The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest
Ivor Wilks
The Juula (or Dyula) defy easy identification. The Mandekan word juula is of doubtful etymology, but has come to mean “trader” in many dialects.1 The Juula of this chapter are those who, over several centuries, established networks of trade in the savannah country between the Middle Niger in the north and the forests of the Guinea Coast in the south, and who had a major involvement in the marketing of gold and kola. Their settlements are to be found scattered across the land between the valley of the White Bandama to the west and that of the Oti to the east. Beyond the Bandama, the Juula networks gave way to those of the Jakhanke; and beyond the Oti, to those of the Hausa.
Historically, the origins of the Juula are to be found in the Wangara trading communities of the medieval western Sudan, to which the earliest known reference is that by Abu ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allah al-Bakri of Cordoba, in 1068 A.D. He wrote of Yarasna, a town “inhabited by Muslims surrounded by pagans.” The former were black, traded in gold, spoke aʿjam, and were called the “Banu Naghmarata.” A minor correction of the Arabic yields “Banu Wanghmarata,” presumably to be read as “Banu Wangharata”—the tribe of the Wangara.2 Al-Bakri’s eleventh-century account presciently describes the Juula of the subsequent dispersion. They were and are Muslim, spoke and speak a dialect of Mandekan, and still commonly refer to themselves as “Wangara.” They remained deeply involved in the gold (and kola) trades until the beginning of the twentieth century, when they were able to take advantage of the new colonial economies vastly to expand the range of their entrepreneurial activities.
In medieval and early modern times there was an unfailing global demand for gold, and West Africa was a major source of supply. The earliest of its goldfields to be intensively exploited was undoubtedly that of Bambuhu (Bambuk), lying in the region of the headwaters of the Senegal between the Falémé and Baling Rivers. It is clear from al-Bakri that Bambuhu gold was then entering the world market through Ghana’s great Sahelian port, the (excavated) site of which is at Kumbi Saleh. Yarasna, however, was located too far south to have been a center for this trade. It lay on the frontier of the Manden kingdom of Do, and therefore proximate to the Boure goldfields between the Niger and the upper reaches of the Bakhoy.3 It seems, then, that the eleventh-century Wangara of Yarasna are to be associated not with the older Bambuhu trade, but rather with a developing Boure one. In this context it is significant that the Juula of the southern dispersion universally refer their origins to “Mande Kaba”; that is, the ancient Manden ritual center of Kangaba lying on the eastern fringes of Boure. They also continue to use distinctively Manden patronymics: Bamba, Bagayogo, Jabagate, Kamagate, Tarawiri (Traore), Watara, and so forth. The Boure goldfields of Manden should, then, be regarded as the location within which a distinctive Juula identity emerged.
The history of the early dispersion of Wangara from the heartlands of Mali is at the same time that of the development of new centers of gold production. Settlements were established in the auriferous valley of the upper Black Volta,4 and, probably in the early fifteenth century, the Juula established a highly lucrative trade with the Akan of the forest country.5 They obtained supplies of gold from the producers, who washed the rivers and sank pits into the alluvia and lodes. The Juula became, then, the first link in a vast distributive network that extended northward from the goldfields to the greater entrepôts of the western Sudan and Sahel, thence across the Sahara by caravan trails to the Mediterranean littoral, and so into Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. Their activities took them far beyond the outermost fringes of the Muslim world, for the gold producers with whom they did business were kuffar, unbelievers.
The Juula settled, most commonly, among ‘stateless’ peoples, those having systems of authority that seldom extended beyond the level of the village or cluster of villages: among, for example, those broadly referred to as the Bobo, Dagara, Gurensi, Kulango, Lobi, and Senufo. They commonly took wives from the host community and so, in addition to their own Juula dialect of Mandekan, also came to speak its language. The Juula have thus tended to develop secondary identities, as Bobo-Juula, Dagara-Juula, and so forth. Sometimes, however, they established settlements within older centralized kingdoms, most notably perhaps in that of Dagomba; and sometimes, as in the cases of Gonja and Wa, they appear to have been catalysts in the very process of state-formation.6
Although the communities of the Juula diaspora originated as parts of a trade network, not all Juula traded all the time, and some did not trade at all. There were those who devoted themselves to learning, others who farmed, and others who were artisans, particularly weavers. And there were still others who were not Juula in the strict sense but who, sharing a common Manden background and using the same patronymics, tended to assimilate to them. These were the tun tigi or sonangui,7 the descendants of warriors who, with the decline of imperial Mali, spread into the regions of Juula settlement and sometimes, as well exemplified by the case of Kong, created small Juula chiefdoms.8 It is the agency of the Juula in the spread of Islam that is of primary concern in this chapter.
On Trading with Unbelievers
It was noted in the reign of Mansa Musa of Mali (c. 1312–37), that when he or his predecessors attempted to extend their sway, and that of the faith, over the gold-mining communities within their dominions, production fell off drastically.9 Since by that time Mali was within dar al-Islam in that its rulers were Muslim, the problem was to do with the terms on which the non-Muslim miners would be “tolerated.” The kings, it was reported, “left the gold countries in the hands of their pagan inhabitants, and were content with being assured of their homage and with receiving the tribute imposed on them.”10 The solution was one fully in accordance with Maliki law, then prevalent in western Sudan. In his Al-Mudawanna, ʿAbd al-Salam Sahnun of Qayrawan (d. 854) reported a fatwa given by Imam Malik b. Anas (d. 795) himself. It concerned the correct attitude toward the unbelievers of, in this case, the Fezzan. It was to the effect that war should not be waged against them until they had been given the options, first, of converting, or second, if this was declined, of paying a tribute—the jizya—to the Muslim ruler in order to be permitted to retain their own religious customs.11 The Wangara, then, might quite legitimately do business with the unbelievers of Boure.
The situation was quite different in the south. The Black Volta and Akan goldfields were never brought under the political authority of imperial Mali, and the position of the Juula was that of Muslims living in dar al-harb; that is, in lands where the law of Islam was not in force. The status of Muslims in such circumstances was one that had long engaged the attention of North African jurists with particular reference to the trans-Saharan trade with the Bilad al-Sudan. Sahnun’s views are evident in a story about him preserved by ʿIyad b. Musa b. ʿIyad al-Sabti (d. 1149). A man asked Sahnun for permission to build a bridge to improve access to his, Sahnun’s, house. Sahnun refused, on the grounds that the man’s money had been made in trading to the Bilad al-Sudan.12 The Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd of Qayrawan (922/3–996), a manual of Maliki law widely used in western Sudan, has a passage that is much to the point. “Trading to the land of the enemy (adw) and to the Bilad al-Sudan is disapproved,” wrote Ibn Abi Zayd; “the Prophet (on him be peace!) said: ‘Travelling is part of punishment.’”13 There was in all of this, however, something of a paradox, for the flows of gold from dar al-harb were vital to the well-being of dar al-Islam, and specifically to the economies of Muslim North Africa. One popular way out of the dilemma was simply to deny that it existed; to deny, that is, that there was any real interface between Muslim traders and non-Muslim producers. It was thus that the myth of the “silent trade” was propagated—that the Muslims accomplished their business without ever coming into actual physical contact with unbelievers. Versions of the myth are to be found in, for example, Al-Masʿudi (d. 956), Yaqut (d. 1229), Al-Qazwini (d. 1283), and Al-ʿUmari (d. 1349),14 and the topic has been thoroughly reviewed, though in a somewhat different context, by Farias.15 The serious jurists, however, could not and did not accept this fabrication, but concerned themselves with doctrinal matters.
