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The Northern Factor in Ashanti History: Begho and the Mande

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Ivor Wilks
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Extract

In this paper I shall be concerned first with the early spread of Mande (or Mali, or Mandingo) peoples, carrying with them Islam, into the area of the later Ashanti, and secondly, with the importance of this for an understanding of the subsequent rise of the Ashanti kingdom in the later seventeenth century. Thirty Years ago Duncan-Johnstone pointed out that ‘it was Mandingo influence that first brought Ashanti in tough with the Moslem world to the north”, and more recently Goody has stressed the role of Mande-speaking peoples, and especially of the Dyula traders, in the spread of Islam southwards along the ‘great trade route from the Niger down to Begho in the north-west corner of present-day Ashanti’. As Goody has noted, this movement of Mande speakers is reflected in a general way on the modern linguistic map of West Africa, in the line of Dyula and related Mande-tan languages that extends from the Middle Niger between Jenne and Bamako south to the Banda and Wenchi districts, in the Brong-Ahafo Region of the present Ghana.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 1961 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1961

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References

1 Quoted in Goody, J., The Ethnography of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast west of the White Volta (Colonial Office, London, 1954), 12n.Google Scholar

2 Goody, J., ‘A note on the Penetration of Islam into the West of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast”, in Trans. Gold Coast and Togo Hist. Soc., I, ii, 1953, 45–46.Google Scholar

3 See Westermann, D. and Bryan, M. A., The Languages of West Africa (London, 1952), endpiece map.Google Scholar

4 Also variously rendered Beeo, Bew, Beego, etc.

5 Clozel, F., Dix Ans à la Cô;te-d'Ivoire (Paris, 1906). Notice on Bonduku by Captain Benquey, 190 et seq.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.

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10 In 1959, I was taken to see a part of the old town through the courtesy of Mallam Yakubu saidu of Namasa. Mrs Meyerowitz was shown a more southerly section, near the village of Hani, by the Hanihene in 1946 (Meyerowitz, 1952), 46. The area is covered with dense vegetation, and an adequate survey would be a major undertaking. In the section visited in 1959 hte old wells were still to be seen, a few standing walls of burnt mud, brick, and many large occupation mounds, now the haunts of hyena.Google Scholar

11 See e.g. Meyerowitx, 1952, 46, recording Hani tradition.Google Scholar Nsoko appears to derive from an old Akan name for the Mande, see Delafosse, 1912, II, 212. It survives in Anyi as Nzoko, in Gonja (Guan) as Nsogo, and in modern Twi, in a form showing Hausa influence, as Nzongo, a generic term for the immigrant (and usually Muslim) quarter of a town.Google Scholar

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28 W. I. C.: verspreyde stukken, 848, Report by Abramsz dd. 23 Nov., 1969 (State Archives, The Hague);Google Scholar see also Brun, ed. of 1913, 58.Google Scholar Stories of dumb barter in the Bunduku area, embellished with devils fond of red cloth, survived in North Africa into the early nineteenth century, when they were related to Captain Lyon, , see Traves in Northern Africa (London, 1821), 148.Google Scholar

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30 The route is that given in Bowdich, T. E., A mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 181–5.Google Scholar It was still of major importance in the late nineteeth century, see Freeman, R. A., Travels and Lofe in Ashanti and Jaman (London, 1898), 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Es-Sa'di, , Tarikh-es-Soudan, translated by Houdas, O. V. (Paris, 1900).Google Scholar

32 Kufik-inscribed brass pans of early Moroccan or Spanish provenance are still to be seen in Ashanti, Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (London, 1923), 314–15, mentions examples from Nsawkaw and Attebubu. Another fine though battered specimen may be seen in a small grove near the palace of the Ejisuhene.Google Scholar

33 Goody, 1954, 10–12. The Gonja Mande probably arrived via Bouna.Google Scholar

34 Wilks, I., ‘A note on Twifo and Akwamu”, in Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, III, 3, 1958, 215–17.Google Scholar

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36 See Meyerowitz, 1952,Google Scholar Passim. But see also Goody, J., ‘Ethnohistory and the Akan of Ghana”, in Africa, xxix, I, 1959, 67–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Trimingham, J. S., Isam in West Africa (Oxford, 1959), 19.Google Scholar

38 MS. Chronicle of Iman Imoru Konandi and Al Hajj Mahama, reproduced in translatin in Goody, 1954, App. IV. This chronicle appears to have been finished about 1770, but undoubtedly incorporates older materials. Where cross-checking is possible with European sources, its accuracy is proved.Google Scholar

39 A tradition to this effect is on record, see Goody, 1954, 55, n. 9. which adds that Mohammed Labayitu died at Sampa. The Chronicle of Imam and Al Hajj Mahama records the death of his father, Mallam Ismailia, ‘on their way back to their town”, at Sanfi. Sanfi and Sampa may both refer to Samba, on the direct route from Buipe, the scene of the conversion, to Begho.Google Scholar

40 ‘The Asia of Jo´o de Barros’, edited by Crone, G. R. in The Voyages of Cadamosto (London, 1937), 125.Google Scholar

41 Chart 743, op. cit. note 13.Google Scholar

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43 W. I. C.: Report by Abramsz, op. cit.Google Scholar

44 Churchill, 1746, v, 165.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 451.

46 Ibid., 180–90.

47 W. I. C.: Report by Abramsz, op. cit.

48 Bowdich, 1819, 14–31, 167, 170 and 483.Google Scholar

49 Ibid.. 341.

50 Ibid.. 229.

51 Wilks, 1957, 125–8: 31 supra.Google Scholar

52 See, e.g. chart 743, op. cit. note 13. D'Anville, Map of the Gold Coast, 1729, somewhat improved and corrected, as well as the ‘Names of Places accommodated to the English Orthography’.Google Scholar

53 Bowdich, 1819, 170. Nta was later applied to the Guan-Brong speaking peoples of southern Gonja, the Nawuri and Nehumuru, and is now used in an even more extended sense.Google Scholar

54 The proximity of Kumasi to Tafo accounts for the confusion of Nta and Ashanti in early sources, for example, Barbot; see Churchill, 1746, v, 145, 189.Google Scholar

55 See e.g. Rattray, R. S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (London, 1929), 169, 235, 256.Google Scholar