Organa, Kuri Gana and Kagha: Speculating on Kanem in the Dulcert Map (1339)

  

Although this is speculative, we have long considered "Organa" in European planispheres, portolan charts, and maps to have been a reference to Kanem and Borno. Some consider "Organa" to have been Ouargla in the Sahara, but the inscriptions in maps from the 1300s and 1400s suggest Kanem and Borno. The strongest evidence of this identification is the Latin inscription from the 1339 portolan chart of Angelino Dulcert. To our knowledge, this is the earliest European source to use the toponym of Organa ("Orgena"). But what makes its identification as Kanem more likely is the Latin inscription's reference to naked black populations attacked by Organa's Saracen king. Moreover, these peoples allegedly lived by a sea. The best candidate for this area is therefore Lake Chad, where we know the rulers of Kanem occasionally engaged in wars or raids with non-Muslim societies near Lake Chad. 

Indeed, the Latin inscription for Organa reads, "Iste rex Saracenus permanet senper in armis cum Saracenis maritimis, scilicet cum una tera Nigroom qui senper vadunt nudi et sine aliquo vestimento." The French translation of De la Roncière rendered this as "Ce roi des Sarrasins demeure toujours en guerre avec les Sarrazins des bords de la mer, c'est-à-dire avec les  nègres qui vont toujours nus, sans le moindre vêtement." The "tera Nigroom" is likely a reference to a "black land" or "land of the blacks," but also close to a sea or body of water. The best candidate for this is Kanem, although it is possible a Saharan region like Ouargla was confused with Kanem further south. To strengthen the identification of Organa as Kanem, one can also note that its position east of Mali and south from Sicily onward points toward the Lake Chad area.

But in 1339, other sources do speak to the kingdom of Kanem engaging in wars or raids against "black" people who lived near a large body of water. According to Dierk Lange's chronology based on the Diwan of Kanem-Borno, there was a king named Kuri Gana (Kuri the Younger) who reigned in c. 1339. This king was said to have died in war with the "Sao" at Ghaliwa, possibly Ngala. This king's name in Kanuri was produced in Nachtigal's list in Sahara and Sudan of Sayfawa maiwa as Kure ghana Ben Abd Allah, dated to 1350. Since Lange's chronology "works best" for the Sayfawa, a date of c. 1339 seems more likely. This date also happens to be around the same time that Dulcert's portolan chart listed a place called Organa. Consequently, one wonders if the name of Kanem's mai, Kuri Gana, was perhaps deformed into "Organa" across the Mediterranean. Then, Kuri Gana's name became the established name for the toponym representing the Kanem/Borno areas. This would require the name of Kanem's mai to have reached Dulcert quite quickly, however. Even if he rose to the throne a year or two before 1339, his name would have had to have reached Dulcert rapidly in order to appear in a corrupted form on a map in 1339.

Exactly how the initial letter was dropped is unclear, but the idea of a Saracen king fighting "naked" dark-skinned people by a sea might match Kuri Gana and the Sayfawa. After all, the Diwan attributed the death of Kuri Gana and 3 other maiwa to wars with the "Sao" in this period. Moreover, if one follows Palmer in Bornu Sahara and Sudan, Kuri Gana (named Kore al-Saghir here) died at N'geliwa, in the area of Marte. This area in the 1300s would have been closer to the shores of Lake Chad and perhaps explain why reports of a "Saracen" king fighting "black" people without clothes by a sea reached Dulcert. Since it is unlikely that areas near the Mediterranean coast would have been defined as a "black land" (perhaps based on the Arabic term for the land of the blacks), Kanem and the Lake Chad region are the best fit for "Organa" in 1339. 

The next step to confirm this pet theory would be to examine subsequent mentions of Organa in the 1300s and 1400s European cartographic corpus. Understanding how the name Kuri Gana would have been pronounced in 14th century Kanembu or the routes through which it was deformed in Arabic and Latin are additional necessary steps. Resolving the later conflation of Organa and Ouargla (or another Saharan region) is also necessary.  More importantly, if the toponym Organa really was derived from the name of a Kanem king who reigned at the end of the 1330s, it would partially confirm the maiwa of this era engaging in wars with the "Sao" on the other side of Lake Chad, in Borno. Our theory might also have more merit than the often playful and inventive linguistic wordplay and reconstruction of Palmer.

