2.2: State Building in West Africa

State Building in West Africa

As we move onto an introductory discussion of early-modern Africa, we can begin with a reminder from François-Xavier Fauvelle that, “we must…free ourselves from the image of a ‘uniform’ and ‘eternal’ Africa, of an Africa of innumerable and unchanging ‘tribes,’ of an Africa conceived as the reliquary of our ‘origins,’ for we are going to speak about African societies in history.” (Fauvelle, 2) Speaking about African societies in history means not consigning its peoples to what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls “the waiting room of history.” (Chakrabarty, 8) This is the place where Africans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Aboriginal Australians, indigenous groups in the Americas and so many others have been trapped by so many textbooks. It is here that they waited in timelessness, in tradition, unchangeable, and stuck in the human past until the arrival of Europeans made them historical for the first time. As we did for the Americas, this section will address the adaptations, developments, and innovations of societies in Africa both before and after the inauguration of sustained contact with Europeans. Coastal East Africa and North Africa will both be discussed in the context of a later section since these regions were already well integrated into the existing Afro-Eurasian global system. In contrast, the regions below the Sahara Desert contained societies that interacted with varying intensity among themselves and with the broader Afro-Eurasian world. Before discussing those regions more fully it is first necessary to push back on some common misconceptions about the continent and its people. 

Africa is, to start with, not a country. It is rather a massive continent (see Figure 2.2.1) stretching from the edge of the temperate zone in the north to the edge of the temperate zone in the south and containing an incredible amount of environmental and human diversity. For these reasons, it is not very useful to generalize based on the idea of Africa and even less so on the category of Africans. As a point of comparison, the largest landmass on Earth is Eurasia which stretches further east/west than Africa does north/south. Yet it is much rarer to see generalizations made about Eurasians than Africans despite the fact people living in the east and west extremes of Eurasia historically interacted (at least indirectly) far more than those in the northern and southern extremes of Africa. In fact, it would not have been until well into the modern age that anyone on the African continent would have identified “Africa” as their home or identified themselves, along with the entire population of the landmass as “African.”

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "The true size of Africa," Jeff Desjardins, licensed under CC By-NC-SA.

The danger of overgeneralizing based on categories created in the modern era is matched by the danger of too closely reading the African past through the contemporary issue of poverty. Certainly, poverty is an enormous issue on the continent today, but that is largely a result of the manner through which it was integrated into the global economy (from the slave trade, to colonialism, to contemporary neo-colonialism) rather than something inherent to Africa. There is simply no reason to think that the histories of people across the continent were more defined by want than any other place in the world. For instance, a French captain visiting a town in modern-day Senegal in the 1760s (near the height of the transatlantic slave trade no less) described a scene of relative comfort and prosperity: “Cotton and indigo already grew around the village, cattle grazed, and chickens and ducks waddled around. The air was fresh, the local fishing industry thrived, the dried fish was tasty, and the palm wine delicious, particularly when enjoyed cool… [The local population] looked healthy, large, and robust. Many were skilled farmers and fishermen…” (Røge, 2) This is obviously just one example but hopefully demonstrates what pre-modern prosperity could look like and the inadequacy of contemporary markers of wealth when thinking about the past. None of what the French captain described could necessarily be measured by indicators like Gross Domestic Product or average wages. Rather, what we would see across much of the African continent was several different types of societies living in radically different environments. In these environments, local populations had worked out ways of life that allowed for relative safety, comfort, and stability. Additionally, many of these communities were autonomous, communal, and relatively non-hierarchical. That said, as we move closer to 1500 there were also several important developments across the continent in terms of state-building. 

Perhaps most significant were the developments in the Sahel (the land just south of the Sahara) and along the Senegal, Gambia, and Niger Rivers of West Africa. Beginning centuries before the era we are examining, the region was home to significant urban centers most of which were self-ruled city-states. As we approach the early modern period, we see the transition to a succession of states that would come to play a major role in global trade while also becoming new frontiers in the growth of the Islamic World. The process of state-building began before the advent of Islam in the region, but the adoption of the Faith first among the merchants and then by the political elites was crucial in providing these states with a set of useful skills and connections with which to expand their power. Islam first arrived in the region with Muslim merchants who took part in the trans-Saharan trade. They were willing to brave the crossing of the world’s largest desert in order to access the copious gold that was produced in the region and was so vital to the perennially cash-strapped Mediterranean trade. 

