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The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Paul E. Lovejoy
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto

Extract

The term ‘Wangara’ has most commonly been used to describe the gold merchants of ancient Mali and Ghana and has been equated with ‘Juula’ (Dyula). This article establishes another meaning for ‘Wangara’, as it has been used in the Central Sudan, particularly Hausaland. There the Wangara were descendants of merchants who were once connected with the Songhay Empire of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the term is also used in Borgu to describe resident Muslim merchants in the Bariba states, it is postulated that the Wangara were once a Songhay-based commercial group which established diaspora communities in the Bariba and Hausa towns before the Songhay collapse of 1591. It is argued that these Wangara merchants were instrumental in the economic development of the Central Sudan in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were not only associated with commerce but were involved in early leather and textile production and probably were responsible for the introduction of such new products as kola nuts and the spread of the Songhay monetary system, based on cowries and gold. The immigration of the Wangara came at a time when other economic changes were taking place in the Hausa cities and Borno. The combined impact of these developments were such as to mark the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a major turning point in the economic history of the Central Sudan.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

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15 This analysis is based on the work of Musa Idris, whose preliminary study clearly establishes ‘Wangara’ as the corporate name for Muslims in Borgu. Since they spoke Dendi, a dialect of Songhay, and since some Songhay moved to the Bariba towns after the Moroccan invasion in 1591, I have assumed that most Borgu Wangara were originally from Songhay and that most early trade was with Songhay. The analysis is also based on recent theories of commercial diaspora organization and development. See especially Lovejoy, , ‘The Hausa Kola Trade’Google Scholar; Lovejoy, , ‘Kambarin Beriberi’, 633–51Google Scholar; Cohen, , ‘Cultural Strategies’, 266–81Google Scholar; Meillassoux, Claude, ‘Introduction’, in Meillassoux, Trade and Markets, 6774Google Scholar; and Curtin, , Economic Change, 59108.Google Scholar

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24 Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 8Google Scholar. The historical development of the kola trade is discussed in Lovejoy, , ‘Kola in the History of West Africa’ (forthcoming)Google Scholar. For a general overview, see Perinbam, , ‘Dyulas in Western Sudanese History’.Google Scholar

25 This expands upon earlier discussions of cowrie use in the Central Sudan; see Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria’, J. Afr. Hist. xv, 4 (1974), 563–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that it corrects Marion Johnson's argument for an early eighteenth-century date for the introduction of cowries into the Central Sudan: see her ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa’, J. Afr. Hist. xi, 1 (1970), 33Google Scholar. In fact, Giovanni Lorenzo Anania reported as early as 1582, and probably for the period before 1570, that at Katsina ‘on y utilise comme monnaie, ainsi que cela se fait chez tous ces Noirs, pour les petites choses, des coquillages de mer qui sont trés blancs, et où l'on échange l'or au poids avec les marchandises qui sont apportées par les marchands’: see his L'Universale fabrica del Mondo, overo cosmografia, in Dierk Lange and Berthoud, Silvio, ‘L'intérieur de l'Afrique Occidentale d'après Giovanni Lorenzo Anania (XVIe siècle)’, Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, xiv, 2 (1972), 335Google Scholar. (Hereafter referred to as Anania, , CosmografiaGoogle Scholar.) It should be noted that the identification of the Wangara with the gold trade also indicates that they very likely introduced cowries, since gold and cowries were the basis of the Songhay monetary system.

26 The debate over the identification of ‘Takedda’ has been a long one, with most authors identifying the copper centre with one of the Tegiddas to the west of Agadez. Brouin, G., ‘Du nouveau au sujet de la question de Takedda’, Notes africaines, xlvii (1950), 90–1Google Scholar; Furon, R., ‘A propos du cuivre de la région d'Azelik’, Notes africaines, xlviii (1950), 127Google Scholar; and Lombard, J. and Mauny, R., ‘Azelik et la question de Takedda’, Notes africaines, lxiv (1954), 99101Google Scholar, favoured this interpretation, although Ibn Battuta's failure to mention salt prevented a positive identification with Tegidda-n-tesemt. H. Lhote refuted this interpretation by insisting that no copper was to be found in the region of any of the Tegiddas: see ‘Recherches sur Takedda, ville décrite par le voyageur arabe Ibn Battouta et située en Air’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., ser. B, xxxiv, 3 (1972), 429–70Google Scholar. The debate has finally been settled by S. Bernus and P. Gouletquer and their discovery of major copper workings near the ruins of an old city ten kilometres from Tegidda-n-tesemt: see ‘Du cuivre au sel: Recherches ethno-archéologiques sur la region d'Azelik (campagnes 1973–1975)’, Journal des africanistes, xlvi, 12 (1976), 7–68Google Scholar; also in Calame-Griaule, G. (ed.), Origine, convergence et diffusion des langues et civilisations résiduelles de l'Air et de l'Azatuaq: Documents, Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, R.C.p. 322, 1975, 168Google Scholar. The question of Ibn Battuta's failure to mention salt production at Tegidda-n-tesemt and Guélélé remains a mystery.

