam, along with the Maghreb and Andalusia, in which the importance of precedence in law was fundamental. The issuance of fatwa (legal opinions) required an appreciation of historical tradition, since reference to earlier legal opinions was essential in order to establish authority. Ibadi tradition was similar in terms of requiring accurate citations of the scholarly and legal literature; thereby displaying an appreciation of history. The categories of legal materials to be found in the libraries of West Africa included sources of jurisprudence (usūl al-fiqh); schools of thought (madhhab), ˙ manuals, didactic texts, legal precepts including foundational texts and fiqh and maxims (al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya); as well as legal cases and opinions, such as al-Miʿyar al-muʿrib wa ʿl-Jamiʿ ʿl-Mughrib fı̄ fatāwā Ifrı̄qiyā wa ʿl-Andalus wa ʿl-Maghrib [Criteria for the Collection Containing the Fatwa of the People of Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 217 Ifriqia, Andalusia, and Maghreb] of al-Wansharisi (AH 834–914; AD 1431– 1508), a massive collection of fatwa from the Maghreb and Andalusia from the ninth to the fifteenth century that was finished in 1496. Abdullahi dan Fodio cites the collection of Egyptian al-Ujhuri in establishing his understanding of law. Attitudes towards ethnicity, race, and gender are thereby revealed in the sources of the period, especially in discussions of issues arising from slavery and enslavement. Ahmad Baba specifically wrote a treatise, Miʿraj al-suʿud [The Ladder of Ascent towards Grasping the Law Concerning Transported Blacks] in 1613 on the legitimacy of enslavement in West Africa, in which he cites legal opinion and historic arguments to disprove any presumed association between racial features, such as being black skinned, and the legitimacy of enslavement.5 As the collection of books and manuscripts in the various libraries of West Africa demonstrate, influence flowed to the Sudan along three main axes, perhaps the strongest influence being from Andalusia and the Maghreb, and following trans-Saharan routes from Ottoman domains from the sixteenth century, with the influence of the pilgrimage route to Mecca always important. An overview of the books and manuscripts that are held in the various libraries of West Africa demonstrates what books were in circulation, at least in some places. Bruce Hall and Charles Stewart have examined seventy-two libraries in Nouakchott and Boutilimit in Mauritania, comprising a total of 4,600 items. In Shinqit and Wadan, twelve libraries hold about 1,100 manuscripts, while the library that belonged to al-Hajj ʿUmar Tall and his family, now housed in Bamako, comprises 4,100 manuscripts. At Timbuktu, there are other libraries, including that of Bou ʾl-Araf that forms the basis of the collection at the Ahmed Baba Institute. Similarly, there are important and substantial libraries in Kano, Sokoto, Agades, and elsewhere. The ʿUmar Falke library has 3,030 items that were originally in Kano but are now located at Northwestern University.6 History was a recognized discipline of the Islamic sciences in West Africa. Ahmad Baba, for example, quoted Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima [The Introduction] (AH 776; AD 1375) and Kitab al-ʿIbar [The Universal History] (AH 780; AD 1379). ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Saʿdi bin ʿAbd Allah’s Tarikh al-Sudan [History of the Sudan] and Tarikh al-khulafaʾ [History of the Caliphs], of al-Suyuti (AH 849– 911; AD 1445–1505), as well as various abridgements and versifications, were well known and perhaps circulated widely. ʿAbdullahi dan Fodio’s autobiography and account of events leading to the Sokoto jihad is another example, although dating to the early nineteenth century.7 There are many histories that were written since at least the late fifteenth century. The Mamma Haidara library 5 Bruce Hall and Charles Stewart, ‘The Historic “Core Curriculum” and the Book Market in Islamic West Africa’, in Graziano Kratli and Ghislaine Lydon (eds.), One Thousand Years of TransSaharan Book Trade (Leiden, 2011), 109–74. 6 Ibid. 7 ʿAbdullahi dan Fodio, Idā c al-nusūkh man akhadhtu canhu min al-shuyūkh, in Mervyn Hiskett, ‘Material Relating to the State of Learning among the Fulani before their Jihad’, Bulletin of the Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 218 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 contains 4,000 manuscripts that belong to all fields of Islamic studies: Qurʾan, Hadith, jurisprudence, literature, astrology, grammar, and sufism. In addition, it contains 1,000 documents of historic value, including fatwa on daily religious matters, commercial, and public issues. The correspondence between traders and scholars reveals the extent of international relations among Islamic countries, and again an appreciation of the past. The Mamma Haidara library was established in the middle of the nineteenth century at Bimba village and is still regarded as one of the best libraries in Mali.8 The Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba in Timbuktu contains 355 titles in fiqh alone, with many documents on sufism and 150 titles on history. The oldest manuscript dates to the seventh century AH (that is, the thirteenth century). While there are many manuscripts that derive from the central Islamic lands, predominant in the collection are local scholars from West Africa and the Sahara.9 The way that history was perceived is revealed in the various chronicles, which were essentially political in their dimension and within a perspective that records the filtered history of the Muslim community. The analysis of history as revealed in contemporary chronicles distinguishes among several periods. These chronicles are referred to as tarikh, in Hausa as tarihi, which is translated as ‘history’— as distinct from stories, known in Hausa as tatsuniyoyi, which include historical