Michael Brett has drawn attention to two fatwas of a contemporary of Ibn Abi Zayd in Qayrawan; namely, al-Qabisi (935–1012). One of these had to do with Muslims in an unnamed location in Bilad al-Sudan, the non-Muslim ruler of which had appointed a Muslim to supervise the affairs of the faithful, as nazir. The matter at issue was whether, in such circumstances, the nazir exercised legitimate authority. Al-Qabisi ruled that he did.
[S]ince the place … was a residence of Muslims who lived and dwelt there, there was no alternative for them but to have someone to supervise their affairs and judge between them, with authority from the ruler of the place to enable him to compel the recalcitrant and carry out his duties. For it is not possible to escape from kings in their power (sultan), and especially not from the power of unbelief (kufr) and enmity (ʿadawa). Therefore, if the nazir of the Muslims judges them by the laws of the Muslims, his judgement goes, hitting the mark of justice, and binding upon those who have been pleased to enter his jurisdiction (sultan) and come under his supervision (nazar), either permanently or in passing.16
As Brett comments, al-Qabisi accepted the fact that there are Muslim communities in dar al-harb,17 recognized that any government is better than no government, and concluded that in such circumstances it becomes necessary to rely on the power of non-Muslim kings to enforce the authority of the nazir and so enable him to apply Muslim law within the community of the faithful.18
The views of these Maliki jurists were ones of men securely located in dar al-Islam. In those distant lands where Muslim traders actually lived among, and did business with, unbelievers, the problems were not only ones of legal theory but of daily practice. A critical figure in the determination of what that practice should be was Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, who has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest over the last twenty-five years.19 He is a greatly revered figure throughout much of West Africa, and particularly among the Juula and the Jakhanke, both of which peoples regard him as the architect of their (similar) ways of life, and as having formulated precepts for the conduct of Muslims living among unbelievers.
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari was a Soninke (Serakhulle). Tradition universally sets the earlier part of his life in Ja (Diakha, Zagha, etc.) in Massina, and has him making the pilgrimage to Mecca seven times. In later life, he resettled at Jahaba (Diakhaba, etc., “great Ja”) in Bambuhu. In the seventeenth century it was described as having been “a town of jurists in the interior of Malian territory … known as the Town of God.” The kings of Mali were said never to enter it, the authority of the qadi being supreme.20 Al-Hajj Salim is the subject of numerous hagiological references in writings that circulate widely among the Juula and Jakhanke. In the Taʾrikh Jabi, for example, he is “their Imam and Shaykh of Shaykhs, wali of Allah the Highest, maker of many successive miracles.”21 He also figures prominently, as wali Allah or “a headman of the Mandinga nation,” in traditions to do with Fulani settlement in Futa Jallon.22 His floruit may be placed in the earlier sixteenth century.23 Juula tradition numbers Bukari Tarawiri of “Jaraba” and Muhammad Bagayogo of Timbuktu among his followers. The former was qadi of Jenne in the 1570s and 1580; the latter, teacher of the celebrated Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu, was born in 1523/24 and died in 1594.24
It is an open question whether any writings of al-Hajj Salim Suwari survive.25 His teachings, however, were transmitted principally through two of his students; namely, Muhammad al-Buni to the Juula, and Yusuf Kasama to the Jakhanke. A third line, about which less is known, passes through Muhammad Duguri of Koro.26 Wangara learning was also spreading into Hausaland in the late fifteenth century, when Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rahman Zaghaite, a name indicative of Ja or Jahaba connections, moved there with his followers.27 It may be that the Wangara settlers in Katsina, Kano, and elsewhere carried with them much the same teachings as those of al-Hajj Salim, but a better understanding of the sources is necessary before this can be argued with confidence.28
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari established, among Juula and Jakhanke alike, a pedagogical tradition that survives to this day despite the pressures of modernism. It is built around the study of three major works; namely, Tafsir al-Jalalayn of al-Mahalli (d. 1459) and al-Suyuti (d. 1505), Muwattaʾ of Imam Malik b. Anas (d. 795), and Al-Shifaʾ fi tarʿif huquq al-Mustafa of ʿIyad b. Musa b. ʿIyad al-Sabti (d. 1149). Of these, the first is, of course, basic. It was completed in Cairo in 1485, and al-Hajj Salim presumably acquired a copy of it in the course of one of his pilgrimages.29 Al-Suyuti himself referred to the many West Africans who studied with him and obtained copies of his works.30 In matters of Quranic exegesis, al-Hajj Salim followed al-Suyuti, who was a Shafiʿi. He found the latter’s relatively liberal attitudes toward non-Muslims congenial: liberal, that is, compared with the harsh pronouncements of his contemporary, Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karim al-Maghili (d. 1503/4).31 Nevertheless, in matters of law, al-Hajj Salim identified himself firmly with the Maliki madhhab. The sequence of his own teachers extends back through several unidentifiable western Sudanese scholars and is then attached to a well-known North African Maliki line through ʿAbd al-Salam Sahnun of Qayrawan and Abd al-Rahman b. al-Qasim of Cairo (d. 806/7) to Imam Malik b. Anas.32
There is general agreement among ʿulamaʾ within the Suwarian tradition, whether Juula or Jakhanke, that the principal dicta of al-Hajj Salim had to do with relations with unbelievers. Drawing upon many conversations with learned Juula in the Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, I believe that the following accurately, if somewhat schematically, represents the Suwarian position on Muslims vis-à-vis unbelievers.33 First, kufr, unbelief, is the result of jahl—that is, of ignorance rather than wickedness. Second, God’s grand design for the world is such that some people remain in the jahiliyya, the state of ignorance, longer than others. Third, true conversion can, therefore, occur only in God’s time, and actively to proselytize is to interfere with his will. Accordingly, fourth, jihad against unbelievers is an unacceptable method of conversion, and recourse to arms is permissible only in self-defense should the very existence of the Muslim community be threatened by unbelievers. Fifth, Muslims may accept the authority of non-Muslim rulers, and indeed support it insofar as this enables them to follow their own way of life in accordance with the sunna of the Prophet. Sixth, the Muslims have to present the unbelievers with qudwa, example, and so, when the time for conversion comes, thereby make possible iqtidaʾ, emulation. And seventh, the Muslims must ensure that, by their commitment to education and learning, they keep their observance of the Law free from error. Al-Hajj Salim Suwari thus formulated a praxis of coexistence such as to enable the Juula to operate within lands of unbelief without prejudice to their distinctive Muslim identity, allowing them access to the material resources of this world without foregoing salvation in the next.34 His dicta do not at any point conflict with Maliki orthodoxy, but clearly he drew selectively from jurists of the mind of al-Qabisi. Indeed, al-Hajj Salim may well have been acquainted with al-Qabisi’s fatwa discussed above, for it was among those that the mufti of Fez, Ahmad b. Yahya al-Wansharisi (c. 1430–1508), included in his massive compilation Al-Miʿyar al-Mughrib ʿan fatawi Ifriqiya wa al-Andalus wa al-Maghrib.35