By the beginning of the 11th century, the Muslim historian and geographer al-Bakri was reporting that the capital of the kingdom of Ghana consisted of two towns located six miles apart, “one of which is inhabited by Muslims and is large, possessing twelve mosques-one of which is a congregational mosque for Friday prayer; each has its imam, its muezzin and paid reciters of the Quran.” The neighboring town, by contrast, contained the residence of the king and was, “surrounded by domed huts, woods, and corpses where priest-magicians live; in these woods also are the religious idols and tombs of the kings. Special guards protect this area and prevent anyone from entering it so that no foreigners know what is inside.” This description suggests, on the one hand, that the value of Muslim merchants to the economy was large enough to make it worthwhile to provide them with what was essentially an autonomous space in which they could reside and conduct business. On the other hand, we see that the political center of the kingdom was still centered on a set of ancestral beliefs and the associated ritual spaces and observances. However, al-Bakri also notes that the separation he described between Islamic and ancestral spaces was not total given that the “king’s interpreters, the officials in charge of his treasury, and the majority of his ministers are Muslim.” (See Primary Source 2.2) Although not yet dominant, Islam was clearly exerting significant influence at the elite levels of politics and commerce even before the conversion of the ruling class.

Interestingly, al-Bakri’s narrative breaks off just before a major and poorly understood shift occurred in the kingdom. In 1063, Ghana enthroned a new non-Muslim king, but just 14 years later sources report that “Ghana was a Muslim state lauded for its adherence to Islam.” Neither internal nor external sources explain what had happened. Some scholars present this as a simple story of elite conversion while others suggest that something more dramatic occurred and that this should be understood as the rise of a new Kingdom of Ghana. Indeed, where previous kings had claimed descent from a mythical ancestor called Dinga who had made a deal with the great snake Bida – the provider of safety, rain, and gold – the new ruling class claimed descent from the Quraysh tribe of Arabia from which the Prophet Muhammad himself was a member. Ghana’s successors would continue this practice of claiming legitimacy based on descent from the Prophet’s tribe or from his close companions. Whatever the nature of this shift to an Islamic kingdom, Ghana, which according to many sources had been in decline, would experience a resurgence in wealth, power, and influence after the change.

The Empire of Mali

In the 14th century, Ghana would be surpassed by the Empire of Mali which established a more expansive and transcontinental set of ambitions at roughly the same time that such far-flung states as Ming China and the Kingdom of Portugal were attempting to do the same. Unlike Ghana, which transitioned to Islam during its history, Mali was founded by a dynasty that had already embraced Islam. The legendary founder of the empire was one Sunjata whose exploits are recounted in the famed epic of Sundiata. While containing many mythical elements, the Sundiata can also be read historically to reveal some significant political and cultural trends of the era:

• the assertion of a new kind of authority in the region, centralized and expansive, that superseded all other local claims to authority
• the continuation of the link between the state and Islam, even as ancestral practices would survive in the context of an otherwise religiously pious ruling class.
• the establishment of the political realm as an increasingly exclusive sphere of men, even as women continued to maintain prominent roles outside of politics.

To focus on this last point, among Mande-speaking groups of West Africa (which included the Soninke founders of Ghana and the Mandinka of Mali) there does not seem to have been any previous assumption that women should be excluded from politics. Neither does Islam explain the shift. Islam was also prominent in the region of the Gambia River west of Mali, yet female sovereigns seemed common along the river, with the Niumi kingdom having twelve consecutive women claiming the title of Mansa (ruler). 

To extend the point beyond politics, when the famed Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta crossed the Sahara in the mid-14th century, he found himself continually exasperated at the presence of women in what he considered male spaces. Coming from the very conservative context of the Sultanate of Morocco he was frequently outraged by the overly familiar relations between the sexes. At one point, he entered the home of an Islamic qadi (judge) and was shocked to be greeted by a beautiful young woman who also happened to be visiting the qadi. On another occasion, he went to visit a well-known Islamic scholar only to find his wife chatting in the courtyard with another man. When Ibn Battuta expressed his disapproval to the scholar he responded, “The association of women with men is agreeable to us and a part of good manners, to which no suspicion attaches. They are not like the women of your country." However, even as women maintained the prominence of their social/spiritual roles, the prevalence of female rulers would continue to decline throughout the region.

