Looking for Borno in Aïr Traditions

Whilst perusing  Documents Nigériens: Tome I, l'Aïr edited in French by Boubou Hama in the late 1960s, we came across references to Borno multiple times. Unfortunately, the corpus of oral traditions collected here are often of a very vague nature. Indeed, when recounting the history of the sultans of Agadez, informants appeared to be making composite figures of various sultans without any clear chronological precision. With these limitations, it is sadly difficult to use these traditions to better contextualize the relations between the Tuareg of Asben and Borno.

Nonetheless, some of the traditions do affirm a period of Bornoan hegemony of Aïr. For instance, one elder reputed to be over 100 years old, reported that that the people of the region had to pay tribute to the people of Borno annually. Part of this tribute consisted of animals (cattle?), slaves, and sometimes nobles. Since the tribute was too onerous, the Abzinawa decided not to pay it any longer. When Borno's representative came to collect it, the people of Aïr refused. The sultan of Borno, not named, prepared to go to war and came to Aïr with his army. But, the Tuareg had fled to the mountainous caves of Bagzam and withstood the besieging forces of Borno. Through a ruse conceived by a man named Hamed Yahya, the eldest, the Tuareg sent out an old camel stuffed with grains, dates, and water. When the Bornoan forces killed and opened the entrails of the camel, they found it full of provisions. This led the Bornoans to assume the Tuareg had sufficient food and water in their mountainous caves to continue to avoid engaging the king of Borno. Deciding to leave Asben, the Bornoan troops lifted their siege and returned to Koukaoua (Kukawa). Obviously, the reference to Kukawa is an anachronism here since this event is said to have taken place when Agadez was a small village or recently founded. This campaign is probably the ill-fated Bornoan expedition to Asben mentioned in the Kano Chronicle, taking place in the 1400s. 

Another informant cited in the study also referred to the same conflict with Borno. According to an elder named Ousmane ben Elhadj Kemel, the Bornoans collected an annual tribute from the Tuareg of Aïr consisting of a beautiful young girl. The Bornoan envoy was called Aganga (a Kanuri or Bornoan form of this word is not known to us) and was refused the tribute one year. According to tradition, the girl who was supposed to be given in tribute had a brother who refused to accept it. What is distinct about this version of events is that the girl's brother actually killed the Aganga, triggering an invasion from Borno. In addition, this tradition of the conflict mentions 3 camels whose stomachs were filled with ample food, giving the impression to the Bornoan troops waiting out the Tuareg hiding in the caves of Bagzan that their enemies had ample resources. Meanwhile, the Bornoan troops were running out of water and supplies, forced to abandon Aïr soon after. Another distinguishing trait of this tradition is that the Istanbul legend starts here, with the Tuareg sending their dignitaries to find a sultan in Istanbul during the time Borno's sultan was in the region. 

Other references to Borno or areas once affiliated with Borno are more arduous to connect with other sources. For example, one tradition based on information from Mohamed ben Agueb refers to Younoussou and Mohamed Ben Younoussou. The latter is mentioned for having attacking Gobir and forcing its ruler to flee their capital. In 578, a year equivalent to our 1182-3. But the context of this attack on Gobir and the conflict in Bilma are more suggestive of the 1700s. The reference to Fachi and Mohamed Younoussou appointing Ibrahim ben Ahmed as chief of Bilma seem to refer to the period of conflict over Kawar in the mid-1700s. 

Later on, Mohamed ben Younoussou defeated Gobir and went to war with Borno, occupying a Bornoan fortress built on a high hill. This campaign was advised by the Agadez sultan's vizir, Abdallahi ben Youssouf, who actually wantedt o weaken the Tuareg. Thus, the troops sent by Agadez to attack Borno found themselves completedly encercled by Bornoan warriors, who trapped the Tuareg on the hill. Eventually, Mohamed ben Younoussou was able to escape and reached Haedja, where he fought with a Bornoan leader named Ibrahim. It is possible this Ibrahim was a galadima of Borno sometime in the mid-1700s. By the end of the conflict, the Tuareg were defeated in 608 and force dto flee to Agadez where the Bornoans followed the Tuareg to Talmari, where they were defeated by the Acharifane. Upon his return to Agadez, Mohamed Elbaki was appointed as heir. 

The best we could do for trying to situate the above tale with the known history of Agadez-Borno wars is to suggest the campaign in which the Agadez sultan penetrated deep into Borno and was forced to flee happened during an attack on Gaskerou or Kawar in the middle decades of the 1700s. According to Landeroin, Bornoan forces did attack and pursue the Tuareg in that raid, before ultimaetly fleeing back to Borno.  In Koyam tradition, the place where the pursuing Bornoan army was defeated was not Talmari, although it is possible the Tuareg and Koyam traditions remember the place differently. 

