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ChikoweroSudanicWestAfrica2024.pptxWestern Sudanic Civilizations: since Jenne-Jeno
PURPOSE: African-centered reading of African civilizations
Ghana
Mali
Songhai
Borno, etc
Jenne-Jeno: forerunner to the Sudanic Kingdoms
By 300BC, the West African Sudan settled by sedentary farmers (grains, herded cattle, goats and sheep).
Evidence of sedentization and intensive exploitation of the environment increased accumulation of wealth centralization for security.
Region collectively called Bilal al-Sudan, that is, land of the Blacks; known for its gold in early Arab sources.
String of states: Jenne-Jeno/Djoboro, Ghana, Mali and Songhai.
Ancient Jenne is thought to have existed between 2500 BC-1648 AD; eclipsed by bigger successor states up north--Ghana, Mali and then Songhai.
Others include Kanem-Borno and the Hausa states of Mossi, Kano, Gobir and Zinder.
Jenne-Jeno/Djoboro fed Timbuktu
By 900 AD, Jenne-Jeno had developed into a major urban center and trade entrepot feeding Timbuktu, 500 km on the navigable Niger River.
Traded in agricultural produce, gold, copper, salt, enslaved humans, kola, tin.
Besides Timbuktu, Jenne-Jeno also key supplier of commodities to the western Sudanic states and north Africa.
Some documentary evidence:
Jenne-Jeno capital of a large kingdom.
Not only does the capital boast a highly stratified population, including a prince, priests, doctors, lawyers, and merchants, but it also is involved in a voluminous trade along the Middle Niger to Timbuktu.
Jenne-Jeno was therefore a stratified, well-developed society.
Writings by Jodius Hondius, 1606
Rene Caillie, 1828:
Jenne was a city approximately 2 miles in circumference, surrounded by an ill-constructed wall ten feet high and fourteen inches thick, pierced by several small gateways.
It housed a population of 8,000-10,000 Mandingo, Fulani, Bambara, and Moors.
Jenne's role in commerce along the Middle Niger:
In 1828 Jenne was no longer the central point in the gold trade, owing to a westward re-direction of the trade as a result of wars between the Fulani of the Inland Delta and the Bambara of Segou.
Why was Timbuktu a key client?
Caillie:
“Timbuktu, though one of the largest cities I have seen in Africa, possesses no other resources but its trade in salt, its soils being totally unfit for cultivation. The inhabitants procure from Jenne everything requisite for the supply of their wants, such as millet, rice, vegetable butter, honey, cotton, Soudan cloth, preserved provisions, candles, soap, allspice, onions, dried fish, pistachios. Bousbehey and Toudeyni being only supplied with the grains which the merchants of Timbuktu receive from Jenne would of course be reduced to famine if the trade between these latter two cities should be interrupted.”
Snippets of oral tradition, with clear Islamocentric twist:
In the beginning, the town had been built in a place called Zoboro; later it was moved to the spot where it still exists today. The former town was situated near the modern town in a southern direction... The town was founded by pagans in the mid-second century ....The inhabitants did not convert to Islam until towards the end of the sixth century A.H.”
--Ta’rich al-Sudan.
Excavating Jenne-Jeno, 1977 (McIntoshes)
The site of Jenne-jeno is a roughly teardrop-shaped mound which rises up to 8 metres above the floodplain of the Inland Niger Delta approximately 3 kilometres southwest of the present-day city of Jenne.
The mound rests in an abandoned channel of the Bani River, which now flows four kilometres to the southeast of Jenne-jeno.
It is surrounded by floodwaters from September through December annually.
The total surface area of the site is 330,810 square metres (33 hectares or 82 acres) and features visible on the surface include mudbrick house foundations, funerary urns, concentrations of iron and slag, and segments of a city wall.
Pottery—for domestic and mortuary purposes, as burial urns.
Human and animal figurines, ash, charcoal.
The first occupants at Jenne-jeno made and used iron; had a subsistence base that was heavily reliant on aquatic resources, including waterfowl, tortoise, cattle.
Earliest discovery of rice.
Jenne-Jeno one of West Africa’s earliest cities
Definition:
An increase in the number and variety of services available as one progresses up the regional settlement hierarchy from the agricultural hamlet to the true town.
A unit of settlement which performs specialized functions in relation to a broader hinterland.
Africa has deep history of urbanization, across the continent.
Decline of Jenne-Jeno, AD 1468.
Habitation of the site began around 250 B.C. and continued through to the twelfth century A.D.
Gradual abandonment, complete by A.D. 1468.
At which time the Songhai conqueror Sonni Ali garrisoned the site during his siege of the city.
beginnings of site abandonment coincide closely with the thirteenth-century date for Jenne's islamization.