The mansas of the Mali Empire would also distinguish themselves by their incredible ambition. They were not content, as previous rulers in the region had been, to engage with the broader world through Saharan middlemen, they wanted to directly touch that world. As an example, a single near-contemporary account describes an early 14th-century attempt by Sunjata’s grandson or great-grandson, Mansa Muhammad Qu, to launch fleets into the Atlantic Ocean. This would have been a massive undertaking for a still developing state whose center lay far from the Atlantic coast. The source for this story was none other than Mansa Musa, almost certainly the most famous sub-Saharan monarch of the pre-modern era. Musa’s account came in response to a question about how he had come to power and was recorded by the governor of Cairo. In answering the question Musa noted that, “The king [Muhammad Qu] who was my predecessor did not believe that it was impossible to discover the furthest limit of the Atlantic Ocean and wished vehemently to do so.” Even after the initial fleet of 300 ships was lost at sea, Muhammad Qu was not deterred. As Musa described:

Then that sultan got ready 2,000 ships, 1,000 for himself and the men whom he took with him and 1,000 for water and provisions. He left me to deputize for him and embarked on the Atlantic Ocean with his men. That was the last we saw of him and all those who were with him, and so I became king in my own right. (Gomez, 100)

Mansa Musa’s account is unverifiable as no other contemporary sources corroborate the story, no archaeological evidence of the fleets has ever been found, and the voyages are not mentioned in any West African oral traditions. Yet, one small detail in the story suggests that it might not be a total fabrication. According to Musa, one ship returned from the doomed first voyage and its captain recounted the fate of the other 299 ships: “O Sultan, we travelled for a long time until there appeared in the open sea [as it were] a river with a powerful current. . . . The [other] ships went on ahead but when they reached that place they did not return. . . . As for me, I went about at once and did not enter that river.” That river “in the open sea” can be plausibly read as a description of the Canary Current which sweeps south along the West African coast before shifting westward across the Atlantic near present-day Senegal. Ships entering the open sea from Mali would probably encounter this current and hard to imagine how such a specific detail could show up in an otherwise bogus account.

If we assume this story is at least partially true and place it alongside the contemporaneous Polynesian discovery and settlement of Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) and later Ming Chinese naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean it appears that European kingdoms were not alone in seeking opportunity on the open seas. Yet, unlike 15th-century Portugal, both Ming China and the Mali Empire would ultimately turn away from long-distance voyaging in favor of different pursuits. To refocus on Mali, Mansa Musa’s account of his predecessor’s demise can be read as a critique of the entire project. Where Mansa Muhammad Qu sought to expand Mali’s influence through a fantastical, unrealistic, and ultimately doomed venture, Mansa Musa would succeed through a different tactic. Figure 2.2.2 is a map of the Mali Empire in 1350 CE. Mali's main trading centers, namely Timbuktu, Jenne, and Gao in the east are shown on the map. The greatest threat to the Mali Empire came from its eastern neighbor Songhay, which is also shown on the map. Starting in 1502, Songhay took control of Mali's eastern commercial sites. The map has a small inset in the bottom left corner that shows the location of Mali in west Africa on a map of the African continent.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): "The Mali Empire at its greatest extent, 1350," licensed under CC-BY.

Mansa Musa likely came to power around 1312 CE and even 12 years later while in Cairo was still being described as a “young man, brown-skinned, with a pleasant face and handsome appearance.” By the time of his ascension to the throne, the borders of Mali had been greatly expanded through his efforts and those of his predecessors (see Figure 2.2.2) and enough political stability had been established for Musa to contemplate his own journey beyond the empire’s borders. Rather than attempt to journey into the unknown as Muhammad Qu had attempted, Mansa Musa would instead use timeworn routes to complete the journey that all Muslims are expected to take once in their lifetime: the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj). He was far from the first West African to make his pilgrimage, or even the first Mansa from Mali, but no previous pilgrim left a greater legacy. The sources vary dramatically in terms of the size of his entourage. One contemporary report stated that he traveled “with a huge army” of 8,000 people; another source describes him setting out on his pilgrimage, “with great pomp and a large group, with an army of 60,000 men who walked before him as he rode. There were [also] 500 slaves, and in the hand of each was a golden staff each made from 500 mithqāls of gold.” There are similar discrepancies when it comes to the amount of wealth he brought with him on his journey. Some estimates suggest that he carried around one ton of gold, an incredible amount in any context, while the highest estimate raises this to 18 tons. What is agreed upon in every source, is that Mansa Musa was not stingy with his wealth. He distributed gold dust as alms to the poor, patronized the building of mosques and madrasas along his route, and is even said to have gifted the Mamluk sultan of Egypt 50,000 miqtals equaling over 400 pounds of gold. Famously, his lavish spending while in the Mamluk capital of Cairo depressed the price of gold in the city for years afterward. The contemporary historian Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari observed that before Mansa Musa’s visit gold never sold for less than 25 dirhams while after he left it never got higher than 22 dirhams. (Gomez, 105)

What all of this speaks to is the enormous capacity of the Mali Empire in Mansa Musa’s time. Obviously, 18 tons of gold is a huge amount to take on a journey, but the number is just as extraordinary when we consider what it must have meant to take it out of the empire. The mines that fed Mali may have produced 4.5 tons of gold per year which means that Mansa Musa carried all of the gold mined over the course of four years. Additionally, Musa was said to have brought many thousands of enslaved people with him. That the empire was able to capture and enslave so many people in preparation for this pilgrimage further suggests how important the project was for Mansa Musa. The West African sources are not as robust as those available in the central Islamic lands so we do not get much of a sense of how these efforts impacted West Africa. At the same time, there is nothing to suggest destabilization and Mali would continue to prosper for much of the rest of the 14th century. 

