Page 79 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

E m p i r E s o f m E d i E v a l w E s t a f r i c a

ruler at the age of 85. Toward the end of Basi’s life he became blind, but
this was kept a secret from his subjects. When Basi had to meet the
A Travel Writer public, he was able to fool people with the help of his ministers, who
Who Stayed Home would whisper or otherwise verbally signal to him what he was sup-
The Arab scholar al-Bakri posed to do and say.
was born in Spain early It is significant that the king before Tunka Manin was his uncle
in the 11th century and
died there in 1094. He rather than his father. This is evidence of a matrilineal line of descent,
never visited Africa, and in which the king’s successor is the son of his sister. This was done
most likely never even because the ruling family and government could always be sure who
left Spain during his a boy’s mother was. But a boy’s father could never be established for
lifetime. Nevertheless, certain.
he is one of the most
important sources for
early West African his-
tory below the Sahara, aniMalS and planTS
including most of what is Hunting was important to the Soninke people, but details about how
known about the Ghana they did it are sketchy because the Arab geographers had only a vague
Empire. Al-Bakri got his knowledge of the animals below the Sahara. Al-Bakri mentioned “the
information from books animal from whose hides shields are made” (quoted in Levtzion and
written by Arab geog-
raphers whose works Hopkins), but he did not know what it was. He did not recognize the
are now lost. He also hippopotamus, but heard about an animal that grazed on land, lived
interviewed many people in the water, and resembled an elephant “in the great size of its body as
who had traveled across well as its snout and tusks” (quoted in Levtzion and Hopkins).
the Sahara. In medieval Ghana, the hippo was hunted with a javelin (a light
spear that was thrown) that had rings in its handle and ropes that
ran through the rings. The hunters would throw several javelins at a
hippo in the water. When it died and floated to the surface, they used
the ropes to drag it to shore. One product made from the thick hippo
hide was a vicious kind of whip that was exported for sale in distant
markets.
Many different kinds of trees grew in the savanna. One of these
was ebony, which produces beautiful and valuable black hardwood—
although it was used for firewood by the local populations.
One of the most useful trees was the baobab, which the Arab writ-
ers agreed was a very strange one. They had some fantastic (and false)
notions, believing the baobab produced wool from which fireproof gar-
ments were made. Other aspects of the baobab must have seemed just
as strange, but happened to be true. Ibn Battuta, who actually traveled
through the Western Sudan from 1352 to 1353, correctly reported that
even without leaves, the trunks are so big around that they can provide