₦airaland Forum

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267705&t=w[/img]

View of the interior of Jenne and the old mosque. (1897)

Image Details

Image Title
: View of the interior of Jenne and the old mosque.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 164

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa

Cityscapes
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Mosques -- Africa, West
Muslims

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267684&t=w[/img]

enne: a corner of the town. (1897)

Image Details

Image Title
: Jenne: a corner of the town.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 83

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267764&t=w[/img]

A school at Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: A school at Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 290

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

Subjects and Names

Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Malians
Muslims
Schools
Students -- Africa

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267719&t=w[/img]

Jenne: the barber. (1897)

Image Title
: Jenne: the barber.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 185

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.



Subjects and Names

Barbering
Barbers
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Malians

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267701&t=w[/img]

House in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: House in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 151

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Dwellings -- Africa

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267697&t=w[/img]

A street in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: A street in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 132

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Streets

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267695&t=w[/img]

A corner in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: A corner in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 119

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267694&t=w[/img]

View of Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: View of Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 111

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267693&t=w[/img]

A house in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: A house in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 108

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Dwellings -- Africa

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267690&t=w[/img]

Houses in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: Houses in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 92

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Dwellings -- Africa

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267688&t=w[/img]

A street in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: A street in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 87

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.


Subjects and Names

Cities & towns -- Africa
Djenné (Mali)
Dubois, Félix
Streets

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267687&t=w[/img]

House in Jenne. (1897)

Image Title
: House in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 86

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267685&t=w[/img]

House in Jenne. (1897)

Image Details

Image Title
: House in Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 84

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

[img]http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1267699&t=w[/img]

Jenne (1897)

Image Details

Image Title
: Jenne.

Additional Name(s)
: Dubois, Félix, b. 1862 -- Author

Item/Page/Plate
: p. 139

Source
: Timbuctoo the mysterious / by Felix Dubois; translated from the French by Diana White ...

Source Description
: xi, 377 p. : ill., maps, plans ; 23 cm.

Location
: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / General Research and Reference Division

pleep: Mansa-Musa did nothing for Africa, I tell you most American students think he is just an exaggerated Afrocentric myth.

Most American students don't learn anything detailed about African history unless they go out of their way to do so, because only European and Western history is considered fundamental or foundational to American society (which is mostly a correct perspective, strangely enough), so they generally leave school thinking Africans had little to no history and were doing nothing impressive before they were colonized by Europeans. When they later encounter hyper Afrocentric websites which list legitimately renowned kings like Mansa Musa next to bogus, fictional, or exaggerated black "heroes," of course they'll think his wealth and scholarly initiatives are just part of a larger corpus of exaggerated Afrocentric mythology. But more mature people who actually bother to research this stuff seriously, including some Americans and other Westerners, don't consider him an exaggerated myth as far as I can tell.

Did you know that Malien gold financed the Italian renaissance? This dumb coon made it possible for the Europeans to advance to the point where they colonized us!

Now i apologize for the foul language, but i am legitimately angry right now. Mansa Musa was a gotdamn coon

Could you go into detail about how Malian gold financed the Italian renaissance and provide some sources that discuss it? I don't remember ever reading about that.




And I didn't get the 'Abd Al-Abdulla' joke. What was that about?

pleep: Physics why did Mali decline?

Because it was led by dumbasses, that don't know when to seize oppurtunity! When empires stop aquireing new power they stagnate... what did Mali's "great learning" do for Africa? All they were learning was how to kiss Arabic Bottom with greater effectiveness.... ill bet 90% of their learning was just Arab script and the rest was memorizing the whole Koran by heart, something most Arabs didn't even bother doing.

Considering that most of the Timbuktu manuscripts haven't been analyzed, it's hard to see how you could arrive at a figure of 90%. From what I've read, some of the manuscripts that they have examined so far actually cover a pretty wide range of topics. Anyway, assuming that what you said here was all true (the "90%" stuff), you do realize that a society at least needs an earlier, usually smaller and less wide-ranging, intellectual basis/foundation to start from before great and really innovative intellectual achievements can later be made (sometimes only hundreds of years later), as was the case in other cultures? The scholastics of medieval Europe spent a lot of time writing a lot of unremarkable material, much of which was simply Christian theology, law, rhetoric, etc., and made few significant innovations or real intellectual breakthroughs, but they also gave Western Europe a firm pre-existing academic/scholarly tradition that they could use to receive and absorb new information (such as the knowledge provided by Muslim innovators and Muslim preservers of Greek learning) which they eventually utilized in bringing about the European renaissance.