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari is said to have introduced various ways of affording recognition to achievement in learning: a special turban (ʿimmama) for those completing the study of the three books, a hooded cloak (burnus) for those erudite in the Maliki madhhab, and a staff (ʿasan) for those skilled in law (fiqh).36 He, or perhaps his students, also introduced the system of asanid (sing. isnad) or salasil (sing. silsila), chains of transmission, from teacher to student, for Tafsir, Muwatta, and Al-Shifaʾ. The isnad or silsila is at the same time an ijaza, or license to teach. Using a sample of some eighty such documents that license Juula teachers either living or recently dead, almost all run back through Muhammad al-Buni to al-Hajj Salim, and for the most part do so in ten to fifteen teaching “generations.”37
The Juula Dispersion: Traders and Teachers
It is difficult to establish a precise chronology for the early dispersion of the Juula. In the late eleventh century, they were the gold traders, “the tribe of the Wangara,” located by al-Bakri in the western Sudanese town of Yarasna. Less than a century later, Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi described the inland delta of the Niger as “the country of Wangara” and noted that “its inhabitants are rich, for they possess gold in abundance.”38 By the late fifteenth century, such was the demand for gold that buyers were traveling as far south as the Costa da Mina (Elmina), where the Portuguese knew them as “Mandinguas”; that is, Manden.39 Much of our knowledge of the period is drawn from European sources. Valentim Fernandes, Pacheco Pereira, and their like were concerned, for practical reasons, to record the growth of the African trade. This was not, however, a matter likely to engage the attention of the Wangara scholars. Their concern was with a kind of frontier history, chronicling the expansion of dar al-Islam and the contraction of dar al-harb (as God had so willed it). Accordingly, the written and oral accounts of those in the Suwarian tradition focus not on those who went to do business in the lands of the unbelievers, but of those who traveled (al-safar) to teach. These were the scholars who sustained the true way of life in the Juula communities and thus at the same time set the example that the unbelievers would in the course of time come to emulate. These themes are well exemplified in the story of the Kamagate of Bighu.
The Juula entrepôt of Bighu (Begho, etc.) was situated on the northern edge of the Akan forest country. Its history has engaged the attention of a number of scholars. The full report of excavations there is awaited, but a provisional reading of the findings suggests that the Juula exercised a commercial sway over the town from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.40 The Kamagate were among the earliest of the Juula to settle there.41 In the mid-sixteenth century, when central authority in Mali had all but collapsed, a desperate bid was made to secure the southern supplies of gold. A Malian warlord, Nabanga, was sent to occupy Bighu. He did so, but then defected and moved eastwards to found the kingdom of Gonja in the valley of the lower Black Volta. In this venture, the faqih Ismaiʿl Kamagate of Bighu and his son Muhammad al-Abyad attached themselves to him. The latter became first imam of the new kingdom. His descendants continued to hold the imamate, and in time founded others in the various divisional towns of Gonja.42 One of the Gonja imams was Sidi Umar b. Suma, who assumed office in 1160 A.H., 1747. He was a great-grandson of the first imam, Muhammad al-Abyad,43 and an annalist with an impressive command of Arabic. He was, I have suggested, the compiler of the remarkable Kitab Ghanja, completed in 1165 A.H., 1751/2. His son and successor in the imamate, ʿUmar Kunandi b. ʿUmar, was jointly responsible for a version of the chronicle updated to 1178 A.H., 1764,44 which contains a succinct description of its contents: “It concerns what Allah has brought about from the beginning of Ghanja, the time of Nabaʿ [Nabanga], the faqih Ismaʿil, and his son Muhmmad al-Abyad; the affairs of the Muslims, the unbelievers, and all the kings of Ghanja to the time of the king, Abu Bakr b. ʿUthman, whose laqab is Layuʿ [Lanyon].”45 It will be noted that “what Allah has brought about” embraces the affairs of the unbelievers of Gonja as well as the Muslims.
According to the Kitab Ghanja, the conversion of the Gonja ruling house occurred in the time of Nabanga’s successor, Manwura. Engaged in battle with unbelievers, Manwura could not overcome them. Muhammad al-Abyad walked toward the enemy and planted his staff in the ground. Then, as the writer has it, “by the decree of Allah” the tide turned. Manwura was impressed, converted, and became “devoted to Islam.”46 The rulers of Gonja were probably the first within the Voltaic region to accept Islam.
In 1615 and thereabouts, the Timbuktu jurist Ahmad Baba made several listings of lands of unbelievers; at issue was not so much the matter of trading with them, but of enslaving their people. Gonja does not appear in the lists. Older kingdoms to its west, in the valleys of the White Volta and the Oti Rivers, do.47 Ahmad Baba’s “Dagomba” probably refers to Dagomba proper (Dagbamba) and also to the neighboring and closely related kingdoms of Mamprussi (Mampurugu) and Nanumba, and his “Mossi” describes their northern counterparts, Wagadugu and Yatenga. All five dynasties were founded after the destruction of a more northerly Mossi homeland as a result of Songhay expansion in the course of the fifteenth century.48 It was not until the second half of the seventeenth century, however, that Islam began to have a significant influence on their ruling houses. The change was brought about by a number of shaykhs who left their towns, Timbuktu among others, to resettle in the southern grasslands.