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37 ‘Kano Chronicle’, 104Google Scholar; and Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘Notes on the Aşl al-Wanqariyiri’, Kano Studies, forthcoming.Google Scholar

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42 Sanneh, , ‘Clericalism’, 6871.Google Scholar

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53 In Gobir, , there was ‘abundance of rice, and of certaine other graine and pulse’Google Scholar, while Kano ‘groweth abundance of corne, of rice, and of cotton’. At Katsina, which was suffering famine in the 1510s, fields yielded ‘great store of barlie and millseed [millet ?]’. ‘Rice, mill, and cotton’ were also grown in Zamfara. See Africanus, Leo, Description 828–31Google Scholar. For pepper, see Anania, , Cosmografia, 339Google Scholar. See also Lewicki, Tadeusz, West African Food in the Middle Ages (London, 1974), 2172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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60 Accounts of Alhaji Haruna and Malam Dan Tsoho, 3, 4, 5 July 1973 (collected by Lovejoy and Aliyu Bala Umar, Tape Ki).

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65 Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 100Google Scholar; and ‘Notes’.

66 Idris, , ‘Bariba States’, 84, 86Google Scholar; Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 32Google Scholar; and Lovejoy, , ‘Monetary Flows’Google Scholar. For a different interpretation which claims that the Muslim merchants on the Guinea Coast were Hausa, see Adamu, , Hausa FactorGoogle Scholar. Adamu's argument is unconvincing before the eighteenth century, however.

67 Marty, Paul, Études sur l'Islam au Dahomey, Le Bas Dahomey—Le Haut Dahomey (Paris, 1926), 79Google Scholar; Idris, , ‘Bariba States’, 85Google Scholar; Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 24171.Google Scholar

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Besides using Wangara as a surname, these immigrants also maintained their distinctiveness with at least one cultural trait. They ate frogs, whereas most Hausa people consider frogs inedible. See accounts of Malam Muhammadu Bello, Alhaji Ibrahim Umaru, and Malam Musa Husaini (Lovejoy Collection, Tapes 7 and 8). See also Al-Hajj, , ‘Wangarawa Chronicle’, 9.Google Scholar

69 For eighteenth-century commercial contacts between the Volta and the Hausa cities, see Wilks, I. (ed.), ‘Abū Bakr al-Siddiq of Timbuktu’, in Curtin, Philip D. (ed.), Africa Remembered: Narratives of West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1967), 158–9Google Scholar. Abu Bakr recounted his family history for the late eighteenth century, and while his family were shurufa, descended from the Prophet, his grandfather's commercial partnership through marriage into a Katsina family demonstrates the relationship between the Hausa cities and the Volta basin at Buna. Arrangements such as theirs may have been made in earlier periods as well.

See also Dupuis, Joseph, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), 97, 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and accounts of Alhaji Muhammad Lawan Barmo of Katsina, Malam Muhammadu Abubakar and Malam Halilu of Sokoto, and Alhaji Abubakar Gambo of Katsina (Lovejoy Collection, Tapes 10, 16).

70 Barth, , Travels, I, 479.Google Scholar

71 Lovejoy, , ‘Hausa Kola Trade’, 87130Google Scholar; and Usman, Yusufu Bala, ‘The Transformation of Katsina: c. 1796–1903. The Overthrow of the Sarauta System and the Establishment and Evolution of the Emirate’ (Ph.D. thesis, Ahmadu Bello University, 1974).Google Scholar

72 Hunwick, (‘Songhay, Bornu and Hausaland’, 212–13)Google Scholar provides one of the latest, standard interpretations that the Wangara were Juula with a far-western orientation, and Sanneh, (‘Clericalism’, 6871)Google Scholar, although he identifies a Jakhanké connexion and denies the importance of commercial relations, still fails to appreciate the position of Songhay. Similarly, Perinbam's survey of the Juula only recognizes the classical understanding of ‘Wangara’ as gold traders with a Manding connexion who are synonomous with Juula: see ‘Dyulas in Western Sudanese History’.

73 Smith, , ‘Early States’, 196–9Google Scholar; Adeleye, , ‘Hausaland and Bornu’, 486–97Google Scholar; and Huhwick, , ‘Songhay, Bornu and Hausaland’, 212–23.Google Scholar