This site has a few of the Timbuktu manuscripts:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-exhibit.html

As you can see, there is considerable variety in just this small group.

Basically, the point is about what Mali's learning could have done for Africa if it had been allowed to continue developing and improving at the pace at which Mansa Musa had started things off with Timbuktu (and there would eventually have been multiple centers of scholarship later on, as this learning and scholarship spread throughout the state), without this learning being affected by the overall decline of Mali, the stagnation endured under Songhai and the ravages of later foreign conquests, occupations and raids.

There would have been a diffusion of knowledge and new technology through other parts of West Africa through trade contacts, and this could have significantly changed the course of African history (I won't speculate on exactly how, since I don't think there's any point in just blindly guessing).

pleep: If he is so great and generous why didn't he free the 12,000 black slaves he dragged across the Sahara, is generosity only deserved by Arabs?

This is a very good objection. So maybe you're right and he was mostly just being flashy and showing off. Or maybe he was generous, but only to people he didn't treat and use as property.

By the way, are the written sources all in agreement that those people were all slaves?

pleep: What im basically getting from this is that [s]the most praised, and perhaps most note-worthy man in African history[/s], was an average intelligence, average ambitioned buffoon.

Who probably would have been better off as a cleric than a ruler.

Mali was by definition an empire, and that neccesitates a tradition of war and conquest. Musa was simply not able enough to extend this to spheres outside is immidiate vincinity.

This was probably caused by a mix of the instant slave mentality a foreign religion brings and Musas own unintelligence and lack of creativity.

This is the core of the problem!

Musa was able to transport "60,000 men, 12,000 slaves who each carried 4-lb. gold bars, heralds dressed in silks who bore gold staffs, organized horses and handled bags. Musa provided all necessities for the procession, feeding the entire company of men and animals.[8] Also in the train were 80 camels, which varying reports claim carried between 50 and 300 pounds of gold dust each."
Across the sahara desert and provide food and supplies for them for several years. T[b]his is a number of men larger than the greek force at Gaugemala, larger than the Hanibals force at cannae and larger than Napolons force at the battle of the pyramids[/b]

And they were almost all fighting age males!

This shows us that the suppliy lines across the sahara were water-tight and that Mali was unequivocally the most wealthy nation on earth at that time.

And army of 60'000 with such a well established supply line could have taken over all of North Africa with ease.

Your problem with Mansa Musa seems to be that he didn't have the world conquest ambition and "killer instinct" of a Napoleon, Alexander, Genghis Khan, or Timur type. I'm not going to really disagree with you about that. All I have to say here is that one can't really change who they are deep down. Mansa Musa was something of an "accidental king" anyway and probably didn't have the war-lust and violent ambitions of a world conqueror.

But this does not mean that he did not have other positive and possibly equally important qualities - the drive for education, scholarship and general civic development, for example. Some of the most celebrated individuals in history are those who are not super conquerors but those who improve the economic, intellectual and social development of their societies peacefully through their policies and initiatives. Musa belonged to that class of individuals, but the men who followed him did not have as large a vision or were just unable to handle the threats to the stability and advancement of the empire. Songhai, whose capital was at Gao (which as I said before, was a great threat to Mali) eventually rose up after Mansa Musa's successors weakened the state, failed to maintain Mali's power, and were unable to keep Gao/Songhai in check. Songhai then took over some parts of Mali, did not really continue Mansa Musa's initiatives in developing and improving Timbuktu as a center of learning (even if they did save it from some Tuareg raiders) and as is already known, the foreign policy and military choices of their later leaders eventually proved disastrous for the wider region (the Western Sudan). Basically, some of Musa's successors screwed up, and a lesser empire (Songhai) took the lead in the Western Sudan, but eventually just led the whole region nowhere.

