The Kingdom of Uri .... Darfur

Quote: Editor's Note Jean Boulègue still working on the completion of this article when we were so suddenly taken on the night of March 13 to 14, 2011. Contacted by phone a few days before his death, John regretted not having sufficiently recovered from his last operation to be able to move to the National Library and make final checks it deemed necessary. Although the article has been completed, the editorial board chose to publish in the state rather than trying to fill the remaining gaps with John alone knew. Under the so characteristic of his method and style concise, Jean Boulègue managed by extracting information from an unexpected text also well known. Implementing analytical fineness and exposure he had to heart to provide its students, the historian reveals the workings of a long-distance trade that connects the coast of Guinea, the Libyan shores of clarity Mediterranean and throughout Darfur, the eastern end of the Sudano-Sahelian zone. Beyond its contribution to the history of old Sahel - understood in its wider extension - so this is the last lesson of method and precision Jean prodigal here. We know that the large Sahelian states have, to varying degrees, extended their sovereignty over portions of the Sahara in order to ensure the minerals (salt, alum, copper) and to control trade routes linking to Northern Africa. Mali, to Walata, controlled movements of caravans. The Songay had the salt mines Teghaza. The Kanem-Bornu, whose sovereignty extended over the oasis of Kawar and Fezzan, controlled axis Chad-Mediterranean to the gates of Tripoli. 1 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 299-350. 2 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 320-322. 2 With the rediscovery by Dierk Lange and Silvio Berthoud, the Italian geographer Giovanni Lorenzo Anania, it appears that a greater degree of was taken at the end of the sixteenth century by a sis bordering Chad Sahelian kingdom and Sudan actuels1. Anania's book, The Universale del mondo manufacturing, has had four editions: in 1573, 1575, 1582 and 1596. The base is heavily borrowed from Abulfeda, Barros, Da Mosto, Marmol and especially Leo Africanus, but the second and third editions (the fourth being the same as the third) include changes due to new information, contemporaneous with the author. One of them concerns the Cyrénaïque2. The meticulous way in which Anania introduced his additions argues strongly in favor of their credibility. 3 In the first edition, Cyrenaica has existed in a quick list of places located on the north coast: On the beaches of Barbary we find Mondibarca so named after the town of Barca, the capital, and Guadames and Fizan 4 The 1575 edition expands its indications with economic and political data: On the beaches of Barbary we find Mondibarca and called the city of Barca, after its capital, and Guadames, big city traffic thanks to the abundance of grana paradisi thereto made by merchants Barca and main city (as stated), with a river at the foot of the walls, where now resides a qadi dependent pasha of Tripoli. 5The Pasha of Tripoli was the representative of Ottoman rule, established in Tripoli by Admiral Turgut Reis (Dragut in the West) in 1551. The seizure of the pasha of Tripoli Cyrenaica was the logic of the Ottoman expansion. It occurred between 1573 and 1575, but perhaps a little earlier because the news can not be reached immediately Anania. 6L'édition 1582 complements the previous and most importantly, it changes the information on the political situation: 3 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 320-323. On the beaches of Barbary we find Mondibarca so named after the town of Barca, the capital, where traffic in this region is notorious. And Guadames city high traffic due to the abundance of grana paradisi thereto made by merchants and Barca principal city (as was said) with a river at the foot of the walls, or a tributary king now resides that of Uri3. 7 edition 1582 so erases the mention indicating the dependence of Barca to the pasha of Tripoli to substitute a sentence that Barca now depended on the king of Uri. The change of sovereignty seems to have relied on local forces as the new holder of the power, under the authority of the king of Uri, is himself called king. 4 A. J. Arkell, 1946. 5 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 338-341. 8 The town of Uri was located in the north of the current where the ruins remain encore4 Darfur. She was known Anania whose information on Sudan are due to Italian travelers he cites repeatedly, including Vicenzo Matteo, "Ragusa merchant who lived in these areas for seven years trying to get at the Prester John, he could not faire5. " She was at the head of a vast kingdom qu'Anania this emphasis on the ethnic composition: 6 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 342-345. Then comes Uri, very important city, the prince is called Nina, that is to say Emperor. Neighboring kingdoms obey him or Aule, Zurla, which are discussed above, Sagava, Memmi, Musulat, Morga, and Saccae Dagio6. 9Sur eight names mentioned kingdoms, which are in fact ethnonyms, four are identified, referring to names currently worn by people who are both in Waday (Ouadaï) in Darfur: the Zaghawa, Mimi, the Masalit and Dajo. The text leaves Anania therefore foresee the existence of a State which included the territories of the future kingdoms of Darfur and Waday whose political structures remained very close. 7 Mainly Nachtigal and Barth. RS O'Fahey studied this chronology by comparing all (...) 10 Oral sources confirm this donnée7. They agree on the existence, prior to the separation of the kingdoms of Darfur and Waday, a large political entity encompassing both territories, dominated by a dynasty of ethnicity Tunjur. The chronology can be reconstructed using those dynasties who succeeded him in Darfur and Waday, is the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this Tunjur State. 