memories as well as fanciful stories of animals, and relations between people and the supernatural.10 The conscious recourse to historical documentation reflects an awareness of history as a documentable form of knowledge. In Islamic science, history and geography were distinguished, although geographical accounts, such as those of Ibn Battuta or the less well known Muhammad bin ‘Umar al-Tunusi (1789–1857), contain important historical information and analysis. There are mahram and diwan that date to the fourteenth century and earlier for Borno and Kanem.11 There are also histories that appear to rely on oral traditions, such as the Asl al-Wangariyyin, the Wangarawa Chronicle (c.1650), and the so-called Kano Chronicle, which dates to the end of the nineteenth century but clearly builds on earlier texts.12 School of Oriental and African Studies, 19:3 (1957), 550–73. See also Hall and Stewart, ‘The Historic “Core Curriculum” and the Book Market in Islamic West Africa’. 8 Catalogue of Manuscripts in Mamma Haidara Library, vols. 1–4, ed. Ayman Fuad Sayyid (London, 2000). 9 Handlist of Manuscripts in the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba, Timbuktu, Mali, vols. 1–5, ed. Julian Johansen (London, 1995). 10 See, for example, Frank Edgar, Litafi na tatsuniyoyi na Hausa, 2 vols. (Belfast, 1911). 11 Dierk Lange, Le Diwan des Sultans du (Kanem) Bornu: Chronologie et Histoire d’un Royaume Africain (Wiesbaden, 1977). See also H. R. Palmer (ed.), Sudanese Memoirs, Being mainly Translations of a Number of Arabic Manuscripts Relating to the Central and Western Sudan, 3 vols. (Lagos, 1928). 12 Paul E. Lovejoy, Abdullahi Mahadi, and Mansur Ibrahim Mukhtar, ‘C. L. Temple’s “Notes on the History of Kano”’, Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 4 (1993), 7–76; Lovejoy, ‘Alhaji Ahmad el-Fellati ibn Dauda ibn Muhammad Manga: Personal Malam to Emir Muhammad Bello of Kano’, in Femi J. Kolapo and Kwabena Akurang-Parry (eds.), African Agency and European Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 219 Muslim West Africa operated within a broader Islamic context, especially as focused on Morocco and by extension Andalusia. It is not possible to separate the scholarship of the Maghreb, Andalusia, and the Sudan; and Cordova and Timbuktu were within the same orbit of intellectual interaction. As Andalusia collapsed, the changes reverberated across the Sahara. This interpretation of history is evident in the accounts of numerous Muslim scholars. The writings of al-Maghili, Ibn Battuta, al-Hasan bin al-Wazzan al-Zayyati (Leo Africanus), Ahmad Baba, Muhammad Bello, and others uncover a vast scholarship that was a disciplined and annotated study of the past and contemporary society through history and geography.13 How the long interaction across the Sahara shaped this intellectual environment and how deep into the savanna and forests to the south of the Sahara this knowledge and approach to history and geography penetrated is still being determined. In addition there are chronicles from Gonja, in the middle Volta Basin, various histories from central Sudan, such as the mid-seventeenth-century Asl al-Wangariyyin from Kano. Later histories, such as the Kano Chronicle, probably compiled in the late nineteenth century, attest to the existence of king lists and oral testimonies that were undoubtedly recounted publically in praise of previous rulers for several centuries.14 The Wangarawa Chronicle is unique in that it recounts the migration of a community of Muslim merchants from western Sudan to the Hausa cities, and in doing so correlates historical events with other indigenous documentation.15 What this local tradition demonstrates is an appreciation of history as a means of establishing legitimacy. Scholars felt the need to document events and information that was considered significant. The ‘Wangara’ were associated with Ibadi tradition, at least in this early period, rather than the sufism that would become dominant by the eighteenth century in many places. The ways in which history was understood is also evident in oral traditions and myth, as in the Sunjiata epic of Mali. The epic recounts events that occurred between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and that were fundamental to the charter of the Mali Empire, which fell to Songhay in the fifteenth century. There are at least seventeen variants of the legend. The scholarship that focuses on understanding the relevance and process of transmission of the tradition demonstrates that the tradition of historical reconstruction and historical commentary extends back into the past. The caste of professional minstrels and court historColonialism: Latitudes of Negotiations and Containment: Essays in Honour of Sydney Kanya-Forstner (Trenton, NJ, 2007); and John Hunwick, ‘A Historical Whodunit: The So-Called “Kano Chronicle” and its Place in the Historiography of Kano’, History in Africa, 21 (1994), 127–46. 13 ʿAbd-al-ʿAziz ʿAbd-Allah Batran, ‘A Contribution to the Biography of Shaikh Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd-al-Karim ibn Muhammad (ʿUmar-Aʿmar) al-Maghili, al Tilimsani’, Journal of African History, 14:3 (1973), 381–94; and John Hunwick, Shari ʾa in Songhay: The Replies of al-Maghili to the Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad (London, 1985). 14 Lovejoy, Mahadi, and Mukhtar, ‘Temple’s “Notes on the History of Kano”’, 7–76. 15 Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Notes on the Asl al-Wangariyyin’, Kano Studies, 1:3 (1978), 46–52. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 220 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 ians, the griots, had the task of performing and presenting traditions to audiences that were well versed in the lore and had critical expectations of how the traditions were represented. Structured traditions were maintained and even enhanced alongside a literate tradition of scholarship that was as well developed as the Latin of medieval Europe. The considerable texts that were written in the several centuries before c.1820 demonstrate how people saw themselves and how they interpreted their history. The epic of Sunjiata dates to the period of Mali ascendancy in West Africa, most notable during the reign of Mansa Musa (d. 1337). The period is perhaps best symbolized by the influence of Abu Ishaq al-Sahili , the Andalusian poet and architect. Having returned to western Sudan with Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage in 1324, al-Sahili was associated with the construction of the Great Mosque (Dyingere Ber) at Timbuktu, an audience chamber for Mansa Musa at his palace in the capital, Niani, and the royal residence for the kings of Mali at Timbuktu, as well as possibly a mosque in Gao.16 Local scholars wrote about this history and documented its importance in terms of an understanding of the Muslim world. Jurists referred to historic precedents and quoted earlier scholarship in addressing issues of enslavement and ethnicity, in a form that was historical in reconstruction. Libraries were maintained, and an institutionalized instruction was sustained at the mosques, and most especially at the mosques in Timbuktu, where different disciplines were taught, from law, to divination, history, numerology, and geography. The method of instruction was through the analysis of texts and mastering the literature of instruction, including the Qurʾan, the Hadiths, the Shariʿa and Maliki legal interpretation, and other texts shared with the Muslim world. TH E ‘ RECO NQ UEST’ OF I BERIA A ND EMIGRATION FR OM TH E L AN DS O F AN DA LU S IA The conquest of Granada in 1492 coincided with an uprising and coup d’état in Songhay, far to the south, that led to the ascendancy of Askia Muhammad and an avowedly more orthodox Muslim government, replacing the regime of Sunni ʿAli, himself a Muslim but considered to be not sufficiently strict, and supposedly tolerating non-Muslim practices.17 Thus the year 1492 stands out as a watershed, both with respect to the expulsion of Muslims from Granada, the Songhay coup d’état, leading to the emergence of Askia Muhammad and the reinforcement of Muslim scholarship, and the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas 16 John Hunwick, ‘An Andalusian in Mali: A Contribution to the Biography of Abu Ishaq alSahili, c.1290–1346’, Paideuma, 36 (1990), 59–66. 17 John Hunwick, ‘Songhay, Bornu and Hausaland in the Sixteenth Century’, in J. F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder (eds.), History of West Africa, vol. 1, 3rd edn (London, 1985), 205–12. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 221 and the opening of the Iberian overseas migration that paralleled the Andalusia diaspora across the Sahara. What is often not appreciated is that the expulsion of Muslims from Iberia was the final phase of a movement to Morocco and beyond, including to Songhay and the Muslim areas of West Africa, that had been underway for at least two centuries and continued through the sixteenth century. Clearly the impact and timing of migration differed, but the association with Iberia/Andalusia is certain.18 Even before the movement of Portuguese and Spanish peoples across the seas, there was a steady migration of Muslims from Andalusia across the Sahara. This migration culminated in the invasion of Songhay at the end of the sixteenth century, at the same time that the Spanish and Portuguese had united their monarchies in consolidating their conquest of vast parts of the world. These parallel trajectories were interrelated, it is argued here; only the Muslim trajectory of expansion from Andalusia has hitherto been recognized by a limited number of specialists.19 While there is an understanding of the significance of the Iberian world and its overseas expansion, the parallel impact across the Sahara has escaped the attention of most scholars of European expansion. In fact, sugar plantations using African slave labour were first developed in southern Morocco, in the area between Marrakesh and Essaouira on the coast.20 Slave labour from sub-Saharan Africa maintained irrigation works that enabled the production of sugar, much of which was sent to England in the early sixteenth century. Hence slave-based sugar production was developed between Marrakesh and the coast well before the earliest sugar plantations in the Americas, or indeed on São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea. The sugar plantations of Morocco may not have served as the model for the forms of sugar production using slave labour in the Americas, but ‘European’ enterprise in developing plantations in the Americas was not unique, as has often been thought in the scholarship of the Americas and Europe. The connections between western Sudan and Andalusia have been well documented.21 For example, ʿAli bin Ziyad al-Quti, the grandfather of Muhmud 18 Ismaël Diadié Haı̈dara, L’Espagne musulmane et l’Afrique subsaharienne (Bamako, 1997); and Haı̈dara, Jawdar Pasha et La Conquête Saâdienne du Songhay (1592–1599) (Rabat, 1996). 19 P-P Rey, ‘La jonction entre réseau ibadite berbère et réseau ibadite dioula du commerce de l’or, de l’Aı̈r à Kano et Katsina au milieu du 15e siècle, et la construction de l’Empire songhay par Sonni Ali Ber’, Revue de Géographie Alpine, 1 (1994), 111–36; and Rey, ‘L’influence de la pensée andalouse sur le rationalisme français et européen’, in Doudou Dienne (ed.), Les Routes d’alAndalus: patrimoine commun et identité plurielle (Paris, 2001), 111–18. 20 P. Berthier, Les anciennes sucreries du Maroc et leurs réseaux hydrauliques (Rabat, 1966), 233–9. See also Michel Abitol, Tombouctou et les Arma: De la conquête marocaine du Soudan nigérien en 1591 à l’hégémonie de l’Empire Peul du Macina en 1833 (Paris, 1979), 42–3. Hence one of the reasons for the invasion of sub-Saharan Africa was to acquire more enslaved workers, as well as soldiers. 