On the part I crossed out above, Mansa Musa is not even the most praised, noteworthy or celebrated man among his own people - that honor belongs to Sundiata Keita, a real warrior king type, who might have had the kind of temperament and ambition to eventually attempt the world conquest stuff you've been talking about, if he had been king in Musa's time. Also Keita possibly was not Muslim. If he really wasn't then he would not have been held back by religious considerations in any of his military decisions.

eGuerrilla: Musiwa resides in Canada - fact!
Prince Phillips attended a public parade in Toronto yesterday - fact!


Source

So he was telling the truth.

Didn't expect that.

pleep: You say that is age may have tempered his war like spirit, but did that stop him from waging war on Gao and other smal muslim African states? like so many black people he was a lion to his own people and a house cat to other races.

You're viewing this primarily from a modern racial perspective which may not have existed for him though. Your priorities are a little different than his own.

To this you might respond that this difference in perspective was due to "religious brainwashing" that made him see all fellow Muslims as brothers before seeing all other black people as brothers and sisters but that is probably not the best explanation for this sort of behavior.

Racial solidarity movements and mindsets probably only arise as a response to some actual or perceived threat, conflict, competition, etc. with another racial group. Without that, it's doubtful that they can ever arise on their own, naturally.

The only solidarity that is usually natural to a person would be solidarity with one's immediate and extended family, then solidarity with one's larger ethnic group against rival ethnic groups when in competition for resources for survival, and then finally, at a lower, tertiary level, solidarity with one's politically defined community, nation or kingdom. This is a more natural arrangement than one which involves race.

Ethnic and political solidarity would have been the kinds of solidarity that would have been natural to Mansa Musa's environment, not racial solidarity. He was a black African surrounded by other black Africans and those North Africans were just some paler people who often came to buy what his merchants and government were selling and brought interesting and valuable items from far off lands to his empire (either directly or by sending them there from their homelands), and who occasionally lived as merchants in the cities of his kingdom if they were more sedentary types. And these paler people with the fancy goods, interesting books, etc. would no doubt have paid respect and obeisance to him and would have been very polite and gracious to him whenever they met him face to face anywhere in his capital city or elsewhere in the state.

These paler skinned North Africans, and the larger racial group to which they belonged, did not and could not have automatically appeared as a threat, a dangerous competitor for resources, a fierce rival, hostile enemy, etc. in the recesses of his mind, merely because of their difference in skin color, hair, facial features, and possibly their mannerisms/general tendencies.

Now had he been born a slave, or a free but poor or middle class black commoner in an Arab or North African Muslim city, and grown up in such an environment, he might have gauged the degree of hostility and contempt towards his racial group (black people) that these paler skinned Arabs and North Africans really had, and based on the degree of this hostility or contempt in that particular area - or his awareness of it - and his personal resilience of mind, "spirit", mental toughness, etc., he would have decided, unconsciously or instinctively, whether he was going to

a) accept that the hostility and contempt was legitimate, normal or even deserved and become a self-hating and self-deprecating "coon" who walked around timidly, shucked and jived for Arabs at the local bazaar every other night, and sulked around the town full of self-loathing

or

b) pretend that all the racially based antagonism and hostility wasn't really there, or that all this stuff was there but wasn't really significant so he could try to ignore it and attempt to live his life from a non-racialized perspective

or

c) become a "race conscious" person with notions of strong racial solidarity and a feeling of much greater closeness to any members of his race and much greater distance from any members of other races, who views every action of members of outside races with added suspicion and secretly or openly desires for his race to outdo those other races in any and everything that is good or noble


But none of that happened. Mansa Musa didn't grow up in the Maghreb or the Middle East so this race consciousness and solidarity stuff would probably have been alien to his mental constitution and his priorities, and besides, as mentioned before, any of these paler skinned people that visited his country or lived there would have been paying him great respect, honor and praise any time that he encountered them - just like his other subjects who were of the same race as him.


As for Gao, it was a direct and more obvious threat from the perspective of ethnic and political solidarity. Gao's resurgence would obviously have been an obstacle to Mali securing its local dominance in the region, and would have decreased Mali's wealth and its survival capability. It would have decreased the ability of the Malian state to survive politically, because there would be a dangerous rival carrying on unchecked right next to it, and also it might have affected their ability to physically survive, for the economic and military threat that it posed.

