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Encyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies

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Nathalie Kouamé
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Éric P. Meyer
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Anne Viguier

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West African Medieval Arabic Inscriptions

Inscriptions médiévales arabes ouest‑africaines

Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias

Résumé

Cette notice examine les inscriptions arabes ouest‑africaines datées du onzième au quinzième siècle apr. J.‑C. Leur importance en tant que sources historiques est évaluée et comparée à celle d`autres sources arabes écrites, des traditions orales, des données archéologiques, et des inscriptions en langue berbère et caractères tifinagh.

Texte intégral

1Medieval Arabic inscriptions are one of the most valuable sources for the history of the eastern part of West Africa’s Sahel region. They provide data on the region’s polities, urban centres, and intellectual and commercial contacts with the world across the Sahara.

2The inscriptions date from a period that goes from the early 11th century ad/5th century h to the late 15th century ad/9th century h. They may be called “medieval” in the sense that virtually all of them were produced before the end of the period that corresponds to the European Middle Ages. Admittedly, the use of the term “medieval” in this context risks transferring to Africa a historical periodisation that belongs to European tradition only. However, the term is needed as an alert to those who still assume, erroneously, that no extant corpus of dated written sources produced within West Africa could possibly extend a thousand years back. It underlines the fact that the Arabic inscriptions began to be engraved, on West Africa’s rock faces and tombstones, several centuries before the writing of Timbuktu’s famed seventeenth‑century Arabic historical literature.

3The rhetoric displayed in the inscriptions throws light on the evolution of the coexistence of the Islamic tradition and other cultural traditions in West Africa. It illuminates aspects of that evolution not recorded by other genres of written evidence, nor by archaeological findings nor by oral tradition. It provides data on how certain sectors of West African societies imported Islam without having been conquered by any Muslim army, and empowered themselves with that cultural import rather than passively surrendering to it.

  • 1 Inscriptions in the Berber language (in Tifinagh script) abound on rock faces at Essuk and elsewhe (...)
  • 2 Sauvaget, 1950 ; Viré, 1958, 1959 ; Moraes Farias, 2003, 2011, 2013, 2017a, 2017b.

4The West African medieval Arabic inscriptions recorded and analysed so far by modern scholars come from five epigraphic sites in the northeast of the Republic of Mali. These are Essuk and Junhan (in the Aḍagh‑n‑Ifoghas plateau) and, further south, Saney, Gao, and Bentiya (along the eastern arc of the Niger valley). In these sites one finds the oldest internally dated examples of writing in West Africa.1 The two earliest inscriptions known were engraved on Essuk rock faces in 1011ad/401h and 1013‑1014ad / 404h. The most recent inscription comes from Bentiya, the southernmost of the sites, and dates from 1489ad/894h. In total, approximately 300 Arabic inscriptions from the five sites have had their Arabic text edited and translated by 20th and 21th century scholarship.2

5In the case of manuscripts written on paper and other easily perishable materials, very often the originals have not reached the present time. What we read are later copies of the originals, and copies of copies. On the contrary, in the case of inscriptions on stone and other durable materials, one often can still read the original texts. The engraved signs one reads now emerge directly, and physically, from the cultures and historical periods they represent. In this they are like archaeological data. Also, in this they are very different from other medieval Arabic sources about Africa, which in general were composed from a distance by foreign authors. Most of these authors never visited West Africa. Rather, they selectively compiled information provided to them by travellers. Moreover, they often uncritically quoted earlier treatises composed in the same way, which meant that some of the information they used was already out of date by the time they wrote.

6Inscription evidence is verbal evidence. Hence it belongs to a dimension of data that cannot be captured by other archaeological findings. However, they provide a direct bridge between archaeological research and the study of texts.

7Three categories of historical evidence made available by the West African medieval Arabic inscriptions must be highlighted.

