Rouch's Contribution to the History of Songhay

Jean Rouch's Contribution à l'histoire des Songhay is rather outdated yet still useful for insights on Songhay history and culture. A reputable ethnographer who studied Songhay religion and magic extensively, Rouch's understanding of their history unsurprisingly emphasizes Islam as an alien element that laid the foundations for the collapse of the Askia. Despite this problematic frame for Songhay history, Rouch's work is one of the best earlier attempts to make sense of Songhay history from its shadowy early origins at Kukiya to the late colonial period. 

Unfortunately, Rouch repeated some of the mistakes of Delafosse and early colonial scholars. For instance, the Za dynasty were said to have been Christianized Lemta Berbers who left Tripolitania around 670. In addition, the early state of Ghana (Wagadu) is attributed to Judaeo-Syrian colonists. These mistakes inhibit a deeper understanding of early Songhay, one which clearly indicates an important role for the Sorko, Gow, and farming populations living near and along the Niger as the foundation of the first Songhay polity. This later inhibits Rouch's analysis of the Za, Si, and Askia dynasties since Islam, promoted by Askia Muhammad, is blamed for the fall of Songhay. Sonni Ali, on the other hand, was the champion of a "black" state that brought Songhay to its zenith, something commemorated in Songhay oral traditions, religion, and Rouch's problematic view of Islam's relations with Songhay religion. 

Of course, later scholars have benefitted from new approaches to the Timbuktu chronicles, epigraphic evidence from Bentia & Gao, as well as archaeological excavations at Gao and other sites in Mali to throw into question a number of theories held as gospel in Rouch's day. The picture that emerges now is one far more dynamic and one that calls into question some of the older generation's stereotypes of Kukiya as the fount of "black" Songhay paganism and even the historicity of Ali Kulun. Nonetheless, Rouch's insights are occasionally insightful here, particularly his proposed translations for Za dynasty rulers recorded in the Timbuktu chronicles. His familiarity with Songhay oral tradition and religion also adds a new dimension to the ways in which Sonni Ali and other rulers are remembered for building their empires through military conquests aided by magic or occult knowledge. 

Atabey, Yucayequey, Caney

Gilbert Valme's Atabey, Yucayequey, Caney is an intriguing yet somewhat meandering work. Since we are always interested in what Haitian intellectuals have to say about our island's indigenous past, we read it all, despite the unnecessary passages on paysages culturels or the occasionally misleading reference to pre-Arawakan peoples in Hispaniola as "ancestors of the Mayas." While a Central American provenience for some of these populations is a legitimate theory, consistently referring to them as sharing ancient ancestry with the Maya is a little misleading or awkward. Despite these missteps, Valme engaged in extensive research on the island of Haiti's hydrographic networks, water entrenchments, and engagement with archaeologists and academics who have researched the development of various pre-colonial cultures in Hispaniola.

Valme's study of the indigenous peoples of the island and how they related to their own cultural landscape through settlement patterns, domestic architecture, subsistence patterns, and political organization in simple and complex caciquats serves as a nice "refresher" on the scholarship of the "Taino"by 2012. Indeed, sometimes he draws from research we have not yet read ourselves. For instance, the possible location of Hatuey's principal village at Gros Morne (with around 15,000 residents) and high population estimates for the area suggest western Hispaniola likely held the largest concentrations of people in what were likely "proto-towns" or cities rather than simply villages. It is perhaps not wise to put too much stock in some of the population estimates for principal villages cited by Valme, but it would suggest 19,080 people lived at Guacanagaric's principal seat of En Bas Saline. One can imagine Xaragua, with its favorable location near lakes, rivers, and the sea, could have hosted an even larger concentration of people, too. The construction of large bateys at sites like En Bas Saline and Maguana also point to large population centers with intensive ritual activity related to the "Taino" cosmovision. This topic receives a lot of treatment here as it relates to the axis mundi concept, reflected in what Valme refers to as the poto mitan structure of the caney or bohios and the role of the batey itself as an axis mundi. 

What strikes us as particularly confusing, however, is Valme's allusion to Xaragua as a simple caciquat. Bainoa, however, was the "complex caciquat" which encompassed Xaragua and other simple caciquats in western Hispaniola. This is a rather confusing interpretation that reflects the author's best efforts to make sense of the conflicting Spanish sources on the political divisions of the island in 1492. Either way, by the late 1400s, Xaragua was undoubtedly the most powerful or influential caciquat in Bainoa (and probably the entire island). The caciquat was even expansionist in terms of the island's southwest corner, although we will likely never know the exact borders between cacicazgos or how their dimensions probably changed based on the power of various paramount caciques.

Reading Inca History Thoughts...

Catherine Julien's Reading Inca History is a work we rather struggled to complete. Due to our difficulties finding physical copies and the time to read, in full, Cabello Valboa and Murua (as well as a few of the hard to find Spanish chronicles), we were unsure how to tackle Julien's work. Her study of Inca historical consciousness and how it manifested in the sources used by the Spanish historical narratives or chronicles is fascinating, but does require a fuller familiarity with more of the Spanish sources. Nonetheless, Julien constructed an intriguing account of how Inca dynastic genealogy and life history of Inca rulers like Pachacuti were major sources of information used by the Spanish chroniclers. Tied to the panacas or descent groups of the Inca, mummies, songs, traditions, and even khipu were all part of the historical records of the Inca past. The use of paintings, ushered by Pachacuti, further establishes his central role in the development of Inca historical consciousness. 

