Kanem – the Holy City on the Lake
Kanem under the Akirid dynasty seemed as if it might even stabilize itself, but that period of calm barely lasted a generation. The Akiri built their dynasty on weak foundations; the declining settled tribes such as the Dabir and Kunkuna were their primary allies. These were the tribes that their successors would denounce as “pagans” and “idolaters” and there is no lack of evidence to corroborate that notion. Despite the messianic reign of Selma, at best a thin veneer of the religion had been plastered over local customs. The divinity of the monarchy had been briefly replaced with the notion of the monarchy as an Apostle of God, but under the Akirids that shifted back once more.
Christianity, travelling from the Coptic Egyptian courts, brought increased literacy and connections with the outer world. Learned men would acquire written Bibles from Egypt and host readings and scholarly debates, and out of this grew a fanatical group who called themselves the Dalai, or Students. At first, the Students were disorganized. They took Christian names in Coptic and formed mobs to tear down icons and “false temples.” But in time, the power of the Students would grow, and they would form something of a paradoxical organization – at once a learned administrative class and a violent force for compelling the mob.
For the Kanem, the new religion came at a time of intense social disruption. For much of its early history, Kanem had existed in a bountiful wet period – but around the middle of the ninth century that began to change. First came political pressures from an outside world which had previously been extremely remote – Berber movements south and Christian missionaries. But by the dawn of the tenth century, these had transformed into environmental pressures. The contraction of farmland gave way to arid and semi-nomadic raiders who had all the fanaticism of new converts to an ancient religion. Two clans in particular, the Kay and the Koukuma, would take up the banner with alacrity, aligning themselves with the growing power of the Students against the ruling dynasty.
The world of the Kay and the Students was one which seemed as if it was ending. In ancient times, the Mai of Kanem had ruled as living Gods. Now that had been proven false, and the great lake and the rivers that fed it were drying up at an unprecedented rate, forcing many to abandon agriculture. The material culture of the whole Lake Chad region, famed for its pottery and elaborate textiles, declined precipitously in this era. Urban centers alternately swelled and shrank depending on the river’s beneficence, forcing whole tribes to migrate. The dread specter of famine loomed over the countryside. Raids and small scale wars were accordingly frequent, and by 920 the Akirid dynasty did not have control outside of their capital city.
In earlier times, this loss of control might have been survivable, but the Akiri lacked the prestige of their greater predecessors. Accordingly, it was inevitable that the rural clans would rise against them. The Kay justified their rebellion by calling Mai Hume Akiri decadent and corrupt. They claimed that he sought to restore the old idols and indeed worshipped them in secret. According to their propaganda, he kept a harem of mistresses and profaned the sacred altars of Kanem’s churches in secret.
The Kay enjoyed immense military successes which, without the benefit of historical context, seem almost miraculous. Their calls for austerity and unity were popular among a world turned upside down by internecine war and societal collapse. Their army was augmented by Berber mercenaries from the oasis of Kawar, who in time largely converted to the strict Christianity of their new masters. The Kay seized Kanem itself sometime between 926 and 930, when records kept by the Akirid dynasty cease and reportedly, the Magomi clan took power in the city. A people whose history was deeply interconnected with the region in any case, the Magomi ruled for a time, but according to most histories (which inevitably were biased towards the Kay) their Queen-Mother sought for her son the title of Mai and wished that he would rule as a God in the traditional manner. Accordingly, the Kay rose up once more and defeated the Magomi. This time, instead of placing another clan on the throne, they took power directly, calling themselves the Holy Kings.
The first Kay ruler, Dunama, was also a reformer. He utilized the literate population for more than just recitations of the Bible – he build a complex tax code and corvee system. His victories had brought him a base population of educated slaves whose talents were turned to administering the country he had conquered. The wealth of Kanem largely came from manufacturing and trading finished goods, salt, and copper north along the Kawar or Djadu roads, and accordingly Dunama required meticulous records of those transactions. He issued small golden coins stamped with the sign of the cross and his name on the reverse, and required that only his new currency could be spent in the city’s marketplaces. Those who did not have it were forced to convert their own money to this local equivalent for a fee.