21 S. M. Cissoko, ‘L’intelligentsia de Tombouctou aux XVe et XVIe siècles’, Bulletin de l’IFAN, 31 (1969), 927–52; Cissoko, ‘L’université de Tombouctou au XVIe siécle’, Afrika Zamani, 2 (1974), 105–38; Ismaël Diadié Haı̈dara, L’Espagne musulmane et l’Afrique subsaharienne (Bamako, 1997); John Hunwick, ‘Fez and West Africa in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 222 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 Kaʿti, author of Tarikh al-fattash, came from Toledo, and moved to Tuwat, in the Sahara, in 1468, apparently reaching Timbuktu within a year or two after that, where he married a local woman of Soninke origin.22 Although Toledo had come under Christian rule in 1085, Muslims continued to live in the city at least until 1502, when a royal decree ordered conversion or exile. As Muhmud Kaʿti’s grandfather’s migration demonstrates, Muslims were moving to sub-Saharan Africa before the fall of Granada in 1492, and the emigration from Andalusia continued long into the sixteenth century. Muhmud Kaʿti was a contemporary of Askiya al-Hajj Muhammad, who ruled Songhay from 1493 to 1529. The travels of al-Hasan bin al-Wazzan al-Zayyati (Leo Africanus) show the extent of interaction between Andalusia and West Africa. Like al-Sahili, Al-Hasan was from Granada, only some 250 years later.23 In writing about his travels, al-Hasan demonstrates his awareness of historical and geographical themes of Islamic scholarship. He referred to Ibn Khaldun and other authorities, whom he had read, and he learned of al-Maghili, who was in Kano c.1493, only seventeen years before his own visit to Kano c.1510. Al-Maghili crossed the Sahara to Kano during the reign of Muhammadu Rumfa (1463–99), before travelling on to Songhay. The city of Kano from that time became a religious, economic, and political centre. Rumfa consciously introduced royal-wife seclusion and expanded the institution of concubinage—in a direct attempt to conform to what was perceived to be Islamic norms in North Africa and later the Ottoman Empire.24 Because al-Hasan was not a historian but rather a diplomat and pilgrim, his knowledge of history is probably indicative of the importance of history in the thinking of many intellectuals. Al-Hasan was aware that al-Sahili had been instrumental in the construction of the Timbuktu mosque, which reveals knowledge of the history of relations between Andalusia and the Sudan for more than 250 years. The reference to Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Battuta clearly establishes the line of authority based on historical chronicles. Local historical texts, such as the Wangarawa Chronicle of Kano, which also refers to al-Maghili, demonstrate that this sense of history was deep-rooted.25 Despite the controversy over the authorship and dating of the compilation of the Kano Chronicle, the information in Scholarly and Sharifian Networks’, in Fès et l’Afrique: relations économiques, culturelles et spirituelles (Rabat, 1996), 57–71; and Elias Saad, Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables (Cambridge, 1983). 22 John O. Hunwick, ‘Studies in Taʾrikh al-fattash, III: Kaʿti Origins’, Sudanic Africa, 11 (2001), 111–14. 23 Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York, 2006). 24 Murray Last, ‘From Sultanate to Caliphate: Kano, 1450–1800 A.D.’, in Bawuro M. Barkindo (ed.), Studies in the History of Kano (Kano, 1983), 67–91. See also Heidi J. Nast, ‘Islam, Gender, and Slavery in West Africa Circa 1500: A Spatial Archaeology of the Kano Palace, Northern Nigeria’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 86:1 (1996), 44–77. 25 Muhammad A. Al-Hajj, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle of the Origins and Missionary Activities of the Wangarawa’, Kano Studies 1:4 (1968), 7–42. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 223 that text associates history with the periods of reign of the various sarki (kings) of Kano, and hence with political authority and legitimacy. This tradition of scholarship that connected Andalusia, the Maghreb, and western Sudan became associated with an indigenous class of Muslim scholars in western and central Sudan who were known locally by various names. Those associated with the Saghanughu clan were part of the diaspora of Juula (Dyula) merchant communities in western Sudan and sahel.26 The pervasiveness of this class of Muslim scholars and teachers can be seen with reference to Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu, who was enslaved in 1777 and sent to Jamaica. Although a young man, he was well educated and claimed to have been on his way to Timbuktu to study law when he was kidnapped and sold. In about 1820, he saw fit to write two related manuscripts, which have been entitled Kitab al-Salat [The Book of Praying], which provides details of his educational experiences in West Africa before 1777 and which reflects accurately the Qadiri curriculum of the Saghanughu towns of Futa Jallon and its interior.27 The history of the Kaba clan, and specifically the Saghanughu clerics, has been reconstructed through the compilation of silsila, literally the chain of transmission, collected by Ivor Wilks, among others. Individuals received an ijaza or diploma that certified the knowledge received from a specific scholar, including the books studied and the chain of teachers. Wilks published one such document that provides an intellectual pedigree back to Muhammad al-Mustafa Saghanughu.28 Therefore historical observation largely arose in documenting pedigree and hence focused on and reflected the major political events of the period. The expulsion of Muslims from Andalusia influenced the transmission of scholarship south of the Sahara. The fall of Granada in 1492, the emergence of a Sharifian dynasty in Marrakesh, and the conquest of Songhay in 1591, provided context for this influence. The extension of Ottoman rule across North Africa and into the Sahara resulted in an alliance with Borno, thereby maintaining links with the central regions of Islam. The predominance of sufism, specifically the Qadiriyya, which developed a major intellectual and spiritual centre in Fez, furthered the interest in historical authority. The jihad of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, culminating in the Sokoto jihad of 1804–8, were legitimized with reference to the initial jihad of the Prophet and subsequent efforts, both spiritual and military, to purify Islam. The history of this period strongly influenced 26 Ivor Wilks, ‘The Transmission of Islamic Learning in the Western Sudan’, in Jack Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 162–97. 