E. W. Bovill - Caravans of the Old Sahara

Volume 9

E. W. BOVILL

First published in 1933 by Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.

This edition first published in 2018

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1933 International African Institute

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ISBN: 978-0-8153-8713-8 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-429-48813-9 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-49101-4 (Volume 9) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-03334-3 (Volume 9) (ebk)

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I. MUSA MALI, LORD OF THE NEGROES OF GUINEA

From a panel of the Catalan Map of Charles V (1375)

OF THE

OLD SAHARA

AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE HISTORY OF THE
WESTERN SUDAN

By

E. W. BOVILL

Published for the

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
AFRICAN LANGUAGES & CULTURES

by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

1933

TO
SYLVIA

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

T HE importance to Christian Europe of the trade which it so long carried on with the Muhammadan states of the North African littoral has always been accepted, but the extent of its dependence on the desert caravan traffic with the negroid peoples of the Western Sudan has been little recognized.

The trans-Saharan trade wove ties of blood and culture between the peoples north and south of the desert, and it inspired the achievements by which, after centuries of failure, the mysteries of the remote interior were ultimately revealed to European nations.

The purpose of this volume is to outline briefly the growth of these associations and to win a measure of recognition for the part which the Western Sudanese have played in the history of civilization.

The Authors considerable indebtedness to his friends and to the works of others is briefly acknowledged in the notes. The references to the late Lady Lugards A Tropical Dependency, however, are no measure of his debt to that brilliant work. It was the enthralling interest of those pages, read amid the stirring scenes which inspired them, that first urged him to explore further the field in which Lady Lugard was the pioneer.

E. W. BOVILL

LITTLE LAVER HALL,
HARLOW .

6th February 1933.

I. Musa Mali, Lord of the Negroes of GuineaFrom a panel of the Catalan Map of Charles V (1375)

Roman Africa

North-Western AfricaTenth to Sixteenth Centuries

Wangara and the Upper Niger

Hausa and the Middle Niger

North Africa in the Middle Ages

The Africae Tabula Nova of Ortelius (1570)

The Discoveries of the Portuguese

North-Western AfricaSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The Africae Nova Descriptio of Blaeu (1665)

XI. The Carte de la Barbarie de la Nigritie et de la Guine of de Lisle (Elwe, 1792)

The Hausa States

XIII. The Principal Caravan Routes of the Nineteenth Century

Caelo terraque penuria aquarum. SALLUST

N ORTHERN Africa is divided into a series of natural zones running roughly parallel to each other from west to east. Along the Mediterranean sea-board lies a narrow strip of undulating country, generally known as the Tell, which enjoys a climate similar to that of southern Europe and is peopled by an agricultural peasantry. Behind these coastal hills lie the arid uplands of the High Plateaux which, although they culminate in the peaks of the Atlas, are for the most part steppe-like in character and support a pastoral and semi-nomadic population. These highlands drop sharply into the Sahara, the largest continuous desert on the earths surface, where extreme aridity imposes a nomadic existence on its sparse population. No natural frontier bounds the Sahara on the south. It gradually merges into steppes and these in turn give place first to savanna and then to park-lands, which, like the Tell, are peopled by a sedentary agricultural population. Beyond the parklands lies the great barrier of the equatorial forest.

The broad belt of broken country separating the Mediterranean from the Sahara and extending from Tripoli in the east to the Atlantic in the west has come to be loosely termed Barbary. The great plains which lie south of the Sahara, separating it from the equatorial forest, form the Beled es Sudan, an Arabic name meaning the Land of the Blacks. It extends from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, that part which lies to the west of Lake Chad forming the Western Sudan.

Although Barbary and the Western Sudan are separated by a desert which forms one of the worlds greatest barriers to human movement the cultural and economic development of both has been profoundly affected by intercourse between the two. The Sahara consequently dominates the whole of the history of the interior of northern Africa.

A slight increase in the aridity of this immense desert would produce far-reaching political consequences. It would drive the wild desert tribes into the settled uplands and plains of Barbary and the Sudan, and it would so extend the waterless stages that the caravan routes would become impassable to camels and therefore to men. A correspondingly slight increase in rainfall would quickly multiply the water-holes and desert pastures, render man independent of the now necessary camel, and, by making his life more endurable, tame the nomad. Whether there has been any material change in the climate of the Sahara in historical times is therefore a question of great importance to the student of history.