11 The rise of the kingdom of Uri must be linked with the part of more and more important by Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in trade, particularly trade in gold, between the Sudanese Africa and the Mediterranean world. 8 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 344-345. This great prince, since it is the ally of the Turks, is very powerful. It is supplied with weapons by the merchants of Cairo who turn to him for the amount of gold found there. The prince does not mean that gold is spent in his country, so that people become, by avarice, greed of such a ####l, and he came running out to trade, and then the merchants end not come, but he wants them to use trade in choses8. 9 R. Mauny, 1961, p. 435-437. 12 The gold of the Volta main producer from the fifteenth century region, was transported to Jenne in the west and east to Kano. The second destination overcame the first. After Kano, gold could be sent to Egypt by the Kanem or the Kingdom of Uri. Darfur was well placed on the "track of the forty days" which led to Nil9. 10 This spice is made from seeds of two species of perennial herbaceous plants, Afromomum (...) 11 They bought at least from the thirteenth century in Tripoli and in the fourteenth century in Alexandria. In pa (...) 12 The network of Wangara, Mandingo traders originally covered all of West Africa. 13 It appears, as shown in the text Anania, at the end of the sixteenth century Cyrenaica became particularly attractive thanks to a new product, a spice, grana paradisi called malaguette or grains of paradise, or "pepper Guinea "10. Note that, in the passage devoted to Cyrenaica, Anania does not mention gold, instead it up in the heart of the relationship between Uri and Turks. In Cyrenaica, malaguette was probably largely sold to Europeans who were very demandeurs11. If the gold trade was flourishing in Uri, one of malaguette was at Barca. The intra-Sudanese ride this spice produced in humid areas of the coast of Guinea, could be provided by the same commercial networks than the OR12. The trans-Saharan route, the question then had to ask Uri a direct connection and controlled by the kingdom (the track Chad - Mediterranean is controlled by the Kanem-Bornu). 14 The hypothesis arises from the use of the axis passing through the oasis of Kufra. It is a difficult path that has never been borrowed permanently. We know she was commissioned in the early nineteenth century by the Sultan of Waday, Saboun. The company was burdened by heavy losses in camels, but it eventually proved profitable. The author of the information focuses on the fact that: 13 M. Emerit, 1954, p. 45. Here it is not the whites who go to black. These are Sudanese blacks, seeking an outlet for their products, have faced the greatest dangers, the most terrible hardships to achieve septentrionale13 coast. Top of page Bibliography Arkell, AJ, 1946, "Darfur Antiquities III: The ruined town of Uri in Northern Darfur," Sudan Notes and Records, 27, p. 185-201. Emerit, M., 1954, "The land links between Sudan and North Africa in the 18th and early 19th century," work Saharan Research Institute, XI, 1, p. 29-47. O'Fahey, RS, 2008, The Darfur Sultanate: a history, London, Hurst. Lange, D., Berthoud, S., 1972 "The interior of West Africa after Giovanni Lorenzo Anania (sixteenth century)," Journal of World History, 14 (2), p. 299-350. Magalhand#227;es-Godinho, V., 1969, The economy of the Portuguese empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Paris, SEVPEN. Mauny, R., 1961, Geographic Table of West Africa in the Middle Ages according to the written sources, tradition and archeology, Dakar, Senegal, Portugal, French Institute of Black Africa [Memoirs of the French Institute Black Africa, 61]. Top of page Notes 1 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 299-350. 2 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 320-322. 3 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 320-323. 4 A. J. Arkell, 1946. 5 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 338-341. 6 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 342-345. 7 Mainly Nachtigal and Barth. RS O'Fahey studied this chronology by comparing all oral sources (RS O'Fahey, 2008, p. 21-40). 8 D. Lange, S. Berthoud, 1972, p. 344-345. 9 R. Mauny, 1961, p. 435-437. 10 This spice is made from seeds of two species of herbaceous perennials, Afromomum melegueta and Afromomum granum-paradisi. 11 They bought at least from the thirteenth century in Tripoli and in the fourteenth century in Alexandria. From the fifteenth century, the Portuguese were buying directly on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea. But we see here that, unlike deductions too fast, the Atlantic trade was not dried-level exchanges of northern Africa. See V. Magalhand#227;es-Godinho, 1969, p. 537-547, and R. Mauny, 1961, p. 249-250. 12 The network of Wangara, Mandingo traders originally covered all of West Africa. 13 M. Emerit, 1954, p. 45. Top of page References Electronic reference Jean Boulègue, "The kingdom of Uri (Darfur) and Cyrenaica. Expansion of a Sahelian country to the Mediterranean shore, "Africas [Online], 04 | 2013, Online since 24 May 2013, connection on 21 July 2013. URL: http://afriques.revues.org/1190 Top of page Author Jean Boulègue Honorary Professor, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre for the Study of African worlds (CEMAF) By this author Orality and literacy in Africa dynastic chronicles of the West [Full text] Published in Africas, 01 | 2010 Top of page Copyright © All rights reserved