The same source also included Borno or the Beriberi as enemies of Agadez during the reign of Sultan Mohamed "El Fadel," who reigned after the aforementioned Mohamed ben Younoussou. Apparently, the Beriberi and "Baghoussow" had crossed the Niger to provoke the Tuareg of Aïr on their own territory and committed massacres at Tiguida and Ingall before being vanquished by Mohamed El-Fadel. We could not be sure to what extent any Bornoan sources recall this, or if there is confusion on the part of the traditionists.

23andMe Chromosome Segment Sharing

Since hearing about 23andMe finally bringing back the chromosome browsing feature that allows one to see one's matches with DNA Relatives on the site, we checked it out for our account (and that of our Haitian parent). For us, unfortunately, 23andMe still maxes out one's DNA matches at 5000. This means that the overwhelming majority of matches I have on that site are those sharing my "Hispanic" roots. For African matches, our Haitian parent has more luck. We were able to browse a number of them and see the shared segments with people from Nigeria, Congo (via South Africa), Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, and other places. 

Interestingly, we saw that our Haitian parent shares a segment of DNA on their X chromosome that overlaps with that of a Fulani person (judging from surname) who is likely from Sierra Leone and someone else from Sierra Leone who is possibly Temne (inferring from surname). And through our Haitian parent's account, we saw that we share the Temne person as a match (even though 23andMe doesn't actually list this person in my DNA Relatives). In any case, the shared segments were always small (11.37 cM for the Temne, 11.58 cM for the Fulani). So, through our Haitian parent's side, we appear to have a female ancestor who was possibly from a Temne-like (or adjacent group) background who was trafficked to Saint Domingue. We assume the Fulani shares this Temne-like ancestry with us. But to make things more surprising, our parent did share a segment of DNA with another Fulani on the second chromosome that was assigned as "Senegambian and Guinean."

In terms of the paper trail, the colonial parish registries, runaway slave ads and notarized contracts or plantation inventories list a number of "nations" from what is now Sierra Leone and Liberia. Some examples include the Timbou, Mamou, Susu, and Mende. Cangas, Mesurades, Miserables, Bouriquis, and more from the Liberian and Ivory Coast regions were also present in the colony, according to Moreau de Saint-Mery. 

We will likely keep exploring this new shared segment viewing feature to explore our Haitian parent's matches with Liberians, Nigerians, and Ghanaians. It is just unfortunate that the Historical Matches feature doesn't allow for this. Nor can one see specific shared segments used by 23andMe to assign the African Genetic Group matches that appear in the Ancestry Composition breakdown. Adding these features would make the site more useful and important for genealogical research. 

Yarnam, Mandara and Descourtilz

 

Something we have thought about for some time now is the reference to a tyrannical and extreme Sayfawa maina in a 19th century Mandara chronicle. The kirgam, translated in French in Eldridge Mohammadou's Le Royaume du Wandala, ou Mandara, au XIXe siècle, was the subject of another post on the ill-fated 1781 Mandara campaign of Borno. But the chronicle, despite being written several years after the war and from a highly biased perspective, also tells us of a Sayfawa prince named Yarnam who robbed, raped, and killed en route to Mandara. At a place called Karangou, Yarnam was said to have stayed with a man named Ali Ayssami. The prince not only demanded money, he also raped his host's wife and daughter and executed her son. When the host sought justice from the mai of Borno, Ali b. al-Hajj Dunama, he received nothing. 

While this episode could be a literary invention to portray the Sayfawa ruler in as poorly a light as possible and make his attack on Mandara unjust, it is interesting to note Descourtilz also reported something similar about an African prince who was extremely cruel and monstruous. In the case of Descourtilz, however, it is left ambiguous as to the origin of this prince. But he included the anecdote of this prince in a chapter on Borno, based on interviews with Africans from there living in Saint Domingue (modern Haiti). In Descourtilz's version, this African prince mercilessly killed a child and then killed the daughter of a ruler in a neighboring state. Since the daughter had the same name as the animal meant for sacrifice in some sort of ritual or rite (labani, a forest beast), the despotic prince killed her and offered her as a sacrifice. Needless to say, this triggerered a larger conflict won by the father of the princess. His victory against the prince and his followers supposedly led to some of them ending up on the Rossignol-Desdunes plantation in colonial Haiti.