8First, the recording of the steps through which new concepts of landscape, world space, and historical time, borrowed from Muslim cultures abroad, came to coexist in West Africa with earlier local concepts. The inscriptions at Essuk, which include the oldest known examples of Arabic writing produced in West Africa, are particularly revealing in this respect. They preserve the oldest known West African evidence of the computation of time according to the Islamic calendar, and of the orientation of local space towards Mecca.

9Second, some of the royal inscriptions from Saney commemorate women and give them the title of “queen”. However, the analysis of the rhetoric of those inscriptions suggests that those women were not wives of kings, nor political rulers in the strict sense. Rather, each of them held a special female ritual office that balanced the king’s political office. Those Saney Islamic inscriptions record a form of female high office, and authority, not mentioned in connection with the area either by other genres of written evidence or by oral tradition. It is only the engraved Arabic evidence that attests to this form of female power.

10Third, the inscriptions at Bentiya record the long historical presence there of a Muslim community, almost certainly constituted by traders engaged in commerce with areas further north, east, and south. The Timbuktu historical literature took no notice of that community. Two of the Islamic offices mentioned by the Bentyia inscriptions appear especially connected with the management of the relations between local Islamic and non‑Islamic institutions. They are precious evidence for the study of the coexistence of Muslims with non‑Muslims along the Niger valley. Oral tradition does not deal with this topic, and archaeological evidence from Bentyia is not yet available. It is Arabic epigraphy that points the way towards further investigation of the region’s past.

Bibliographie

Book

Moraes Farias P.F. de, 2003, Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicles and Songhay‑Tuareg History, Oxford University Press for The British Academy, Oxford, 603 p.

Papers and Contributions to Books

Moraes Farias P.F. de, 2011, “Local Landscapes and Constructions of World Space: Medieval Inscriptions, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Course of the Niger”, Afriques [On line], 02/2010, http://afriques.revues.org/896

Moraes Farias P.F. de, 2013, “Bentyia (Kukyia): a Songhay-Mande Meeting Place, and a “Missing Link” in the Archaeology of the West African Diasporas of Traders, Warriors, Praise-Singers, and Clerics”, Afriques [On Line], 04/2013, http://afriques.revues.org/1174

Moraes Farias P.F. de, 2017a, “Arabic and Tifinagh Inscriptions”, in Nixon Sam (ed.), Essouk‑Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans Saharan Market Town, Leiden, Brill, p. 41‑51.

Moraes Farias P.F. de, 2017b, “Essouk Arabic Non‑Funerary Inscriptions, New (Previously Unpublished) Series”, in Nixon Sam (ed.), Essouk‑Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans‑Saharan Market Town, Leiden, Brill, p. 299‑303.

Sauvaget J., 1950, « Les épitaphes royales de Gao », Bulletin de l’IFAN, 12/2, p. 418‑440.

Vire M.‑M., 1958, « Notes sur trois épitaphes royales de Gao », Bulletin de l’IFAN, B, 20/3‑4, p. 368‑376.

Vire M.‑M., 1959, « Stèles funéraires musulmanes soudano‑sahariennes », Bulletin de l’IFAN, B, 21/3‑4, p. 459‑500.

Notes

1 Inscriptions in the Berber language (in Tifinagh script) abound on rock faces at Essuk and elsewhere in the Sahel. They belong to a tradition of writing introduced into the region centuries earlier than the Arabic tradition. However, Tifinagh inscriptions display no chronological information. They focus on practical and personal aspects of the life of pastoralists and crafts people. They virtually never contain allusions to Islamic, or any other, religious practice, and Tifinagh signs were rarely used for funerary inscriptions. Many Tifinagh inscriptions are of a ludic nature, or are love messages. These Berber-language inscriptions have an important historical value of their own. They are a splendid record of widespread popular use of writing by both men and women. Most importantly, they also demonstrate that the practice of writing is not necessarily linked to cultic activities, the computation of time, or the celebration of rulers.

2 Sauvaget, 1950 ; Viré, 1958, 1959 ; Moraes Farias, 2003, 2011, 2013, 2017a, 2017b.

Auteur

University of Birmingham, U.K.

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