The history of Dagomba has been the most fully studied.49 A critical factor was the arrival of Shaykh Sulayman b. ʿAbdallah Bagayogo from Timbuktu. He is said to have proceeded from one to another of the Wangara communities that existed under the protection of non-Muslim rulers: specifically, from Gourcy in Yatenga, to Salmatenga (Kaya) and Mane in Wagadugu. From there he traveled to Dagomba at the request of its king, Na Luro (died c. 1660). He was given land at Sabari, in the Oti Valley, where he built a mosque and opened a school. On his death, his son Yaʿmuru succeeded him. Among Yaʿmuru’s students was the young Muhammad Zangina, who was to become, around 1700, the first Muslim Na of Dagomba. He is remembered particularly for opening up his country to trade by encouraging Muslim immigration. Later in the century, a visitor, the Fezzan merchant Sharif Imhammad, described “the Mahometan Kingdom of Degombah.” His brief account indicates that a Suwarian tolerance prevailed, for he noted, “that Musselman and the pagan are indiscriminately mixed; that their cattle feed upon the same mountains; and that the approach of evening sends them in peace to the same village.”50
Across the northern hinterlands of Gonja, from the Black Volta eastward into the Kulkpawn valley, there existed a number of small settlements established, probably in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by warlords of Manden background. Best known of these are, from west to east, Nasa, Visi, and Palewogo.51 Another Timbuktu shaykh, Abu Bakr b. ʿAli Kunate, is said to have settled first at Kudugu, a Wagadugu town, before continuing south to Visi. His descendants, and those of his companions, were to found many small imamates in the region.52 Shaykhs Sulayman Bagayogo and Abu Bakr Kunate exemplify what Sanneh describes as characteristic of the Suwarian tradition; namely, “travel or mobility (al-safar)… the penetration of distant lands for religious purposes.”53 Yaʿmuru Tarawiri belonged to the same category. Of Ja (Dia) origins, he was probably a great-grandson of the later-sixteenth-century qadi of Jenne, Bukari Tarawiri, mentioned above as a follower of al-Hajj Salim Suwari. He traveled to Nasa, where a Kunate imamate may already have been established. There he attached himself to a Mampurugu prince in exile, Saliya, and was instrumental in creating the Wa kingdom. Yaʿmuru’s floruit is a late seventeenth and early eighteenth century one. He became the first imam of the new state and his descendants continue to hold the office and most of the lesser imamates created later.54
The imamates founded by Ismaʿil Kamagate in Gonja, Sulayman Bagayogo in Dagomba and Yaʿmuru Tarawiri in Wa, became hereditary ones. Candidates for the office were chosen from among the descendants of the founder and, in theory at least, had to be approved by the ruler. The incumbent is known to the Juula as imam al-balad, imam for the country. He is responsible for the secular affairs of the Muslims; that is, for mediating between them and the ruler under whose authority they come and on whose protection they depend (and in this respect functions not unlike al-Qabisi’s nazir). That the three cases related above are all, as it were, success stories, should not obscure the fact that Juula settlers in non-Muslim lands faced major challenges. They seem seldom to have come into conflict with the host communities, but were acutely conscious of their own isolation from major centers of Islamic learning. There was inevitably the danger of backsliding (ihmal) and even of apostasy. The Tagara (that is, Tarawiri) of Jirapa, to the north of Wa, are known to have reverted to paganism.55 So, too, are Sanu in the Bobo country (also listed by Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu as a land of unbelief), who are said to have “stopped praying” for five generations before being reconverted in the later nineteenth century.56 The Juula accordingly not only placed (and place) much emphasis upon schooling within the community, but also perceived the need for constant renewal (tajdid) from without.
The Saganogo as Renewers of Islam
The notion of mujaddidun, renewers of Islam, was and is an important one for the Juula.57 It is firmly associated in their thinking with the celebrated Saganogo shaykhs who impinged upon their world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Under their influence, a new wave of mosque building began, specifically, of mosques large enough to accommodate whole communities for the Friday prayer. Among them, according to Al-Jawabir wa al-Yawaqit by al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba Saganogo, were those of Kong in 1200 A.H., 1785/6; Buna in 1210, 1795/6; Bonduku in 1212, 1797/8; and Wa in 1216, 1801/2. With the proliferation of mosques went the creation of a new style of imamate. The imam al-jumʿa, the imam for the Friday mosque, represented the community of the faithful as such. He was chosen by it and assumed responsibility for its spiritual well-being. The office was not hereditary. Quality of learning was all important in the selection of an occupant, and that sons often succeeded fathers reflects only the fact that fathers regularly taught sons.58 A sadly diminishing number of the striking western Sudanese-style mosques survive in their original form. The imamates, however, still flourish, and for the most part their occupants uphold the liberal tradition of Islam associated with al-Hajj Salim Suwari.
The appendix to this chapter shows asanid, teaching chains, for two Juula students and, for comparison, one Jakhanke. Yaʿqub b. al-Hajj Saʿid of Wa, Harun b. Baba Watara of Bonduku, and Al-Hajj Muhammad Alfa Silla of Kunting all completed their studies in the mid-twentieth century.59 The first Juula chain passes through lines of Tarawiri (or “Takari”) teachers in Wa and Watara teachers in Buna, and the second through Timite and Konate (“Qunati”) teachers in Bonduku. Both, however, will be seen to converge on the figures of Abbas Saganogo and his father, Muhammad al-Mustafa b. ʿAbbas Saganogo. In this they are typical of Juula chains.60
The eastward movement of Saganogo teachers in the second half of the eighteenth century can be dated. The grave of Muhammad al-ʿAfi, grandfather and teacher of Muhammad al-Mustafa b. ʿAbbas, is at Koro, between Odienné and Man in what is now the western Côte d’lvoire. That of his father, ʿAbbas, is at Kani, 95 kilometers to the east, where he is said to have died in 1178 A.H., 1764/65. Muhammad al-Mustafa himself settled in Boron, a further 70 kilometers east. He died there in 1190 A.H., 1776/7 (to select the most acceptable of several dates that appear in Juula writings), and his grave remains the site of local pilgrimage.61 His teachings were transmitted principally through his son al-ʿAbbas, who, after the death of his father, moved to Kong, 160 kilometers northeast of Boron, and in time became imam of that town. He died there in 1215 A.H., 1801.62 Al-ʿAbbas, according to Saganogo tradition, “brought his brothers to stay there, and then the ʿulamaʾ gathered around him to learn from him, and the news spread to other places, and the people of Bonduku and Wala came to him, and the people of the land of Ghayagha and also Banda came to study with him.”63 The Wa experience may be used in illustration. Their eleventh imam, Saʿid b. ʿAbd al-Qadir Tarawiri, went, according to a local chronicle, “to the town of Pan [Kong] to look for knowledge.”64 In 1964, Imam Saʿid’s descendant al-Hajj Siddiq b. Saʿid expanded on this. Long ago, he said,
all the old men of knowledge [karamokos] died. Men of knowledge became few. This continued up to the time of Imam Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Qadir. Then Imam Saʿid, my father’s grandfather, went to Kong. He was not then imam, but was sent there. He spent twelve years in Kong. The teacher was Karamoko ʿAbbas Saganogo. Saʿid came back from Kong to Wa. He was a mujaddid, a reviver of Islam in Wa. Later he was made imam.65
The Saganogo achieved a major renewal of learning among the Juula. Most Juula men, if fewer women, were educated to an elementary level by rote learning of the Quran. This is certainly true of recent times and presumably has long been the case.66 Advanced studies, terminating in the award of the ijaza to teach, were undertaken by relatively few, but it was those few who, as teachers, imams and the like, became responsible for maintaining the quality of the community’s religious life. Scholarship tended to become located within specific families, since fathers taught sons and the physical plant that constituted the school—buildings and books—were inherited the one from the other. No ʿalim, however, would teach only his own sons, for the essence of knowledge lay in its diffusion. All such families, for example the Timite of Bonduku, Limamyiri Tarawiri of Wa, Watara of Buna, and Bamba of Banda, regard themselves as talaba (students) of the Saganogo. It is the particular imprint of the Saganogo on Juula learning that distinguishes it from that of the Jakhanke, who share the Suwarian legacy but through different lines of transmission.
