Waaga grave figure
(Konso). Ethiopia.

Wood, height: 213 cm.

Private collection.

 

 

Intensive agriculture is practised by the Konso who live in a walled hilltop village. Bravery is a highly revered quality, as hunting is a prestigious activity; men who have killed a dangerous wild animal or enemy are considered heroes. This phallic stone is placed atop the grave of a hero; if he was wealthy and of senior Gada status, a group of carved figures accompany this stone around his grave. When new, the figures are painted with red ochre, have bone eyes and teeth, and painted black eyebrows and beards. The sculpture, meant to represent the hero, portrays him to be aggressively masculine with an erect penis. His phallic forehead ornament, hairstyle, and bracelets denote his senior Gada rank as well as his hero-status.

 

 

The Empire of Bornu

 

To the east of the Hausa, on both sides of Lake Chad, lives a population whose domain to the west bears the name of Bornu and to the east that of Kanem. This population is related by its origin and language to another, dispersed across immense territories, for the most part desert, that of the Teda or Goran; these two groups meet at the Kawar (oasis of Bilma), at the Tibesti or Tu or region of Bardai (whence the name of Tibbu or Tubu and of Bardoa given to the Teda of this region), at the Borku or Daza, in the Ennedi (where they take the name of Anna and are called Bedeyat by the Arabs), in the Kabga or Kapka, north of the Wadai (Gaoga of Leo the African), finally in the Zaghawa, situated to the north of Darfur between the Ennedi and the Nile. These Teda were divided into a great number of tribes, some nomads, others sedentary, some Muslim, others pagan, some frankly Negroes, others more or less mixed with white blood. The family of the first sovereign of the Kanem – Bornu of whom tradition preserves the memory, probably belonged to this people. He was a prince who is given the name of Saefe or Sefu, from which the Muslims have not hesitated to make Seïfullahi “the sabre of God”, although fully recognising that he was no Muslim; neither did they hesitate to assimilate him to Seïf ben Dzu-Yezen, the last Himyarite king of Yemen.

 

In reality, this Saefe was most certainly a Negro of Teda origin, who established his residence at Njimi, between Mao and Yagubri in the Kanem, and set his domination over the Teda of the Borku, the Tibesti and the Kawar, over the Kanembu or the inhabitants of the Kanem and over the Kanuri or Baribari of Bornu and Munio. We do not know at what epoch he lived. It is towards the 11th century, under one of his successors named Oume, that Islam is thought to have made its first appearance in the country.

 

At the end of the 12th century the Teda and pagan dynasty founded by Saefe was overthrown by a Kanembu and Islamic dynasty whose first representative was Tsilim or Salmama, that is to say, “the Muslim”, who reigned, it is believed, from 1194 to 1220, taking the title of mai. His successor Dunama I (1220-1259) was obliged to combat Teda revolts. Then two centuries passed in almost continual anarchy. Under the mai Ibrahim (1288-1304) began the revolt of the vassal tribe of Bulala, which continued to trouble the empire for more than three hundred years. The mai Idris I (1352-1376) had just mounted the throne when the Arab traveller Ibn-Batuta, coming from Timbuktu to the Tuat, sojourned in 1353 at Takedda, between Gao and Agades (Teguidda of our present maps), at that time celebrated for its copper mines in full operation; the Takedda people told Ibn-Batuta that King Idris never showed himself in public and never spoke to anyone except hidden behind a curtain, according to a custom that may still be observed in our day in many States of Negro Africa.

 

The mai Omar (1394-1398) decided to abandon the Kanem to the Bulala and went to settle in Bornu, where one of his successors, Ali (1472-1504), had established the capital of the empire of Gassaro or Kasr-Eggomo, 75 kilometres to the west of Chad. It was this Ali who attacked the kanta of the Kebbi and was defeated by him. His son Idris II (1504-1526) reconquered the Kanem from the Bulala; he was a contemporary of Leo the African, who speaks of him in his accounts, giving him by mistake the name of Libran (Ibrahim), one of the predecessors of Idris.