History of Islam: a religion of trade and writing; violent southward incursions.
Conclusions
The 1977 excavations demonstrated that Jenne-jeno existed as early as 250 B.C., and was rapidly developing during the early centuries of this era into a town measuring a half-kilometre or so along one axis.
By A.D. 900 or 1000, Jenne-jeno and neighbouring Hambarketolo formed an urban unit covering more than 40 hectares.
the development of local and regional trade networks in the Inland Delta and adjacent areas was a factor in the early expansion of Jenne-Jeno.
Situated in an alluvial plain lacking in stone and iron ore, at the interface of two major vegetation zones (dry savanna and sahel), the site is a natural candidate for the early growth of inter-regional exchange.
The Ghana Empire (superstructure: Soso, Gao, Wangara, Taghaza, etc). Do you see the Ethiopian Sea?
Ethiopian Sea
Ethiopian Sea
Trans-Saharan Trade
Gift of the Sahara
If, according to Herodotus, Kemet (Egypt) was the gift of the Iteru Harupwi (Nile), the western Sudanic kingdoms were the the gift of the Sahara
Sahara not only cradle of plant and animal domestication, but also source of crucial resources salt, quartz, trade routes.
Three factors explain the successive rise and fall of all these states: changing environment, trade and Islam. Use of iron tools by the first millennium BC as farmers cleared land and grew crops, fished in the great river systems and traded locally and regionally and, later on, across the Sahara to accumulate wealth. Metallurgy indigenous invention in Africa.
Iron weapons, and later horses, allowed military classes to rise into ruling classes; to defend sources of wealth and to expand ruling houses into large states and empires.
Throughout the history of these states, struggles were waged around sources of gold such as Bambuk and Bure on the southern forest fringes;
Also over oases in the Sahara and salt mining centers like Awdaghost and Taghaza, and trade centers and routes.
Oases: water supply, limited agriculture (dates, palms), hunting to nourish the trans-Saharan trade.
Oases so important they acted as entrepots, where trade items were exchanged, taxed and warehoused.
They were also points where brokers, outriders, guides, guards, camel drivers and traders established their bases. They were also populated by enslaved people who both worked for their masters in addition to being part of the cargo.
Sahara therefore historically fought over between Africans and advancing Arabs, esp. c. 600s AD
Arabs progressively took over the Maghreb:
Oral traditions explain the displacement of Blacks by Umayyads, 700 AD
Desiccation of Sahara plus gradual displacement by Arabic invasions southwestward, as in ancient Egypt.
Many Black communities: Walata, Nema, Tichit, Shiqita are remnants of the Sudanic Soninke peoples of western Africa
Soninke peoples of ancient Ghana deeply involved in plant and animal domestication, and metallurgy.
Ghana the sorthernmost Soninke state who grappled with Arabs through trade and warfare.
The Soninke peoples used their Sahelian towns as entrepots, warehousing and taxing Trans-Saharan trade between south and north.
Ancient Ghana is synonymous with gold.
Arabic sources (identify the positionality of author)
Twin Cities: Kumbi Saleh & al-Ghaba (30 000 people)
The city of Ghana consists of two towns on a plain. One of these towns, which is uninhabited by Muslims, is large and possesses mosques, in one of which they assemble for the Friday prayers. There are salaried imams and muezzins, as well as jurists and scholars. In the environs are wells with sweet water, from which they drink and with which they grow vegetables.
The king’s town, and not far from his court of justice, is a mosque where pray such Muslims as pay him formal visits.
Around the king’s town are domed buildings and groves and thickets where sorcerers of these people, men in charge of the religious cult, live. In them are their idols and the tombs of their kings. These woods are guarded and none may enter them and know what is there.
Residential segregation on religious basis
Administratively dependent on the royal city, Al-Ghaba had 12 mosques.
Sacred groves close to royal town link between African religions and politics.
System of religious segregation a key feature of urban ancient Ghana throughout the empire.
Religious/social segregation did not prevent communication.
King maintained his traditional religion, but friendly to Muslims this would be his undoing.
Religious Tolerance for Muslims
King appointed many Muslims in his administration diplomatic strategy to control trade and benefit from Arabic literacy advantage.
King’s interpreters, treasurer, and most ministers Muslims.
He built a mosque for these, and for visitors near his palace.
King exempted Muslims from traditional greeting conventions.
Religion marker of distinction in Arabic writers, not ethnicity or race.
Royal Opulence! Principal consumer of empire’s gold.