As previously mentioned, the story reported by Descourtilz does not specify that the young prince was from Borno. But it is inserted in a short chapter on Borno. Is it possible this young prince was the same Yarnam mentioned in the Mandara chronicle? The timing is consistent with a perhaps 1780s Sayfawa maina whose extremely abusive and violent actions led to his demise. Some of his followers may have ended up in Saint Domingue by the end of the 1780s and then were met by Descourtilz. Of course, Descourtilz never clearly identified the place of origin for the prince he was writiing about. 

Fey

Just a classic RAM song from the 1990s...brings back better memories, even though we have never been huge fans of RAM.

Foucault's Pendulum

As fans of Ishmael Reed's masterpiece novel, Mumbo Jumbo, Naoki Urasawa's Twentieth Century Boys, as well as Chris Carter's Millennium (although the second season was not exactly in the vein of what Carter would have done), we finally read Foucault's Pendulum. This is a novel we endeavored to read a few years ago on a Kindle but due to its length and subject matter, a text like this is meant to be read in physical form. Umberto Eco has created the ultimate anti-occult, anti-conspiracy theory book using a conspiracy and invented Tradition. This zany tale involves everything from Jewish mysticism, alchemy, Ism'ailism, and Candomble to the Templars, Rosicrucians, Paulicians, Nazism, Freemasonry, telluric currents and the Jesuits. It is also an excellent work for the bibliophiles and book editors, since the Plan concocted by the 3 Italian editors is really a masterful work of erudition and throws a number of references to major texts in the history of Western literature, esotericism, and even popular culture (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, for instance). 

In terms of the novel's structure, most of it is really Casaubon narrating the previous steps that led to him staying in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris after hours to witness an occult gathering of various Diabolicals (believers in various strands of occultist knowledge who come to believe in the Plan concocted by Belbo, Casaubon and  Diotallevi). Occasionally, journal entries or literary pieces from the computer, Abulafia, of Belbo, provide additional narration of events that shape the novel. By the end, the three book editors, who initially approached the subject of the Plan with an inventive sense of humor, find themselves trapped in a whirlwind of curious and dangerous events. Along the way, Belbo is forced to revisit his memories of the latter days of Fascist Italy and lost opportunities while Casaubon tries to find another, deeper, meaning in the plethora of invented esoteric currents mixed together to in a deep way. 

While Umberto Eco did not seek to undermine the racial and Eurocentric biases that Ishmael Reed highlighted with Jes Grew, he managed to produce an intellectually sophisticated look at how the occult mind works and distorts to create new realities to make sense of their zeitgeist. This is why for each period, newly  invented "Tradition" is adapted to make sense of the world in the search for a higher truth. Perhaps more of the Diabolicals should have thought like Casaubon and Lia did about their own philosopher's stone...

Peep Show Laugh Track

 

If you ever wanted to know what Peep Show with a laugh track would be like, this Channel 4 Charity Comedy Gala clip is a good example. While it is always fun to see Jeremy and Mark doing mundane things together (which they do in the show, sometimes eating at restaurants like the Indian one where Jeremy requested 4 naan) or going to a pub, this clip captures our duo at their best. The clip here is quintessentially Peep Show but I think we're all glad that the show did not  use a laugh track...

Revisiting Contribution à l'étude de l'ethnobotanique précolombienne des Grandes Antilles

After reading numerous other studies on the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, revisiting Jacques Roumain's "Contribution à l'étude de l'ethnobotanique précolombienne des Grandes Antilles" in Oeuvres Complètes  is a more meaningful experience. As the only substantial article on the indigenous peoples of Haiti (and the Greater Antilles) by Roumain, this piece from the 1940s shows Roumain attempting to bring together the historical, archaeological and linguistic sources. An added benefit is the inclusion of Haitian Creole names for various flora of the region, not just the Taino and Spanish names (often derived from the Taino or indigenous names). This is particularly interesting as one can see how Haitian Creole words for local flora are often not of Taino origin, though hardly shocking. But as one of the few articles that tries to bring Haitian perspectives into conversation with sources drawn from Spanish, English or German sources, Roumain's work shows there is a place for Haitian perspectives. Indeed, the Puerto Rican scholar, Francisco Moscoso, made a point of citing Nau for his understanding of how Taino chiefdoms worked through tribute obligations. One only wishes Roumain had lived long enough to explore other dynamics of indigenous Caribbean archaeology and socio-political questions. Perhaps Haitian ethnology could have maintained a more serious interest in the indigenous theme.