Windows on the Juula in the Later Eighteenth Century
There are sources that provide useful windows into Juula trading and clerical activities in the second half of the eighteenth century. Some idea of the volume of gold being moved from West Africa to the Maghrib is provided by an item from the trading accounts of al-Hajj Hamad al-Wangari of Timbuku. By the autumn caravan (al-rkaba al-kharifi) of 1204 A.H., 1790, bound for Akka in southern Morocco, he sent fifty camels loaded with gum acacia within the skins of which were packed four thousand ounces of “Wangara gold” (specifically, two thousand ounces of gold dust and two thousand ounces of gold bar). These were in payment for a large consignment of Flemish and Irish cloth.67 We do not know, of course, from which goldfields al-Hajj Hamad was obtaining his supplies, or whether he himself dealt directly with the producers. In such matters as these, we know more about the activities of a contemporary of al-Hajj Hamad—namely, Karamo Sa Watara, a resident of Timbuktu and Jenne.
Karamo Sa Watara was the eldest of five brothers. The second, Idris, was settled at Ja, in Massina; the third, ʿAbd al-Rahman, in Kong (where he had married a daughter of Soma ʿAli Watara, ruler of the Nzan province); and the fourth, Mahmud, at Buna (where he, too, married a daughter of its ruler). Only the youngest, Abu Bakr, remained for the time at Timbuktu. As a relatively young man, Karamo Sa did business in Hausaland and Borno and married a daughter of one al-Hajj Muhammad Tafsir, a prosperous merchant (probably of Katsina) who was involved in the Egyptian trade. Early in the 1790s, however, he traveled south to join his brother in Buna. He took with him a number of servants who, to quote from our source, “gathered a quantity of gold for their master; for there is a great deal of gold in that country, from the wilderness down to the river-side [that is, the Black Volta], also from the rocks.” Karamo Sa consigned some of the gold to his father-in-law, al-Hajj Muhammad Tafsir, and among the goods he received in return were, apparently, Egyptian silks. We know these details of the life of Karamo Sa from the brief autobiography of his son Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.68
Karamo Sa died of fever in the course of his venture into the Black Volta goldfields and was buried in Buna. Five years later, the youthful Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, in the company of his tutor, went to Buna. Abu Bakr was put to school there, to study tafsir (exegesis). Among his classmates was his cousin Kotoko Watara, who was later to succeed Soma Ali as ruler of Nzan.69 The teachers, Abu Bakr reported, were “not natives of one place, but each of them, having quitted his own country, has come and settled there.” They included scholars (Jakhanke among them) from as far afield as Futa Jallon and Futa Toro. The head of the school, however, was a Juula, ʿAbdallah b. al-Hajj Muhammad Watara. Both Abdallah and his father are known independently, from teaching chains. The former is recorded as instructing students from Wa and Bonduku, and has having been taught by his father, Muhammad b. Ibrahim Watara, whose own chain extends back through a line of Saganogo teachers to the revered Muhammad al-Mustafa b. Abbas of Boron (and thence, of course, to al-Hajj Salim Suwari himself).70 Buna retained its fame as an educational center in the mid-nineteenth century, when Henry Barth heard of it as “a place of great celebrity for its learning and its schools, in the countries of the Mohammedan Mandingoes to the south.”71
It is remarkable that even in the later eighteenth century, there were North African merchants who remained diffident about the morality of doing business with unbelievers. Sidi al-Hajj ʿAbd al-Salam Shabayni was a case in point. He was born in Meknes in or about 1743. His father was involved in the West Africa trade, and Abd al-Salam accompanied him on one extended visit. They spent twelve years there, from 1757 to 1769, and were resident for the greater part of that time in Timbuktu. Much enriched by their enterprise, they returned to Morocco in or about 1770. ʿAbd al-Salam settled in Tetuan. In time he became unhappy about the source of his wealth. “Money gained among the negroes has not the blessing of God on it,” he is reported as saying, “but vanishes away without benefit.” Later, as a result of a vision, he was to give away all his material possessions and to become a sage and healer (hakim) in the Jbala, where his cult survives.72
A Window on the Juula in the Early Nineteenth Century
In the mid-eighteenth century, the Juula were deeply involved in the lucrative trade with the Akan goldfields, but seem not to have established a presence in the capital of the kingdom that had, over the previous half century, acquired hegemony in that region—in, that is, Kumase, seat of the powerful Asante kings. In 1750, Asantehene (or King) Opoku Ware died. The Kitab Ghanja carried an obituary, penned probably by Imam Sidi ʿUmar: “[M]ay Allah curse him and put his soul into hell. It was he who harmed the people of Ghanja [Gonja], oppressing and robbing them of their property at his will. He reigned violently as a tyrant, enjoying his authority. Peoples of the horizons feared him much. He had a long reign of almost forty years.”73 In this case, kufr, unbelief, seems to have amounted, even for Suwarian savants, to rather more than ignorance.
But God’s inexorable will was in time to reveal itself. By the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a well-established Muslim community in Kumase that regarded the then Asantehene, Osei Tutu Kwame, as “a friend on whom they could always rely for protection.”74 One of its most prominent members was Muhammad Kamagate, known locally as Karamo Togma. He was a son of Gonja Imam Muhammad al-Mustafa, a grandson of Gonja Imam Umar Kunandi and a great-grandson of Gonja Imam Sidi ʿUmar—Opoku Ware’s presumed obituarist. Clearly times had changed.
Karamo Togma, who was a close confidant of the Asantehene, had with him in Kumase at least one section of the Kitab Ghanja, and it was presumably he who undertook the compilation of the lost chronicle of the Asante kings.75 Joseph Dupuis was in Kumase in 1820, as British consul. A knowledge of Arabic enabled him to converse directly with the Muslims there. Although the Asantehene was, they told him, “a misguided infidel, he was yet superior by far, to many other sovereigns, and particularly to the king of Dahomey, his eastern neighbour, who was an infidel of infidels (Kaffar ben al Koufar).”76
The fortunate survival of a number of letters from Osei Tutu Kwame’s “chancery” provides further insights into the attitude of the Kumase Juula toward their non-Muslim patron. Through Karamo Togma and other members of the Muslim community, the Asantehene maintained an extensive correspondence with the Gonja ʿulamaʾ. He required their prayers for his personal well-being and that of the Asante nation, the two being inseparable. A letter, probably of 1822, from Karamo Togma’s paternal uncle, the imam of Gonja, is informative: “Now then, I, Malik, the Imam of Ghanja, ask blessing for your soul and good health, and may you conquer countries. Good health to your son, blessings to your ancestors, to your wives and to your kin. May Allah bless your son and help him conquer the people of the land. Now then, I pray for you, your children, your ancestors, your wives and all the members of your family.”77 Another letter of the same period commences: “O righteous Sultan, benefactor of the Muslims, have mercy upon the Muslims. Allah will give you life, Allah will grant you long life. He will raise you [up] and aid you against all your enemies. Greetings to you, great Sultan.”78 The writer was ʿUthman, son of the imam of the Gonja divisional town of Gbuipe. Two decades or so later he was to become the first imam al-balad of Asante, formally recognized as such by Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin (1834–67). All subsequent occupants of that imamate have been his descendants.79
Had these Juula in Kumase, in making prayers for the well-being of the Asante nation and its non-Muslim king, and even for his ancestors, strayed beyond the limits of what was permitted even within the generous Suwarian concept of coexistence?80 They were, perhaps, on the very fringes of what was permissible, but they were also very deep in the land of unbelief. Certainly they observed the Suwarian dictates on the importance of education, and it became something of a tradition for Asante imams to receive their education at the prestigious Buna school mentioned above.81 Certainly, too, their Muslim identity remained quite apparent. The Danish pastor H. C. Monrad, who resided on the Gold Coast near Accra from 1805 to 1809, described the frequent visits of “Moors.” They wore Muslim dress, were literate in Arabic, and prayed continuously. Significantly, he remarks that most of them spoke Asante.82 Monrad had met those Juula still known as Asante Nkramo—Asante Muslims.