More broadly, Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage was a major event in the Islamic World of the time and even became known in Christian Europe. According to the historian Michael Gomez, this was, “the moment of Mali’s emergence as a transregional power, and it is through imperial Mali that West Africa literally and figuratively enters the spatial and imaginary dimensions of Europe and the central Islamic lands. Indeed, much of what is known about medieval Mali is due to a fascination emanating from far beyond its borders.” Indeed, fifty years after the pilgrimage, he was depicted in the famed Catalan Atlas as a huge figure occupying much of West Africa. There he sits on his throne with a golden crown and scepter staring at a single gold dinar that he holds in his hand (see Figure 2.2.3). 

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): "Detail from the Catalan Atlas (1375 CE)," Abraham Cresques, in the Public Domain.

Slavery in Africa

Another fifty years after the production of the Atlas, the Portuguese would begin sending ships south along the African coast. These voyages were spurred by many factors but among them was the pursuit of the now legendary wealth of West Africa.

Before moving on, it is important to address here the issues of slavery and the slave trade in Africa prior to the advent of the Transatlantic slave trade (which will be discussed in later chapters). In discussing this topic it is first necessary to note the limitations of commonly used terminology like slave and slavery. That is because the actual experience of being an enslaved person could vary widely depending on time and place. The prevalence of chattel slavery in the modern Atlantic World means that today people mostly associate the institution with plantation-style labor. This, however, was not the most common form of slavery nor did being enslaved always signify low status. In the Ottoman Empire, for example, “slaves of the gate” were people of high status with access to considerable wealth and privilege. Similarly, enslaved people constituted a military elite in many Muslim societies across Eurasia. In fact, the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo to whom Mansa Musa gave such an extravagant gift of gold was at the head of a dynasty founded by slave soldiers. In Africa, like the rest of the world, there were diverse experiences associated with being enslaved. Our best descriptions of slavery on the continent come from West Africa so I will focus on the region while also being clear that the specifics of West African slavery should not be generalized across Africa as a whole. 

In large parts of West Africa societies divided themselves into three social categories: noble or freeborn, castes, and slaves. Nobles and freeborn were the most numerous and were usually associated with agriculture or herding. Castes were local occupational groups who most often married with others of their group and made up a small minority within the society (as low as 5% of the population in some places ranging to 20% in others). The last of the categories were the enslaved people who likely made up a significant chunk of the population even if less than the freeborn. 18th and 19th-century European travelers suggest that enslaved people constituted 50% of the population in some areas, but how representative this was for earlier eras is hard to say. Regardless of the numbers, slavery was certainly prevalent within West Africa, especially among the states in the region. By contrast, in stateless societies like villages or village confederations the institution of slavery was often rejected. The enslaved were mostly captured during conflicts between and among various West and Central African states and societies. Scholars have suggested that in parts of Africa where land was widely available and notions of private property basically did not exist, it was ownership of labor rather than ownership of land that determined wealth. Unlike the form of slavery that would develop in the Americas, in West Africa an enslaved person had a much greater chance of being freed within their lifetime and, possibly since slavery was not racialized, it was also not assumed that status as an enslaved person would pass from one generation to the next. An enslaved person could also be integrated into their master’s kinship group over time and it was even relatively common for slaves to marry into the family.