Also, that local dominance (which required the subjugation of Gao) of Mali would have been necessary before they could even start to contemplate international and intercontinental dominance.

Interesting post above Terracotta. However, I see a lot of things embedded in the above post that strike me as not being accurate, so I'll have to respond at even more length tomorrow or the next day. There are so many things in your response that I would have to give detailed responses to that I can already guarantee that my response will be pretty long, and will probably have to be split into parts.

And on the Bondarenko paper, I have already read it - I've read all of his papers that are available online in English, so I won't need to re-read that. It's an interesting paper, although I disagree with several of his conclusions and interpretations and I'll comment on that when I comment on the rest of that same post of yours (I'm assuming you posted it because you wanted my opinion on the contents/conclusions of the authors).

I meant to write "started around the end of the fifteenth century (and ended in the early sixteenth century)" above when referring to Oba Ozolua's reign. I don't intend to edit the above post because of the spambot.

Also, the only part of the quote from Egharevba about Oba Ewuare that I referred to as being obvious exaggeration was the part about Oba Ewuare traveling over "every part" of those countries, since it would probably have taken more than half a lifetime to do that back then. I am not saying that any other part of the quote is exaggeration, however.

TerraCotta: On your second point about the extent of Benin's western frontier, I'd be careful about extracting exact imperial boundaries from those early reports. Olfert Dapper reports that Ijebu was tributary to Benin in the late 17th century too but there's no corroboration from the Ijebu side (perhaps not surprisingly). Similarly, Oyo claims it conquered Ijebu around that same period and exacted tribute, but that's not matched by any outside information either. My point is simply that empires and emperors (like most Nigerians) are prone to exaggeration. That's not to discount the claim, since Benin's role on Lagos Island is part of the historical record, but just a suggestion of skepticism.

Dapper was a compiler of other people's information. One of the people whose information he relied heavily on was a merchant named Samuel Blommaert who visited Benin in 1602. The information Dapper was relying on for Benin could have been from the early 17th century or the mid 17th century, not necessarily the late the 17th century when Dapper published his book. Around 1602, Benin would have been near the height of its power. The Benin claim is that Ijebu was tributary to Benin during the reign of Oba Ozolua (one of the renowned warrior kings) and also for some time afterward. Oba Ozolua's reign started around the end of the fifteenth century (and ended in the early fifteenth century), only a little more than a century before 1602, when Dapper's informants would have heard the claim from Benin informants. If the claim was told to them at an early time (around 1600) before Benin's decline near the end of that century, then I don't think the claim is really that implausible. Also, the known art connection between Ijebu and Benin may have come about during this period when Ijebu was tributary to or was considered tributary by Benin.

As for Oyo and Benin both claiming Ijebu was tributary, I'm not sure the claims of conquest/tribute are really from around the same time or that there's any contradiction there. The Benin claim is that the conquest and tributary status was from Oba Ozolua's reign to some time afterward, and this period of time afterward when Benin had authority or considered Ijebu as tributary could have been only a century or less. Benin would obviously have lost any kind of influence over Ijebu as Benin's power declined in the late 17th century. So Oyo, which was enjoying a period of greater prominence/power around this same time (late 17th century), could certainly have made Ijebu a tributary kingdom after Benin's loss of influence there. And of course, after Oyo's decline, Ijebu could once again have re-asserted or regained its status as being tributary to nobody.


I definitely agree that empires do exaggerate their territorial extent and power. But several of these claims about the extent of Benin's westward reach are not from Benin informants, but later informants from other groups who were making such claims on their own. In some cases it doesn't come off merely as hankering after prestige, but stating real Benin influence or authority in their areas.