The Matter of Jihad
For the Juula, non-Muslim government was regarded as preferable to no government; among other reasons, the former condition was the more conducive to trade. Non-Muslim rulers might convert to Islam, as in Gonja, Dagomba, and Wa, but in other instances Muslim warlords arrived as conquerors, displacing rather than converting earlier rulers. Thus the founder of the appropriately named “Watara States of Kong” was Shehu Watara, who died in 1158 A.H., 1745.83 A warrior of Manden origins, he first brought the old Juula trading community of Kong under unambiguously Muslim rule.84 He, his sons, and his brother Famaghan (d. 1163 A.H., 1750),85 extended their sway—albeit lightly in some places—over a vast area between the Bandama and Black Volta rivers, implanting themselves in positions of power in the lands of Bobo, Kulango, Lobi, and Senufo.86 They did not, however, attempt the conversion of the rural populations, and in that respect they followed Suwarian precepts.
This was not the case with the movement associated with the name of Mahmud Karantaw, who in the mid-nineteenth century launched a jihad along the higher reaches of the Black Volta. Mahmud Karantaw was educated within the Suwarian tradition, but in the course of his pilgrimage to Mecca he met a Qadiriyya shaykh who convinced him of the propriety of jihad. In the event, Mahmud Karantaw was able to secure the support of Muslim warrior groups in the region, the tun tigi, but, with the possible exception of Wa, not of the Juula scholars.87 Few of the Dafin of the region supported the jihad: enjoying good relations with non-Muslims, they had no wish to fight them and often preferred to emigrate rather than do so.88 A Saganogo shaykh, Bamori Ja, is said to have met Mahmud Karantaw at Diebougou, and to have persuaded him to end hostilities.89 The Karantaw jihad was successful, but limited in impact. No more than a few small towns were overrun, their people converted, and mosques and schools built. It would have been at much the same time that, by one report, the Saganogo ʿulamaʾ of Bobo-Dioulasso advised al-Hajj ʿUmar al-Futi against jihad.90 It was also the period in which, in the deep south (as the Juula perhaps perceived it), Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin formally conferred the Asante imamate on the Kamagate of Kumase.91
The Juula of the southern dispersion knew of the radical doctrines of the great mujaddidun of the north, of ʿUthman dan Fodio and Ahmadu Lobbo among others. They must have heard of the sack of old Wangara centers in Hausaland such as Yandotu and Kurmin Dan Ranko, whose scholars had refused support for jihad.92 Nonetheless, the Juula seem to have regarded these distant events as of little relevance to their affairs. As late as the 1870s, for example, in an Asante at war with the British, the Muslims of Kumase continued to work for Asantehene Kofi Kakari, as they had done for his forerunner Osei Tutu Kwame, a half-century earlier. “The Moorish necromancers and fetish priests,” to quote one hostile witness, “continue to be the guiding spirits in Ashantee politics.”93 Word went out, inviting to the capital those willing to support the non-Muslim ruler in Kumase against the Christian one in London. The appeal brought to Kumase, inter alia, Ahmad Batunbuce (“of Timbuktu”), Binafi al-Hawsawi (“the Hausa”), and the Dafin scholar Sulayman b. ʿAli Kunatay.94
In 1887, the Zabarima warlord Babatu attacked both Wa and Nasa, destroyed the mosques, and put to death perhaps a hundred of the faithful. His anger had been fueled by the knowledge that Wa Imam ʿUthman Dun (who had studied under ʿAbdallah b. al-Hajj Muhammad Watara of Buna) had encouraged the non-Muslim ruler of the Wala, the Wa Na, to oppose the Muslim Zabarima. Specifically, he had “blessed” the Wa Na’s gunpowder.95 The writing was on the wall, but the Juula savants had yet to see it. The very next year, 1888, L.-G. Binger visited Kong and produced a well-informed account of it.96 Karamoko Oulé, a surviving grandson of Shehu Watara, had been in power for some forty years. The imam was Mustafa Saganogo, who, since he managed a score of schools in Kong, was likened to a minister of public education. He personally taught a class for adults, which Karamoko Oulé and his elders looked in on two or three times a week. There were, Binger thought, few illiterates in the town, and his general observations leave little doubt that the Suwarian tradition prevailed there. He referred to the tolerance and lack of religious fanaticism of the Juula of Kong, and to their “instinctive horror of war, which they consider dishonourable unless in defence of their territorial integrity.”97 He described how one or two Muslim families from the town would settle in an outlying village and establish rapport with the ‘fetishist’ headman (roitelet fétichiste), “securing his confidence and imperceptibly immersing themselves in his affairs.”98 They would open a school and invite the non-Muslim populace to send children to it. The process was, Binger said, one repeated in many villages along the roads running out of Kong—and, we may add, along those of the wider Juula network. Example—qudwa—was being put in place; conversion would follow at the appointed time.
The situation in Kong, represented by Binger as almost idyllic, was soon to be disturbed by the appearance on the scene of Almami Samori Ture. In 1885, Samori was consolidating his power in Jamala and Jimini, in what is now the northern Côte d’Ivoire, and his troops were establishing control over a wide belt of country between the Bandama in the west and the Black Volta in the east.99 One by one, the Juula communities of the region fell under the Almami, who claimed the status of an amir al-muʾminin, commander of the faithful. They thus found themselves united for the first time under a common political authority. At the end of 1895, the ʿulamaʾ of Kong sent a letter to those of Buna and Bonduku. Samori did not wish to make war on their towns, it read, but Samori says that obedience is due to him!100 Samori’s strength lay not simply in the extraordinarily efficient military machine he had created,101 but in his intention to use it as an instrument of radical social reform. Conversion was enjoined, and new converts were frequently impressed into the army. Mosques and schools were opened even in small villages, and Islamic law introduced. In the longer term, it seems, agricultural production was to be reformed, and the ancient system of (segmentary) lineage farming was to give way to one based upon plantations.102
Person (1975) liked to think of the Samorian movement as a “Dyula Revolution,” and wrote of the “profound political and social changes … forced on the old structures of Manding society” Many of the developments, however, were perceived as a threat to the traditional Juula way of life. Relations between Samori and the Juula ʿulamaʾ deteriorated rapidly. Samorian soldiers sacked Buna, probably late in 1896. Among those executed for having supported the Buna mansa—regarded as a pagan—was the imam of the Friday mosque, Saʿid Sissay.103 A few months later, in May 1897, the Almami’s troops sacked the town of Kong itself. Forty of the senior ulama, who had gathered at the mosque to pray, were taken to the army camp and executed—though, as Muslims, they were afforded proper burials.104 Marty reported that Samori had been offended by the contempt that Juula scholars had shown for his, Samori’s, learning.105 It may be assumed, conversely, that Samori had found their tolerance of kufr unacceptable. He discovered, moreover, that the Juula of Kong had been in communication with the French. This he regarded an act of treason. This time, though, the Juula had been quick to see the writing on the wall. Under unremitting French pressure, the state that Samori was building collapsed, in 1898, and he himself was taken prisoner in the autumn of that year. The future, as it turned out, lay with Suwarians, rather than Samorians.