By 934, the Kay ruled all of old Kanem. By 940, they had turned their conquests into a base from which to launch holy war. Beyond the rhetoric and propaganda which survives, the motivation for the Kay holy wars seems quite clear. Controlling the northeastern rim of Lake Chad, the Kay hoped to expand their dominion over the west and thus gain a firmer hold on the Berber trade routes. Furthermore, any conquest would net them a valuable source of slaves, which could be traded for Berber horses and camels. Logistically, Kanem lacked the capacity to truly control the northern trade routes. Kawar oasis in particular lay beyond the pale of what they could easily conquer, and the caravan paths that tracked across the Libyan desert could reach Air and the Niger river every bit as easily as they reached Kanem. Accordingly, their wars were primarily directed towards the west and south, striking against the poorer, regional rivals who lacked the geographic security of the Kawar oasis.
Dunama’s son, Iakobas lead the wars against Kanem’s southern rivals, and with the help of a learned scribe he compiled a great account of his conquests. His descriptions have a fatalistic quality to them, that of a victorious conqueror who sees his victories as inevitable – and perhaps they were. From the Berbers of Cyrene, the Kanem cavalry adopted new tactics, in particular the use of the long, heavy lance to disrupt massed formations of infantry. On open ground, these brutal charges proved devastating to the Bornu cavalry, who fought with shorter spears and throwing javelins.
First, Iakobas struck against the “great residence of the Bornu of Yao, who hold among their vassals the Tatala and the Ngalma.” He describes the destruction of its temples and thousands of slaves being taken from the city. Further campaigns down the Kamadugu river saw the sack of Diakam and “twelve lesser towns” whose peoples were similarly treated without mercy. His victorious cavalry crushed all in their path until ultimately he ends his chronicle with an afterthought:
“When the waters of Ngadde receeded I made war upon the Kagha who dwelled along the river. For seven years, seven months, and seven days I warred against them, until they were broken and made to accept the Lord who is God of Israel and Egypt. Their idols were destroyed in a great fire, proving their weakness against the Almighty, who cannot be destroyed. Those who refused to set aside their devils were burned or impaled. To the glory of God, few chose that option, and a great number of men and women were baptized and then sold into slavery.”
By the eleventh century, Kanem was once again regional hegemon, but in a very different manner than the mercantile hegemony of earlier centuries. The “great residences” of the south, which had been coming into their own along the fertile rivers which fed Lake Chad, were broken. The Kay and other Christian tribes were moving into the region as well, an inevitable consequence of the desertification of the north. In many respects, their new state was simply a well-regulated army which lived parasitically off the spoils of the still-prosperous south.
Ghana and the Hausa
The 10th century saw the ranks of Ghana’s rivals grow, and her hegemony finally break. It was, in some ways, inevitable. Across the well-watered Sahel cities were growing, necessitating the construction of walled suburbs and allowing increased division of labor. The agriculturalist element of the population was diminishing and a new urban world based in the manufacturing of finished goods was being supported on its back.
However, the growing aridity which pitched Kanem into ruin had its impact on West Africa as well. Even as cities were growing huge along the Senegal and Niger watersheds, elsewhere, particularly further to the north, urban settlements were regressing into more mobile camps as people turned to pastoralism. Those who remained settled were forced to rely on increasingly more elaborate forms of agriculture – deeper wells and more complex works of irrigation. However, they transmitted this knowledge southwards and soon even the peoples privileged by easy water were able to bring in greater yields of crops than previously.
Ghana however, was on the brink of collapse. Roving bands of Taureg bandits caused a shocking contraction in the trade economy, one which was accompanied by the rise of the city-state kingdom of Niani immediately to the south. A dagger pointed at the very heart of Ghana, the ruling elders of Niani refused to submit themselves, and between 930 and 950 won several battles including most notably the Battle of Mahina in 936, where the Ghanan cavalry elite took grievous losses. One in every three noble horsemen were slain and henceforth Ghana was primarily reactive – struggling against the coalition of Gao and Djenne to the east and Niani to the south.
The wars of the great Mande cities were often deeply personal. To maintain their hegemony, the original Ghanan conquerors had utilized intermarriage between notable families, one which ensured that the battles that brought down Ghana were often family affairs, conflicts between nephews and cousins. Unlike Kanem, however, religion was rarely a motivator for bloodshed, apart from the ritual harvest sacrifices of cattle. Tereism, as the Teacher Nakhato’s religion became known, was an important tool for subverting the divine hierarchy of the Ghanan kingdom, but it did not advocate violence and in many ways was a philosophical cousin of the indigenous beliefs of many ethnic groups. Tereism also served as a way for the aristocracy to separate themselves from the common people. As a religion with many mystery elements, it became a mark of pride for the civilized elites of Gao to be inducted high into the society.