What makes me believe the story about the soldiers that were sent westward originally wanting to exact tribute from a place further away than Lagos (maybe they wanted to use Lagos as a war camp to branch out further west or to regroup) are

a) the Benin colony of Idole near Dahomey/Republic of Benin that the Dahomeans apparently destroyed in the early 1700s (according to that article I posted a link to) and the two settlements, "Ado" and "Ikpokia" (which are mentioned in that same article as well) which were right on the border of Dahomey/Republic of Benin with Nigeria. ("Ikpokia" (or is it "Ipokia"?) was apparently founded by people from a nearby Benin colony, and not directly by people from Benin.)

b) the report from the Portuguese missionaries in Benin in 1538 that the Oba of Benin who ruled at the time was holding the ambassadors of "Labidda" (Labadi, in the Accra area of modern day Ghana) and "Arida" (Allada/Ardra, a coastal kingdom located in the modern day Republic of Benin) as hostages. Hostage exchanges during negotiations were a common practice in some other societies elsewhere in the world in Asia and Europe, but these ambassadors might not have been held hostage merely as some form of insurance during negotiations but as real prisoners from places that the Oba at the time was not on good terms with or viewed as enemies that he planned to attack. Or the king of Benin at that time could have just have been holding them prisoner because he thought they were useful as far as providing knowledge about regions further west. Whatever the reason was, the evidence of contact further west is pretty clear from this alone.

So apart from those two towns in or right next to Dahomey/Republic of Benin mentioned in the paper, the holding of ambassadors from places in Dahomey/Republic of Benin and Ghana as hostages implies that Benin already had westward contact beyond Nigeria before setting up a war camp in Lagos a few decades later. Now that is not in and of itself special, but what is very interesting to me are the claims about far away colonies or tributary states such as those mentioned in that paper.

I'm not saying I actually believe everything that I've read about Römer's account of an early Benin colony in modern day Ghana or the extent of Benin's territory in earlier times (this part is simply unbelievable), but the specifics that he goes into (in the excerpts and summaries of his account that I've read), and the way he presents his claims as being the claims of the inhabitants of the area with no apparent guile, and the fact that there are other, completey different accounts which suggest political contact further west, make me think there was definitely some early Benin presence in the Dahomey/Republic of Benin coastal area, before the Lagos conquest, at the very least. As for Ghana, there are Benin traditions of early migrations to Ghana, such as those mentioned by Egharevba, and the fact that what Egharevba published somewhat matches up with independent information from various other people from before and after his publications makes me suspect that there was a real connection there. But I don't know if there is any knowledge of an actual colony or tributary state in Ghana in Edo traditions that matches up with what Römer was claiming. At least I haven't come across such information.

Also, although one could just assume that the Portuguese would have facilitated contacts between these places or made contact between some of these societies (such as Labadi, Allada, and Benin) easier, the possibility that they made contact themselves, without the Portuguese, is definitely possible. In his main book, Egharevba makes the claim that Oba Ewuare traveled very widely: “Ewuare was a great magician, physician, traveller and warrior. He travelled over every part of Nigeria, Dahomey, Ghana, Guinea and the Congo”

While this is obviously exaggeration, even the most unbelieveable part of it, the part about Oba Ewuare even reaching Congo, is not as implausible as it seems at first. The paper I posted a link to doesn't even mention this, but there is a complaint in a letter sent to the Portuguese king by the king of Kongo from 1526 that "people from Cachen and Benin" were causing trouble in his country (Kongo).

What some Benin people were doing there stirring up trouble in Kongo at such an early date (1526) is something I've wondered about. I assumed they got there through the Portuguese when I read it initially, and I'll probably stick with that assumption, but it may be possible that even though Egharevba was exaggerating, there was a bit of truth in his idea of widespread travel by some royalty. This is mere speculation, but perhaps some people from Benin that Oba Ewuare took with him or informed about his travels might have gone on to do some exploration of their own later on, after his reign, and established contacts to the south or outposts to the west, well before Oba Orhogbua's expedition to Lagos.

TerraCotta: I think the man does amazing work on the Kongo/Angola region though.

Agreed.

And thanks for those comments on Nri and Igala. That's an interesting perspective on Nri and Igbo Ukwu, but I'm not sure how the founder of Nri being of Igala origin would necessitate that the Nri kingdom came much later than currently claimed. It seems like a pretty big assumption to make. It seems as if you're saying that this founder had to have come from the politically centralized Igala kingdom at a later date, rather than just coming from the general uncentralized Igala populace at a much earlier time.