Al-Bakri:
The king dressed like a woman, with a high cap decorated with gold and wrapped in a turban of fine cloth. He received visitors in his domed pavilion, where he sat in his golden chair. Behind him were ten royal guards holding shields and swords, and to his right sons of (vassal) kings of his country. In front of him, the governor of the town and his ministers sat on the ground. The door was guarded by dogs of excellent pedigree. The Arab visitors were dazzled by the glittering gold, which decorated shields, swords, garments and even the dogs’ collars.
King controlled trade thru taxation
Local goods taxed once
Salt (Sahara--north); gold (Bambuk, Bure--south) taxed twice
Gold and salt traded pound for pound. Salt was that important!
“Rare nuggets, weighing btwn an ounce and a pound found in the mines were reserved for the king and only gold dust was left for the people” (al-Bakri).
Al-Bakri alleged Ghanaian raids on Lamlam stateless peoples, enslavement for Arab slave merchants.
Salt blocks in the trans-Saharan trade
Fall of Ghana, 11th Century AD
11th Century, Almoravids raided and sacked Ghana from Islamic forts (ribats) and mosques.
Converted Ghana to Islam thru a military jihad.
Almoravids took over trading city of Awdaghost and salt mines of Taghaza.
By 1203, Kumbi Saleh weakened by attacks and internal revolts by Islamized vassal kings.
Ghana thus eclipsed by northern commercial town of Walata and the emergent Mali empire.
Trajectory of statemaking: Ghana—Mali--Songhai
Epic of Sundiata (the founding of Mali)
Rise of Mali
Malian control of trans-Saharan trade
Legend of Mansa Musa, 1324-25:
Hajj to Mecca with 500 servants bearing golden staffs,
100 camels each carrying 300 pounds of gold,
1000s of retainers
Stop-over in Cairo, lavish spending caused unprecedented inflation
Story of rich African king reached Europe thru European merchants in Alexandria prompted European interest in African riches
Muhammad Ture repeated this feat years later
Old European cartographic representation of wealthiest nation in the world (British museum)
Power of gold, global imagination
Gold was power, wealth, currency
Allowed Musa to travel within and outside of the continent, shaking global economies
Not first time: His brother, King Aboubaker II, had done the same
He had dispatched sailing vessels to the Americas, way before Columbus
Musa had also sponsored building of schools and mosques to promote literacy and Islamic learning
Timbuktu: Knowledge City
Mansa Musa also sent some of his subjects to Fez to learn in the madrasas there
Built the famed Timbuktu Mosque
Built Sankore University, perhaps the first university in the world.
Discussion: The Lost Libraries of Timbiktu.
Great Mosque of Jenne, Timbuktu. What’s the significance of this architecture?
Leo Africanus visited Timbuktu during Askiya Muhammad’s reign; reported on everyday life:
many shops, craftworkers made wealth from the lively trade: fabrics, spices, ostrich features, gold, ivory, and slaves
city watered from wells and sluices from the Niger River, sustaining a thriving agriculture
people friendly and hospitable, held street carnivals into the night
City of Learning
The university of Timbuktu was one of the earliest in the world, where chronicles of kings, Islamic and African wisdom, and the human, physical and social sciences and law were all special fields
impressed by intellectual activity centered on visiting and resident scholars and students, all sponsored by the King from his own treasury
Libraries large and numerous; Sankore mosque double function as a university and place of worship
Thousands of manuscripts written in both Arabic and many African languages recently released after the people successfully hid them from European colonists in the 20th century
Islamic zeal:
Ibn Battuta wrote that Mansa Suleyaman, Musa’s successor, kept young men in chains until they had memorized the entire quran.
Trade Entrepot: International Trade
Timbktu also a trade entrepot for both local, trans-Saharan and international trade from places as far as Venice, Genoa, and Cairo.
Africa was the center and economic hub of the world, as we saw with Kemet, and as we shall also see with Great Zimbabwe.
That reality would change only with European invasions in the 1500s.
See Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Decline of Mali, and Rise of Songhai
Mali declined under the stress of political rivalries, a weakened mansaship, and attacks from the Bambara states of Kaarta and Segu in the 15th century.
Eclipsed by the empire of Songhayi by 1450
Story of Songhayi a similar chronicle of gold wealth, agriculture, learning, and trade
Its power waned to combined force of the encroachment of Islam as a political force, rampant Arab and European enslavement, which took root by the end of the 1400s.
Kanem-Borno…
Increase in strength relative to Songhai, thanks to diplomatic and economic relations with the Medit. Coast (Tripoli, Tunis)—which provided horses
Reflection theme for your section this week:
Prompt:
Analyze the excavation of Jenne-Jeno. List the materials that the McIntoshes unearthed at Jenne-Jeno. What is their methodological and historical value in the writing of Africa’s ancient history?
The reading (on Canvas):
Susan and Roderick McIntosh, “Finding West Africa's Oldest City.”