That said, the Kagha (origin of the term kaigama) seems like a reasonable contender, too. The word Kagha seems to have been established in medieval Arabic sources by the end of the 1200s for designating part of Borno (Jaja, Kaka, Kagha). But how that transmogrified into Organa is unclear. The Kuri Gana or Kore Gana etymology we proposed may explain the appearance of the "gana" part of "Organa" but also requires dropping the initial k and a vowel. It also is unlikely that a Kanem king with such a short reign possibly right before the time Dulcert's map was finished could be the source of the toponym Organa (Orgena). The Kagha theory is more likely.

Fra Mauro, Kanem, Organa

Source

Fra Mauro's depiction of the Lake Chad region correctly named some of the peoples and features of the area, like Bagirmi, Bulala (after they were the dominant power in Kanem), and the Mandara Mountains. He must've had 'native' informants from Kanem or Borno or access to decent Arabic sources by geographers.

Source

But why continue to use the name "Organa" instead of Kanem? Fra Mauro knew of the Marghi, Mandara, Bagirmi, Bolala (Bulala in Kanem and Lake Fitri), and perhaps he thought Lake Chad was a giant marsh due to its seasonal fluctuations. But why continue to use the name Organa when his Arabic and/or Africans sources have specified Kanem and Borno as place names by the mid-15th century. Was it due to the fact that the Bulana rulers had already seized power in Kanem by this time? It could have been due to the already established pattern in medieval European Cartography to refer to Kanem as Organa, something which was already apparent in the 14th century map of Angelino Dulcert.

Source

The Angelino Dulcert map also mentions the king of Organa fighting naked "blacks" by the sea, which I interpret to mean Lake Chad. There's a French translation and commentary of his map here that makes it even more likely to be Kanem. 

Martin Waldseemuller's Universalis Cosmographia (1507) and More World Maps

 Waldseemuller's world map, first drawn in 1507, though inaccurate on North America, is quite good for the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. South America is oversized in comparison to North America, but North America's contours were still relatively unknown at the time. As one can clearly see, the continental outline of the entirety of the African continent is well-done, albeit slightly off at times, with the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea coastline (as well as other regions) veering from accuracy. His version of southern Africa indicates knowledge of Monomotapa, one of the Shona kingdoms of southeastern Africa linked to Indian Ocean trade networks through the Swahili coast, particularly Sofala in modern Mozambique. This is also the first map to refer to the "New World" as America, named after the Italian explorer, Vespucci. Moreover, the map also depicts the Pacific, an ocean Europeans had yet to reach (Magellan comes later). Of course, this map is a little off in that it lacks Australia and Antarctica, but it is the first world map to have the rough outline of the world (most of it) depicted, forever changing the future of cartography, trade, colonialism, and European (and world) consciousness.

Chinese World map of the 14th century, Dan Ming Hun Yi Tu, likely the source for the Kangnido, which in turn inspired the subsequent Japanese map of the world. Since China was the "Middle Kingdom" and believed to be the center of the world according to dynastic Chinese ethnocentrism, the map overstates the size of China and it's environs in Asia while understating Africa, which is shown on the far left with black unknown land marked in the center, the same color as the ocean, which at first led me to believe that medieval Chinese and East Asian mapmakers believed that the interior of the African continent was a gigantic lake or body of water (perhaps they were thinking of Lake Chad, which, several thousand years ago, was much larger in its extent, but obviously never as large as the dark space here). Anyway, the map clearly indicates familiarity with the profile of the African continent, including the southern and western coastlines, some likely coming from Islamic and Arab geographers, traders, and cartographers as well as Chinese mariners and accounts of the "Zanj" coast of East Africa, etc. That the Chinese knew of (to a certain extent, accurately) the western and southern coastlines of the African continent prior to Zheng He's expeditions and the Chinese junks described in the Fra Mauro map of the world near the Cape of Diab (Cape of Good Hope) are tantalizing, though one source indicates that the source for Fra Mauro's map was Ethiopian/Abyssinians in Italy in the 1440s who provided geographic information that was then applied to subequatorial Africa without regard to the vast distances separating southern Ethiopia and the Horn from southern Africa. Regardless, the Chinese mapmaker here knew enough about the general coastline of the African continent and may have sent ships into the Atlantic.

This, clearly based on the earlier 14th century Chinese mappa mundi, depicts the world with a China-centered focus, although Africa's contours may be more based on the Kangnido map of Korea. Intriguingly, a river from southern Africa is shown to be extending to the Red Sea (also seen in the previous Chinese map which inspired this Japanese one), an idea also appearing in some European cartography, too, suggesting either European influences or perhaps just Japanese, Korean and Chinese theories on the source of the Nile, whose sources were never ascertained until recently.