On the Awka smiths, I guess what you're referring to is the mention of them in J.P. Clark's Ozidi saga and also this article about the "Southern Edo" (the Urhobo, Isoko, etc.) and the Awka metal smiths : www.jstor.org/stable/3335053

I've read Neaher's articles on the Awka metal smiths. They are interesting and its true that there might be a connection between the Awka smiths and the Nri bronzes, but I never got the sense that there was any historic kingdom or politically centralized state associated with those Awka smiths (although a 15th century sword and some other metal items were unearthed there). Such a kingdom or state would probably be necessary to sponsor the making of the art and to engage in the long distance trade required for some of the materials found at Igbo-Ukwu. So perhaps there was some now forgotten kingdom (not Nri) that covered the Awka and Igbo Ukwu area that people in the area can no longer recall.

TerraCotta: Thornton's article along the same lines was definitely flawed by his interpretations of directions mentioned in the early sources.

What is "east" and what is "west" depends on one's orientation and the informants may have been looking at things from a different geographical perspective than the Portuguese they were informing - I think that's the thing that Ryder and Thornton may have missed. Either that, or they considered this possibility, but thought the Portuguese were too skilled at navigation and too competent at figuring out directions to have confused east and west regardless. Maybe Thornton assumes that they would have known to ask what perspective the informants were viewing things from when they mentioned certain cardinal directions. But then again one can also assume that the Portuguese did not bother to do so and assumed their informants were viewing directions from the same orientation as they were.

This is one of those Internet rumors I read all the time that remind you of the dangers of not correcting wrong information. There's no reason to believe the Atta of Igala ever claimed descent from Nri (and certainly does not do so today, though that's beside the point)

Well actually it doesn't merely come from the internet, it's found elaborated in different forms in non-internet publications. I also stumbled across a lecture/article a year ago when I was doing a bit of searching about Nri's history called "The Politics of Igbo Origin and Culture: The Igbo-Ukwu and Nri Factors Reconsidered" by Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, which sheds some light on some of the Nri-Igala connections (not that I wasn't already aware of the basic information, but this has some additional information I couldn't have found out on my own). I think you can find the article from a quick search. The only thing that I know is an error in there is when the author claims that the Attah of Igala dynasty was founded by a Benin prince. In reality, there was a ruling dynasty there before the Benin prince came, then a dynasty of Benin origin after he came, and then a dynasty of Jukun origin later on.

and I'm fairly sure the claim comes from linking Nri to Igbo-Ukwu, which is another inconclusive link presented as fact by ethnically-motivated speculators on the Internet.

It may not have been proven outright yet, but the idea that there's a strong connection isn't due merely to internet speculators and I don't see how it's really all that inconclusive. Now internet speculators may take Thurstan Shaw's theory of the Nri - Igbo-Ukwu link and present it as a given fact, but is there any better explanation for the origin of the art?

If you don't think the Igbo-Ukwu art should be attributed to Nri, then what Igbo kingdom do you think it is attributable to? And what do you make of the mention of the belief that the Eze Nri had control over locusts (and could cause swarms of locusts to ruin the crops of someone who got on his bad side) in some early colonial era publications and the bronze figure of a locust that was found among the Igbo-Ukwu art? Is that a coincidence? And don't you think that the use of bronze items during coronation ceremonies by the Eze Nri as documented in the early 1930s (before the discovery of the art) also makes Nri the best candidate for the makers of the art?

pleep: lol did this stop the Morrocans from conquering the Songhai with a measly 2500 troops?

Did that stop the muslims states from fighting with each other?

I love religion... islam is a great religion, but why is it that when a negro gets religion he goes over board with it and self destructs?

There is something wrong with the brain here... this is a man who had control of almost all the salt and gold in the world, he could have recruited a mercenary army bigger than anything else on earth. Just compare him to the Phoenecians (Cartheginans) who raised an army big enough to take on Rome based on mercenary troops alone.