Both French and British colonial administrators were to enjoy the close collaboration of the Juula ulama, who had no difficulty in adding Europeans to the list of non-Muslims with whom, over half a millennium and more, they had successfully done business.106 The story of the Juula under the colonial and postcolonial regimes and governments is beyond the scope of this chapter,107 but one vignette is offered in conclusion. In the early 1960s, Osagyefo (“Redeemer”) Kwame Nkrumah, a (lapsed) Roman Catholic, presided over the affairs of Ghana. Among his personal consultants—indeed, in many respects his imam al-balad—was al-Hajj Sekou. Popularly known as Kankan Nyame, he was, indeed, from Kankan in Guinea. Nkrumah’s Ghana Muslim Council drew up its bylaws. Number 8 read: “We should sympathise with every Muslim and non-muslim”; number 11: “We should pray for Osagyefo and the Country on every Friday”; and number 14: “We should always support the Government Party with sincere love for its activities.” One may readily recognize, in this later-twentieth-century Ghanaian context, the deeply structured Juula beliefs that al-Hajj Salim Suwari had fashioned some four hundred years earlier. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Juula Teaching Chain |
Juula Teaching Chain |
Jahanke Teaching Chain |
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, to |
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, to |
Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, to |
Muhammad al-Buni, to |
Muhammad al-Buni, to |
Yusuf Kasama, to |
Mandi Kuri, to |
Mandi Kuri, to |
Jibrïl Kaba, to |
ʿUmar Fufana, to |
ʿUmar Fufana, to |
ʿUthman Suwari, to |
Al-Hajj ʿUthman, to |
Al-Hajj ʿUthman Sakanughu, to |
Muhammad Fataju, to |
Muhammad Tarawiri, to |
Muhammad Tarawiri, to |
Muhammad Jaghabi, to |
Abu Bakr Saghanu, to |
Abu Bakr Sakanughu, to |
Al-Amin Kajaqi, to |
Al-Hajj Muhammad Saghanu, to |
Al-Hajj Muhammad Sakanughu, to |
Yusuf Darami, to |
Imam ʿUthman, to |
Imam ʿUthman Sakanughu, to |
Muhammad Yaramaghan, to |
Al-Hajj Muhammad Saghanu, to |
Al-Hajj Muhammad Sakanughu, to |
Al-Hajj Kasama, to |
Muhammad al-ʿAfi Saghanu, to |
Muhammad al-ʿAfî Sakanughu, to |
Kaba Silla, to |
Al-Mustafa b. ʿAbbas b. al-Mustafa b. Al-Hajj ʿUthman Saghanu, to his son |
Muhammad al-Mustafa Sakanughu, to his son |
Muhammad Tanu Turi, to |
ʿAbbas b. al-Mustafa Saghanu, to |
Al-ʿAbbas b. al-Mustafa Sakanughu, to his son |
Muhammad Fatim Kasama, to |
Yahya b. Muhammad Saghanu, to |
Muhammad al-ʿAfi b. al-ʿAbbas Sakanughu, to |
ʿUthman Ghari, to |
Ibrahim b. al-Mustafa Saghanu, to his brother |
Al-Hasan Qunati, to his son |
Al-Hajj Salim Jabi Kasama, to |
Muhammad b. al-Mustafa Saghanu, to |
Adimuru Qunati, to |
Ibrahim Amina Silla, to |
Siddiq b. Ibrahim Saghanu, to |
ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Timiti, to |
Ibrahim Maryam Silla, to |
Muhammad known as Jankira Watara, to |
Imam Saʿid b. Muhammad al-Timiti, to his brother |
Muhammad Karamba Ba Silla, to |
ʿAbdallah Watara, to |
Imam Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Timiti, to his brother |
Shaykh Muhammad Sanusi Silla, to |
Sharif b. Madani Tarawiri, to |
Imam Ismaʿil b. Muhammad al-Timiti, to |
Muhammad Jurum Silla, to |
Imam al-Hajj Sharif b. Imam ʿUthman Takari, to his son |
Imam Kunandi b. Malik al-Timiti, to |
Al-Hajj Muhammad Alfa Silla |
Imam al-Hajj Tamimu b. Imam al-Hajj Takari, to |
Abu Bakr Karamoko b. al-Hasan al-Timiti, to |
|
Yaʿqub b. al-Hajj Said |
Harun b. Baba Watara |
1. Delafosse 1955, 2:297–98.
2. Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 82, 453. Wilks 1982a, 333, but cf. Hunwick 1981, 420–21.
3. I follow Hunwick (1981, 425) in locating Yarasna near the source of the Bakhoy River.
4. Kiéthega 1983, 151–62; Perinbam 1988, 437–62.
5. Wilks 1982a, 339–44.
6. Ferguson 1972, passim; Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 13–17, 22; Wilks 1989, passim.
7. Wilks 1968, 164; Launay 1982, 25–34.
8. Green 1984, passim.
9. Gaudefroy-Demombynes 1927, 58–59; Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 262, and cf. 250.
10. Gaudefroy-Demombynes 1927, 58–59.
11. Brunschvig 1942–47, 120–22.
12. Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 103, and cf. 61.
13. Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 55, and see Bercher 1949, 318. The anonymous author of the late-twelfth-century Siyar al-mashayikh testifies to the Ibadi concern for the spiritual welfare of those traveling to—and hence presumably trading in—Ghana; see Lewicki 1960, 18–21.
14. Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 32, 169–70, 177–78, 273.
15. Farias 1974, 9–24.
16. Brett 1983, 433–34.
17. For this, see the testimony of Ibn Hawqal, a contemporary of al-Qabisi, on Muslims in pagan lands, Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 52.
18. Brett 1983, 435–37.
19. Wilks 1968, 162–97; Hunter 1977; Sanneh 1979.
20. Houdas and Delafosse 1913, 179 (Arabic text) and 314 (translation).
21. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Arabic Collection, IASAR/451, Taʾrikh al-Jabi, otherwise known as Taʾrikh al-Madaniyya.
22. For perhaps the earliest English recension of this tradition, see Reichardt 1876, 319. See further, Sow 1966, 210–11.
23. Wilks 1968, 177–79; Hunter 1977, ch. 2. Sanneh 1979, 23–26, opts for a period three centuries earlier, but this appears incompatible with the burden of the evidence.