As Ghana’s wars in the late tenth century were simply political jockeying for position, the stakes were never as high as they were around Lake Chad. Even the most bloodthirsty wars were primarily a matter for the mounted elites to dispute in pitched battles rather than with outright massacres and genocide. To a degree, the Soninke in particular made war into a ritualistic expression – battles were frequently indecisive and without significant casualties. Sporadic peasant rebellions in the same era, meanwhile, or actions against raiders, were brutal and uncompromising, pointing to an intentional limiting of casualties among the interrelated aristocracies of western Africa.
Along the western coasts, meanwhile, a unique cultural exchange was happening. The spiral patterns beloved by the indigenous people of the Canaries began appearing on Takruri merchandise in the tenth century, and the Niumi and Fulani people took to the seas. At first, they primarily made their way north on Mauri and Norse expeditions, but those who travelled returned and with their shipbuilding knowledge, local villages began to build larger ships in emulation of the oceangoing cargo ships of both civilizations.
Takrur in particular had potential. Over the tenth century the city blossomed with maritime environs – the beginnings of a safe harbor on the Senegal River. As the African coast (above a certain line correlating with diseases to which even the hybridized Norse of the isles had no immunity) became connected to the outside world, commercial enterprises began to circumvent the Tauregs and the Berbers of the interior entirely.
Some of our first records of the Hausa people come from the court of Ghana, where Berber historians wrote that “many are the peoples who have been drawn to their culture and abandoned their own tongues and histories.” According to these historians, the Hausa came from the great desert and moved into their Central African homeland as it became increasingly arid – a plausible hypothesis, although one that has been debated by other modern historians, who asserted that the Hausa migration was a movement of people fleeing the Kanem holy wars.
The Sarkunan, or Kings of the Hausa, were reportedly seven in number, and according to legend and archeological finds were prolific builders of cities. Throughout northern Nigeria their cities sprung up almost spontaneously throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Traditionally, these cities were based on small local communities which in turn were organized into larger and larger blocs of people. At the highest level these communities were ruled by a village chief, who in turn was ruled by the chief of the “country”, who in turn was subordinate to the Sarkin, or King. Kings and chiefs alike were sacred, and their performance in elaborate religious rituals defined their power.
The galadima, or Vizier, was the head of the King’s household and was typically an educated slave – as was most of the bureaucracy of the Hausa states. Building off the example of the Mande kingdoms to the west, the Hausa cities were typically well ordered and governed. Trade was the lifeblood of these kingdoms; the Hausa were well situated between all the great states of Africa. To the south lay the populous cities of the Ukwu Empire, to the West, Gao, and to the north the Taureg traders. The wealth of the West African world filtered through their cities, and as it did so it could be taxed.
On Heathens
From Hermann of Koln’s famous eleventh century treatise On Heathens:
In the East, those who are not of the Christian faith call themselves Brazaic[1] and worship many gods. To them, as to the Romans of old, the greatest of these deities is Jove, who in their tongue is called Tangras. The Chirican make their grandest sacrifices to Jove, and every year their King takes five hundred mounted men and rides on a grand hunt, the purpose of which is to capture all manner of game for this sacrifice.
But the cornerstone of the Barzaic faith is not lofty Jove or any of the other demons who they worship, but a false prophet by the name of Boddo, who is idolized beyond the measure of their gods.[2] Boddo it is said was a prince in his own country, who, after hearing the blessed gospel became enraged and was determined to pervert it to his own ends, lest his subjects be turned to the worship of the Lord. It is said that he bound himself to a tree, and in doing so became possessed by demons who granted him the power to speak in many languages, and he went and preached among the monstrous peoples of the East.
Boddo is the architect of all the woes of the Eastern Christian, whose heresy was insufficient to earn them a reprieve from his servants. Instead the great warlord Mirgul and his sons[3], swayed by the teachings of the false one, made war on Rome and ultimately would bring down Constantinople itself. Oh what woe for the patriarchal sees of our great faith, that so many of them should fall into the hands of vicious idolaters and heathens!
[1] from the Khotanese word for the transcendent Buddha, Barza or Barslya. In this timeline, Brasayasna is a common umbrella term in the Iranian language for all the different schools of Buddhism which are worshiped in the West, and certain Hindu philosophies as well.
[2] While Christians of the Near East were often much more familiar with the religions of their foes, knowledge of Buddhism in Western Europe was spotty at best. Still, he gets some things right.
[3] A reference to Mihirgula, one of the more famous of the Eftal Shahs. A more obscure reference and a sign of the diffusion of information, given that usually the “Chirican” were blamed for most of Christendom’s woes, including the fall of the Roman Empire.
