MMo or ree AAbbuunnddaannt t DDo occuumme ennt taat tiioonn
It was in the 14thcentury that European navigators began to land
at a few places along the coast of tropical Africa, but it was hardly
until the following century and especially in the 16ththat relations
were established between the Negroes and the whites and that
somewhat rounded details reached Europe touching the newly
discovered countries and their inhabitants.
However, compared to the preceding period, we have other and
more abundant sources of information on the condition of Negro
Africa subsequent to the Middle Ages. There are, to begin with,
the recitals of the first navigators, such as Cadamosto; then there
are those of the Arab traveller, Leo the African, whose work, less
documented than the books of the previous Muslim geographers
but better known because of its Italian and French editions, consti-
tuted, at least in what concerns Berbery, Egypt, Ethiopia, and
Sudan, the basis of numerous descriptions of Africa published in
the 16thand 17thcenturies, from Marmol to Dapper. Then there are
the accounts or diaries of the numerous travellers, Portuguese,
French, English, Dutch, Italian, etc., who wandered all over Africa,
pushing farther and farther towards the interior and finally
informing us about the equatorial and southern countries that the
Arab authors did not know. It should be added that oral traditions
and local chronicles are the richer in detail as the events they
recount become more recent.
Profiting by all this documentation, accumulated during five
centuries, I will try to sketch a summary picture of the history of the
principal Negro peoples of Africa after the 15th century. The
immensity of the domain where this history unrolled will prevent me
from employing in a rigid fashion the chronological method and
will force me to turn back again each time that I must pass from
one region to another. Going from west to east and from north to
south, I will begin with West Africa, continuing by central and
eastern Sudan and terminating with sub-equatorial Africa.
TThhee MMa annddi innkkaa aanndd SSoonngghhooyy EEmmp pi irrees s
In western Sudan, two great empires divided the supremacy at
the beginning of the 15thcentury: one, that of Manding, was
terminating the period of its apogee, while the other, that of the
Songhoy, was on the eve of attaining it. The first still exercised,
sometimes its direct authority, sometimes only its influence, over
all the countries comprised between the Sahara to the north and
the great forest to the south, the Atlantic on the west and the 5°
west longitude on the east. The second extended its power, with
the same alternatives, from this meridian in the west to the 2°
east longitude in the east and from the Sahara in the north as
far south as a line going approximately from Hombori to
Karimama on the lower Niger. Beyond this line, and as far as
the proximity of the coastal zone, was the domain of the two
Mossi empires of Yatenga and Wagadugu and, farther to the
east, the kingdoms of the Gurma (or Gurmanche) and of the
Bergo or Borgu (or Berba. or Bariba), which were founded at
nearly the same epoch as that of the Mossi States and
possessed a similar organisation, but with a more modest,
though not negligible, destiny.Without doubt, the first Sonni prince of the Songhoy, Ali-Kolen (or
Ali-Kolon or Ali-Golom) had, in 1335, shaken off, in part, the
tutelage of Manding. However, the army of the Mandinka
emperor Mussa II, who in 1374 had succeeded Mari-Diata II,
dead of the sleeping sickness, went to wage war as far as the
east of Gao and was even audacious enough to attack Omar
ben Idris, sultan of Bornu, all of which indicates that the
Mandinka Empire still enjoyed a certain strength. Ibn Khaldoun,
who finished writing his History of the Berbers around 1395, said
that in his time the Tekrur was vassal to the Mali prince Magan-West Africa from the 15thCentury to Today
Crest (Ejagham).
Nigeria or Cameroon.
Wood, antelope skin, basketry, iron, bones, pigment, 72 x 54 cm.
Musée du quai Branly, Paris.