Musa was not even smart enough to capture a foothold in the mediteranian... he had the logistics to transport 60k men and billions of Gold and all he did was give it away.

dumb dumb dumb

Morocco invaded and looted Songhai because of its wealth. Are you saying that Mansa Musa, who was extremely wealthy and had a prosperous kingdom should have spent his time and wealth invading north Africa, the middle East, and the Mediterranean to acquire even more wealth, even though his nation was already very wealthy?

Instead he wanted to gain as much knowledge as he could from other Muslims, and you're calling him dumb for that?

Mansa Musa was in his mid-40s (near the end of his life) when he went on that pilgrimage and perhaps he had matured and was no longer a young warrior king type, full of war-lust and wealth-lust, but had become more interested in the acquisition of knowledge.

But who knows, maybe he still had imperial ambitions and he and his commanders thought about world conquest and talked about it, but realized that the long distance across the desert that would have to be crossed by hundreds of thousands of soldiers and carriers of supplies in order to invade and conquer these places, and the military risk (to their home base) and cost of such an expedition, and the possible disruption in profitable trade with North Africa that could follow, and the infeasibility of holding together such a far flung and diverse empire (if they did succeed in their conquests) without internal rebellions bringing down the empire, made the entire idea unworkable or pointless. Maybe they realized all of this, and settled for learning instead of engaging in additional campaigns of expansion because they thought they weren't in a position where they could really pull it off successfully.

And if Mali had gone on to become highly technologically advanced or become one of the intellectual leaders in the world, instead of declining greatly and becoming a much weaker kingdom economically, militarily, and intellectually, you wouldn't be calling him dumb today, but praising him for laying the foundations for such a society.

On the giving away of gold, I don't see what the big deal is. He had an immense amount of it, and he handed some gold dust to peasants and beggars to improve their lives. So generosity is stupidity? He was a devout Muslim, so he arranged for many mosques to be built (assuming that story is true) during his pilgrimage so that more people who believed in the same religion as himself could worship properly. But you say he should have been hiring legions of mercenaries to conquer half the world. . .and that doesn't sound like a highly implausible and unreasonable course of action to take to you? I still don't see what the motivation for that would have been.

pleep: "The discovers" by daneil j. Boorstein lists those as tributary states.

Yes, exactly.

I haven't actually read the book to see how he justifies calling them tributary, but I have to ask, how is giving another group a giraffe (after they give you gifts as well) the same as being tributary to that group?

China had no tributaries in Africa. China perceived or considered virtually everyone that they came into contact with as their tributaries because of the superior self-conception they had of their nation relative to others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tributaries_of_Imperial_China

Take the Milandi giraffe example for instance: http://books.google.com/books?id=Xuq7QCmY6jQC&pg=PR9

The giraffe had some special cultural significance for them because it resembled a divine animal from their mythology, so when the Chinese emperor received the giraffe he interpreted it as proof of his perfection and they classified Malindi as tributary just for giving that one gift. China did not have authority over these places.

The extent of Benin imperial control/influence in 1550 was probably further west originally than Ehret's map indicates, even before the takeover of Lagos by an army of Oba Orhogbua's. From a few written accounts, an army that Oba Orhogbua sent westward was actually originally sent to exact tribute from a kingdom or town further west than Lagos (a town or kingdom in the modern day Republic of Benin), but settled for setting up a war camp in Lagos when they were unable to reestablish control over that kingdom or town further west. Later on, Benin certainly seems to have had control over or exacted tribute from the small coastal kingdom of Allada (in modern day Dahomey) during the 17th century, although Benin did go through a territorial decline and general weakening in the early 1700s and lost any kind of power it had over Allada later on. Ehret is primarily an African linguistics researcher rather than a researcher on West African history and he probably is unaware of the written evidence for a Benin imperial presence even further westward than his maps suggest.

A good article about the westward extent of Benin is 'Ludewig Ferdinand Römer's "Nachrichten von der Küste Guinea" (Mid-18th Century) as a Source on the Benin Kingdom History and Culture' by Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Peter M. Roese, and Tobias M. L. Roese.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220033042_Ludewig_Ferdinand_Rmer%27s_Nachrichten_von_der_Kste_Guinea_%28Mid-18th_Century%29_as_a_Source_on_the_Benin_Kingdom_History_and_Culture

The article goes even further and mentions documents from the past which mention political and cultural connections between certain groups in modern day Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) and the Benin kingdom.