27 Yacine Daddi Addoun and Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica’, in Lovejoy (ed.), Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, 2004), 201– 20; and Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, ‘The Arabic Manuscript of Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu of Jamaica, c. 1820’, in Annie Paul (ed.), Creole Concerns: Essays in Honour of Kamau Brathwaite (Kingston, 2007), 313–41. 28 Wilks, ‘The Transmission of Islamic Learning in the Western Sudan’, 162–97. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 224 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 Muslim scholars to write about their times and the political history of the Islamic regimes. The expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, especially after 1492, punctuated what can be thought of as the ‘Andalusia period’ from the perspective of western and central Sudan. The period reached its peak during the century of Songhay dominance of western and central Sudan, culminating in the fall of Songhay to Moroccan invasion in 1591–2, during the reign of Sultan al-Mansur of Marrakesh. It should be noted that these events occurred in the year AH 1000; the 1st of Muharram AH 1000 corresponds to AD 19 October 1591. Andalusian influence continued but there was a considerable shift, of historic proportions, with the consolidation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A consideration of African history from the perspective of contemporary reflection and study provides an insight into global history that corrects a major bias and distortion in our understanding of the rise of the ‘Atlantic world’ and the origins of slavery in the Americas. Through an examination of contemporary Africa’s understanding of their own history, it can be seen that the Iberian explosion across the Atlantic was matched by an Iberian explosion across the Sahara into western and central Sudan, with reverberations that are as complex as those in the African diaspora of the Americas. Despite the fall of Songhay, the tradition of scholarship flourished, first evident in the writings of Ahmad Baba in defence of Songhay and its legitimacy but eventually providing for a movement of jihad that would intensify Muslim scholarship even more. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Saʿdi discussed the main texts being studied in Timbuktu, demonstrating both the continuation of scholarship after the fall of Songhay in 1592 and explicitly recounting the most important texts that were read during the sixteenth century. His Tarikh al-Sudan is a history of Songhay that also describes what has been called ‘the classical, 17th-century Sudanese tradition of Islamic learning’.29 It was once thought that the fall of Songhay led to a political crisis in western Sudan, which in turn resulted in the collapse of Islam, yet the thrust of recent research has demonstrated that this was not the case. There was a spread of the sufi brotherhood of the Qadiriyya and its curriculum, reformed in the middle of the eighteenth century, which was an example of the ongoing tradition of scholarship.30 Qadiri training and scholarship promoted political action and advocacy of jihad to establish regimes that would conform to the shariʿa and perhaps even usher in the millennium. Qadiri teaching was based on interpreting history, drawing on the original jihad for inspiration on how to purge society of 29 Hall and Stewart, ‘The Historic “Core Curriculum” and the Book Market in Islamic West Africa’. See also John Hunwick (ed.), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Saʿid’s Taʾrikh al-sudan Down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Sources (Leiden, 1999), 1–270; and Hunwick, ‘Studies in the Taʾrikh al-fattash II: An Alleged Charter of Privilege Issued by Askiya al-hajj Muhammad to the Descendants of Mori Hawgaro’, Sudanic Africa, 3 (1992), 133–48. 30 Wilks, ‘The Transmission of Islamic Learning in the Western Sudan’. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 225 wrongdoing and institute a regime of equity for Muslims. Of particular note was the emergence of the Kunta family in Mauritania and the area as far east as Timbuktu in the late eighteenth century, and continuing into the nineteenth century.31 Sayyid al-Mukhtar bin Ahmad bin Abi Bakr al-Kunti al-Kabir, in his al-Minnah fi I ʿtiqad Ahl al-Sunnah [The Gift of the Followers of the Path of Muhammad], examines the history of Songhay and discusses important questions of Islamic law that arose in the administration of empire, including the status and rights of women and children in Muslim society. The ongoing historical tradition is evident in the biographical accounts collected and collated by al-Talib Muhammad al-Bartili, whose Fath al-shakur fi maʿrifat aʿyan ʿulamaʾ al-Takrur [The Key Provided by (God) Most-Rewarding for the Knowledge of the Most Learned Scholars of Takrur] is a biographical dictionary of the scholars at Walata, in the sahel to the west of Timbuktu. AlBartili summarized the qualifications of each scholar according to the books each had studied. As Chouki El Hamel has demonstrated, al-Bartili provides an overview of the scholarly tradition for at least one part of West Africa