24. Wilks 1989, 61–62, 93; Hunwick 1966, 24–25.
25. I have been assured by Juula scholars that such writings do exist, but those works I have seen have turned out to be by the later al-Hajj Salim Kasama of Touba (d. 1836). See, however, Marty 1922, appendix 7, for a reference to al-Hajj Salim Suwari’s Fath al-Aqfal, perhaps “Opening of the Locks.”
26. Wilks 1968, 180.
27. See the Kano Chronicle, in Palmer 1928, 3:104–5, 111; Al-Hajj 1968, 7–42. For the spread of the Wangara into Borgu, see Farias 1996, 259–86.
28. For a tradition linking al-Hajj Salim Suwari and someone of the name Zaghaite (“Diakité”), see de Mézières 1949, 23.
29. Wilks 1968, 179; Hunter 1977, ch. 2.
30. Sartain 1971, 195, citing al-Suyuti’s Tahadduth bi-niʿmat Allah.
31. Hunwick 1985, 60–95.
32. Wilks 1968, 176–77.
33. Participant observation, and see Ivor Wilks, “Conversations about the Past, mainly from Ghana,” field notes on deposit in the Africana Library, Northwestern University.
34. Wilks 1968, 179; Hunter 1977, passim; Sanneh 1979, 2–3, 21–24, 241–47. See further, Curtin 1975, 79–80; Quimby 1975, 604–18; Wilks 1989, 25, 99–100, 202; Owusu-Ansah 1991, 131–33; Launay 1992, 21, 78–81.
35. Brett 1983, 431; Hunwick 1985, 134, 144.
36. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Arabic Collection, IASAR/246: al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba Saganogo, Al-Jawahir wa’l Yawaqit fi Dukhul al-Islam fiʿl-Magharib maʿa ʾl-Tawqit. This work is a recension of earlier writings, and traditions, compiled by al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba in 1963. For the use of the turban in the Korhogo region, see Launay 1982, 36–37.
37. See, for example, Wilks 1968, 194–97; Wilks 1989, 96–97.
38. Levtzion and Hopkins 1981, 111; McIntosh 1981, passim.
39. Wilks 1993, 4–8.
40. Ibid., 16–22.
41. Levtzion 1968, 8–11; Wilks 1982, 333–49.
42. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 13–15, 36–51, 91–92, 109–10.
43. Ibid., 110.
44. Ibid., 66–71, but cf. 61–66 for Levtzion’s differing opinion.
45. Ibid., 89, 108.
46. Ibid., 74, 92–93.
47. I am indebted to Dr. John Hunwick for allowing me to see an early draft of his (and Fatima Harrak’s) “Believers and Unbelievers in Seventeenth-Century West Africa: Correspondence on the Legality of Enslavement between Tuwat, Timbuktu, and Southern Morocco” (forthcoming).
48. For a brief account of Mossi origins, see Wilks 1985, 466–76.
49. Wilks 1965, 87–98; Levtzion 1968, 85–123; Ferguson 1972, passim.
50. Proceedings of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa. 1791, 263–64.
51. Wilks 1989, 85–86.
52. Levtzion 1968, 143–47; Wilks 1989, 53–56.
53. Sanneh 1979, 19.
54. Wilks, 1989, 47–90.
55. Wilks 1968, 195; 1989, 58.
56. Al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba Saganogo, Taʾrikh al-Islam fi Bubu, and see Wilks, field notes FN/181, 189, interviews with Al-Hajj Muhammad (May 9 and 13, 1966).
57. For the case of the Wa mujaddidun, see Wilks 1989, 93–95.
58. Wilks 1989, 109–12.
59. Wilks 1968, 197, and 1989, 97. I am grateful to Dr. Thomas Hunter for supplying me with a copy of the Jakhanke chain.
60. This observation is based upon the sample of eighty Juula asanid. Only four follow a different track, to Abu Bakr Jabagate of Jenne, who seems to be a late eighteenth-century figure.
61. Wilks 1968, 173–74. For the grave, see Launay 1992, 220.
62. He died on 8 Dhu ʾl-hijja, 1215, after afternoon prayer, according to a marginal note by his son ʿUmar, in a work on syntax in the library of al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba Saganogo in Bobo Dioulasso; see Wilks, field notes, FN/180 (May 8, 1965).
63. Al-Jawahir wa’l Yawaqit (note 36).
64. Ibtida’ Din Wa; see Wilks 1989, 76.
65. Wilks, field notes, FN/53 (July 1, 1964).
66. Wilks 1968, 165–67.
67. Jackson 1820, 347–48.
68. Wilks 1967, 152–69, and The Life and Times of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq of Timbuktu, in preparation, which corrects many errors in the earlier account in the light of further data. Inter alia, I have preferred to interpret the “Kara-Mousa” of the text as “Karamo Sa,” and Watara (Weterawi) as his patronym (qabila).
69. Davidson 1839, 124.
70. Wilks 1989, 97 and 216 nn. 16, 17. The reader will readily remark that my interpretation of the text of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq on this point has been a wavering one.
71. Barth 1859, 3:496.
72. Wilks and Ferguson 1970, 35–52.
73. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 86, 104.
74. Dupuis 1824, 250 n.
75. Wilks 1975, 347–52. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 20–21, 202–5.
76. Dupuis 1824, 250 n.
77. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 210–11, 221.
78. Ibid., 210, 220.
79. Wilks 1975, 277–78.
80. I have discussed this issue, in a different context, in Wilks 1989, passim, but especially 202–4. For fuller consideration of the views of the Kumase Muslims, see Wilks 1995, 55–72.
81. Wilks 1975, 315–16.
82. Monrad 1822, 90–91.
83. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 83, 101, 131.
84. The complexities of the situation are examined in Green 1984, 155–217.
85. Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986, 87, 105, 138.
86. Bernus 1960, 242–323; Green 1984, 306–404.
87. Wilks 1989, 100–103.
88. Binger 1892, 1:416, and see 369, 380.
89. Wilks, field notes, FN/186, interview with Al-Hajj Muhammad Marhaba Sagonogo (May 12, 1966).
90. Wilks 1968, 179 n. 2.
91. Wilks 1975, 278.
92. Last 1986, 25.
93. [Maurice, J. F.], The Ashantee War (London), 1874, 1:16.
94. Wilks 1975, 238–42.
95. Wilks 1989, 97, 103–8. For the Zabarima intrusion, see Holden 1965, 60–86.
96. Binger 1892, 1:287–334.
97. Ibid., 1:298, 324, 328.
98. Ibid., 1:327.
99. The major study of this phase in the Samorian epic is Person 1975, 3:1537–1993.
100. Marty 1922, 234–35, and annex 13. See also Holden 1970, 97 n. 6.
101. Legassick 1966, 95–115.
102. Holden 1970, 103–5.
103. Ibid., 97–103.
104. Person 1975, 3:1880 and 1900 n. 26.
105. Marty 1922, 188.
106. Launay 1996, 297–318.
107. But see Launay 1982, passim.
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