Book contents
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Global developments
- Part II Eurasian commonalities
- Part III Growing interactions
- Part IV Expanding religious systems
- Part V State formations
- 18 State formation and empire building
- 19 State formation in China from the Sui through the Song dynasties
- 20 The Mongol Empire and inter-civilizational exchange
- 21 Byzantium
- 22 Early polities of the Western Sudan
- 23 Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period
- 24 State and religion in the Inca Empire
- 25 “Proto-globalization” and “Proto-glocalizations” in the Middle Millennium
- Index
- References
22 - Early polities of the Western Sudan
from Part V - State formations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
Book contents
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Global developments
- Part II Eurasian commonalities
- Part III Growing interactions
- Part IV Expanding religious systems
- Part V State formations
- 18 State formation and empire building
- 19 State formation in China from the Sui through the Song dynasties
- 20 The Mongol Empire and inter-civilizational exchange
- 21 Byzantium
- 22 Early polities of the Western Sudan
- 23 Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period
- 24 State and religion in the Inca Empire
- 25 “Proto-globalization” and “Proto-glocalizations” in the Middle Millennium
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter examines Western Sudanic states and the role of oral traditions and recent interpretations of archaeological findings in West African history. It discusses the antiquity of both trans-Saharan trade and the trade-based polities of the Western Sudan. The first major West African state in this era was the kingdom of Wagadu/Ghana, which emerged in the Sahel, the semi-arid region between desert and savannah, from villages established during the period 500 to 700 CE. The Mande people's oral tradition, Mande Maana, which presents their own perceptions of the origins of the Mali Empire, is usually referred to outside the culture as the Sunjata Epic. By around 1300, Gao had become so prosperous that it attracted the attention of Mali's rulers and conquered by them. In the ninth to the eleventh centuries, the Kingdom of Takrur was the dominant power in the Senegal River Valley, competing for trade with Wagadu/Ghana.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History , pp. 586 - 609Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
Further reading
Brooks, George. Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Cisse, Youssouf Tata and Kamissoko, Wa. La grande geste du Mali des origines à la fondation de l'Empire. Paris: Karthala-Arsan, 1988.Google Scholar
Cisse, Youssouf Tata and Kamissoko, Wa Soundjata, la gloire du Mali. Paris: Karthala-Arsan, 1991.Google Scholar
Connah, Graham. African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Conrad, David C. “From the Banan Tree of Kouroussa: Mapping the Landscape in Mande Traditional History,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 42 (2008): 384–408.Google Scholar
Conrad, David C. “Mooning Armies and Mothering Heroes: Female Power in Mande Epic Tradition,” in Austen, Ralph (ed.), In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Epic as History, Literature and Performance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999: 189–229.Google Scholar
Conrad, David C. “Oral Tradition and Perceptions of History from the Manding Peoples of West Africa,” in Akeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku (ed.), Themes in West Africa's History. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006: 73–96.Google Scholar
Conrad, David C. “A Town Called Dakajalan: The Sunjata Tradition and the Question of Ancient Mali's Capital,” Journal of African History 35 (1994): 355–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, David C. and Fisher, H. J.. “The Conquest that Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076,” History in Africa 10 (1983): 53–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrard, Timothy. “Myth and Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade,” Journal of African History 23 (1982): 443–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunwick, John, trans. and ed. Timbuktu & the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents. Leiden: Brill, 1999.Google Scholar
Kea, Ray A. “Expansions and Contractions: World-Historical Change and the Western Sudan World-System (1200/1000 B.C. – 1200/1250 A.D.),” Journal of World-Systems Research 10 (2004): 723–816.Google Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia “The Western Maghrib and Sudan,” in The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. III. Cambridge University Press, 1977: 331–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia and Pouwels, Randall L., eds. The History of Islam in Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
McDougall, E.. “The Sahara Reconsidered: Pastoralism, Politics, and Salt from the Ninth through the Twelfth Centuries,” African Economic History, 12 (1983): 263–86.Google Scholar
McDougall, E. “The View from Awdaghust: War, Trade and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara, from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 1–31.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Roderick J., Tainter, Joseph A., and McIntosh, Susan Keech, eds. The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Susan Keech. “Floodplains and the Development of Complex Society: Comparative Perspectives from the West-African Semi-Arid Tropics,” in Bacus, Elizabeth A. and Lucero, Lisa J. (eds.), Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 9 (1999): 151–65.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Susan Keech “A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold,” Journal of African History 22 (1981): 145–58.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Peter. African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Moraes Farias, P. F.. “Intellectual Innovation and Reinvention of the Sahel: the Seventeenth-Century Timbuktu Chronicles,” in Jeppie, Shamil and Diagne, Souleymane Bachir (eds.), The Meanings of Timbuktu. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008: 95–107.Google Scholar
Munson, P. J. “Archaeology and the Prehistoric Origins of the Ghana Empire,” Journal of African History 21(1980): 457–66.Google Scholar
Niane, Djibril Tamsir. Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Trans. Pickett, G. D., London: Longman, 1965.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Sharon. “Saharan Climates in Historic Times,” in Williams, M. A. J. and Faure, Hugues (eds.), The Sahara and the Nile: Quaternary Environments and Prehistoric Occupation in Northern Africa. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1980: 173–200.Google Scholar
as-Sa'di, , ‘Abd ar-Rahman b. ‘Abdullah. Ta'rikh as-Sudan, trans. and ed. Houdas, Octave and Delafosse, Maurice. Paris: Librarie d'Amérique et d'Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1964.Google Scholar
Sutton, John E. G. “West African Metals and the Ancient Mediterranean,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 2 (1983): 181–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, James. Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change Along the Western Sahel 1600–1850. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Willis, John Ralph. “Ancient Ghana and Mali,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8 (1975): 175–81.Google Scholar