Undoubtedly, an Inca historical consciousness existed. However, it was significantly changed or codified beginning with the reign of Pachacuti. Once Inca imperial expansion began, the need arose to establish descend from the patrilineage of Manco Capac and his sister (though sister marriage was not clearly established until much later) as the elite, power-holding group allegedly descended from the Sun. Using the Spanish chronicles and how they differ or share details about the early Inca past and the peoples of the Cuzco valley, Julien uncovers some hints at how the Incas were, at the beginning, just one of many groups in the Cuzco valley and their rulers engaged in marriage alliances with neighboring groups who even shared descent (or claimed it) from Pacaritambo and the Ayar brothers. But, with the expansion of Inca power and the need for a select group to consolidate its position, history and ritual were used to confer kingship to descendants from a more restricted kinship group that no longer had to rely so extensively on marriage alliances or acknowledge its shared origins with other groups in the valley. While much of the Inca source material that shaped the Spanish chronicles is still obscure, it is clear that historicist approaches to said Spanish chronicles can still be used to gain deeper glimpses of how the Inca constructed their own understanding of their past. The "mythic" elements and aspects that can perhaps be contextualized in the conflict between panacas or the growth of Christian influences on Andean belief may still reveal something of this historical consciousness that has been omitted or forgotten. 

1000 Years of Economic Growth and Regression on the Middle Niger

Le développement et la régression chez les peuples de la boucle du Niger à l'époque précolonial by Michael Tymowski is an ambitious work. An attempt to make sense of around 1000 years of economic progress and regression along a key part of the Western Sudan (centered on the Middle Niger), Tymowski relies heavily on the Timbuktu chronicles, external Arabic sources, and oral traditions. He persuasively makes the case for economic development with the growth of urban centers, limited private land tenure, and accelerated long-distance trade, which later declined in the 1600s and 1700s. This shows that the history of "development" in sub-Saharan African areas has always been dynamic, and not simply one of timeless "backwardness" or irrelevance. 

However, Tymowski's study is quite outdated and relies on French translations of sources in Arabic. It also relies heavily on Jean Rouch and other somewhat outdated scholarship on Songhay ethnography and oral traditions, even repeating the unproven claim that the Dia/Za dynasty of early Songhay rulers were actually Lemta Berbers. In addition, he heavily relied on the problematic Tarikh al-Fattash chronicle for assertions about servile/caste populations. This dependence on French translations of Arabic sources and outmoded scholarship on Songhay ethnography and oral traditions suggest possible limitations of Tymowski's study. While one must acknowledge that the aforementioned Timbuktu chronicles are probably reliable for the 1400s and 1500s (at least more so than for earlier centuries), Tymowski's attempt to derive meaningful conclusions or theories about the economic development of the Mali Empire and Songhay Empire may be misleading or problematic. Nonetheless, there are a number of intriguing ideas about the relationship between the towns (Gao, Djenne, Timbuktu) and the countryside, as well as the role of the state in promoting land tenure arrangements along the lines of property property or through state domains (those of the askias) that controlled and promoted the redistribution of goods.

On Magloire Ambroise...

Whilst perusing an article on Magloire Ambroise by Alix Ambroise in the Revue of the Haitian Historical Society, we noticed some inconsistencies. according to Alix Ambroise, Magloire was born on the Pasquet habitation. He married Theophile Cangé, the daughter of Pierre Cangé. However, when checking the parish registers, we came across a Marie Rose Theophile who was the daughter of Jean Louis Cangé and Marie Charlotte Favre. It would seem that Alix Ambroise, presumably a descendant of Magloire Ambroise, the hero of Jacmel, made an error.

Careybana

Although this is purely speculative, one wonders if the place name, Careybana, may have simply meant a flooded or wet plain. Identified in the Spanish chronicles as an area situated on a plain with a large concentration of people in the cacicazgo of Xaragua, the first part of the name, Carey, bears a slight resemblance to a Palikur word for a flooded plain. According to Launey's book on the Palikur tongue, kariy means flooded plain. While Palikur is an Arawakan language distantly related to Taino, we suspect carey and kariy might be related terms. Sadly, we could not find any similar words in Island Carib, Garifuna, or other Arawakan languages. In the Arawak of Suriname, however, Goeje did record kalhao or kalho as words for grass. Perhaps it is far more likely that Careybana simply meant a wet plain where seaturtles could be easily caught near the coast, assuming carey is really the Taino word for sea turtles.

Christianity in the Sudan

Giovanni Vantini's Christianity in the Sudan is a dated work which, by and large, is mainly about Christian Nubia. Heavily based on the corpus of "Oriental" sources (plus some European ones) Vantini published, much of the text is like reading that compilation with some narrative commentary. It was a refresher for certain points in the history of medieval Nubia that we have forgotten about, but without any deeper investigation of the source materials, rather limited. Fortunately, advances by archaeologists and studies of Old Nubian and other textual sources has shed more light on the nature of the Nubian political system, economic structure, and religion. For instance, Dotawo is now more widely accepted as being the same state as Makuria. Sadly, Alwa, in Upper Nubia, remains a mystery in Vantini's text, but that is no surprise given the year this work was published (1980). More intriguingly for those interested in the later centuries of medieval Nubia, one can find here useful Western sources on Nubia and some important references to the Vatican's attempts to replant the Christian seed in Nubia. Some of this correspondence even touches upon the Kwararafa south of Borno, confusingly believed by some Europeans in Tripoli to have been Christians. Last, but certainly not least, some European sources also alluding to the survival of Christianity in pockets of Nubia as late as the 1740s suggest fruitful areas of research for scholars interested in Christian traces in Nubian culture. Some observations noted here on possible areas of Christian Nubian influence in Kordofan and Darfur also suggest medieval Nubian kingdoms really did exert some degree of influence to the west of the Nile...Indeed, the place name in the Dilling area mentioned in the famous Tabaqat may be further evidence of this.