From the 8th century, external demand for African slaves would grow as mostly Arab merchants began crossing the Sahara in search of labor sources. As that demand grew so did the incentive for West and Central African elites to engage in more slave raiding to supply that demand. The Saharan city of Zawila, for instance, is an example of a place that rose to prominence by the 10th century specifically because of its role in the slave trade. The total number of enslaved people brought out of Africa through the Arab slave trade almost certainly pales in comparison to the scale of the transatlantic trade, but it was still significant with possibly 17 million people carried out of Africa between the 8th and the 18th centuries. Even so, for most West and Central African societies the slave trade remained a relatively small part of their overall economies throughout this period. The city of Gao, for instance, was one of the most important West African cities in the trans-Saharan trade, yet, as Michael Gomez notes: “In discussing Gao’s economy…the sources specify livestock, rice, sugar cane, and sesame as the principal bases for Gao’s wealth, while in emphasizing Gao’s strategic position astride multiple axes of transregional commerce, [a Muslim geographer] makes no mention of slaving.” (Gomez, 43) Even when we move into the period of European involvement, the slave trade would continue to be a fairly minor economic activity through the 17th century. During most of that century, the gold exported through the single port of Elmina exceeded the value of slave exports from all of Africa. At the same time, an economic boom was occurring based on village-level artisanal production. However, a sudden drastic and tragic turnabout would occur by the end of the century. By that time rising demand for labor in the Western Hemisphere made slaving so profitable for African elites that a “wave of enslavement” began. As the 18th century began, cities like Elmina had, “ceased exporting gold – instead, the region imported gold from Brazilian mines in exchange for slaves.” (Manning, 175) The pervasiveness of that trade would grow to infect all aspects of West and Central African society and in turn, help construct the capitalist global economy.

This has, of course, been a limited discussion of pre-modern Africa. The actual depth and breadth of the continent’s history is impossible to encapsulate in such a small space. At the very least, though, what I hope that this section has accomplished is the replacement of the stereotypical Africa – defined by poverty, stagnation, slavery, and isolation – with a more complex depiction. As we have seen, pre-modern Africa was a continent marked by dynamism, political and social innovation, economic dynamism, and deep engagement with the broader world. Even as the slave trade, Western imperialism, and neocolonialism would become key elements of Africa’s modern history, Africans themselves, both on the continent and those in the diaspora, would always be more than just cogs in the creation of a world system that oppressed them. Instead, by using their voices, their pens, and their very lives, they would become some of our most eloquent critics of, fiercest fighters against, and stalwart resistors of that system. 

Primary Source: Abu Abayd al-Bakri, Excerpt from Book of Roads and Kingdoms, 1067

The city of Ghana consists of two towns lying on a plain, one of which is inhabited by Muslims and is large, possessing twelve mosques-one of which is a congregational mosque for Friday prayer; each has its imam, its muezzin and paid reciters of the Quran. The town possesses a large number of juriconsults and learned men.' . . . 

The town inhabited by the king is six miles from the Muslim one and is called Al Ghana... The residence of the king consists of a palace and a number of dome-shaped dwellings, all of them surrounded by a strong enclosure, like a city wall. In the town

... is a mosque, where Muslims who come on diplomatic missions to hear the king pray. The town where the king lives is surrounded by domed huts, woods, and copses where priest-magicians live; in these woods also are the religious idols and tombs of the kings. Special guards protect this area and prevent anyone from entering it so that no foreigners know what is inside. Here also are the king's prisons, and if anyone is imprisoned there, nothing more is heard of him...

Ghana is the title of the kings of this people, while the name of their country is Aoukar [Wagadu in surviving traditions, however]. The king who governs them at present ... is called Tenkaminen; he came to the throne in 455 A.H... Tenkaminen is the master of a large empire and a formidable power... The king of Ghana can put two hundred thousand warriors in the field, more than forty thousand being armed with bow and arrow...

When he gives audience to his people, to listen to their complaints and set them to rights, he sits in a pavilion around which stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair. The governor of the city is seated on the ground in front of the king, and all around him are his vizirs in the same position. The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed, who never leave the king's seat: they wear collars of gold and silver, ornamented with the same metals. The beginning of a royal audience is announced by the beating of a kind of drum which they call deba, made of a long piece of hollowed wood. The people gather when they hear this sound...

The king [of Ghana] exacts the right of one dinar of gold on each donkey-load of salt that enters his country, and two dinars of gold on each load of salt that goes out. A load of copper carries a duty of five mitqals and a load of merchandise ten mitqals. The best gold in the country comes from Ghiaru, a town situated eighteen days' journey from the capital [Kumbi] in a country that is densely populated by Negroes and covered with villages. All pieces of native gold found in the mines of the empire belong to the sovereign, although he lets the public have the gold dust that everybody knows about; without this precaution, gold would become so abundant as practically to lose its value... The Negroes ... known as Nougharmarta are traders, and carry gold dust from Iresni all over the place...

Discussion Questions: 

• What would explain the fact that there are two towns? Why would a non-Muslim ruler provide a dedicated space for Muslims?
• Al-Bakri wrote this despite never having been to Ghana. Does that lessen the usefulness of this as a source of knowledge about West Africa? How should a historian use a source like this that is secondhand? 

Review Questions

• What are some misconceptions about Africa?
• How did the spread of Islam impact state-building in West Africa?