Cup bearer (Yoruba). Nigeria.

Wood, pigment, pearls, height: 37 cm.

Chambaud Collection.

 

 

Olowé of Isé made this cup which illustrates maternity and can serve three functions: holding presents for important people, offerings to the Yoruba gods, Orishas, or palm nuts for the Fa divination.

 

 

The Bambara Kingdoms

 

I have just spoken of the Bambara as exercising the authority to the south of Timbuktu, dating from about 1660. This people, a branch of the Wangara group, spread out on both sides of the Niger from Bamako to the region of Djenné and the Massina, had been at first subject to Manding, becoming, at least in part, vassal to the Songhoy from the epoch of the Sonni Ali the Great and especially that of the askia Mohammed. Having gained their independence towards the middle of the 17th century, they then formed two States. One had its capital at Segu and extended along the Niger between this river and the Bani; the other called Kaarta, had its domain to the west of the first, at the north of the upper Senegal. At first, both were governed by princes of the same family, that of the Kulubali, the western portion bearing the name of Kulubali-Masasi.

 

Towards 1660, the king Biton Kulubali settled at Segu. The mansa of Manding, who was then Mama-Magan, wanted to destroy in his nest this neighbour whom he guessed to be dangerous and about 1667 he attacked the fortress built by Biton. The siege still continued in 1670 and Mama-Magan, despairing of its coming to an end, retired, following the right bank of the Niger; Biton pursued him as far up as Niani, cornered him at the river and forced him to conclude a treaty by the terms of which the Mandinka sovereign engaged himself not to advance in the future downstream from Niamina, Biton, on his side, promising not to go upstream from this point. This event marked the end of the Mandinka Empire, which from now on, reduced to the Malinke provinces of the upper Niger and the upper Gambia, ceased to count among the powerful States of Negro Africa.

 

Biton raised a professional army on the pattern of those of the askias, by means of ton-dion or government slaves, and organised a State flotilla, utilising the fishermen, called Somono, and their small craft. He set his authority solidly on all the countries between Niamina and Djenné, captured the Bagana, and imposed his suzerainty on the Massina and Timbuktu. In 1710, he died of tetanus resulting from an accident, and with him, his dynasty came to an end.

 

In fact, his army massacred his children and relatives and took over power; but it became divided, part sustaining the chief of the infantry and the other part the master of the cavalry, until a servant of the former royal family, named Ngolo or Molo Diara, succeeded in having himself proclaimed king and founded a new dynasty (1750). One of his successors, Monson (1792-1808), made himself especially celebrated by the war that he waged on his congeners, the Bambara of the Kaarta, and by a punitive expedition that he conducted in 1803 to Timbuktu, following the refusal of this city to pay its annual tribute to Segu.

 

It was under his successor Da that the Massina freed itself from Bambara suzerainty to constitute an independent kingdom under the command of the Fulani marabout Seku-Hamadu, of the Bari or Sangare family (1810). The latter captured Djenné, constructed a capital at Hamdallahi on the right bank of the Bani, and wisely organised the administration and the finances of his kingdom. He converted to Islam the Fulani who until then had obeyed an ardo of the Diallo family and succeeded in substituting at Timbuktu his own influence for that of the king of the Bambara at Segu. In fact, he captured Timbuktu in 1826 or 1827, but his compatriots were hated and the Fulani garrison which had been installed there could not remain. He was to have only two successors: his son Hamadu-Seku and his grandson Hamadu-Hamadu, who was vanquished and put to death in 1862 by the Tukulor conqueror EI-Hadj Omar.

 

As for the Bambara kingdom of Segu, it disappeared at the same epoch and in the same fashion as the Fulani kingdom of the Massina: EI-Hadj Omar, in fact, conquered Segu on 10 March 1861, and the following year he seized Ali himself, the last king of the Diara dynasty, who, having taken refuge with Hamadu-Hamadu, had, in the face of the common danger, become the ally of his former enemy. The Bambara kingdom of Kaarta had an even shorter duration. Its beginnings went back, like those of the kingdom of Segu, to 1660 or 1670. Less than a century afterwards, in 1754, King Sie captured Diara. His successors became masters of the greater part of the other provinces situated to the north of the upper Senegal and took Bambuk and Kita from the Mandinka.