De Virga map from the early 15th century depicts Afro-Eurasia quite well, considering it's European originators had little knowledge, at the time, of the southern Atlantic, southern Africa, etc. Africa and parts of Asia are messed up, but the map seems to refer to a landmass in the southeast that could be "Australia," or "terra incognita Australis." The Garden of Eden is depicted in southern Africa, an idea that would live on for European settlers and travelers at the Cape, considering the Western Cape of South Africa's temperate climate, majestic mountains, beautiful coastline, and location at the "end of the world" at the southernmost tip of Africa.

World Maps!

 

Ptolemy's world map

 World map by 6th century traveler and writer, Cosmas Indicopleustes. Depicts a flat world that is very difficult to read. The fellow, an Alexandrian Greek, traveled to Axum in Ethiopia as well as southern India.

Ibn Hawqal's 10th century world map, south on top.

Kashgari Map, from the 11th century. Map oriented to east on top.

Al-Idrisi's map of the world for the king of Sicily, Roger II from the 12th century. The map depicts the Nile and Niger as connected rivers,  since it was a widely held belief among Islamic geographers that the two rivers were one and the same. Notice how it depicts the two sources of the Nile, one in the highlands of Ethiopia and the White Nile's deep in East Africa. Besides not representing sub-equatorial Africa very well, this map is a surprisingly accurate depiction of the "Old World." Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia is definitely lacking in detail, as well as southern Africa.

Hereford Map, medieval Germany. Dated back to ca. 1285.

Psalter Map depicting the world from 13th century Christian European perspective. East is at the top of the map.

Pietro Vesconte's world map, oriented to the east at the top. 14th century.

Portion of the Catalan Atlas, 14th century, depicting Europe, Mediterranean and northern Africa

Da Ming Hun Yi Tu, from 15th century China, depicting the world centered on China and East Asia. The earliest known world map from East Asia, it depicts Europe and Africa very poorly. By this era, after centuries of contact with Islamic geographers and traders, as well as Chinese navigators and trade in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, the cartographer had a general idea of Europe and Africa. Africa is depicted with a gigantic lake in the interior, probably due to hearing about the Great Lakes of East Africa from contact with Islamic and East Africans.

Kangnido map from the early 15th century, Korea. Depicts Europe and Africa quite poorly, with the same mega-lake in the interior of Africa that we see in the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu map. Of course, it's centered on China and East Asia, so there are obvious problems there. Check out the labeled portion of western Afro-Eurasia here:

De Virga world map from early 15th century. Seems to semi-accurately depict the continent of Africa, at least getting parts of the western, southern, and eastern coasts several decades before the Portuguese reached the Cape of Good Hope.

Fra Mauro world map from 1457 with a South-North orientation. Fra Mauro knew about the coasts of southern Africa, referring to the Cape of Good Hope as "Cape Diab" and used many Indian and Arabic names for portions of the southern and eastern coasts of Africa. It's quite fascinating to see such an accurate depiction of a portion of the African continent that was indeed connected with the much broader Atlantic and Indian ocean worlds and cultural contact zones than previously thought. Indeed, Swahili, Shona, and other peoples interacted with and traded with Arabs and Persians on the East African coast as far south as Mozambique during the Middle Age. And it's perfectly plausible that Zheng He's expeditions crossed over into the western coast of the African continent in the early 15th century. 

Cantino Planisphere from early 16th century depicts the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia.

Ruysch Map of 1507

Pietro Coppo map from 1520

Jean Rotz's world map made in the mid-16th century

Columbus map depicting known world before crossing the Atlantic. As you can see, West Africa figures prominently here and there are two West Africans visible.

 Based on Mateo Ricci's mappa mundi made in China in the early 17th century

In summation, I suppose my reasoning for including this list of extensive world maps is to illustrate that peoples living in different areas of the "Old World" knew about each other and had sufficient seafaring and traveling to document it through these amazing maps. Africa, for instance, was never the "Dark Continent" because so many Islamic, Asian, and even European geographers had a great idea of the continent's varied topography, waterways, and interior. Indeed, ancient Islamic maps suggest a keener understanding than one would expect of the Nile's sources in East Africa. Ignoring the obvious error of a Nile-Niger rivers combined, and the heavily flawed Islamic maps drawing on Ptolemaic worldviews, these earlier maps are not too horribly inaccurate.