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isaac Samuel Profile picture
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9 Jul, 6 tweets, 3 min read
1882 AD
Wathiqa ilā amir Kanū fi amr al-mahdī (treatise on the exodus) by Maryam Bint Shehu in sokoto, Nigeria

-sokoto state history bureau
#randomxt

Maryam was a prominent scholar & lecturer from the sokoto empire; one of several highly literate women in 19th cent. west africa
in this letter to her son Muhammad Bello b. Ibrahim Dabo; ruler of kano (then province of sokoto), Maryam sought to reassure and calm the people of kano that the rumors of the Mahdi's arrival were false inorder to stem the exodus of faithfuls moving east (to sudan)
This was a time of eschatological anxieties in west africa in anticipation of the prophetic traditions of the 12th caliph and the mahdi leading to a millenarian turmoil

a nubian named Muhammad Ahmad had declared himself the mahdi in 1881 and freed sudan from the ottoman turks
Maryam rejected these rumors of the (Mahdi's legitimacy) as false and unsupported by the sources. Her argument respects the orthodox explication that no one knows the time of the hour’s coming, but that there will be some signs that will show it as “a fire on a flag.”
reading

translation and interpretations;
1:
siiasi.org/wp-content/upl…

2:
Risāla min Maryam bint Fūdī ilā al-ibn. A brief contribution to the study of 19th century Nigeria eschatology
by Mauro Nobili
academia.edu/2258817/Ris%C4…
general reading on 19th century west african literacy

1:
Sultan, Caliph and the Renewer of the Faith
<pg 229>

books.google.co.ug/books/about/Su…

2:
Arabic Literature of Africa: The writings of central Sudanic Africa Vol.2
<pg 176>

books.google.co.ug/books/about/Ar…

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isaac Samuel Profile picture
8 Jul
Folios from three of the chronicles of the history of kano, nigeria

1650AD, Asl al-Wanqariyin (wangara chronicle)
1880AD, Tarikh al-Musamma (kano chronicle) written by the scribe Dan Rimi Malam Barka
19th cent., Wakar Bagauda (Song of Bagauda)

-jos museum, nigeria
#randomxt
Kano was one of the commercial capitals of the hausalands and one of the largest cities in 19th cent. west africa

Malam Barka was a powerful slave official originally from wadai (in chad) during the reign of sarkin kano Muhammad Bello (1882–93) he wrote
the kano chronicle using several oral history sources during the political upheaval after bello's death

The anonymously authored Wakar Bagauda may also be attributed to him
Read 6 tweets
isaac Samuel Profile picture
16 Jun
1566AD
Letter from Antonio Vieira to king Henry of Portugal reporting on copper in Kongo
written from Sao Tome
-National Archive of Torre do Tombo
#randomxt

Antonio was a powerful Mwisikongo noble and diplomat that served as the Manikongo's factor at Lisbon under 1/3
both kings Afonso and Pedro later acting as Kongo's ambassador to Rome in 1595 under king Alvaro later marrying to Margarita da Silva (a Portuguese noble woman and Queen Catharina 's lady in waiting)

He was instrumental during the various successions of kings of the era,
ecclesiastical issues between kongo, lisbon, sao tome and Rome and the trade between Portugal and Kongo of which copper was one of Kongo's biggest exports during the early stages of the Atlantic trade esp after Kongo restricted slave exports in the late 16th and early 17th cent.
Read 4 tweets
isaac Samuel Profile picture
25 May
#triviaxt
A look at John Thornton's argument that the Atlantic trade was marginal to African economy, on why slavery was mild in Africa and why the primacy of labor over land in pre-colonial African production explains the existence of domestic slavery in pre-Atlantic Africa
He explains that Africans weren't coerced into the trade by european military superiority b'se europeans failed in their first attempts at colonizing the senegambia, west-central africa (plus southeast africa & the swahili coast) b'se it was africans with the military superiority
He has covered it before: the defeats successive european navies suffered in the senegambia, the portuguese defeats in west-central africa (kongo at mbanda kasi and kitombo, matamba's queen njinga, etc)
and if I may add: changamire and mutapa in southeast africa and the swahili
Read 28 tweets
isaac Samuel Profile picture
7 May
large states were ubiquitous in African history and were never mono-ethnic: the limitations of low population density often meant that a state had to draw resources from a diverse range of groups

secondly, ethnic groups are rarely geographicaly limited but dispersed as diasporas
the most prominent "diasporas" in west africa alone were over half a dozen with distinct states, religions and cultures some as state builders, traders, etc none were delimited by geography
eg the soninke/wangara/Jakhanke, peul/fula/, hausa, tuareg, malinke/mande, songhay, sorko
the best African example of trying to counter the limitations of low population density by incorporating various ethnic groups was the lunda empire of central africa
drawing from the textile belt groups, the salt producing groups, the copper mining groups and ivory trading groups
Read 4 tweets
isaac Samuel Profile picture
30 Apr
early 14th cent. AD

Ife terracotta and copper-alloy artworks

-Head of a king with an 'akoko' crown
-arm of a ruler/priest with leaf motif
-beaded figure of a king with an oro cap
-bronze bowl with intricate cord patterning
#randomxt

-Berlin state museum, germany
-NCMM, nigeria
"Ife was an African civilization whose art, inventiveness and ritual primacy developed with little foreign influence: contrary to the misconception where Muslim empires of West-Africa like Mali were transmitters of high culture into the southerly regions"
uncensoredopinion.co.za/the-ancient-ci…
reading...

Art in Ancient Ife, Birthplace of the Yoruba
Suzanne Preston Blier
scholar.harvard.edu/files/blier/fi…

Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, ca. 1300
By Suzanne Preston Blier
books.google.com/books/about/Ar…
Read 4 tweets
isaac Samuel Profile picture
23 Apr
#Triviaxt

Thread on economic dynamics of slave trade: why most west african states exported enslaved ppl and why some states didn't export them despite the overwhelming economic incentives (by extension political incentives) to do so

screeshots used are taken from these 4 books
initially, there was no "stock" of slaves in africa, waiting for European buyers. Instead, the expansion of the trade was b'se there was a price differential between retaining slaves locally vs exporting them in which the latter's high price rationalized slave exportation
for the majority of (coastal) african states that did export slaves the question of complicity and agency is best answered in Robin law's introduction to ouidah -which was west africa's biggest slave "port"

on the rationale during the trade and ultimately the legacy of the trade
Read 12 tweets

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