for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.32 We can see the tradition in the writings of the founders of the Sokoto Caliphate, Sheikh ʿUthman dan Fodio, his brother, ʿAbdullahi dan Fodio, and his son, Muhammad Bello, among many others. ʿAbdullahi, who described his training in Idaʾ al-husukh man akhadhtu ʿanhu min al-shuyukh [Clarification of the Ambiguous about the Shaykhs with Whom I Studied] reveals an extensive exposure to the scholarship of West Africa, the Maghreb, and the classical Islamic texts.33 His education was similar to that of his brother. His nephew, Muhammad Bello, wrote a history of the Sokoto jihad, Infaq al-maysur fi tarikh Bilad al-Takrur [Dispensing the Wisdom of the History of the Land of Takrur] in 1813, after the jihad had been successfully consolidated in the Hausa heartland and already was extending the frontiers through an aggressive campaign.34 Not only do these texts recount the history of the times, but a considerable amount about the intellectual context in which these histories were conceived is revealed in the texts. 31 Charles Stewart and E. K. Stewart, Islam and Social Order in Mauritania: A Case Study from the Nineteenth Century (London, 1973); and Hall and Stewart, ‘The Historic “Core Curriculum” and the Book Market in Islamic West Africa’. 32 Chouki El Hamel, La vie intellectuelle islamique dans le Sahel Ouest-Africain (XVIe –XIXe siècles): Une étude sociale de l’enseignement islamique en Mauritanie et au Nord du Mali (XVIe–XIXe siècles) et traduction annotée de Fath ash-shakur d’al-Bartili al Walati (mort en 1805) (Paris, 2002). 33 Hiskett, ‘Material Relating to the State of Learning among the Fulani before their Jihad’, 550– 78. See also ʿAbdullah ibn Muh: ammad dan Fodio, Diyaʾ al-sultan wa ghayrihi min al-ikhwan fi ahamm ma yutlab ʿilmuhu fi umur al-zaman, in Muhammad Sani Zahradeen, ‘ʿAbd Allah ibn Fodio’s Contributions to the Fulani Jihad in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland’, Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1976, 13–14; and Abdullahi ibn Fodio, Tazyin al-Waraqat (Ibadan, 1963). 34 The Infaq al-Maysur of Sultan Muhammad Bello written 1227 A.H. 1812/3 A.D. (Legon, Ghana, 1964). Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 226 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 T HE Q U EST IO N OF S LA VER Y A ND H I ST OR Y Ahmad Baba’s treatise of 1613, Miʿraj al-suʿud, was a determining influence in setting the course of trans-Atlantic slavery by codifying limitations on the participation of the Muslim interior in the sale of slaves to Christians.35 The hidden parallel to the Andalusian and Iberian spheres of expansion revolved around issues of slavery—who could be enslaved, and who could not be enslaved. The focus of Andalusia and Iberia were different, the first across the Sahara, the second across the Atlantic. The slavery issue was confusing. Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean enslaved each other, but most often for purposes of obtaining a suitable ransom, not for the purpose of acquiring labour or service. In the Muslim context, the question of who could be enslaved and who could not was often based on historical interpretation. Ahmad Baba’s career corresponded with the Moroccan conquest and occupation of Songhay after 1591, which intensified the debate about the legitimacy of enslavement and about who could legally be held as a slave and who should be freed from captivity on religious grounds.36 Although both Morocco and Songhay were Muslim states, Morocco’s subjugation of Songhay revealed that legal opinion could be overridden for political reasons. The expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian peninsula in the late fifteenth century, and the ongoing conflict between Spain and Portugal on the one hand, and the Muslim states of North Africa on the other, has been studied extensively. The conflict among Muslims in the Maghreb was an integral part of this larger picture. The expansion of the Ottoman Porte to the western Mediterranean involved the conquest of Muslim states in an attempt to establish a pan-Islamic empire, but the Ottomans faced resistance from many Muslims, including the Sharifian dynasty of Morocco that was centred in Marrakesh.37 The dynasty claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad (as reflected in their designation as shurfa, pl. sharif ), and hence they claimed to be the inheritors of the ‘caliphate’ of the Prophet. On this basis, the regime not only resisted Ottoman hegemony and opposed the Qadiriyya sufi brotherhood for its support of the Ottomans, but also developed a strategy to obtain the support of Muslim governments south of the Sahara, or otherwise overthrow any governments that opposed their claims to the caliphate. Accord35 John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak, Miʿraj al-suʿud: Ahmad Baba’s Replies on Slavery (Rabat, 2000). For a brief biography see John Hunwick, ‘Further Light on Ahmad Baba al-Tinbukti’, Research Bulletin, 2:1 (1966), 19–31; and Mahmoud A. Zouber, Ahmad Baba de Tombouctou (1556–1627): sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1977). 36 In addition to the Miʿraj al-suʿud, Ahmad Baba also wrote Nayl al-ibtihaj bi-tatriz al-dibaj and Taj al-din fi ma yajib ʿala al-muluk; see Hunwick and Harrak, Ahmad Baba’s Replies on Slavery. 37 The attempt to unify Morocco was partially a response to the crisis in Iberia in the fifteenth century. Initially promoted by Imam al-Djazuli (d. 1465), the movement advocated no cooperation with Christians and from a dozen zawiya and ribat resisted Portuguese encroachment after the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 and Tanger in 1437; see Abitol, Tombouctou et les Arma, 35–9. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 227 ing to Abitol, the intention was to establish a large Muslim state in the west that stretched from Borno in the region of Lake Chad to the Atlantic and northward to include the Maghreb.38 In resisting Ottoman encroachment from Algiers, the Sharifian dynasty at times found an ally in Spain and, after the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588, from England.39 Particularly ominous for the development of trans-Atlantic slavery, the Sharifian dynasty, for much of its foreign exchange (as noted above), relied on the export of sugarcane that was produced on plantations worked by black slaves in the region of Sous. As a member of the Timbuktu ʿulamaʾ, Ahmad Baba was adamantly opposed to the Sharifian invasion of Songhay. Because he was also associated with the rival Qadiriyya, he was imprisoned and removed to Morocco along with other captives who without doubt were devout Muslims. Though he was eventually released and returned to Timbuktu in 1615, his experience in captivity under conditions of dubious legality made him uniquely qualified to write on the historical context of slavery, which is perhaps one reason that his opinions weighed so heavily in subsequent Muslim scholarship in West Africa. Morocco’s subjugation of Songhay pitted Muslim state against Muslim state, and through captivity Ahmad Baba undoubtedly came into contact with enslaved people of diverse backgrounds, an experience that must have informed his commentary. Moreover, Songhay had promoted enslavement of non-Muslims as state policy in the sixteenth century, especially under Askia Dawud (1549–82), who settled large numbers of enslaved people on agricultural estates along the middle Niger River, as well as exporting slaves to North Africa.40 In both Morocco and Songhay, therefore, the employment of slave labour on agricultural estates, erstwhile plantations, was part of state policy. The importance of slave labour in state policy means that the legal opinions on who could be legitimately enslaved had special meaning, especially in understanding the role of ethnicity in identifying who was protected and who was not. The arguments were based on history. Ahmad Baba drew upon a long tradition of commentary on the subject of slavery, and he was well aware of the importance of slavery to the economies of both Songhay and Morocco. Muslim scholars in West Africa, as well as in North Africa, whom he quotes or summarizes, had already examined the issue of legitimacy in enslavement. This legal tradition predated European slaving on 38 As shurfa, they claimed to possess baraka, or blessing, that could only be inherited by blood from the Prophet; the shurfa had been invited to Drāʿ in Morocco in the twelfth century and were widely respected; see Abitol, Tombouctou et les Arma, 35. 39 Abitol, Tombouctou et les Arma, 40-46. 40 On the slave estates of Songhay see especially John Hunwick, ‘Notes on Slavery in the Songhay Empire’, in John Ralph Willis (ed.), Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa (London, 1985), and N. G. Kodjo, ‘Contribution à l’étude des tribus dites servile du Songai’, Bulletin de l’IFAN, 38:4 (1976), 790–812. See also Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2000), 31–2. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 228 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 the African coast and the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and of course involved relations between Christians and Muslims, especially in the Mediterranean. Some scholars, and Ahmad Baba was one of them, argued that the nonMuslims in sub-Saharan Africa, although not Christians, should be treated in a similar fashion. That is, they were subject to enslavement, unless they were protected through the payment of a discriminatory tax (jizya). It is argued here that this debate helped shape the contours of the European trade along the African coast, which resulted in the settlement of enslaved Africans in the Americas. The connection between sugar production in southern Morocco in the region of Sous and the export of sugar to England especially has been noted above. Ahmad Baba was of the opinion that people from Muslim countries in subSaharan Africa, including Borno, Songhay, and the Hausa cities, should not be enslaved, and if individuals from these states were found in a state of captivity they should be freed without reservation. He based this fatwa on the basis of history, that people who had been long under Muslim government were protected by law. Ahmad Baba’s relative, Mahmud bin ʿUmar bin Muhammad Aqit, who was the qadi of Timbuktu between 1498 and 1548, issued a legal opinion that any Muslim who had been enslaved and who came from a country that was considered to have embraced Islam voluntarily should be freed. Again, historical precedent of citizenship was the determining factor.41 These scholars wrote at a time when Songhay and Borno dominated much of the West African interior and were actively raiding in the quest of slaves who were clearly not Muslims. But in North Africa there was considerable confusion as to whether or not colour of skin was enough to identify those who could be enslaved. As would later be true for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, those who had been enslaved were often identified with the place where they were first traded, in this case Songhay and Borno, which made it difficult to determine whether or not the enslaved were actually from those places or from somewhere else and only passing through these states. These early fatwa attempted to address the questions of legitimacy over who had been enslaved in terms of whether or not they had come from countries that had been historically Muslim.42 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Islamic schools across West Africa taught the principles of history that conceptualized slavery in ethnic terms that derived from Ahmad Baba and the scholars to whom he referred. This considerable continuity in thinking about the relationship between ethnicity and slavery in West Africa derived from the educational system associated with the Qadiriyya 41 Ibid., 46. Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘The Context of Enslavement in West Africa: Ahmad Baba and the Ethics of Slavery’, in Jane Landers (ed.), Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, 2006), 9–38; and John Hunwick, ‘Islamic Law and Polemics over Race and Slavery in North and West Africa (16th–19th Century)’, in Shaun E. Marmon (ed.), Slavery in the Islamic Middle East (Princeton, 1999), 45–6. 42 Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. Lovejoy 229 brotherhood with which Ahmad Baba identified.43 In the eighteenth century, the Tuareg scholar, Jibril bin ʿUmar, relied on this earlier tradition in advocating jihad to confront injustices arising from the violation of the free status of Muslims through their enslavement. Jibril’s student, ʿUthman dan Fodio, along with his son, Muhammad Bello, and his brother, Abdullahi dan Fodio, were strongly influenced by this literary tradition, and in their turn revitalized the arguments of Ahmad Baba in justifying jihad to protect Muslims from wrongful enslavement and to sanction the enslavement of the enemies of jihad, even if those enemies were Muslims. The many references in the writings of the Sokoto leadership reveal the extent of the intellectual and ideological debt to the tradition of scholarship epitomized by Ahmad Baba.44 This scholarly tradition had profound consequences for the later imposition of Islamic rule. Governments that were in fact ruled by Muslims were declared apostate, just as Askia Muhammad had earlier pronounced Sunni ʿAli’s regime in Songhay in 1492–3 and al-Mansur had denounced the government of Songhay in 1591. These charges were based on historical interpretation, whether or not military action was ultimately justified. Interpretations of history were fundamental to the justification of state action. Ethnicity and the political discourse of enslavement and legitimacy in Islamic context reflected a historical perspective and sense of geography and ethnicity that are well portrayed in the extant literature of the centuries before c.1800. Citizenship was associated with free status and being Muslim, both of which were confirmed with reference to history. Arabic was the common language, although the lands of Islam incorporated people who spoke many languages, from Berber to Songhay, Mande, Hausa, and Kanuri. The resulting multilinguistic setting forced the intelligentsia and merchant class at least to speak more than one language and to varying degrees to be literate in Arabic. The question of citizenship was contested, however. The ʿAlawi sultan of Morocco, Mawlay Ismaʾil, who reigned from 1672 to 1727, enacted a decree in 1699 that enslaved all blacks in Morocco on the assumption that they had once been slaves or were descended from slaves. In this way, Ismaʾil amassed a large slave army, based on the re-enslavement through conscription of young blacks in southern Morocco and the purchase of slaves from south of the Sahara.45 He also confronted history by denying the rights of haratin to free status, and the subsequent opposition to his decree was based on historical argument. 43 Wilks, ‘The Transmission of Islamic Learning in the Western Sudan’. The literature is extensive, but see Zahradeen, ‘ʿAbd Allah ibn Fodio’s Contributions’, 13–14, 20; Shehu Yamusa, ‘Political Ideas of the Jihad Leaders: Being Translation and Edition of Diya ‘l-hukkam and Usul al-Siyasa’, MA thesis, Ahmadu Bello University (1975), 270–85. 45 Chouki El-Hamel, ‘“Race”, Slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean Thought: The Question of the Haratin in Morocco’, Journal of North African Studies, 7:3 (2002), 29–52. 44 Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi 230 Islamic Historical Scholarship in West Africa before 1800 CONCLUSION A perspective on how Africans viewed their own history in the period 1400–1800 necessarily draws upon known documentation and the ability to date oral narratives and myths, and how these might or might not have changed over time. Moreover, the coverage here, focusing on the interior of West Africa, is not intended to be comprehensive, even with respect to Muslim areas of Africa, and the chronicles of Coptic Ethiopia demonstrate that a literary tradition was not only confined to Muslim records. Chronologically, there is no particular logic to begin this discussion in 1400 or to end it in 1800. While the focus has been on this period, where necessary or appropriate earlier and later time periods have been assessed to demonstrate continuities or disjunctures of relevance to an assessment of how people conceptualized the past. T I M E L I N E/ K E Y D AT E S 1324 Mansa Musa of Mali performs pilgrimage to Mecca 1330s Construction of Great Mosque (Dyingere Ber) in Timbuktu 1350 Ibn Batuta visits Mali 1464 Sonni Ali becomes ruler of Songhay 1492 Fall of Granada 1554 Sharifian rule established in Marrakesh 1492–1528 Askia Muhammad 1492–8 al-Maghili in Kano 1463–99 Reign of Muhammad Rumfa of Kano 1482 Portuguese build Elmina Castle 1525 Ottoman occupation of Algiers 1549–82 Askia Daud, ruler of Songhay 1564 Mai Idris Alooma, ruler of Borno 1579–1603 Ahmed al-Mansur, ruler of Marrakesh 1591 Morocco invasion of Songhay 1713 Bambara state of Segu established 1725 Jihad of Futa Jallon 1804–8 Jihad of Uthman dan Fodio KEY HISTO RICAL SO URCES ʿAbdullahi dan Fodio, Idā c al-nusūkh man akhadhtu canhu min al-shuyūkh, in Mervyn Hiskett, ‘Material Relating to the State of Learning among the Fulani before their Jihad’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 19 (1957), 550–78. Comp. by: pg4118 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001331919 Time:15:08:03 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001331919.3D Date:3/10/11 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 3/10/2011, SPi Paul E. 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