One of the authors of the article has made it publicly available for free so it can be downloaded on that site (researchgate.net) by clicking on the "view" button on the bottom right hand corner of that website and then clicking download. It comes as a doc file so anyone with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice (which is free) can read the file.

pleep: China could have conquered all of Asia if they wanted to... but they didnt because it was against their pholosophy. That is why they failed

Medieval china had tributary states in africa during the 1400's

Which African states were tributary to China?

Are you talking about Malindi, Mogadishu, and Barawa and other places on the eastern coast of Africa? I don't think those places were actually tributary. It seems like they were exchanging gifts as a prelude to opening up more trade. The Chinese gave them gifts as well. Here's a direct account which mentions one of the instances where the Chinese gave gifts when they visited a certain kingdom in eastern Africa: http://books.google.com/books?id=Xuq7QCmY6jQC&pg=PA44

pleep: No empire has ever lasted forever. But the ones who expanded have passed down a legacy to their decendants while the ones that didn't passed down a history of slavery and colonialization

which is better?

Well Mali did expand widely - within West Africa. The Malian army was still warring with surrounding peoples (such as the rebellious Gao kingdom, which they re-conquered) even while he was making his pilgrimage.

I would be interested in seeing what you think the rationale would have been for a devout Muslim leader to expand to the northeast and invade North Africa (which had a lot of Muslims) and the Middle East (which had a lot of Muslims) on his way toward world conquest, even as he was making a pilgrimage to the most important Muslim holy site and also trying to acquire more knowledge from other Muslims.

pleep: @ The bolded, you have read all that? hmmmm... you are defintely by far the most learned person on African history i have ever encountered. And your posts are fact based and generally seem to be free of Afrocentric "black jesus" fluff.

lol, thanks but history isn't my focus professionally and there are definitely people who know much more than me - usually African history professors, lecturers, grad students, etc. so if you meet some of those people at a university with a good program on African history, you'll almost certainly have automatically met people who are more learned than me on African history. And yes, I've read that series (all 8 volumes). It's a very good read and I strongly recommend it. I doubt that it's flawless or anything, but it does seem to have few errors or mistakes for such a lengthy work, and it has a great deal of interesting information. Another good series of general history books is UNESCO's General History of Africa series, which also seems to not have many errors in each volume for such a lengthy series.

Were your posts seen as un-credible?

I only made a few posts there before that one random mod banned me, and only one of them (the first post I made) was really a detailed post on history. The other posts, besides that spelling/punctuation post, were just casual comments on other things. Nobody in that thread attempted to rebut the first post that I made (I don't see how they could have anyway, since I relied entirely on facts) and the posters that commented on the thread after my post generally continued the discussion in another direction, leaving the issue of precolonial African development, architecture, art, etc. alone and discussing more current affairs.

Is that how these people perceive any information that deviates from the standard "Africa was always a jungle" narrative?

Not necessarily. There were a few more objective comments that I came across from the non-black posters, but I didn't read the entire forum or anything. It's just that there seem to be many posters there who seem clueless about even the basics of African history yet insist on commenting on it or using it to make comparisons. It was usually the few black posters on that site that I saw correcting those other posters when something ridiculous or blatantly and obviously false was said, but I think it's really a pointless uphill battle.

Unfortunately that is how African history seems to be veiwd by alot of people. Basically as revisionist black pride, and thats why i try to avoid the subject

This is basically true, unfortunately. From some experiences I've had on this forum and in real life, I've learned that even some Africans and black people in the West will act as if you're exaggerating or engaging in revisionism when you talk about African history, unless you show them eye witness descriptions and accounts from centuries ago that prove what you're talking about or show impressive images that corroborate what you're trying to get across. And even then, a few people, whether black or non-black, will deny the evidence and act like you're engaging in some sort of revisionism.

Anyway i think i will check that forum out, western history has always been my forte. Been looking for a place to discuss my theory on why Napoleon was a fool for not attacking Saint Petersberg instead of Moscow.

Oh what fun that will be

lol, alright. Good luck with that forum. Hope you get into some interesting debates.